Chapter 10
It is an odd thing to have one’s life appear perfectly ordinary while one’s mind is occupied by treason.
There were lessons to be heard; there were hands to be washed; there were hems to be mended, sums to be corrected, and tempers to be soothed before they grew into tears.
All of it proceeded as it must—because a school, like the sea, is not moved by a woman’s private dread.
Nonetheless, all afternoon Elise moved through her duties as though a thread were pulled taut inside her, and every turn of her attention tugged it.
She watched a girl practise her scales on the pianoforte and found herself counting not notes, but minutes.
She listened to a recitation of French verbs and heard instead Blake’s rough whisper in her mind about Holt and new shipments.
She corrected an exercise in penmanship and caught herself staring at the curl of an H as though it might arrange itself into Holt’s name and reveal its owner.
If Blake were to be trusted—and she had trusted him with the cipher itself—then Holt was no harmless drunk or opportunist sailor.
Holt was connected to the old channels. Holt had knowledge no man ought to possess.
Holt was precisely the sort of man who could appear in a place with a false name and vanish again before daylight.
If Holt was here, if the old trade had revived, then the cipher’s reappearance was no accident. It was a signal; a summons—or a snare.
Elise made herself smile at Miss Forbes’s pleasantry.
She approved Miss Grenfell’s needlework.
She sat with a weeping girl whose father had not written in three months and told her, gently, that ships and storms were cruel correspondents.
She praised Cook’s bread and endured the woman’s opinions on every other topic under the sun.
She spoke as though the world remained properly arranged.
Her mind had, however, already stepped beyond the school walls.
Tonight, after dark, she would go down to the tavern.
She would find Holt—or at least, she would see him—and if the night yielded nothing but noise and ale and the town’s harmless gossip, then she would go again, and again, until she did.
There were tasks women performed in daylight, and there were tasks they performed when no one of consequence ought to be looking. She had learned that distinction from Charles. She had also learned that a woman could do a great deal, if she were willing to be thought capable of nothing.
After dinner, Jane found her in the attic, fetching her old disguise. The light through the small window had gone grey-blue, and the air smelled faintly of dust and damp wool.
“Whatever are you doing up here, Elise?” Jane asked, looking with disapproval.
“Looking for something.”
“You have been quiet today,” Jane observed.
Elise did not look up. “Have I? I thought I had spoken to half the house.”
“You spoke,” Jane said, “but your mind has been elsewhere all day.”
Elise closed a trunk with a spray of dust and hefted the clothes she had dug out of it. There was no point pretending with Jane. Jane had lived at Belair House long enough to distinguish between ordinary fatigue and the kind that came from fear.
“There is something I must do,” Elise said at last.
Jane waited.
Elise drew a breath. “I shall be out tonight.”
“Out?”
“Yes.”
“At what hour?”
“After the girls are in bed.”
Jane’s gaze sharpened. “When will you return?”
“I cannot say.” Elise’s voice cracked.
A silence fell—brief, but weighted. Jane’s expression altered in small degrees: firstly concern, then comprehension, then the kind of reluctant acceptance that was Jane’s particular form of loyalty.
“This is about Blake,” Jane said quietly.
“It is about what Blake told me,” Elise corrected.
Jane’s eyes held hers. “And what Blake told you is about men who should not be asking questions.”
Elise’s fingers curled against the clothing. “Yes.”
Jane exhaled. “Where are you going?”
Elise hesitated for only a moment. “The George.”
Jane’s brows rose a fraction. “The George?”
“It is a busy tavern,” Elise said, “and therefore the easiest place to be unseen.”
Jane made a sound that might have been a laugh in any other circumstance. “You and I have very different ideas of being unseen.”
Elise looked at her then, and allowed the truth to show—just enough that Jane could not mistake it. “There is a man I must find.”
Jane scowled. “You mean to go and look for him yourself.” It was not a question.
“I mean to see,” Elise said, “to listen and to learn what I can.”
“And if he sees you?” Jane’s voice intensified, not with reproach, but with fear disguised as practicality. “If someone recognizes you, what will you do then?”
“They will not,” Elise replied, though she was not as certain as she wished to sound. “Not if you help me.”
Jane’s gaze narrowed. “Help you? How?”
