Eight #2
Mrs. Pembroke patted her hair. “Captain, you gave me the list.”
“And I require it back,” he said.
Mrs. Pembroke smiled. “Then we are both in luck. I have no sentimental attachment to it.”
“Now, if you please, Mrs. Pembroke,” Captain Whitby growled.
“Fine. I will fetch it.” Mrs. Pembroke turned to Anna. “Come along, Anna. You know where I left the papers better than I do.”
Anna didn’t know where Mrs. Pembroke left anything, but she curtsied and followed her anyway. They walked down the hall into the morning room, where Mrs. Pembroke shut the door behind them. She then crossed to the writing table and opened a drawer.
“Anna.”
Anna pressed a hand to her chest. “They speak of the shipment.”
“Apparently.”
She gave the door an anxious look. “They know something happened, ma’am.”
“They know enough to be angry and not enough to be certain.” Mrs. Pembroke removed a folded paper from the drawer and sat. “This is a useful state for an enemy. It makes them loud.”
Anna swallowed. “Did the message reach someone?”
Mrs. Pembroke peered at her over the paper. “We may safely assume so.”
Relief struck Anna so hard she almost had to sit down. The locket had worked. Men who fought for liberty might live because of it. Unfortunately, the men in this very house might hang her for it.
Mrs. Pembroke handed Anna the guest list. “Breathe, my dear.”
Anna drew in a shuddering breath and nodded.
Mrs. Pembroke eyed her. “You’re turning the color of boiled linen.”
Anna nodded. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Mrs. Pembroke gave her a small, gentle smile. “You did well, dear.”
Anna’s throat tightened. “I lied.”
“Of course.”
She swallowed hard. “To an officer.”
“Yes.”
“And I may have helped steal powder,” Anna said.
“Not steal, dear. Delayed. Or you could say diverted. We must not give ourselves too much credit without evidence.”
Anna let out a startled laugh.
“There,” Mrs. Pembroke said. “Better now?”
Before Anna could answer, Mrs.Pembroke kept talking.
“Listen carefully. Lieutenant Rothborne suspects everyone because he dislikes people. Major Ellis suspects everyone because he is cleverer than most, and Captain Whitby suspects no one until suspicion inconveniences him. And then there is Mr. Sloane.”
She sat back in her chair. “He suspects people for sport. Mr. Reed, on the other hand…”
Anna gave her a wide-eyed stare.
Mrs. Pembroke watched her. “Mr. Reed is more complicated.”
Anna gripped the guest list. “Do you trust him?”
Her employer’s gaze moved to the closed door, and for once, she didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said, “Not entirely.”
That should have comforted Anna, but it didn’t.
Mrs. Pembroke left her chair and crossed to the door. “But he did protect you last night.”
Anna’s face warmed. “He drew attention away from me because Rothborne was making a scene.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Pembroke agreed. She left the desk and opened the door. “Come along. Let us return this list before Lieutenant Rothborne decides to search the sugar bowl for sedition.”
They stepped back into the hall. The men were still where they’d left them, though Nathaniel now stood near the window. Mrs. Pembroke handed the list to Captain Whitby. “Here. Every guest who attended your delightful little ball.”
Whitby took it. “Thank you.”
Rothborne reached for the paper, but Whitby held it back. “I will review it first, if you don’t mind.”
The lieutenant didn’t like that, but he inclined his head. “As you wish.”
Nathaniel stepped forward. “Captain, if there are inquiries to make in the village, I can begin at once.”
Rothborne shot him a look. “Eager, Reed?”
“Useful,” Nathaniel said.
Mrs. Pembroke’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
Nathaniel glanced her way as he turned toward the door. It was only a glance, but Anna saw the warning in it.
Be careful.
She inclined her head the tiniest bit to let him know. I am.
Then he was gone, following Captain Whitby and Rothborne into the morning sunshine.
The door closed behind them. For several seconds, no one spoke. That is, until Mercy whispered from the dining room doorway, “Ma’am, should I still worry about the sugared almond in the candlestick?”
