A grey cloak.
A basket on one arm.
Elise Larkin, walking with Miss Archer.
They did not see him, but keeping utterly still, he watched them.
She moved with that purposeful grace again—a woman accustomed to bearing a burden without complaint. Beside her, Miss Archer spoke animatedly while Mrs. Larkin listened, replying occasionally, but her eyes drifted often to the sea, as if measuring it.
Danger, Edmund thought.
She walks like one who knows danger.
When she disappeared into the fold of the path, he released the breath he had held for far too long.
He did not hesitate long. Habit, more than curiosity, set his feet in motion. He left the garden by a side gate, closing it softly behind him, and cut across a field that sloped towards the lane. There was nothing, after all, in the least improper in walking along a public road at dusk. A man might choose the same direction as a pair of ladies for a dozen innocent reasons.
Unfortunately, he had none of those reasons.
He kept to the verge, his boots pressing the damp earth without sound. Ahead, at a bend where gorse and furze grew thick, he saw the grey of Mrs. Larkin’s cloak and the flash of Miss Archer’s bonnet ribbons as the ladies descended towards the town. Their voices drifted back to him in snatches—one voice light and quick, the other lower and measured.
He could not distinguish the words, but the cadence held no panic, no haste. They did not walk like conspirators on their way to a clandestine meeting. They walked like women who had a purpose.
It was the very ordinariness of it that unsettled him.
He let the distance between them lengthen when the lane grew more open, drawing nearer only when hedges and turns allowed him to do so without attracting notice. A farmer’s wagon passed him on the road. Edmund stepped aside, lifted a hand in casual greeting, and received in return the solemn nod bestowed upon all strangers.
By the time he reached the outskirts of the town proper, Mrs. Larkin and Miss Archer had already passed the first row of cottages. Their figures slipped between the huddle of whitewashed walls and slate roofs, moving towards the square where the church, the smithy, and Mrs. Grey’s bakery faced one another like three old gossips.
He paused in the shadow of a lichen-covered wall, leaning his shoulder against it with the appropriate air of a man resting after a stroll. His hat brim shaded his eyes. From here he might observe without being easily observed himself.
They slipped into the church.
It was suspicious behaviour, he told himself drily—very much the sort one expected in a dangerous agent of the Crown’s enemies.
At last, the ladies emerged to then turn their steps towards the low stone building that housed the postal counter. The sign above its door creaked faintly as the breeze caught it. A lantern had already been lit in the narrow window; within, Edmund could see the outline of shelves stacked with bundles of stationery and long, folded newspapers.
He straightened, all indolence gone.
Mrs. Larkin stepped inside, whilst Miss Archer remained on the threshold, speaking to an elderly woman who had evidently been waiting for her; the two ladies bent their heads together in earnest conversation.
Edmund crossed the square with unhurried steps and took up a position near the churchyard gate, where he might observethe door without appearing to be lurking. He flipped open his notebook and affected to sketch the church steeple. The wind tugged at the pages; he braced them with his thumb and waited.
Mrs. Larkin did not remain long. When she emerged, she carried her basket somewhat differently—lighter at one side, heavier at the other, as though some weight within had shifted. He caught the faintest gleam of folded, stiff paper between the cloth covering and the wicker.
She had gone in with nothing but what he had seen her take from the Seminary; she came out with a laden basket.
No great crime there, he mused, and yet?—
As she stepped aside to allow a gentleman to enter, she glanced back over her shoulder. Not a fluttering, anxious look, but a swift survey of her surroundings.
Her gaze passed over him without pausing. Why should it? He was merely another stranger admiring the architecture.
Miss Archer rejoined her then, having parted from the older woman with a squeeze of the hand and some low-spoken assurance. Edmund saw a coin press discreetly from Jane’s fingers into the other’s, and the older woman’s hurried curtsy of gratitude. Was it charity, or payment for news? It was impossible to tell which from this distance.
The pair moved on again, away from the square, towards the narrow lane that led down to the harbour.
Edmund hesitated. It would be one thing to follow them through the open streets; quite another to trail them down to the quayside, where every stranger stood out against the daily pattern of nets, barrels, and rope. Still, if there were to be a point of contact—if any packet of messages were to change hands—it was most likely to occur where boats came and went without much accounting.
