Edmund kept his expression mild and his breathing even. “Perhaps I am not most gentlemen.”
Prowse gave a breathless laugh. “No, sir. That’s plain enough. You ’ave a soldier’s back.”
Edmund felt the faint prickle on his neck that always came with such easy recognition. He had spent years learning how to become unseen. Yet in a town like this, it was difficult to vanish entirely.
“A soldier,” he said lightly, keeping the saw’s teeth biting into the wood. “Many men were soldiers. These days it is hardly distinguishing.”
“Aye, but you ’ave a different look,” Headley replied.
“What look is that?” Edmund asked, though he suspected he knew.
“The look of a man who keeps listening even when there be nothing to hear,” Headley said, and for the first time his voice held something less casual. Then he cleared his throat as if he had said too much and added briskly, “Mind your fingers, Prowse. You be about to take the end of one off.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes, the saw rasping, the smell of resin rising as the fresh cut opened the tree’s heart. The damp, cold air made Edmund’s lungs sting; theexertion warmed him nevertheless. His hands ached in a way he welcomed—an honest ache.
It struck him, with faint surprise, that he enjoyed the company.
This was not the polished banter of St. James’s Square, with Manners’ elegance and Baines’ bluster; not even Stuart’s comfortable cheer. This was different. Here was camaraderie without history, obligation without expectation. He was merely Mr. Leigh, a gentleman with his sleeves rolled up, sharing labour in a field of mud. No one spoke of Singleton. No one watched his face for fractures.
And that, he realized grimly, was the very danger of it. Comfort could make one careless.
Prowse spat into the mud and wiped his brow with his forearm. “Storm did more’n drop trees,” he said, as if the thought had occurred to him only now. “Shook loose a deal of old trouble too, I reckon.”
Headley shot him a look. “Mind your tongue.”
“What?” Prowse insisted, eyes bright with the pleasure of half-forbidden gossip. “’Tis not as if I said it weren’t true. Folks ’a been talking since Holt came back.”
Edmund lifted his gaze slightly, keeping his tone mild. “Talking of what?”
Prowse looked briefly pleased to be invited and then wary of Headley. “Oh, nothing, sir. Just… old stories.”
“Old stories are the sort writers come for,” Edmund said, and let the faintest amusement touch his voice. “So I am told.”
Headley snorted. “You’ll be putting him in a book, will you? The lad’ll charge admission to speak to you after.”
Prowse grinned, encouraged. “’Tis about Captain Larkin, sir.”
The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. Edmund kept his hands on the saw. “What about him?”
Prowse lowered his voice, though there was no one near enough to overhear except the wind. “Well, folks say when he died, it were nay just a storm what took him.”
Headley swore under his breath. “Prowse?—”
“It be only talk,” Prowse said quickly. “But talk’s all we ’ave, sometimes. His ship went down, they said, out at sea. But there were men in the tavern who swore they saw strange lights that night. Signal lights—and a boat that did nay belong.”
Edmund’s pulse did a quiet, disconcerting thing: it steadied. He felt suddenly awake in the old way, the way he had felt on the Continent when a rumour became a thread and a thread became a rope leading to a hidden door.
“Strange lights,” he repeated, “from where?”
“Off the Sound,” Prowse said. “And nearer in than a ship ought to be if she’s honest. Wasn’t smugglers. Wasn’t Revenue men. Might ’ave been nobody. But?—”
Headley cut in, his voice gruff. “Captain Larkin was a fine officer. Mrs. Larkin’s a fine lady. Leave it be.”
Prowse coloured. “I mean no ill. Just… when things go wrong, folk look for reasons. And when a man dies sudden, folk think there must be a hand behind it.”
Edmund nodded as if indulging idle town speculation, but his mind shifted, aligning itself around the new detail. “A brother of mine died in an accident. It is hard not to look for reasons why.”
The other men gave a sympathetic nod as they continued to saw and axe at the tree.
