Chapter 15
Edmund had seen rooms ransacked in Spain.
He had seen French farmhouses searched with bayonets and boot-heels.
He had watched men with authority take liberties because they wore the livery of power and believed it excused them.
Yet he had not expected to feel, in the midst of a modest girls’ school on a Devon headland, the same old, fierce anger rise again—as hot and swift as a match put to tinder.
He stood at the threshold of Mrs. Larkin’s chamber and took in the disarray with the sort of stillness that men mistook for calm.
It was not calm. It was control. Control was the only thing that kept him from crossing the room and swearing a promise to God that Holt would not leave Plymouth unscathed.
Elise was bending over her desk, gathering papers with hands that tried very hard not to tremble. She did not cry. She did not even permit herself the indulgence of outrage in words. She merely moved in small, exact motions that imposed order upon chaos.
Edmund had meant to speak gently. He had meant to begin with caution and courtesy, yet the sight of her invaded room made him too blunt for tact.
“Did they take anything?” he asked.
She did not look at him. “No.”
He stepped no further in, though every instinct urged him forward. If he entered fully, it would feel like another trespass, and he had no wish to be counted among the men who presumed upon her privacy.
“Did they find what they were looking for?”
At that, she stilled. Her fingers gripped the edge of a ledger.
“I do not know what you believe they were looking for,” she said.
“You do,” Edmund replied quietly.
It was a risk—pressing her, trapping her.
Renforth’s instructions had not included coaxing truth from the widow.
They had been simpler, colder. However, the world had grown untidy.
Holt had grown bold enough to bring violence to her threshold.
Blake lay broken in a hidden room. The cipher had stirred from its grave.
She set the ledger down with exaggerated care. “They did not find what they wanted, because it is not here,” she said at last, so softly it barely reached him.
A cold satisfaction—brief and grim—passed through him. Then it was swallowed at once by the darker thought that followed it. “Then they will return.”
Her chin lifted. “I would presume so, yes.”
There were women who used agreement as a weapon—to cut short an argument, to deny a man the satisfaction of persuasion. Elise’s agreement was not that. It was the voice of someone who had stared at danger long enough to learn its habits.
“They are not to be toyed with,” Edmund said, and heard the edge in his own tone. “They have already shown they are willing to kill for what they want.”
“I am aware of that,” she returned, as calm as a winter sea, and just as treacherous beneath. Her eyes—storm-grey, steady, infuriatingly clear of guile—held him with a directness that would have unsettled a man of weaker conscience. “What is it you want from me, Mr. Leigh?”
The use of his alias, even here, struck him with a strange sensation—half relief, half irritation. He resented the fact she did not know the real him. It was a reminder that he was not to imagine intimacy merely because he had carried a wounded man through her corridors.
“The truth,” he said.
Her mouth tightened. “You are asking me to confide in a man who arrived here with an alias and an evasive manner.”
“Yes,” he answered, because anything softer would be false. She did not know just how much of an alias he used. Would she hate him if she knew he was now Singleton?
She turned her gaze briefly to the scattered papers… to the disordered bed… to the gaping drawers.
Then she looked back at him, and something shifted. She had made a decision.
“Very well,” she said. “Not here, though.”
He inclined his head at once. “As you wish.”
She gathered papers as if her hands demanded occupation. He understood that instinct. Men did it, too—polishing weapons, folding maps, arranging useless objects—anything to keep the body from betraying what the mind must not reveal.
“We will go to the kitchen,” she said.
“The kitchen?” he repeated, surprised.
“It is the only part of this house no man dares linger,” she replied, and he heard the edge of grim humour. “Cook would drive him out with a ladle.”
Edmund felt a corner of his mouth twitch—an involuntary expression of amusement that faded almost as soon as it had come. In the midst of danger, Elise’s ability to be wry was… disarming.
He stepped aside to let her pass. Without thinking, he positioned himself between her and the stair. He caught himself too late, realizing the movement was instinctive and habitual—a soldier’s response.
She noticed. Her eyes snapped to him, and though she did not comment, he felt the silent acknowledgement.
Yet when she passed him, close enough that her cloak brushed his sleeve, he felt the smallest jolt—an awareness that was altogether unhelpful.
