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“Letters,” Frederick said promptly. “I have an enduring interest in ‘em. The letters we write today will be the museum exhibits of tomorrow. It’s one of the reasons I nurture a flowery style, the better to flummox the future.”

“I knew someone other than Major FitzRoy wrote that absurd letter!” Daisy exclaimed.

“It was not absurd, but an excellent example of a nineteenth century aristocratic missive,” Frederick retorted. “Are you both ready to begin reading?”

“This is a losing proposition,” Livie said as she rose from the table.

“We brought all the letters to the library,” Daisy said, ignoring Livie’s pessimism.

“Excellent choice,” Frederick said. “Libraries usually house brandy decanters, and I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“I, for one, am glad you’re joining us,” Daisy said to Frederick, as they walked out of the room. “Captain Sir Tyron’s writing style is frightfully grim. Now that Livie is disappointed in love, rereading them might send her into a decline.”

“Can’t have that,” Frederick said.

A few hours later, they were all in a decline. The library table was piled high with letters, battered and salt-stained after making their way to London from various seaports. They had managed to read through four years of them.

“Bloody hell,” Frederick said, getting up to pour himself another brandy.

“I agree,” Daisy murmured, her head bent over a three-page, closely-written letter. “In this one, the captain is talking about Cassio again, predicting that one day he’ll captain his own ship and help Britannia rule the seas. How on earth could you have overlooked your father’s adoration of his first mate, Livie?”

Livie looked up from the letter she held. “I never read them very carefully.”

“I wouldn’t have either,” Frederick said, returning with a full glass. “They remind me of a nasty old gull at Eton who called himself a minister.”

“You can’t have that brandy unless you eat something first,” Livie said, dropping her letter and taking the snifter away.

Frederick grumbled, but Livie didn’t give it back until the butler brought him bread and a slice of meat.

“Honestly, Livie, if someone in the future happens to read these letters, they’ll believe the captain’s daughter was an accomplished strumpet,” Daisy said, an hour later. “Maybe we should destroy them.”

Livie choked back the foolish confession that she was a strumpet. More relevant was the fact that her father had castigated her for sins she hadn’t yet committed.

“Let’s each read aloud a favorite sentence,” Frederick said, picking up a letter he’d just dropped. “Here’s mine: ‘She that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, and when she does fall, she falls at once without warning.’ Did you know, that happens to me regularly? Usually when I’m on my fourth bottle.”

“I can’t mock my father’s letters,” Livie protested. “There’s a line in this one, for example—” She broke off. “Here—” She broke off again.

“What is it?” Daisy asked.

“Have you noticed ink blots above certain words?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Livie slapped the letter she was holding down onto the library table. “There!” she cried, pointing to a dot over the word “for.”

Daisy squinted at it. “So?”

“There’s another ink blot, a few lines down,” Livie said. “A big one over ‘the’ …‘for the!’ For the what?”

It took several hours, but finally seven letters were discovered to have round ink blots, all seven dating to the year before the meeting in France when a traitor met his regicidal band on the shore. At a careless glance, they looked as if the author had raised his quill in thought without carefully tapping away his ink.

Livie snatched up a piece of foolscap and began taking notes. If a large dot topped a small word like “for,” the entire letter was part of the cypher; larger words were spelled out with tiny dots over individual letters.

“This letter spells out ‘May fourth,’ ” Daisy said, putting down the sheet she held. “I suspect that’s the date of the incident.” She picked up another. “This letter spells out ‘Trouville,’ presumably the town on the French shoreline near to their landing. These two were likely sent together, because with ‘dark shore’ the traitor’s plot is outlined. He was telling his confederates that the boat should land under cover of darkness.”

“Must be,” Frederick said. He was turning over the discarded letters, making certain that no other missive contained dots.

“But why send the messages here? To me?” Livie asked. “The information would only be useful to the plotters, and there’s no one here but family and staff!”