Chapter 19 #2
Renforth spoke plainly. “Singleton’s intelligence—much of what allowed us to catch him, to intercept his shipments, to choke his supply—did not come from him alone.”
Edmund felt a cold, creeping unease. “From whom, then?”
Renforth held his gaze. “From your father.”
For a moment Edmund could not breathe.
The words did not fit. His father was a man full of his titles and cold manners, a man who believed loyalty a performance and honour a family heirloom.
His father despised scandal; despised weakness.
Yet he revelled in earthly pleasures. Had he been lost to such desperation that he would betray his country?
Could his father really have provided intelligence for treason?
It was suddenly, sickeningly plausible—because the only thing his father prized more than money was power, and power required knowledge; and because treason had come too near the family not to demand some counterweight.
Edmund’s throat tightened until speech felt impossible. “You are certain.”
Renforth’s expression did not soften. “Beyond doubt, I am afraid.”
Fielding took a slow sip of his drink, as if bracing himself for Edmund’s reaction. Manners’ eyes remained intent and sympathetic in a way that would have been alarming from anyone else. Stuart remained quiet.
Baines grunted. “Families,” he said roughly. “Worse than the French.”
Edmund swallowed hard. “Why are you telling me this now?”
Renforth’s voice remained firm. “Because the proof has only just come to light, but cannot be concealed any longer. Holt’s ledger—this one, I mean, and the fragments we have recovered—contains references that lead back to your father.
Not as the architect of Singleton’s treason, but as one who fed information when it suited him—and withheld it when it did not. ”
Edmund’s hands curled into fists. “So he played both sides?”
Renforth nodded once. “He attempted to, and we assumed because of his connection to you that your brother had been the main culprit… until the ledger was stolen and shipments of arms were again being plundered.”
A hollow sound escaped Edmund. It might have been laughter in another man. In him it was only disbelief turning to rage.
“What does the Crown intend?” Edmund asked, already knowing that the Crown rarely intended mercy when it came to treason… twice.
Renforth’s eyes hardened. “The King knows of your allegiance, Edmund. He knows you have served England and served her well. He knows you have risked everything to rectify what your brother began.”
Edmund flinched at the mention of his brother—as if the word itself were a bruise.
Renforth continued, his voice cool and controlled. “You will not be stripped. Your title will remain. Your prospects will not be ruined.”
“Your father, however,” Renforth said, “cannot be permitted to go unpunished.” The room went very still. Renforth’s gaze did not waver. “His death will be arranged. Quietly. In a way that spares the Crown scandal and spares you the spectacle of his being declared a public traitor.”
Edmund’s stomach turned. He had killed men. He had watched men die. He had accepted death as the natural consequence of certain choices…
However, the phrase will be arranged carried a coldness that made his flesh creep. It was not justice delivered in court, not a sentence pronounced under law. It was the hidden powers deciding that a man’s existence was to be extinguished.
It was the sort of thing Edmund had done abroad when England required ugly work done neatly. He had never imagined it would come home to sit in a drawing room and speak his father’s name.
“It only awaits for your return to say goodbyes,” Renforth said, in a somewhat softer tone.
Edmund shook his head once, decisively. “I do not want to see him.”
Renforth’s expression softened almost imperceptibly. “That is understandable.”
Manners spoke quietly. “It is not cowardice to refuse a final audience with a man who does not deserve your affection.”
Renforth turned then to the practical matters with the ease of a man who could step over emotion without bruising it.
“We return to London within the hour,” he said. “We take the ledger and make our report. We ensure the Crown understands precisely what has occurred.”
Manners’ looked at Edmund. “And you, Chum?”
When he answered, Edmund’s voice came out more roughly than he had expected. “I will follow later.”
Renforth studied him. “You have unfinished business?”
Edmund thought of Elise’s face as they stood on the wharf. He remembered Holt’s words—keeping it all in the family—and the way Elise’s shock had flickered like lightning and then been swallowed by necessity.
“Yes,” Edmund said, “I have unfinished business.”
Renforth inclined his head. “I prefer to wait for you. You must return in time for the funeral.”
Edmund was stunned by the order. “The funeral?”
