Chapter 14
When Jane found Elise, she was in her study with the shutters half drawn and the day pretending—very badly—to be ordinary.
The girls were practising their copy-books in the next room.
The older ones were bent over their pages, and the younger ones were engaged in appearing industrious whilst contriving to do no work at all.
Elise sat at the mistress’s desk trying to decide what to do.
She did not know if she could bear it if Blake died because of her.
There was also the matter of Holt, who would apparently stop at nothing short of murder to find the cipher.
Jane entered without ceremony, for she had long ago resigned the pretence that Elise required it. She shut the door behind her with a care that spoke of more than quietness.
“Elise,” she said. There was fear in that single syllable—fear forcibly controlled, as Elise had taught her to control it.
Elise looked up. She did not ask what was wrong. It was in Jane’s face, in the too firm clasp of her hands, in the way she kept her shoulders squared.
“You were gone,” Jane said, her voice low, “at an hour when you never go. You were not in the kitchen, nor in the chapel, nor in the study, nor in any corner of this house where you may pretend you have been all along. Do you mean to tell me where you were?”
Elise’s fingers squeezed the pen. The nib scratched a small blot into the paper and she set it down at once.
“I went to the wharf,” she replied.
Jane’s expression did not soften. “That is not a complete answer.”
Elise drew a breath measured enough to be called calm by anyone who had not lived beside her for years. “Blake was injured.”
The words fell between them like a stone in water. Jane stared at Elise for a moment, as if she had not properly understood. Then her face changed—the colour retreating, her eyes sharpening, and every instinct waking.
“Injured,” she repeated. “How? A fall? An accident? Or—”
Elise answered her with silence.
Jane’s voice dropped further. “How badly is he hurt?”
“Badly enough,” Elise said, and forced herself to continue before Jane could shape the next question into something Elise could not bear to hear aloud, “that I could not leave him. And badly enough that I fear it was intended.” What an inane way to say he had been attacked and stabbed, she thought in self-condemnation.
Jane’s hand went to the back of a chair, steadying herself. It was a familiar motion, from the days when a letter arrived with an Admiralty seal and Elise read it without trembling, and Jane trembled enough for them both.
“Intended…” Jane said, “meaning someone did it to him on purpose?”
Elise nodded once.
Jane’s lips parted and shut again.
Elise rose and crossed to her, laying a hand upon Jane’s sleeve as if she could lend steadiness by touch.
“Jane,” she said quietly, “listen to me. There may be trouble.”
Jane’s laugh—if it could be called such—was thin. “There has been trouble since the instant Mr. Leigh arrived with his London manners and his soldier’s walk.”
Elise winced, though she would not allow herself to flinch from the truth that name carried now.
Mr. Leigh: a presence that was becoming, against every intention of hers, threaded into the fabric of their days—lifting beams, securing roofs, steadying old men, watching her with that quiet, infuriating attention.
“What can you tell of Mr. Leigh?” Jane demanded, not as gossip but as strategy. “Is he—does he know?”
“He knows Blake is injured,” Elise said. “He helped me bring him to safety.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “He brought him here? Elise—”
“I had no choice,” Elise cut in, more tartly than she intended. She softened at once. “I could not move Blake alone, and Mr. Leigh was there.”
Jane stared at her. “Where?”
Elise did not answer directly, because to do so would invite the next questions, and to answer those would require a confession she had not yet completed herself.
Jane saw the evasion, as she always did. Her jaw clenched.
“He is tending him at this moment,” Elise added, because she owed Jane at least that much truth.
Jane’s voice fell to a whisper. “You have put a wounded man in the house, under the care of a gentleman we scarcely know, and you expect me to be calm?”
“I expect you,” Elise said, meeting her gaze steadily, “to help as you always do.”
Jane’s breath shuddered out. For a moment she looked very young—an orphaned girl again, left behind by a Navy that swallowed fathers and returned only their effects. Then her spine straightened, and the housekeeper—no, the mistress of order, the guardian of twenty girls—reasserted herself.
“Tell me,” Jane said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
Elise held her gaze, grateful and miserable all at once. “We must be prepared to move the girls.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed. “Move them—where?”
Elise’s mind, always too practised at contingency, had already begun assembling a plan out of whatever fragments lay to hand.
“The Admiral’s cottage,” she said first, “if it is habitable.”
Jane frowned. “But the roof?”
