Her pulse beat harder still, but her voice was calm. “Then please write it, sir.”
He did not touch the paper until she had finished speaking. When he did, it was with the measured care of a man who understood that every word could cost a life.
Elise watched him write, then fold the note.
“I will take it,” he said. “You stay with Cook and Blake until I return—please.”
She nodded once. “Then go.”
Mr. Leigh paused at the door and looked back at her—really looked, as though fixing her in his memory. “We are not offering surrender,” he said quietly, “just taking control.”
Elise met his gaze without flinching. “Then let us hope Mr. Holt follows our instructions.”
As the door closed behind him, she found herself grateful she was not having to do this alone.
CHAPTER 17
Edmund left Belair House with the note tucked into the inner pocket of his coat, as if it were merely a memorandum about roof tiles and carpenters, and not the slender paper upon which a house and a woman’s life had been wagered. He carried no lantern. The moon did enough, and the rest was habit: moving in shadow, keeping to the hedgerows, one hand on the hilt of his knife strapped to his chest, listening for the changes in wind that signalled another man’s step.
Behind him, the school stood quiet—too quiet for a place normally full of girls and lessons and clattering industry. A dog barked once, then fell silent. Edmund passed cottages with dark windows and the smell of smoke from damp wood. He let none of it change his pace.
The George sat at the harbour’s heart like a pulse. Even at this hour there was light behind the lower windows, and the low, steady hum of voices. Men sat and drank and spoke of what they had lost in the storm, and what they hoped they might still keep.
He slowed before the door. Not because he feared what lay inside—he had walked into French camps under a flag of truce and felt less caution than he did now—but because the tavern was a place where one’s intentions were judged by one’s ease. Heensured his mask of indifference was in place. He pushed open the door and stepped into warmth and smoke and the scent of ale.
The room was crowded, but not riotous: fishermen in woollen caps, a few dock workers, an older farmer in muddy boots. The air rang with that peculiar cheerfulness of men who have survived something and feel obliged to prove it by drinking. Behind the bar, Mr. Grey—a broad-shouldered man with a face as weathered as any pier post—caught sight of Edmund at once and nodded with the familiarity of recent days.
“Mr. Leigh,” he called, voice rough but friendly. “Two nights in a row.”
Edmund allowed a faint smile. “I needed a moment away from a house full of silly chits.”
A few men laughed. He felt their acceptance settle around him like a borrowed coat.
He crossed to the bar and laid a coin down, not so much for ale as for the privilege of private words. “May I have a moment?”
Mr. Grey’s eyes flicked to the coin, then to Edmund’s face. There was intelligence there. Edmund had suspected it since the first day—intelligence and a discretion that had been honed by years of knowing what not to say in public.
He lifted the coin and slid it into his pocket as if it were nothing. “You may have two,” he said, “but not three. My wife claims I am too generous, and I intend to prove her wrong.”
Edmund leaned slightly forward, keeping his voice low. “A man named Holt comes here, does he not?”
Mr. Grey’s expression did not change, but a subtle stillness came over him. “Many men come here.”
“This one is not many,” Edmund replied. “I ask you only to pass something to him—will you do it?”
Mr. Grey’s gaze narrowed. “Is that a request, Mr. Leigh, or an order?”
Edmund chose his words carefully. “It is a request, but it is also important.”
Mr. Grey wiped a tankard as if he were considering the merits of the glass. “Important for you,” he said at last, “or important for Plymouth?”
Edmund could have lied. He could have said it was for Plymouth, for the safety of the girls, the school and the Admiral. It would even have been true—partly.
Instead he said, “Important for a woman who has already been threatened.”
Mr. Grey’s eyes flicked, almost involuntarily, toward the direction of Belair House, as if the building’s shadow reached all the way into his tap-room.
Edmund took the folded note from his inner pocket and slid it across the counter.
