Chapter 5
The Admiral was in unusually high spirits that afternoon compared with the evening before—clear-headed, talkative and anchored firmly in the present rather than drifting into the fogs of memory.
Edmund, observing him with an eye long trained to measure small variations in temperament, recognized at once that this was a rare window in which certain questions might be answered without confusion.
After Mrs. Grealey had cleared away the tea-tray, the Admiral lit a pipe with contented dignity.
“A very good visit,” the Admiral pronounced, stretching his legs. “I am always improved by Mrs. Larkin. Better than quinine, she is. Better than laudanum. Better than fair winds.”
Edmund smiled faintly. “She is indeed an agreeable presence, sir.”
“Agreeable?” the Admiral repeated, affronted. “My boy, agreeable is a lukewarm word. The weather may be agreeable. A boiled potato may be agreeable. Mrs. Larkin, however, is—bless me—excellent.”
She was not a woman designed to unsettle a man. Her beauty did not cry out for admiration. No, it waited, quiet and self-possessed, and still, she unsettled him.
Her face stayed with him more than he cared to admit.
It might have been soft, had life allowed it.
Instead, care had left its faint marks along her brow and at the corners of her eyes, and yet these did not diminish her appearance—they deepened it.
They made him wonder what she had endured to earn them.
Her eyes, a storm-grey, unsettled him most. They were clear, observant, the eyes of a woman who missed nothing and revealed only what she chose.
What would it be like to coax a smile from her?
A silence followed, companionable and warm. Edmund took a seat opposite the Admiral, not too near the fire lest he appear over-familiar, but near enough to speak without raising his voice.
“If I may ask, sir,” he began lightly, “how did she come to open the school? It seems a demanding undertaking. Did Larkin leave her in straightened circumstances?”
The Admiral snorted. “Demanding? It is a miracle the woman stands upright under the weight of all she does. But she will bear it—aye, and smile through it—for she has the constitution of three women and the heart of a saint.”
Edmund waited, knowing the Admiral liked to come to the point in his own circuitous fashion.
“No, her circumstances are not dire. She opened the school, Mr. Leigh, because she needed to be useful,” the Admiral continued. “After Charles…” He stopped, swallowed, and pressed on. “Well. When a young woman loses almost everything, she must cling to the remnant. Hers is service.”
“Serving, sir?”
“Teaching, tending, visiting—good heavens, she does half the parish’s work for them.
The school is only part of it. Do you know, she calls upon every old sailor within a mile of the harbour?
Feeds them when they do not ask for it, reads to them when they pretend they do not need it, and hears all their tales—even the disreputable ones. ”
Edmund blinked. Old sailors. A man at the harbour. The image of her standing in the dimness of the cliff path rose before him—her tension, her watchfulness. Was that all it had been? Her errand to a bedridden seaman, a widow’s benevolence?
The Admiral, watching him over the rim of his spectacles, gave a shrewd little hum—far too knowing for a man who sometimes could not recall his own breakfast.
“You have an interest in her?”
Edmund coloured very slightly. “I have merely crossed her path once or twice.”
“You look as though your interest is more purposeful than that.”
Edmund forced his expression to remain neutral. “I just wondered, sir…”
“Yes?” the Admiral pressed with an innate authority.
“I wondered whether her errands might be more than mere charity.”
The Admiral set down his spectacles with a soft click. “Do you suspect her of some mischief, Leigh?”
“No,” he said at once—too quickly. “No indeed. Only—she was abroad last evening at a time when most ladies are not.
“Visiting Blake, no doubt,” the Admiral muttered.
“Who is he?”
“A former sailor. Surname Carrick or Garrick—or perhaps that was the dog.” The Admiral waved a hand. “It hardly matters. Mrs. Larkin insists on supplying him with food and such. I believe he would improve most if he came out from the shadows.”
“She appeared… on her guard.”
The Admiral’s brows rose. “And you, my boy—you look as though you know what it is to be on your guard.”
Edmund stiffened. “I beg your pardon, sir?”
“That alertness. That tendency to watch the shadows before you look at the light.” The Admiral narrowed his eyes with surprising clarity.
“Sir—” Edmund began.
“Army?” the Admiral asked bluntly.
There was no derision in the question, nor judgement. Only the gentle shrewdness of an old man who had seen more than most. Edmund drew a quiet breath.
