Chapter 13 #2
Something in her expression changed—very slightly, like the shifting of a curtain revealing only a sliver of what lay behind.
She looked at the folded blankets. “Blake is resting now.”
“Blake?” Edmund repeated.
Her silence stretched for too long.
He pretended not to notice. “Nevertheless, he will need care. And you, Mrs. Larkin, have a school to run, lessons to teach and two dozen girls to mind.”
Her lips parted, ready to refuse him; he saw it before she spoke.
He held up a hand. “I am accustomed to nursing men with injuries far worse than these and I have the strength to move him should he worsen. Allow me to assist. You may check how he does as your duties permit.”
She shook her head. “It is not your duty.”
“Perhaps not,” he said gently, “but it is practical.”
Her eyes lifted to his, storm-grey and striking in their reluctance.
He continued softly, “I give you my word I will keep my involvement discreet.”
She looked away, her thoughts clearly in conflict. He had no desire to push her—only to help her, and perhaps learn who had inflicted such cruelty upon the poor soul she was struggling to protect.
He waited.
At last she spoke, her voice very quiet.
“If you would watch over him until nightfall, when I can escape my duties without notice, I would be grateful. If he wins through the night… I do not want him to be alone. You may send messages to me through Sophie in the kitchen, which is up the next corridor to the right. I will tell Sophie.”
He inclined his head in solemn acceptance. “I will stay with him.”
He felt her relief even through the rigidity of her composure.
“Very well,” she said. “I will return to the girls.”
He stepped back to let her pass, but she paused in the doorway—just for a breath, as though weighing something. She said nothing more, and descended the stairs.
Edmund remained alone in the quiet corridor, listening to her footsteps fade. Only then did he allow his composed facade to crack, running a hand through his hair with a quiet sigh.
He had never met a woman so reluctant to be helped… he was certain she held more secrets, probably including the key Holt sought. How was Blake connected, though?
He returned to the bed where Blake lay.
“If you can speak,” he murmured, “you may yet tell me what she cannot.”
He gritted his teeth, resolve settling like armour. Blake had to live.
Whoever had done this to him had meant it as a warning. The question to be answered was if the attack was related to the lost cipher, and if Mrs. Larkin was the intended target.
Edmund drew a chair closer to the narrow bed and sat down, resting his forearms on his thighs.
The room was spare—stone walls, a single shuttered window, the smell of old linens and dried herbs lingering faintly in the air.
It had once been a storage chamber, he suspected, perhaps used in darker times for quieter necessities.
Mrs. Larkin’s choice of it had not been accidental, as though she had done this very thing before.
Blake lay still, his breathing shallow but regular, the rise and fall of his chest even beneath the blankets.
Edmund had cleaned the wound as best he could, applied the poultice Elise had prepared before she left, and set the bottle of laudanum well out of reach.
He did not trust a man half conscious and in pain not to drink himself into oblivion.
“You were meant to die,” Edmund said quietly, more to himself than the unconscious man, “left where the tide and the gulls would finish what they began.”
Blake stirred faintly at the sound of his voice. A low, rasping breath caught in his throat. Edmund leaned forward at once.
“Be easy,” he murmured. “You are safe. For now.”
He was safe—for the moment. The words felt dangerously provisional.
He studied Blake’s face more closely now that the urgency had passed.
The man was older than he had first thought, the lines around his mouth and eyes deeper, the skin weathered by long exposure to salt and wind—a sailor or fisherman who had lived near the sea long enough to wear its mark.
His hands, though rough, bore a certain familiarity—calloused in places that suggested rope rather than oar.
Not a fisherman by trade, Edmund decided, or not just that.
“You knew Charles Larkin,” he said softly, “did you not?”
Blake’s eyelids fluttered. A faint sound escaped him—not a word, but something close to it. Edmund leaned nearer.
“You worked with him,” Edmund continued, carefully modulating his tone.
The injured man emitted a low groan this time. Blake’s head shifted slightly on the pillow.
Edmund straightened, his pulse quickening. “Can you hear me?”
