Chapter Thirty-One
Sunday afternoon, the wind had shifted, bringing with it a strange urgency.
The tea tray was perfect. Too perfect. The china gleamed, polished to a shine so fine it caught the firelight.
The biscuits were still warm. Mary-Ann poured with steady hands, her movements graceful, practiced, like a woman untouched by grief or betrayal.
Mrs. Bainbridge noticed. She noticed everything.
“You’ve gone quiet,” she said, accepting the cup Mary-Ann handed her. “That always used to worry me.”
Mary-Ann smiled faintly. “No need to worry. It’s just tea.”
“Darling, if I believed that, I’d be wearing my yellow bonnet and not my walking boots.”
Mary-Ann took her own seat, her back straight. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are,” Mrs. Bainbridge said lightly. “Because the man you grieved for three years came back, and instead of holding you, he handed you silence. That would make anyone feel whole again.”
The cup in Mary-Ann’s hand trembled.
She set it down. Slowly. Deliberately. And then she said, voice barely above a whisper, “He knew.”
Mrs. Bainbridge blinked. “Quinton?”
Mary-Ann nodded. “About everything. About the shipments. The symbol. The Order.”
Mrs. Bainbridge’s teacup clinked against its saucer as her hand trembled. “Oh my God.”
“I showed him the mark I found. I asked him what it meant.” Her voice was calm. Detached. Too detached. “He told me it wasn’t safe to share. That Barrington had said—”
Mrs. Bainbridge didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
“He said it wasn’t about trust,” Mary-Ann continued, “but that’s all it has ever been about.
And he failed it. I let myself believe I was safe with him,” she whispered.
“Even after everything. Even after he looked right through me that first day, I told myself he’d come back to me.
That he’d remember who we were. But he never did. ”
Her eyes filled with tears, sudden and sharp, and she pressed her lips together tightly.
“I’ve had my privacy stripped away. My mail tampered with. My room searched. Every time I think I’ve clawed my way back to control, someone takes it from me.”
She turned her face away for a moment, blinking furiously, but a tear slipped free despite her will. She caught it with the back of her hand and took a breath so shallow it barely stirred her chest.
Mrs. Bainbridge’s voice was soft now. “My dear girl…”
“And no one does anything!” Mary-Ann said, voice rising. “They know. My father. Barrington. Quinton. Everyone’s circling this threat like it’s a fire they’re afraid to smother. But it’s burning through my family. Through our business. Through me.”
She stood. Her chest rose and fell, her breath shallow and uneven. “My mother would have never stood for this,” she said, the words escaping before she could temper them. “She would have made them answer for it.”
Mrs. Bainbridge rose too, her expression shifting as grief transformed into fury.
“I won’t stand by while Wilkinson turns my father into a puppet and calls it business.
I won’t pretend I don’t see what he’s doing.
If no one else will stop him—” Her voice cracked, but she forced it through.
“—then I will. I’ll get the proof I need if I have to go into the cave and retrieve it myself.
A beat of silence passed between them.
Then Mrs. Bainbridge said, with no theatricality at all, “You are the bravest woman I know.”
Her pulse thundered, but her spine held straight. She wasn’t her mother’s shadow. She was her echo, sharpened by grief and grown by truth. If the men couldn’t bring down the Order, she would. If no one else would protect her family’s name, she’d do it herself.
Mary-Ann laughed bitterly. “I’m exhausted.”
“I know. And I don’t blame you for what you want to do. But I’m asking you to wait until you can think clearly. As you said yourself, you’re exhausted.”
“I don’t want to wait. But I will. For now.”
Mrs. Bainbridge crossed the room and took her hands. “You have nothing to prove. Not to them. Not to anyone. But if you must, let me speak first. Let me try.”
Mary-Ann nodded once. Her voice was barely audible. “Very well.”
Mrs. Bainbridge lingered for a moment, her grip firm.
“I’ve seen what happens to women who speak the truth too soon.
I’ve watched wives lose their reputations for asking the wrong questions.
I’ve seen daughters disinherited for daring to see too clearly.
And you, God help them, you see everything.
