I was angry...for Adele. And ironically for Burke, who would no doubt have done almost anything for a story to add to his publishing laurels and provide the story of his career. Instead, he had reached out to me as he lay dying...
‘What will you do now, Mikaela Forsythe?’
It would be so easy to end the wretched life of the man before me, sprawled across that display case, his own saber scattered to the floor as he fell back.
“Mikaela.”
The sound of my name. Not a shout or a warning, but low, as I had heard it dozens of times as if we were the only two people in that room.
“Ye dinna want to do this, lass.”
Brodie... Oh, but I did. I wanted it for Adele, and I suppose that I wanted it for Burke in some small way, even with his endless criticisms, sly remarks about my novels, and his contempt for women in general.
I did so want to end the life of the miserable, cringing man who stared back at me, believing that I could and would.
Brodie reached around me, his hand wrapping around my hands as I held the tip of that saber against Smith-Thomas’s throat. It would be so easy.
“Let it be, lass,” he said then. “There are others who will see that the man accounts for what he’s done.”
I slowly lowered the saber as Alex Sinclair arrived, with Sir Avery as well.
“He has a leather portfolio inside his coat that he was given by the Foreign Secretary, Sir Montfort.”
“Oh!” Alex replied as he saw the saber I held. “I say! Lady Forsythe! Are you all right?”
I was, and handed the saber to him, which he very nearly dropped and would have hurt himself. He stared at me.
“You might have been injured.”
“Ye dinna know her very well,” Brodie replied as he slipped an arm about my waist and escorted me from the Armory.
Seventeen
SIX WEEKS LATER...
MIKAELA
I had madethe final edits to the manuscript. It was presently wrapped and bound in brown paper on the seat beside me in the coach as I rode to the offices of Warren & Co., Publishers, to meet with my brother-in-law.
He was most anxious to get it to his editors in time for the release he had planned for October, in time for the winter reading season.
There had already been articles in the newspaper on the Crime Sheet of the Times, in special editions the publisher insisted on putting out. A sort of advertising campaign for the forthcoming book about the scandal involving the capture and exposure of the spy ring, as he called it, in our inquiry case. Those caught included several notable persons, members of Parliament, and the military, plotting to pass on stolen plans for the submarine B-10.
Stories in the newspapers had sent London government and society into turmoil as the roles of the conspirators were exposed after their arrests.
Sir Smith-Thomas, Lord of the Admiralty, who had access to those plans was arrested the night of the reception at St. James's Palace. Not one to take the entire blame for having stolen the plans, he had willingly shared the names of the others involved in the scheme.
“A coward,” Mr. Conner declared when it was revealed that Smith-Thomas had provided the names.
“They never want to take all the blame. Spread it around. It makes them feel just a wee bit better.”
Sir Montfort, the Foreign Secretary, was stripped of his position and expelled as a member of Parliament, where he had been privy to highly secret communications with other countries across Europe, had met with foreign Ambassadors, and had initiated foreign policy for Great Britain.
Their goal in taking the plans for B-10, a highly sophisticated underwater vessel—a submarine, as I had first recognized it—was to ‘balance the scales’ of power. Between those who were increasingly gaining more power across Europe. With the hope of preventing a disastrous confrontation over shipping lanes, ports of call used for commerce, and a growing uneasiness among countries in the Mediterranean and the Far East.
“A harbinger of things to come,” Sir Avery had commented in meetings afterward.
Brodie was presently off, meeting with him again. I had declined, in deference to the editing I had promised James I would do. I had no need to hear it all again, while Brodie had been circumspect.
