Eleanor’s mind leapt, unbidden, to Mr. Pritchard’s smooth hands and careful questions.
“Halford,” she whispered.
The name did not belong in this room of plain plaster and honest horse-scent. It belonged in corridors with ledgers and seals, in offices where men congratulated themselves on order while trafficking in ruin.
Graham’s mouth tightened. “Or someone like him.”
Eleanor’s fingers traced the margin of the paper. “My father used to say the true danger was never in the code, but in the hands that wrote it.”
“He was right,” Graham said.
The mews house settled around them, small and plain and inadequate against the enormity of what sat on the desk until a knock came. Two brisk taps, then a third, as if the visitor had grown bored of courtesy.
Eleanor tensed.
Graham was at the door before her breath finished leaving her lungs.
He did not open it. He listened—then lifted the latch only enough to accept a folded slip from a hand that never fully revealed itself.
When the door was bolted again, he crossed to the desk and set the note beside her papers. “A courtesy,” he said.
Eleanor’s gaze dropped.
Three short lines, written in a crisp hand:
Watcher posted at the third stoop. Boots too clean.
Pritchard’s man seen near the mews at dusk.
City. St. Paul’s. Before six.
* * *
C.
Eleanor looked up. “Colin Westcliff, Lord Highwood.”
Graham’s expression gave away nothing, but his voice went quieter. “Yes. He’s confirming what I suspected.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened around her pencil. “You trust him.”
“I trust his information,” Graham replied. “Not his enjoyment of being right.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved faintly despite herself.
“Now,” she said, tapping the torn catalogue page, “we solve what we can before the men outside decide to solve me.”
* * *
Evening came early, folding shadows into the corners until the mews house felt smaller.
Graham had gone out briefly, with Colin, to post men and to ensure the street looked ordinary.
Eleanor did not waste the time alone.
She copied the remaining entries twice, once in her own hand and once in her father’s shorthand, as if mimicry might summon him back long enough to advise her. She listed every district letter her father had ever used in his notes. She underlined Withdrawn until the ink threatened to tear the page. By the time she had finished, Graham had returned.
When the streetlamp flared outside and banished the last blue of dusk, Eleanor rose to draw the curtain. Habit made her glance out first. The lane was nearly empty. There were no carriages, no strolling couples, only fog softening the far end of the street.