Blake’s lips parted. For a moment Edmund thought he might speak, but instead Blake’s hand twitched weakly against the blanket, his fingers curling as though grasping at something no longer there.
“Key,” Blake breathed.
Edmund froze.
The word was scarcely more than a breath, barely shaped by tongue or teeth, but it struck like a shot.
“Key?” Edmund repeated softly. “What key?”
Blake’s brow furrowed, the lines around his eyes and mouth deepening with pain. His head rolled slightly to one side, and the moment passed as quickly as it had come. His breathing grew more laboured.
Edmund swore under his breath.
So Holt had been right—or right enough to matter. There was a key and Blake knew of it; perhaps guarded it. Or perhaps he guarded Elise’s knowledge of it.
Edmund pushed back from the bed and rose, pacing the narrow confines of the room with controlled agitation. Every instinct honed by years of covert work pressed in upon him at once, ordering, arranging, demanding conclusions.
Holt believed the widow possessed the key.
Blake was attacked brutally but not killed—an interrogation interrupted, perhaps, or one cut short by the storm.
Then Elise Larkin, for all her outward calm, had reacted with the efficiency of a woman long acquainted with crisis, concealment, and contingency.
A guilty woman—one actively complicit—would already be gone.
She would have burned the house, the school, the past, and vanished inland before dawn.
Elise Larkin had done none of that. She had remained, steadied frightened girls, tended a wounded man, and entrusted his care—however reluctantly—to a stranger she did not fully trust.
That was not the behaviour of a conspirator.
Nor, Edmund reminded himself grimly, was it the behaviour of an ignorant woman.
He forced himself back to the chair, schooling his breathing into steadiness once more. This was neither time for sentiment nor for self-deception. Renforth’s words echoed in his memory as acutely as if spoken anew: Observe. Confirm. Do not engage.
And yet, here he was—engaged far beyond instruction.
Edmund reached into his coat and withdrew the small notebook he kept always upon his person. He hesitated only a moment before opening it, then wrote with careful precision, his hand steady despite the conflict in his thoughts.
Blake—assault deliberate. Not random.
Spoke single word while semi-conscious: “Key.”
Confirms Holt’s belief. Key exists.
Mrs. Larkin aware of Blake’s significance.
Behaviour inconsistent with active treason. Consistent with concealment under threat.
He closed the book and tucked it away. Concealment under threat. He understood that state all too well.
His gaze drifted to the door through which Elise had departed, his thoughts following her down the corridor, back to the orderly chaos of the school.
He could imagine her even now—moving among the girls with calm authority, offering reassurance she did not feel, bearing the weight of decisions no one else could see.
Blake would not be able to help her for some time—if ever again.
“You should not have to do this alone,” he murmured. The thought startled him with its intensity.
This was dangerous ground. Pity led to compromise; compromise led to error; and error, here, could cost lives—including hers.
A sudden sound from the bed pulled him swiftly back to the present. Blake’s breathing had changed—ragged now and uneven, a faint wheeze emerging with each inhale. Edmund was on his feet in an instant, checking the dressing, loosening the blanket slightly to ease the man’s chest.
“Steady, now,” he murmured, administering a few careful drops of laudanum. “No more than that.”
Blake’s features eased fractionally, the tension in his jaw softening as the pain retreated. Edmund watched him closely until his breathing settled again into a fragile rhythm.
“You will live,” Edmund said quietly. “You will tell me what you know. You will also tell me why men like Holt believe you—or she—hold the key to reviving a dead cipher.”
He sat back once more, the resolve within him hardening into something cold and clear.
There was no turning away from this now. Blake’s survival had bound him irrevocably to whatever web Charles Larkin had left behind. Meanwhile, Elise—whether she wished it or not—stood at the centre of it.
Edmund rested his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers, fixing his gaze upon the wounded man.
“Sleep,” he said softly. “When you wake, we will have much to discuss.”
Edmund closed his eyes briefly, gathering himself. He would protect Elise Larkin if he could. He would protect the Crown as he must. May God help him if the two demands proved irreconcilable.
For now, he would remain at Blake’s side—watchful, resolute, and painfully aware that whatever came next would change everything.