Elise held up a plain brown gown, coarser than anything she would ordinarily wear, and a white apron with the stains half-laundered but never quite erased.
Jane stared. “Surely you are not serious?”
“I am always serious,” Elise said, with the faintest edge of humour. “It is one of my most tiresome qualities.”
Jane crossed her arms. “You intend to dress as a barmaid? It is a foolish notion—and perilous.”
“I have done so before,” Elise said evenly.
Jane’s eyes widened. “Before?”
Elise’s mouth tightened, remembering nights of whispered messages and Charles’s careful, troubled instruction. “In the past, when Charles was alive, there were occasions when… information did not come neatly sealed in letters.”
Jane looked at her for a long moment, then very slowly nodded, as if placing Elise into a category she had always suspected existed but had never been forced to define.
“You mean to go alone?” she asked at last.
Elise met her gaze. “You cannot come. The risk of discovery is too high. You are more distinctive, and someone must watch over the girls.”
Jane released a quiet breath.
“I am known as Mrs. Larkin,” Elise said, “not as a girl who carries ale.”
Jane shook her head, still unconvinced. “A woman cannot simply put on an apron and become invisible.”
Elise lifted the gown and held it against herself. “Men will see what they expect. The tavern keeper will see help as before. The sailors will see a pair of hands. If any man sees more than that—”
Jane’s voice cut in. “—then you will be in danger.”
“Yes,” Elise said plainly.
Jane’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “You should not go.”
Elise’s own temper—usually disciplined, usually restrained—rose for a moment like a wave. “What would you have me do? Sit quietly and wait for danger to come to my door? Wait until Blake or I draw someone to Belair House and then discover too late that I might have prevented it?”
Jane flinched, but Elise knew the reaction was not at her anger, but at its truth. After a moment the housekeeper said softly, “You believe it is already happening, do you not?”
“I believe,” Elise said, forcing her voice back to steadiness, “that something has been set in motion, and I would rather meet it with open eyes than with blinds drawn.”
Jane’s shoulders sagged slightly. “Very well.”
Elise blinked. “Very well?”
Jane pointed toward the gown. “If you insist on doing something reckless, you will at least do it competently. Put that on, and let me adjust your hair.”
Elise’s breath left her in something like relief. Jane might scold and argue, but she did not abandon one.
They moved to Elise’s chamber. Jane shut the door, lit a single candle, and turned Elise toward the mirror as if preparing her for battle rather than subterfuge.
“You cannot go with your hair like that,” Jane muttered, tugging at Elise’s neat arrangement. “You look like a headmistress about to inspect slates.”
“That is precisely what I am,” Elise protested.
“Tonight you are not,” Jane said. “Tonight you are a wench with tired arms and a willingness to work for a coin.”
Jane loosened Elise’s hair, drawing it down into a rougher knot, then secured a dark cap over her hair. She dabbed the faintest smudge of face paint along Elise’s cheekbone, then darkened her skin with some powder mixed with ash.
Elise stared at her reflection. The face looking back was still hers—but altered, softened into anonymity by the smallest changes. It was startling how little it took.
Jane held up the apron. “Tie this low across your stomach. And do not stand as if you are about to give orders to a fleet.”
Elise’s mouth twitched. “How, then, should I stand?”
“As if you expect to be ignored and have nothing to offer,” Jane replied crisply. Elise tied the apron and then reached for her cloak.
Jane caught her hand. “Promise me you will not do anything stupid.”
Elise met her gaze. “I promise I shall do only what I must.”
Jane stepped back, studying her. “You look… plausible.”
“I do not know whether to thank you or not,” Elise said dryly.
“Do not thank me,” Jane replied, “just return alive. That will be gratitude enough.”
Elise hesitated at the door, one hand on the latch. “If I do not return before dawn—”
Jane’s eyes flashed. “Do not say it.”
Elise nodded, accepting the rebuke, and slipped out into the corridor.
Downstairs, the house was settling for the evening. Cook had finally stopped muttering about damp flour. The girls were in their rooms, hushed with the tiredness that follows a long day.
When the last candle in the dormitory corridor was extinguished, Elise took a steadying breath and, leaving by the side door, stepped into the dark.
The docks at night were another world.