“That alertness. That tendency to watch the shadows before you look at the light.” The Admiral narrowed his eyes with surprising clarity.
“Sir—” Edmund began.
“Army?” the Admiral asked bluntly.
There was no derision in the question, nor judgement. Only the gentle shrewdness of an old man who had seen more than most. Edmund drew a quiet breath.
“Yes, sir,” he said at length. “Cavalry.” It was always best to stick as close to the truth as possible.
The Admiral nodded as though this confirmed a private belief. “I thought as much. It is in the way you stand, and in the way you look at a room.”
Edmund said nothing. He never spoke of his profession unless compelled. It was safer that way. The Admiral, in his lucid mood, was not to be diverted, however.
“Since you have had the misfortune to be acquainted with danger,” the Admiral continued, “I suppose Mrs. Larkin’s behaviour caught your attention.”
“It did, sir.”
“Well,” the Admiral said, leaning back and folding his hands, “Charles Larkin had dealings of his own, you know.”
Edmund lifted his head. “Dealings, sir?”
“Not all naval work is unfurling sails and shouting orders,” the Admiral said softly. “There are undertakings—quiet undertakings—known only to a few. I will not say much; it is not my place.” He hesitated. “But Charles was involved in such matters, now and again. Information passed. Patterns were observed. Smuggling was to be stifled or traced. He was a brave man—and a perceptive one. Too perceptive, perhaps.”
A slow tension gripped Edmund’s chest.
This—this was worth hearing. This was a thread to follow. This was the first hint that Captain Charles Larkin had been part of something far larger than a mere naval rotation.
“And Mrs. Larkin?” Edmund asked carefully.
“Oh, she was no part of such business,” the Admiral said. “Charles protected her from all that. Yet a woman married to a man with secrets often senses more than she knows.”
Edmund inclined his head. “Indeed.”
The Admiral looked at him keenly. “You were not sent here for no reason.”
“No, sir. An old, ciphered ledger has gone missing, and the code has been resurrected.”
“One of Charles’, I daresay. He was quite clever with them.”
Edmund inclined his head.
“Then you must discover it, of course,” the Admiral said simply. “If there is any danger—any danger at all—you will let me know?”
Edmund bowed his head. “I give you my word, sir.”
“You believe she is involved in something now?”
“I was sent,” Edmund said slowly, measuring the risk, “to discover if there are any doings here. I have no indication of her in particular.”
The Admiral relaxed, satisfied, and reached for his newspaper, scanned a few lines, and promptly nodded off.
Edmund watched the old man sleep for a moment before quietly rising. He stepped out into the passage, his mind already thinking back—to the cliffs, to the path, to the man he had glimpsed speaking low to Mrs. Larkin at the harbour, to the moment the widow had paused upon the rocks, as though sensing him or someone far more threatening.
Charles Larkin had been engaged in secret work… that much was known.
If Mrs. Larkin was continuing some fragment of it without fully understanding… then the risk was real.
He left the house and took to the path behind the Admiral’s gardens—an overgrown lane bordered by stone walls and buckthorn hedges. The change in the weather was more than merely visible; it could be felt at the back of the neck. The sky, which had worn a thin, indifferent blue that morning, now sank under a bank of lowering cloud rolling in from the open sea. The light thickened to a sullen pewter, as though the day itself were being smudged out.
