Chapter 17
Edmund left Belair House with the note tucked into the inner pocket of his coat, as if it were merely a memorandum about roof tiles and carpenters, and not the slender paper upon which a house and a woman’s life had been wagered.
He carried no lantern. The moon did enough, and the rest was habit: moving in shadow, keeping to the hedgerows, one hand on the hilt of his knife strapped to his chest, listening for the changes in wind that signalled another man’s step.
Behind him, the school stood quiet—too quiet for a place normally full of girls and lessons and clattering industry. A dog barked once, then fell silent. Edmund passed cottages with dark windows and the smell of smoke from damp wood. He let none of it change his pace.
The George sat at the harbour’s heart like a pulse. Even at this hour there was light behind the lower windows, and the low, steady hum of voices. Men sat and drank and spoke of what they had lost in the storm, and what they hoped they might still keep.
He slowed before the door. Not because he feared what lay inside—he had walked into French camps under a flag of truce and felt less caution than he did now—but because the tavern was a place where one’s intentions were judged by one’s ease.
He ensured his mask of indifference was in place.
He pushed open the door and stepped into warmth and smoke and the scent of ale.
The room was crowded, but not riotous: fishermen in woollen caps, a few dock workers, an older farmer in muddy boots.
The air rang with that peculiar cheerfulness of men who have survived something and feel obliged to prove it by drinking.
Behind the bar, Mr. Grey—a broad-shouldered man with a face as weathered as any pier post—caught sight of Edmund at once and nodded with the familiarity of recent days.
“Mr. Leigh,” he called, voice rough but friendly. “Two nights in a row.”
Edmund allowed a faint smile. “I needed a moment away from a house full of silly chits.”
A few men laughed. He felt their acceptance settle around him like a borrowed coat.
He crossed to the bar and laid a coin down, not so much for ale as for the privilege of private words. “May I have a moment?”
Mr. Grey’s eyes flicked to the coin, then to Edmund’s face. There was intelligence there. Edmund had suspected it since the first day—intelligence and a discretion that had been honed by years of knowing what not to say in public.
He lifted the coin and slid it into his pocket as if it were nothing. “You may have two,” he said, “but not three. My wife claims I am too generous, and I intend to prove her wrong.”
Edmund leaned slightly forward, keeping his voice low. “A man named Holt comes here, does he not?”
Mr. Grey’s expression did not change, but a subtle stillness came over him. “Many men come here.”
“This one is not many,” Edmund replied. “I ask you only to pass something to him—will you do it?”
Mr. Grey’s gaze narrowed. “Is that a request, Mr. Leigh, or an order?”
Edmund chose his words carefully. “It is a request, but it is also important.”
Mr. Grey wiped a tankard as if he were considering the merits of the glass. “Important for you,” he said at last, “or important for Plymouth?”
Edmund could have lied. He could have said it was for Plymouth, for the safety of the girls, the school and the Admiral. It would even have been true—partly.
Instead he said, “Important for a woman who has already been threatened.”
Mr. Grey’s eyes flicked, almost involuntarily, toward the direction of Belair House, as if the building’s shadow reached all the way into his tap-room.
Edmund took the folded note from his inner pocket and slid it across the counter.
Mr. Grey did not reach for it immediately. “I do not want her harmed,” he said softly.
“Neither of us do,” Edmund answered.
Mr. Grey snorted, and that, oddly enough, was Edmund’s first reassurance of the night. Only a man who had decided could afford to be amused.
He took the note and tucked it under the lip of the counter where the bar’s woodwork hid it from any casual eye. “He comes in late as a rule,” he said. “Not every night, but often.”
“Give it to him,” Edmund said, “or to whichever man asks for it on his behalf. It must reach him.”
“And if it does not?” Mr. Grey asked.
Edmund spoke harshly. “Then he will come to the school.”
Mr. Grey’s face hardened. “I will see it done.”
Edmund inclined his head.
He took the tankard Mr. Grey slid toward him, lifted it in a half-salute, and drank enough to make his presence plausible. He stayed no longer than necessary.
When he left the Blue Anchor, the air struck him like a slap.
The night was cold enough to sting, and the moon had slipped behind a rag of cloud.
His breath smoked in front of him. He had gone perhaps twenty paces from the tavern door when he felt it—the subtle shift in the street’s quiet, the sense of another presence that did not belong.