The warmth of her, even through wool; the faint scent of clean linen and winter air; the reality of her body beside him, not as the widow or the suspect, but as a living woman… all were inconvenient and dangerous.
They moved through the side passages, away from the girls’ bedrooms. By the time they reached the kitchen, Cook had already been told enough to be furious.
“Elise!” Cook exclaimed—using her name with the blunt ownership of a woman who had long ceased to stand upon ceremony in her own domain. “Someone has been in your rooms. Sophie says—”
Elise lifted a hand. “Cook, the girls are quite safe. I have the matter in hand.”
Cook’s eyes narrowed to slits. “In hand? Men don’t go rummaging through a lady’s drawers for sport.”
“I had expected you and Sophie to leave as well.”
“I would never!” Then Cook’s gaze swung to Edmund—as fierce as a lion. “And what do you say to it, sir?”
“I intend to help,” Edmund replied.
Cook sniffed, and for a moment Edmund wondered whether he was being evaluated the way any cook evaluated meat at market—assessing the cut for flaws and signs of putrefaction.
“Tell me what you have need of,” Cook said at last, turning back to Elise.
“I need you to remain with Blake,” Elise said quietly.
At the name, Cook’s indignation shaped into alarm. “The sailor? You brought him here?” Cook pursed her lips. “And you expect me to sit quietly by while the house is turned upside down?”
Elise’s voice remained steady. “I expect you to do what you always do when you see someone is hurt.”
Cook held her gaze a long moment—then exhaled through her nose.
“Aye,” she said. “Very well. Mark my words, if anyone comes sniffing round, I shall tell ’em I’ve a pot of boiling water and no patience.”
“You will not be alone,” Edmund said, because he could not help it.
Cook’s gaze snapped to him, her dislike of men evident in her gaze and posture.
Edmund checked himself and inclined his head. “If you hear anything or need anything, send Sophie.”
Cook grunted. “Aye. I can do that.”
Elise looked briefly at Edmund, and the smallest gratitude passed across her face before she schooled it away. It was enough to make him absurdly aware of himself—absurdly aware that he cared for her approval.
He did not like that realization. Elise led him away from the kitchen to a narrow cupboard beyond the pantry which contained spices, preserves and strong tea, among other items. She shut the door, and the hum of the kitchen dulled.
“My husband,” Elise began, “left unfinished work.”
Edmund came to attention instantly.
“After the war, he tracked stolen arms,” she said. “Not petty smuggling—betrayal.”
Edmund felt the name rise unbidden. “Singleton.”
Elise did not flinch—yet her shoulders tensed, and he knew he had struck a tender chord. The name did that to her because it belonged to the man her husband had hunted. The name did that to him because it belonged to his brother.
“Yes,” she said. “Charles pursued him. He knew Singleton had men along the coast: Men who worked in secret; traitors who sent stolen arms to enemies.” Her voice grew steadier as she spoke, as though the act of recounting facts permitted her to regain command.
Edmund listened without interruption. He forced himself not to reveal too much. He forced himself not to betray the personal stake that thickened his throat when she spoke the name again.
“They thought the organisation to be ended,” Elise continued. “After Singleton was killed, Charles’s cipher should have died with him but it appears someone is using it again. Blake saw it on a scrap of paper at the tavern.”
“They therefore believe you possess the key,” Edmund said quietly.
He watched her fingers clench, then relax. He could see her struggle with the question of whether or not to trust him.
“Where is it?” he asked.
Elise hesitated. Then, with a movement that Edmund deemed a concession made under protest, she moved some jars and opened a small hidden door nestled behind them. She reached for a plain metal canister within and unlatched it.
Inside the canister lay a packet wrapped in oilcloth.
Edmund held his breath. He had expected cunning; he had not expected the simple brilliance of hiding secrets in the one place no gentleman would dream of searching without being mocked.
She unwrapped the packet quickly. It contained letters, a small notebook, and a folded sheet of correspondences—symbols to any untrained eye, but to his, a map.
“The cipher,” he murmured, “which you can read—and Blake?”
Her silence confirmed it.
Edmund exhaled, slow and controlled. He felt an odd, unwilling admiration, not only for her courage but for her competence. She had not merely kept this cipher, but understood its value and its danger, and had guarded it well.
“We need a plan to find the ledger,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied, “but I will never hand over the cipher.”