Mr. Leigh sat opposite her, his posture less guarded than she had ever seen it in a parlour. A kitchen stripped a gentleman of performance. There was no elegant chair to lean upon, no glass of brandy to hold as if it were a symbol of authority. There was only a wooden table, rough stools, and steam rising from bowls.
For a few moments they ate in silence, and Elise found the silence different from the usual one between them. She realized, with a faint shock, that she could hear the sea, a constant presence beyond the cliffs. The sound at once soothed and unsettled her. The sea had taken Charles. The sea might yet take something else.
Mr. Leigh set his spoon down.
“We must speak of the tunnel,” he said.
Elise clutched her bread between her fingers. “Yes.”
“We need to seal it.”
The directness of it—seal it—made her bristle. It was sensible and practical. It also felt like surrender.
“I want to know where it goes,” Elise said.
His eyes lifted to hers. They were like dark caramel in the lantern light; intent in a way that made her feel both seen and examined. “No.”
The word landed like a slap, not because it was rude, but because it was so unqualified.
Elise lifted her chin. “You do not forbid me, sir, in my own house.”
His gaze did not waver. “I do not forbid you out of arrogance. I forbid you because it is a trap.”
“Indeed? If so, it is a trap I intend to understand. I can wait for Holt to come here again, or I can go after him myself.”
“You intend,” he said, and there was a faint edge in his voice now, “to walk into a tunnel used by men who have alreadybeaten Blake half to death and ransacked your rooms? You intend to do so with a lantern and what? A kitchen knife?”
Elise felt heat rise in her throat—anger, humiliation… and something else. “Do you think me foolish?”
“I think you courageous, but also desperate,” he replied, and somehow that was worse, because it contained truth.
She pressed her palm to the table to steady herself. “You speak as if you are the only one allowed to act.”
“I may act,” he said quietly, “because I have been trained to survive violence.”
The admission hung between them. He had never said it so plainly. He had implied, evaded, suggested. ‘Trained to survive violence’ was not the phrase of a common man.
Elise narrowed her eyes, the better to consider him. “Of course, you think I have not.”
He paused. For the first time since he had sat down, his composure shifted. It was only a flicker, as if the mask adjusted itself. His gaze travelled over her face—not in insolent appraisal, but in careful study.
“Well, it would be most unusual,” he said at last. “If so, I suspect you have learned it the hard way.”
The words loosened something in her chest, a knot she had not known she carried. ‘The hard way’, her mind repeated.Yes, one learns to survive violence when one has buried a husband and kept a school operating and hidden a wounded man in a cellar and listened to footsteps in the night.
Elise took a slow breath. “How quickly can you send for help?”
His senses sharpened. “Help from London?”
“Yes.”
“If I know my Commander at all,” he said, and though he did not name him, the weight of the word ‘commander’ confirmedeverything Elise suspected, “he and the troop are already on their way.”
“Already?” she repeated, surprised despite herself.
He gave a small, humourless smile. “Men who dislike scandal do not wait to be invited into it.”
Elise’s thoughts raced. If his men were coming, then Plymouth was already marked on a larger map. It was no longer merely her problem. Yet the thought did not comfort her, it merely widened the sense of consequence. If the Crown came in force, the cipher would not remain hers. The truth about Charles’s work would not remain hidden. Blake might become an inconvenience to be disposed of, not a man to be saved.