Renforth’s voice remained calm. “It would be remarked upon if you were absent. Your father is being spared the full spectacle of being proclaimed a traitor. You will be seen to mourn him. It will protect you.”
Protect him. Even now, the Crown’s kindness came wrapped in demands.
Edmund forced a nod. “Yes, sir.”
Manners’ gaze held Edmund’s for a brief moment longer. “Do what you must,” he said quietly.
They began to disperse, efficient as ever, and Edmund felt a strange emptiness settle in their wake.
He had lived for years in the company of men who understood him without explanation.
Their camaraderie was a familiarity as deep as any friendship.
Yet even that familiarity could not blunt what waited for him now.
He had to speak to Elise—not as Mr. Leigh, the convenient alias, but as himself.
He climbed the stairs slowly. Each step felt heavier than the last. He had faced death without this hesitancy; yet words—truth—were a different kind of weapon. They could not be parried once spoken. They could not be taken back.
At Elise’s door, he paused. He listened, as if he might hear in the silence whether she would forgive him. Then he knocked.
There was a pause, the faintest rustle, as if she had been sitting very still and had to remember how to move.
“Come in,” she replied.
He opened the door to her sitting room. Elise stood near the window. Her cloak was off, her hair slightly disordered from the morning’s haste. She held herself like a woman trying to keep her spine from collapsing.
Her eyes went to him at once. They were bright—too bright—with exhaustion and thought.
“Your men are leaving, I see. Do you leave with them?”
He did not answer that. He could not—not without spilling the entire world at her feet. Instead, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Silence stretched between them.
At last Elise spoke, her voice low. “Is it true, what Holt said to me?”
He took a careful breath. “Yes.”
Elise stared at him. In her expression was shock, certainly, but also something else: the hurried calculation of a woman who had spent years learning which truths were dangerous and which were merely painful.
“Singleton was my brother,” Edmund finished quietly. “My name is Edmund Cholmely. Alastair—Lord Singleton—was my brother. My father is the Earl Ormond.”
Elise’s lips parted. She looked as if she might strike him, might turn away, or might simply collapse from the weight of it.
“You came here knowing who my husband was,” she said, each word controlled, “knowing what Charles had pursued and what Singleton had done.”
“Yes,” Edmund admitted. “I came because the ledger vanished, and because there were whispers of the cipher reappearing, and because—” He stopped, because the rest was too intimate to say aloud.
“And because you wished to see if I was complicit?”
The accusation landed cleanly because it was true. Edmund did not flinch. “It was a possibility.”
Elise’s chin lifted. “So you watched me… followed me… entered my house. You ate my bread and made me believe—” Her voice broke on that last, and she swallowed hard, as if furious with herself for allowing it.
Edmund stepped closer carefully, as if approaching a skittish horse. “Elise—”
“Do not,” she snapped. “Do not use my name as if—” She stopped, her chest rising unevenly.
The unspoken words hung between them—as if he had the right.
For several moments Edmund let the silence stretch over the room in gentle balm. Then he said, quietly, “I did not lie about my intent. I meant to help you.”
Elise’s laugh was brittle. “How noble.”
He winced. “My feelings are not noble. I quickly realized you were no traitor.” Before she could decry him farther, he forced himself to speak what she deserved to hear, even if it tore him open.
“I cannot undo what my brother did,” he said.
“I cannot erase the fact that his treason stained everything near him—my family, my name, the men he harmed, and the men your husband died pursuing. But I can choose whether I spend the rest of my life running from it, or trying—however imperfectly—to make right what I can.”
He went on, because if he stopped he might never speak again.
“Holt wanted the cipher to complete what Singleton began. The cipher to the ledger would have bought him power. It would have endangered men in London and soldiers abroad. It would have made your husband’s work meaningless—and it would have placed you in the path of men who do not hesitate to kill. ”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You could have told me earlier.”
“I should have done,” Edmund admitted.
“Why did you not?” she demanded, and now she sounded less like a commander and more like a woman wounded by deception.
He hesitated, then told her the ugliest truth. “Because I wanted you to keep looking at me as if I were not a condemned man.”
Elise went very still.
He felt the floor shift beneath him. He had not meant to confess that—not in those words, at least. Once spoken, though, it could not be retrieved.