In the hall, the boy handed him a packet marked with the word urgent. Edmund returned to the saloon, broke the seal and quickly read the contents. Renforth’s hand, like his mind was brisk, precise and merciless.
Edmund returned to the boy. “Wait for a reply,” he told him curtly.
Wide-eyed, the boy obeyed at once.
It confirmed Holt to be a former Revenue officer, disgraced, suspected and dangerous. It confirmed arms to be missing from London Docks and the old pattern revived. It confirmed what Edmund had feared since stepping into Plymouth: the past hadnot stayed dead merely because he wished it buried with his brother.
Elise stood beside him, very still. “What is it?” she asked.
Edmund had a choice, then. He could conceal and deflect, to keep her ignorant for her own ‘safety.’ He had seen what ignorance cost. It cost preparedness. It cost life. On the other hand, he could trust her as she had trusted him with the cipher.
“It is from my Commander,” he said quietly.
He watched her go pale.
“What does it say?”
“It confirms Holt is nefarious,” Edmund replied, and kept his voice low so as not to be overheard. “He is a former Revenue officer and a traitor. He was connected to Singleton’s circle. It says arms have gone missing from the London Docks—as before.”
Elise said nothing.
Edmund wrote a reply quickly—carefully and sparingly. He told Renforth Holt was hiding in caves nearby. He told him the widow’s house had been searched. He told him it was likely a concealed passage was being used. After a moment of grim consideration, though, he decided not to tell him about the key’s present hiding-place—not yet. His task had been to find the missing ledger, not a lost cipher or her knowledge of it.
If London decided ‘safekeeping’ was required, then they would take it from her with official smiles and iron hands. Neither was Edmund prepared—yet—to watch Elise Larkin be stripped of the last thing Charles had left her.
When he had sealed the note and sent the boy away, he returned to the saloon to find Elise’s gaze fixed upon him.
“So you are in the service of the Crown,” she said.
It was not a question. It was a judgement.
“I am in the service of necessity,” Edmund answered, because it was the closest truth he could offer without exposing her to the full weight of it.
Elise drew a careful breath, and Edmund waited. “You begged me to confide in you. I did. Now you will tell me what you are.”
He held her gaze and felt the desire to be understood by her, to be something other than a shadow with an alias.
“I am what I told the village I am,” he said at last, “a man who writes in a notebook.”
Her eyes flashed. “That is evasion.”
“Yes,” he said, because she deserved honesty where he could give it. “To tell you more would put you in greater danger.”
“You have already put me in danger by being here.”
“No,” Edmund replied, and felt the old soldier’s certainty rise. “Holt put you in danger. The cipher put you in danger. The men who entered your rooms put you in danger. I am merely the inconvenience that refuses to let you face it alone, and who is here to recover the ledger.”
A beat of silence. Elise’s expression was blank, and he could not tell whether she was furious or—worse.
“We must plan to recover it,” she said at last in a clipped tone.
“Yes,” Edmund agreed, “but first, I want to see if there is a tunnel beneath the house where they got in.”
“There used to be, but Charles closed them up after the war.”
“Show me… please.”
They went to the cellar, to the oldest part of the house. Elise carried the lantern, and he followed, alert to every shadow and change of direction. He felt the shift of air, the damp, the thick stone. Belair House had secrets in its bones.
