Mrs. Larkin was ahead of him, walking with that same purposeful grace. She did not look back. She had not expected him to follow her.
Edmund kept a distance a gentleman might plausibly keep in a public lane—near enough to see, far enough not to appear attached. He passed two women carrying baskets, nodded to a boy dragging a broken shutter, and let himself become merely another figure in the storm’s aftermath.
In town, Mrs. Larkin paused at the butcher’s first, then the post. Edmund kept to the opposite side of the street, loitering nearby as Mrs. Larkin paused near the post office as if considering whether to enter.
The postmistress—Mrs. Markes, a pointed-nosed woman with ink-stained fingers—came out with a parcel in her hand and spoke to Mrs. Larkin at once.
“Mrs. Larkin!” she called. “A delivery came through last night, as late as you please.”
Mrs. Larkin crossed toward her, receiving the parcel with a composed nod. Her fingers tightened around it in a way Edmund had seen before, in soldiers receiving dispatches.
She turned away—yet not toward the path back to Belair House. She moved instead toward Plymouth and the harbour. Edmund’s instincts homed in. Blake?
He waited three heartbeats and then began to follow.
The harbour was back to business—boats swaying against their moorings, ropes creaking, the smell of brine thick in the air. Men moved with purpose.
Mrs. Larkin walked through it without hesitation, her basket on her arm and her eyes looking forward. She moved as if she belonged in the harbour.
Edmund kept his distance, slipping behind a stack of crates when she paused near a fishman, stepping aside when a pair of sailors crossed his path.
He watched her purchase small supplies—assumingly for Blake again. Then she turned down a narrower lane, one that led away from the busiest part of the wharf.
She was walking in Blake’s direction. Edmund moved after her, to where the lane ended at a low boat-house, half-sheltered by a wall. Mrs. Larkin slipped behind it. Edmund paused where he could see without being seen—behind a pile of netting and a broken barrel.
He heard voices: Mrs. Larkin’s, low and controlled; Ana a man’s, rougher, threaded with strain—Blake’s. “—earlier than usual,” Blake said. “You should nay ’ave come so soon.”
“I have come because you frightened me the other day,” Mrs. Larkin replied, “and because the storm has changed matters. Tell me what you meant.”
“There are men here what don’t belong,” Blake said. “Their signals are similar to Singleton’s gang.”
Unconsciously, Edmund’s hand had tightened.
“Revenue men, surely?” Mrs. Larkin asked, and there was something in her tone—anger, perhaps, or fear.
Blake gave a low laugh without humour. “Revenue men don’t signal that way. These—these are the sort what wear official coats when it suits ’em and plain ones when it don’t.”
Mrs. Larkin’s breath caught. “Have you seen them?”
“No, just the signals.”
Mrs. Larkin’s voice lowered further. “And the cipher?”
Blake was silent long enough that Edmund felt every second in his bones.
“It ’as been used. I saw it. I saw marks on a paper—same shifts, same pattern as the Captain used. Same as you taught me.”
Mrs. Larkin’s voice was very quiet. “Where?”
Blake swallowed audibly. “At the tavern. A man dropped a scrap when he was drunk. I picked it up after he left, and—ma’am, it was the code.”
Edmund’s blood cooled. A drunk man carrying a ciphered scrap was either absurdly careless… or bait.
“Let me see it,” Mrs. Larkin said at once.
“No,” Blake said quickly. “I burned it. I ain’t a fool.”
“Did you read it first?”