“Mr. Leigh has ordered repairs. A builder has started work. We must know whether it can shelter any portion of the girls, even for a short time. Perhaps the other wing may be habitable. If not—” She drew a breath. “—then the vicarage; families who owe us favours; relatives.”
Jane stared. “You mean to send them away?” Jane’s voice sharpened again. “Because you believe they will come here?”
Elise looked down for a moment because looking at Jane made it harder to keep herself composed. “If someone is asking after me—after this house—and if they were willing to do what they did to Blake, then they will not scruple to frighten girls or harm them to reach what they want.”
Jane’s face went very still. “What is it they want?”
Elise’s throat tightened. She could not—would not—name the cipher here, not with walls and servants and children and the very air seeming suddenly treacherous.
“Something of Charles’,” she said, “and Blake—”
Jane’s eyes went to Elise’s pocket, as if she could see through cloth to the note hidden in the lining of a box upstairs. “Blake knows what they want?”
“Yes.”
Jane’s hands clenched. “Do you think they will search the house?”
Elise’s voice was soft. “I fear they already have the intention. The school is a target of convenience—a woman’s establishment, a place men assume will contain nothing more harmful than needles and nothing more dangerous than French grammar.”
Jane swallowed, then said, “How do we explain it to the girls?”
“We do not,” Elise replied at once. “Not truly. We must give them a reason that will not alarm them, nor invite questions among mothers which will travel back to the ears of men who listen.”
Jane’s brow furrowed, evidently already calculating. “An illness?”
Elise nodded. “An illness. Influenza, a fever, anything seasonal and plausible. We say we have had a case among the kitchen maids. We say we must separate the girls from the household to preserve their health.”
Jane made a sound of disgust. “As if Cook could ever permit the word ‘illness’ to be spoken in her kitchen without producing an onion poultice and declaring herself immune.”
“She will comply if I instruct her to do so,” Elise said, with the faintest attempt at humour.
Jane looked away, breathing hard through her nose. When she spoke again, her voice was steady. “Where shall we start?”
“Mrs. Grealey,” Elise said. “She must know about the Admiral’s roof. You must go to her at once. Ask whether the cottage is sound enough, or how quickly it might be made so.”
Jane grimaced. “You would have me enquire of the old tyrant housekeeper whilst you—where will you be?”
Elise did not answer immediately.
Jane’s eyes narrowed. “You mean to go to Blake.” Jane’s voice rose a fraction. “Elise, you cannot do everything alone.”
“I must,” Elise said simply. “Blake was attacked because he knows something. He may have overheard where Holt is lodged, or who sent the men or where they mean to strike next. If he should tell anyone, he will tell me.”
Jane closed her eyes briefly, as if restraining a caustic retort. When she opened them, the fear remained, but it was harnessed now.
“What of Mr. Leigh?” she asked again. “If he is tending Blake, do you trust him?”
Elise gave her answer too quickly, too instinctively, she knew. “I trust his hands.”
Jane’s eyebrows lifted. “That is not what I asked.”
Elise felt heat rise into her cheeks—annoyance at herself, not at Jane. “This far he has proved worthy,” she said carefully, “and I trust that whatever game he plays, he is not aligned with Holt.”
Jane studied her. “You speak as if you know more.”
Elise looked away. “He is not a writer.”
“No. He has never fitted that mould,” Jane agreed.
Elise forced herself to remain calm. “Go,” she said. “Speak to Mrs. Grealey. She went earlier to check on the progress at the cottage. Discover what you can and send word to the vicarage if needed. Quietly, mind.”
Jane hesitated. “You will be alone here.”
“I will not,” Elise said, though the words tasted strange. “Mr. Leigh is here.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed. “With Blake. Not with you.”
Elise lifted her chin. “I do not require a chaperone.”
Jane’s expression turned outright grim. “That has never prevented trouble before.”
Elise let her hand rest briefly on Jane’s arm. “Please, Jane, make haste.”
Jane held her gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded once. “Very well. I will go, but Elise—” Her voice softened, and in it was all the friendship she seldom allowed herself to show when duty demanded hardness. “If there is more you are not telling me—”
“There is,” Elise admitted, because lying to Jane in that moment felt like turning her back on a rope she relied upon in order to keep from falling, “but I cannot speak of it here.”
Jane’s eyes filled, though no tears fell. “Then I beg you to speak of it later.”
Elise nodded whilst fighting back tears.