Silence.
“Jonathan?”
The loft was empty.The blanket was neatly folded.There was no sign her viscount had ever been there.
Staring at the empty hay, she felt the loss of him like a stone in her chest.
Chapter Twelve
Jonathan heard feet on the ladder and tensed, his hand moving instinctively toward the pistol at his waist.Lantern-light crested first, enough to reveal Jacob’s young face as the stable boy rose from the shadows below.
“Sorry to intrude, my lord, but I heard you up here.I’ll help you,” he said quietly, already reaching for one of the panniers that Jonathan had just packed.“I know how to tie these on your pack-saddle so they won’t come undone.”
Jonathan winced, hating to get the lad involved.Having waited until one in the morning, knowing the household and its guest would be asleep, and hopefully any soldiers, too, he had tried to leave without waking the stable boy.
Jacob climbed down, out of sight before Jonathan could tell him to go back to bed.Grabbing the rest of his things, he followed him to the stalls.Within minutes, Jacob had the panniers secured to the mare’s pack-saddle and stood holding the gelding’s bridle whilst Jonathan mounted.
“Thank you,” Jonathan said, the words inadequate for the risk the boy was taking.
Jacob merely nodded.“The French killed my brother, my lord,” he said, matter-of-factly.“Anything you can do to hinder them or better yet, bring them to their knees, I would appreciate.Which way are you traveling?”
Jonathan hesitated, so Jacob added, “The patrol route has shifted.They’re watching the south road now, and the coast from Neustadt downward.If you’re trying to go that way, toward Lübeck, you’ll need to take the miller’s track toward Plön, then cut south at the Bösdorf junction.”
Jonathan shook his head at the unexpected intelligence.“How did you find that out?”
Jacob gave a lop-sided smile and a shrug that told him nothing before checking that the mare’s lead rope was fastened securely to Jonathan’s saddle.
“God keep you, my lord.”
“And you.”
As he disappeared through the gate, which Jacob closed behind him, he didn’t let himself look back at the darkened house where Lise slept, or perhaps did not sleep.Tomorrow, she would arise and have a pleasant breakfast with her betrothed, as she should.The thought twisted his gut, but he pushed it aside.Friedrich Albrecht remained under the von Ostenfelds’ roof, and every moment Jonathan lingered increased the danger to Lise and her family.
He could not stay because his presence endangered her.More than that, he could not stay because Friedrich suspected something, even if the man didn’t yet know precisely what.
Unfortunately, Jonathan couldn’t leave the region entirely, for the work remained unfinished.Incomplete maps were worse than none.They gave false confidence, led men into traps, wasted resources that Britain could ill afford to lose.If he vanished from Lise’s life, he must still remain in the north for now.
That was his immediate future, a mixture of professional duty and godawful personal yearning.
The gelding’s steady rhythm beneath him provided a focus as he navigated the darkened landscape.He knew these roads now, had spent weeks memorizing every turn, every crossing, every village that might offer sanctuary or betray him to the French.The moon slipped behind clouds, and Jonathan relied on instinct and training to find the miller’s track the boy had mentioned.
As the sky began to lighten in the east, he was already miles from Eutin and turning south.The work consumed him as he pushed aside thoughts of Lise.His task was crucial and a far cry from how he started as a mapmaker, on native soil.Those early assignments, especially the Highlands, were sometimes arduous but never truly dangerous.Nor could the information save or cost lives.
Now his goal was to gather intelligence on routes that might help Britain survive Bonaparte’s stranglehold on European trade.Not only would he map the physical aspects of a foreign land to tell the British Army, but also, whenever possible, add notations of where French troops regularly set up camp.
The Continental System was tightening like a noose.The Little Emperor meant to choke British commerce until the island nation had no choice but to submit or starve.But King George held Heligoland, that rocky outcrop off the German coast, and from there, goods were smuggled, various agents such as himself landed, and messages moved inland, as well as back to England.
The northern ports mattered desperately.Lübeck and Travemünde in the east, Cuxhaven in the west, and the Elbe and Weser approaches.Every route Jonathan mapped, every ford and forest path that he measured, every coastal approach confirmed brought his country one step closer to disrupting French logistics.With each map he completed, however, he had the dangerous task of finding the right person to transport it back to a port where a British sympathizing captain would take it on board.
These prearranged links in the intelligence chain occasionally fell apart, leaving him scrambling to get his maps into safe hands.
Ashworth didn’t want him keeping the drawings in his possession a moment longer than he had to, not because the colonel worried over Jonathan’s safety.But if he was captured, the maps would be used against his own countrymen.Thus, he found himself meeting with a series of Prussian merchants and Holstein traders, sometimes even farmers, all of whom wanted to get rid of the French as much as the British did.
With each map that left his hands, he felt a sense of satisfaction at doing his duty.Some thought Bonaparte’s bloated acquisitions could be whittled down to a smaller, more manageable size — one that could no longer swallow half of Europe on a whim.Jonathan assumed eventually, that would be the case.
Over the following days, he worked with methodical precision, noting which routes were passable for wagons and which would bog down in the autumn rains that would be upon them soon.He measured river crossings, marking depths and approaches, and even plotted the fastest way around the Wardersee lake.
In each village, he observed carefully those residents who met his eyes with suspicion, those who looked away with the practiced indifference of people under siege, and the few who, with frank defiance, avowed sympathy for Britain’s cause.