“Yes, sir,” he said at length. “Cavalry.” It was always best to stick as close to the truth as possible.
The Admiral nodded as though this confirmed a private belief. “I thought as much. It is in the way you stand, and in the way you look at a room.”
Edmund said nothing. He never spoke of his profession unless compelled. It was safer that way. The Admiral, in his lucid mood, was not to be diverted, however.
“Since you have had the misfortune to be acquainted with danger,” the Admiral continued, “I suppose Mrs. Larkin’s behaviour caught your attention.”
“It did, sir.”
“Well,” the Admiral said, leaning back and folding his hands, “Charles Larkin had dealings of his own, you know.”
Edmund lifted his head. “Dealings, sir?”
“Not all naval work is unfurling sails and shouting orders,” the Admiral said softly.
“There are undertakings—quiet undertakings—known only to a few. I will not say much; it is not my place.” He hesitated.
“But Charles was involved in such matters, now and again. Information passed. Patterns were observed. Smuggling was to be stifled or traced. He was a brave man—and a perceptive one. Too perceptive, perhaps.”
A slow tension gripped Edmund’s chest.
This—this was worth hearing. This was a thread to follow. This was the first hint that Captain Charles Larkin had been part of something far larger than a mere naval rotation.
“And Mrs. Larkin?” Edmund asked carefully.
“Oh, she was no part of such business,” the Admiral said. “Charles protected her from all that. Yet a woman married to a man with secrets often senses more than she knows.”
Edmund inclined his head. “Indeed.”
The Admiral looked at him keenly. “You were not sent here for no reason.”
“No, sir. An old, ciphered ledger has gone missing, and the code has been resurrected.”
“One of Charles’, I daresay. He was quite clever with them.”
Edmund inclined his head.
“Then you must discover it, of course,” the Admiral said simply. “If there is any danger—any danger at all—you will let me know?”
Edmund bowed his head. “I give you my word, sir.”
“You believe she is involved in something now?”
“I was sent,” Edmund said slowly, measuring the risk, “to discover if there are any doings here. I have no indication of her in particular.”
The Admiral relaxed, satisfied, and reached for his newspaper, scanned a few lines, and promptly nodded off.
Edmund watched the old man sleep for a moment before quietly rising.
He stepped out into the passage, his mind already thinking back—to the cliffs, to the path, to the man he had glimpsed speaking low to Mrs. Larkin at the harbour, to the moment the widow had paused upon the rocks, as though sensing him or someone far more threatening.
Charles Larkin had been engaged in secret work… that much was known.
If Mrs. Larkin was continuing some fragment of it without fully understanding… then the risk was real.
He left the house and took to the path behind the Admiral’s gardens—an overgrown lane bordered by stone walls and buckthorn hedges.
The change in the weather was more than merely visible; it could be felt at the back of the neck.
The sky, which had worn a thin, indifferent blue that morning, now sank under a bank of lowering cloud rolling in from the open sea.
The light thickened to a sullen pewter, as though the day itself were being smudged out.
Beyond the rise, he could hear the sea had altered—a rougher, more unsettled sound, as the waves beat against the shore. The air felt heavier, as though trying to impart a warning. The town had been speaking of a storm for two days, and as a testament to the impending tempest, no one was about.
He had no purpose in walking except to think, yet thinking demanded movement.
Pausing beside the low stone wall, he ran a gloved hand over the lichen-patched stones. The cold roughness calmed him and steadied the current of his thoughts.
He could read faces—men’s faces, chiefly—and hers had had the unmistakable look of someone accustomed to assessing danger long before it reached her.
He crossed the lane and followed the narrow track toward the school.
The grounds were extensive—fields to the west, a copse of beech trees to the north, and the school itself rising from the earth in solid grey stone softened by ivy and winter roses.
Smoke curled from one of the eastern chimneys where the kitchen fires burned.
The high windows threw back the last of the daylight in pale reflection.
No movement showed within, though he heard a girl’s laugh drift faintly from the courtyard before fading into quiet.
The building gave the impression of unwavering respectability, solidity, and order. Yet even orderly places concealed their secrets. He knew that better than anyone.
He approached the gate but did not pass through. Instead he lingered at the wall, notebook in hand. Edmund drew it from his pocket the way other men might draw a flask—by instinct and habit. Its pages were filled with coded notes in a tidy hand, and small sketches rendered with precision.