You ask for answers from men who think silence is safer. I won’t let that be your end.”
*
Barrington leaned back in his chair, one brow lifted. “So you’re saying the second ship wasn’t registered under its original name?”
“No,” Quinton said. “It was renamed and moved through Scarborough’s south inlet. Someone’s forged at least three manifests.”
“The Argent Wind?”
“Still docked. But the markings are gone. She’s being repainted.”
Barrington’s jaw tightened. “They’re preparing to disappear.”
Quinton nodded, the motion sharp. “And if they succeed, we lose any hope of proving the connection.” He sat without saying a word. After a long pause, he glanced at Barrington. “And we leave Seaton with a broken company and the primary suspect in smuggling.”
He didn’t say her name. He didn’t have to.
Barrington noticed the silence. “You did the right thing, you know. Not telling her about any of this.”
Quinton’s gaze didn’t leave the fire. “Did I?”
“She would’ve been a target.”
“She already was,” Quinton snapped. “You gave me an order to protect her by shutting her out. You told me to stand back and watch while she unraveled everything on her own.
Barrington looked away, and for a fleeting moment, Quinton thought he saw regret.
Maybe he’d honestly believed he was shielding her.
Playing the long game. But in doing so, he’d underestimated not just her abilities, but her heart.
He hadn’t counted on Quinton falling in love with her all over again, or on Mary-Ann seeing the cracks in their entire foundation.
“I followed that order.” Quinton lifted his chin to his former commanding officer. “But not every order is right.”
Barrington didn’t speak.
Quinton had watched her gather herself from grief, step back into her father’s house like a woman determined to build something lasting, and he hadn’t trusted her with the truth.
Not because she wasn’t capable. But because some foolish, broken part of him still believed silence could shield her. That part of him had been wrong.
“I should’ve changed your mind,” Quinton said. “You’re a fair man. You would have listened.”
He had followed orders through war, through captivity. But this one. This silence had never sat right. And now, too late, he saw what it had cost.
The fire snapped. Neither man moved. The silence between them stretched taut.
The door burst open. A gust of wind followed Mrs. Bainbridge in.
She didn’t wait to be invited. She swept in like a storm, skirts snapping, eyes alight with fury.
She had warned them. She had begged them to take Mary-Ann seriously.
But no. Secrets were safer than trust. Orders were easier than respect.
And now? Now they were chasing the consequences of their own arrogance.
“You,” she said to Barrington, “are a pompous, calculating man. And you,” she turned to Quinton, “are a coward.”
They both stared.
“Do you know what she’s done in your silence?” she said, storming into the room. “She’s tracked every ship. She’s copied the ledgers. Confirmed every manifest. She’s confronted her father. And what have you two done? Strategized.”
“Honoria—”
“No, don’t you dare, Honoria me, Reese Barrington. She told me everything. The missing ships. The raven seal. The dock names. Even the recipients. I have them written down, if your clever minds are still catching up.”
Quinton stood slowly. “She found the recipient logs?”
“She found everything. And she’s been alone in it because both of you thought keeping her in the dark and at Wilkinson’s mercy was protection.”
Barrington’s voice turned hard. “We couldn’t risk a leak.”
“She isn’t a leak. She’s your best chance. She expected to be treated like a partner, not a problem. She’s smarter than both of you and braver than either of you. And now you’ve lost her.”
Quinton’s jaw clenched. “Where is she?”
Mrs. Bainbridge hesitated. “At home. I think I talked her down. She said she was going to the cave, to look for proof.”
Quinton went still.
The room did too.
“She wouldn’t,” Barrington said.
“She would,” Quinton answered, already reaching for his coat. “If she believes there’s proof there, nothing will stop her.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do,” Quinton said. His voice was low. Unshakable.
“Because I know what she looks like when she’s made up her mind. And I will not let her walk into that place alone.”
He crossed the room in three strides.
“She will get her proof,” he said as he pulled open the door, “and if I have to die to protect her while she does, then so be it.”
He paused at the threshold, turning back to Barrington one last time. His voice dropped to something dangerous, steady.
“If anything happens to her, there won’t be a strategy clever enough to save you from me.”