They reached a wall, and she lifted the lantern, revealing a panel.
It was undeniable—a careful join in the mortar, the sort of workmanship intended to vanish into plain sight.
“It does not appear to be sealed any longer.” Edmund pushed, and the panel yielded with a groan of old hinges. Darkness yawned beyond.
Elise whispered, “Good heavens.”
“A passage,” Edmund looked through. “Someone has opened it,” he replied, and watched her face pale at the thought.
They stepped only a short way into the tunnel. Edmund listened more than he looked. He had learned, long ago, that danger announces itself first as absence—an absence of ordinary sound, a hush where there should be life.
The air smelled of salt. The floor sloped. After a few yards, the lantern light caught something on the ground—fresh mud.
Elise’s breath caught. “Someone has been here.”
“Recently,” Edmund said. He looked at her. “We do not go any further now.”
“But—”
He kept his voice low and firm. “No, not without preparation. Not while Blake lies broken in a hidden room. Not while men like Holt could be inside, waiting. We know the passage has been used.”
He watched her swallow her frustration; watched her accept his judgement, if reluctantly. It should have been satisfying. It was not, because he did not want her forced into obedience by fear. They retreated and closed the panel again.
“Are there any others?”
“Possibly, but none for which I have ever determined an entrance.”
“We must set an indicator,” she said as they walked back upstairs.
“Yes,” Edmund agreed. “A thread or powder—something subtle.”
“Flour,” she said promptly.
He almost smiled. “It will do.”
And there it was again—that strange, inconvenient spark of admiration. Elise was not merely brave, she was quick and practical. She possessed a mind honed by necessity, not ornament.
They returned to the kitchen for flour. When the arrangements were made, when the cipher was hidden in the cupboard and the flour prepared to betray any movement, Elise turned to Edmund again.
“You told your Commander I am endangered,” she said quietly. “Did you also suspect me of stealing the ledger?”
“At first, I was uncertain, but I quickly decided against your culpability.”
There was a long pause. Then Elise said, very softly, “And if you are mistaken?”
“Then I will face that when it comes.” He could not promise outcomes. He could only promise his own conduct.
Elise’s gaze held his as if she heard, beneath the bluntness, a deeper truth. He had placed himself on the side of her protection, at least for now.
When she turned away, he found himself watching her again—not with the searching gaze of an investigator, though that remained, but with a deeper awareness he disliked and could not wholly dismiss.
It was not merely that she was handsome, though she was, in a restrained way that made her beauty feel like an accident rather than a display. It was her composure… her competence… the way she refused to collapse, even when she had every right to do so.
He had known many kinds of courage on the Continent. Elise’s courage was domestic and therefore, to his mind, moreastonishing. It was the courage of continuing daily life and caring for children while men in the shadows sharpened blades.
It made him furious on her behalf. It made him want to be near her. It made him want to take care of her.
When they returned to the corridor outside the hidden room, Elise paused briefly, as if something within her resisted moving farther forward.