He did not turn.
He simply slowed, as if he were adjusting his gloves, and let his hand fall near his coat pocket where he kept his knife.
A shadow detached itself from the alley beside the baker’s wall. A boy stepped into view—no older than fifteen, cheeks reddened by cold, and his cap pulled low over his eyes. He moved with purpose.
He came close enough to speak without raising his voice. “Mr. Leigh?” he whispered.
Edmund narrowed his eyes. “Who sent you?”
The boy’s hand darted into his own coat and produced a small, folded paper—creased and sealed with a familiar wax mark that made Edmund’s pulse thrum.
He took it at once. “Where did you get this?”
“From a gentleman at the post-road,” the boy said. “’E told me to find the writer staying wit’ the Admiral.”
Edmund did not answer. He broke the seal with his thumb.
Renforth’s hand was unmistakable—controlled, spare, every word weighted.
Arrived. In position. Surrounding house and grounds. Intercepted your last report. Do nothing rash.
Edmund stared at the paper, relief striking at once. Reinforcements: Renforth; Manners; Stuart; Baines; Fielding; They were here.
They had come—without waiting for a request—because Renforth did not allow his men to bleed alone, even when those men believed they deserved it, because Renforth understood that a ledger could ruin more lives than any bullet. His resolve strengthened as he folded the note.
He looked up at the boy. “How long ago did he give you this?”
“Just now,” the boy said in a near whisper. “They’re out near the headland. I was told to keep quiet, sir.”
“You were told correctly,” Edmund murmured.
The boy hesitated, then added, “There is a man in the alley by the cooper’s shop, watching. I saw him before I came to you.”
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t believe so,” the boy admitted, swallowing. “He looked like a wild beast.”
Edmund felt his mouth twitch faintly before he curbed the flash of amusement. “That is merely the sort of face some men are born with.”
He pressed a coin into the boy’s hand. “Go, and say nothing.”
The boy stared at the coin, then nodded quickly and vanished into the dark.
Edmund remained still for a moment, listening carefully, before going to his comrades.
He turned and set his pace toward the headland, avoiding the more obvious lane.
He kept to the shadows in the line of the hedge.
When he approached the rise above the town, a figure stepped from shadow and barred his way.
“Who goes there?” came Baines’s low growl.
Edmund halted. “If you shoot me, Baines, I shall haunt you out of sheer spite.”
A low chuckle answered him. The larger shadow stepped forward; moonlight caught the breadth of Major Baines’s shoulders and the faint gleam of his grin. Baines jerked his chin toward the headland. “Renforth is waiting.”
Edmund followed, stepping through a gap in the hedge and onto the rough track beyond. The land rose toward Belair House, and the wind, off the sea, carried the smell of salt and wet earth.
In the shelter of a low fold in the ground, Renforth stood with his cloak pulled close and his hat brim shading his eyes.
Even in darkness the Colonel had the air of command; it was not arrogance but a steadiness that made other men unconsciously align themselves around him, as if he were the fixed point on a map.
Manners and Fielding were not beside him; Edmund could sense their absence as keenly as he would have noticed missing men on a line. Stuart, too, was somewhere else in the dark, doing what needed doing without flourish.
Renforth stepped forward and spoke when Edmund approached, his voice pitched low. “You have made contact with Holt?”
“Sir,” Edmund said. The words came out clipped; not impatience, exactly, but the pressure of too much at stake. “I have just left him a note to meet with Mrs. Larkin on the morrow.”
Baines gave a satisfied sound under his breath, as if imagining Holt already in irons.
Renforth’s gaze held Edmund’s. “Any difficulty?”
“None,” Edmund said. “Mr. Grey is cautious, but he understands enough to be discreet.”
Renforth nodded once. “Good.”
As if summoned by the mention of discretion, Fielding appeared from the darker edge of the hedge, moving as quietly as a man half his bulk. He had always been the quickest of them, quick in wit and quicker in judgement; marriage had altered his priorities but not his sharpness.
“Chum,” Fielding murmured, and his mouth twitched. “Running messages in the middle of the night? I begin to think you are a romantic.”
“God forbid,” Edmund returned. “It is not even ten of the clock.”
Fielding’s humour did not extend to laughter; it was merely the small, saving lift of expression that kept a man from being too grim.