“No.”
“Then you followed Holt. Why?”
“I have reason to believe he is connected to something I am trying to prevent,” he said carefully.
She stopped walking. He halted too, immediately, as though trained to match another’s movement without thought. The moonlight caught the side of his face, illuminating the faint scarat his temple. She wondered—not for the first time—how he had earned it.
“You will speak plainly,” she said.
He regarded her steadily. “You are asking questions you may not like the answers to.”
“I am accustomed to that.”
“As am I.”
The wind gusted, tugging at her skirts. She did not look away.
“You knew my husband,” she said flatly.
“Yes.”
“At school?”
“Yes.”
“And Singleton?”
He flinched almost imperceptibly. “Yes. That was the truth.”
She noted it and filed it away against future need.
“You arrived here at the same time Holt appeared,” she continued. “You have insinuated yourself into the Admiral’s household, into my school, into my path. You follow men who speak of keys and ciphers. Do you continue to insist you are here merely as a writer?”
He exhaled slowly. “I do not to you.”
Her brow furrowed. “You do not?”
“I insist only that I am searching for an object,” he said, “and that whatever I am pursuing intersects uncomfortably with your life.”
“That is an evasion.”
“Yes.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“I am not at liberty to disclose details. Besides, if I tell you everything,” he said quietly, “you will wish you had not heard it.”
Her voice softened despite herself. “You assume I am fragile.” Again, though, it was a statement.
“No,” he said at once. “I assume you are resilient enough to be endangered by the truth.”
That struck deeper than she liked.
They resumed walking, more slowly now. The school’s silhouette rose ahead of them, solid against the night, its windows dark save for a faint glow on the upper floor.
“You said that Holt believes I possess something,” Elise said.
“A key.”
