Chapter 16
Elise and her new ally went first to the hidden room—not because either of them believed Blake would wake conveniently to answer questions, but because anxiety had a way of insisting upon proof.
One needed to see that the injured man still breathed, that the door still held, that the world had not shifted further into calamity during one’s absence.
Mr. Leigh carried the lantern, though Elise noticed that he did not walk as if he feared shadows.
He walked as if he expected them to move at his command.
There was a steadiness in him, not loud, not showy, but absolute—the sort of constancy that had once belonged to Charles when he stood at a chart-table with men looking to him for direction.
It was a comparison she did not permit herself often. It felt disloyal, as if the mind might wander from remembrance into—something else. Yet she could not deny the pull she felt towards this man. Was it because of his similarity to Charles? She dismissed the thought at once.
Blake lay upon the cot exactly as Elise had left him, the blanket drawn to his chin and his face slackened by laudanum into a peace that was not wholly natural.
His brow was less pinched than it had been.
The bruising on his throat and jaw remained angry, but the worst of the shaking had ceased.
His breathing was deep and even, the sound of it a dull reassurance.
Cook, however, did not regard reassurance as sufficient excuse for lingering.
“There,” she snapped in a loud whisper the moment Elise and Mr. Leigh entered. “He’s asleep, and he will stay asleep if you both stop hovering like hungry pigeons.”
Elise’s lips twitched despite herself. “I wished only—”
“You wished to worry,” Cook cut in, as if it were as much a vice as brandy. “Well, put it aside for now. Sophie and I are here. We will keep watch, and if he so much as twitches, you will be the first to hear of it.”
Sophie stood by the doorway with a candle and a face set in a determination Elise would not have expected from her. It did something strange to Elise’s chest to see it: loyalty made visible in a girl who had never before known danger in any form but burnt pastry and Cook’s wrath.
Cook folded her arms. “And since I ’ave no one to cook for, as the girls are gone and the house is all quiet and empty, I ’ave left stew on the stove. Fresh bread too. You two need feeding, unless you mean to fight off smugglers on empty stomachs.”
Mr. Leigh inclined his head with a gravity that might have been comic, had it not been so sincere. “You have my thanks.”
Cook sniffed. “You can thank me by eating. Now, be off with you.”
Elise allowed herself one last look at Blake—at the rise and fall of his chest, at the steady line of his mouth—and then followed Mr. Leigh from the room, climbing back towards the kitchen with the sensation that the house itself had become a ship, every corridor a narrow deck, every sound a creak of timber under stress.
In the kitchen, the heat was immediate and homely, almost indecent in its comfort.
The smell of the stew and its onions, beef and herbs, made Elise’s stomach clench with sudden, unwelcome hunger.
She had eaten little all day, being driven by duty and fear and the incessant tasks of keeping a school functioning whilst its foundations were being threatened.
Mr. Leigh set the lantern down on Cook’s work table, and for a moment they stood facing one another across the scarred wood.
The table had witnessed a thousand ordinary days: dough kneaded under laughter, girls called in to taste a spoonful and then scolded for daring.
It had never been intended as a council table for peril.
Yet there they were—two conspirators, neither wishing to call themselves such, yet both forced into it.
Elise drew her cloak closer about her, though the kitchen was warm.
It was not cold that troubled her; it was the strange exposure of being alone with him in a room that in this house belonged to women’s work and women’s privacy.
The house was empty of girls’ chatter. The school, usually so full, felt suddenly too quiet, and in that quiet every awareness awakened.
Mr. Leigh moved first, not speaking, simply ladling stew into two bowls with the competence of a man who had learned to make do with whatever pot was available.
It should not have been remarkable. Yet Elise found herself watching his hands: steady, efficient, and accustomed to practical tasks.
Those hands had lifted the Admiral and Blake, hauled branches, cleared debris, and now served stew as if it were all of a piece—one more necessary task.
He placed a bowl before her with quiet courtesy, and set bread beside it.
“Eat,” he said, as Cook might have done, only with less tyranny.
Elise obeyed because she had no energy for pride. She sat on the bench by the table, drew the bowl closer and tasted the stew. It was very good. Of course it was, she reflected. Cook would have considered failure a moral offence.
