Jars of sulfur. She hefted it aside and opened the box below it. Potassium chloride and, stuffed between the jars, glass powder in bags.
“Bastard,” she whispered.
William whipped his head around as she swore, eyes wide in shock. But she didn’t care. Alastair was a bastard. “Here,” she said. “We need to take these.”
She stood and rattled the desk drawer but it didn’t open. She stepped aside as William joined her.
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “I’ve broken into Wilde’s desk many times. Do you have a hairpin?”
She pulled out one of the pins that secured her wig and gave it to him. Within a few seconds the drawer snicked open.
“Don’t tell Wilde.” William grinned.
“And reveal how I ken about yer secret talent?” The words came out lightly, but her shoulders sank a little under the weight of yet another lie. They were starting to pile up and the more mistruths she made, the more secrets she kept, the harder it would be to ever come clean.
I guess it’s a good thing we’re going our separate ways. He’ll never have to know any of it.
The papers inside had been stuffed in, in no identifiable order. There were not even piles, just a single large heap. Here and there she could see the deep blue of her preferred ink and her loopy, uneven hand.
She pulled out a handful of pages and passed them to William. “Look for anything that says matches, sulfur, or glass, or anything with my handwriting.” She held up an example.
Quickly, efficiently, she sifted her papers from the rest, snapping each down on the top of the desk. With every sheet her anger grew. William was not nearly as efficient. In fact, he’d hardly made headway through his pile at all. Instead, he had turned toward the lamp and was examining a document.
“For goodness’ sakes, Will. You can read them when we’re home.”
“It’s not that.” He passed a leaf of paper to her. It wasn’t her writing. It wasn’t her ink. The hand was lighter, the strokes thinner and sloping at a more acute angle.
And the content—that was certainly not hers. It was a cipher—one her father had used with his friends back in Scotland before he’d been run out of the country by the law. She’d cracked it as a child, out of curiosity more than anything.
He hadn’t changed, clearly. He was still planning revenge on the upper classes. The document didn’t go into too much detail, just today’s date and that they would be laying supplies in preparation for their final mission. There were instructions on where to meet and where to reconvene should the group be separated. “Oh, Da. What th’ devil are ye doin’?”
William held up a map. “This is Westminster Palace. I’ve been there before. The king is my cousin.”
Fiona cursed. Her father had always been angry and volatile. He didn’t think before he acted, and he certainly didn’t consider the consequences for himself and his family. But this? This was a whole new level of recklessness. Tucker was surely to blame.
At William’s concerned look, she relayed the contents of the coded paper. “Bloody hell,” he said. “He’ll hang for sure. At the very least they’ll pack him off to Australia for good.”
Her throat constricted at the words. She loved him. He wasn’t even remotely deserving of her loyalty, but he was all the family she had left and she couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in the world. She paused, desperately racking her brain for a solution.
William picked up the papers she’d let drift to the floor and sorted through them, separating her documents from the rest. When he’d made a neat pile of everything that was hers, he folded it and stuffed it into his coat. Everything else he shoved back into the desk in the same haphazard manner in which they’d found it.
Fiona remained frozen.
He took her by each shoulder, forcing her to look up at him. “We could do it, you know,” he said. “We could break into Westminster Palace.”
“Are you mad?” Breaking into her father’s rooms had been risky enough—the palace was unthinkable. “What would it achieve?”
“We go in, intercept your father, convince him he’s being an addle-pated, harebrained lunatic, and lead him out. If the guards catch us, I’ll pass it off as a prank on my cousin.”
It might work. It might be an utter disaster. “Maybe we go and get Edward. I should have told him the truth this afternoon. I just— He just— After last week, I don’t know if he will help.”
William’s expression flattened. “The explosion?” He huffed, and she waited for the yelling to start. Instead, he just pointed a finger at her. “I told you it wasn’t me.”
He had, and both she and Edward had been so willing to assume otherwise. “I’m sorry. Does it change your offer to help him?”
William shook his head, dropping his finger. “No, but I am going to thrash him when we’re through.”
“Fair enough.” She sagged against the desk, rubbing a hand over her jaw. She did not want to tell Edward about her father and Tucker. Yes, it was becoming a better and better idea, but it would also mean admitting that she hid the information from him in the first place.