Mr. Leigh sat opposite her, his posture less guarded than she had ever seen it in a parlour.
A kitchen stripped a gentleman of performance.
There was no elegant chair to lean upon, no glass of brandy to hold as if it were a symbol of authority.
There was only a wooden table, rough stools, and steam rising from bowls.
For a few moments they ate in silence, and Elise found the silence different from the usual one between them.
She realized, with a faint shock, that she could hear the sea, a constant presence beyond the cliffs.
The sound at once soothed and unsettled her.
The sea had taken Charles. The sea might yet take something else.
Mr. Leigh set his spoon down.
“We must speak of the tunnel,” he said.
Elise clutched her bread between her fingers. “Yes.”
“We need to seal it.”
The directness of it—seal it—made her bristle. It was sensible and practical. It also felt like surrender.
“I want to know where it goes,” Elise said.
His eyes lifted to hers. They were like dark caramel in the lantern light; intent in a way that made her feel both seen and examined. “No.”
The word landed like a slap, not because it was rude, but because it was so unqualified.
Elise lifted her chin. “You do not forbid me, sir, in my own house.”
His gaze did not waver. “I do not forbid you out of arrogance. I forbid you because it is a trap.”
“Indeed? If so, it is a trap I intend to understand. I can wait for Holt to come here again, or I can go after him myself.”
“You intend,” he said, and there was a faint edge in his voice now, “to walk into a tunnel used by men who have already beaten Blake half to death and ransacked your rooms? You intend to do so with a lantern and what? A kitchen knife?”
Elise felt heat rise in her throat—anger, humiliation… and something else. “Do you think me foolish?”
“I think you courageous, but also desperate,” he replied, and somehow that was worse, because it contained truth.
She pressed her palm to the table to steady herself. “You speak as if you are the only one allowed to act.”
“I may act,” he said quietly, “because I have been trained to survive violence.”
The admission hung between them. He had never said it so plainly. He had implied, evaded, suggested. ‘Trained to survive violence’ was not the phrase of a common man.
Elise narrowed her eyes, the better to consider him. “Of course, you think I have not.”
He paused. For the first time since he had sat down, his composure shifted. It was only a flicker, as if the mask adjusted itself. His gaze travelled over her face—not in insolent appraisal, but in careful study.
“Well, it would be most unusual,” he said at last. “If so, I suspect you have learned it the hard way.”
The words loosened something in her chest, a knot she had not known she carried. ‘The hard way’, her mind repeated. Yes, one learns to survive violence when one has buried a husband and kept a school operating and hidden a wounded man in a cellar and listened to footsteps in the night.
Elise took a slow breath. “How quickly can you send for help?”
His senses sharpened. “Help from London?”
“Yes.”
“If I know my Commander at all,” he said, and though he did not name him, the weight of the word ‘commander’ confirmed everything Elise suspected, “he and the troop are already on their way.”
“Already?” she repeated, surprised despite herself.
He gave a small, humourless smile. “Men who dislike scandal do not wait to be invited into it.”
Elise’s thoughts raced. If his men were coming, then Plymouth was already marked on a larger map.
It was no longer merely her problem. Yet the thought did not comfort her, it merely widened the sense of consequence.
If the Crown came in force, the cipher would not remain hers.
The truth about Charles’s work would not remain hidden.
Blake might become an inconvenience to be disposed of, not a man to be saved.
Elise moved her spoon absently through stew she no longer tasted. “If they arrive,” she said softly, “they will take everything…”
Mr. Leigh’s gaze was fixed on her.
“Everything that is precious to me,” she continued after a pause.
Silence fell again, heavier now.
Then the sound came—three hard blows, loud enough to startle the very air. The front door was being pounded.
Elise’s blood turned to ice.
Another blow came and then another. This was not the polite knock of a visitor, nor the hesitant rapping of a villager come to ask about a roof tile. This was a demand, an assault—a message delivered with fists.
Mr. Leigh was on his feet at once, his chair scraping roughly on the stone flags.
Elise rose too, though her knees felt weak.
“Stay here,” he said and simply moved, with swift and controlled steps, from the room.
Ignoring his order and gripping the edge of her shawl as if it were a weapon, Elise followed.