Mrs. Pembroke shook her head. “Child, Mrs. Fenwick took care of it.” She looked toward the broken, blue-edged plate still on the floor. “Anna, fetch the broom.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Anna hurried off, grateful for the ordinary task. But as she crossed the hall, she glanced toward the front door.
The British were suspicious now. And Nathaniel Reed, British courier and a very inconvenient complication, had protected her twice.
She no longer knew whether disliking him was practical, wise, or entirely necessary. She only knew it was becoming increasingly difficult.
Captain Whitby said little on the ride from Pembroke House to the village. Rothborne, on the other hand, said far too much.
Nathaniel listened to him list possibilities as they rode: spies among servants, careless officers, disloyal merchants, rebellious farmers, a traitor in the harbor post, a traitor in the counting house, a traitor in the very air they breathed.
Nathaniel let him talk and talk and talk. Surprisingly, so did Captain Whitby.
This puzzled Nathaniel at first. The captain wasn’t known for patience, but perhaps he was merely trying to tune the man’s prattle out as they rode.
“Someone knew,” Rothborne said for the third time as they neared the village. “Someone knew the shipment had been moved.”
Whitby’s jaw at last tightened. “The shipment was not moved, you fool. It was delayed.”
“It was diverted,” Rothborne said.
“It was delayed!” Captain Whitby reined in his horse so hard the beast tossed its head. “Lieutenant, if I wished every unhappy event repeated back to me in a more irritating tone, I would hire a parrot.”
Nathaniel glanced toward the far side of the road so neither man would see his smile.
Rothborne’s face darkened, but he fell silent. The village looked as it had the day before. Men crossed the road with sacks over their shoulders. A woman argued over the price of flour. A child chased a hoop past the blacksmith’s yard. All ordinary, peaceful, and entirely false.
Somewhere beyond that ordinary morning, powder meant for British hands had failed to arrive where expected. That meant Caleb received the message, or someone close enough to him had. It also meant the locket found its way out of Pembroke House after all.
Nathaniel thought of Anna in the hall, pale and steady while Rothborne tried to frighten the truth out of her.
She’d lied well. Too well for comfort. That was not a skill a maid acquired by accident.
Whitby sent Rothborne toward the harbor post with instructions to speak to Major Ellis. Then he handed Nathaniel a folded note. “Sloane,” Whitby said. “Put it in his hands and wait for his reply.”
“Yes, Captain.” Nathaniel rode to the counting house but didn’t enter it right away. He tied his horse to the hitching rail and took a moment to adjust the strap of his saddlebag. Anyone watching would see a courier checking buckles.
No one would notice the boy with the basket of kindling who brushed past him at the corner. “Bell still lives,” the boy muttered.
Nathaniel didn’t look at him as the boy continued down the street and vanished behind the baker’s shop.
Nathaniel’s hand stilled on the strap. Bell lived to see another day. That was something.
Inside the counting house, Mr. Sloane was in a temper. That, too, was something. “You may tell Captain Whitby,” Sloane said after reading the note, “that I do not conjure ships, wagons, tides, or obedience from thin air.”
“I will be sure to use those exact words, sir,” Nathaniel said.
Sloane glared at him.
Nathaniel smiled back. “Or perhaps I shall soften them a touch.”
“Do that,” Mr. Sloane said.
The clerk wisely kept his head down. The broad-faced wharfman from the day before was absent.
Two ledgers lay open on the desk, one atop the other. Nathaniel watched Sloane shift from one foot to the next as he examined them. He could make out little more than a column of dates and a name half hidden beneath a blot of ink.
Kingfisher.
So the vessel hadn’t vanished. Only the cargo failed to move cleanly.
Sloane wrote a reply, sanded, folded, and sealed it, and pressed it into Nathaniel’s hand. “Tell the captain I will attend to the matter myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Also tell him this. There are men who survive by carrying messages, and men who die because they learn what those messages mean. Be the first sort, Reed.”
Nathaniel tucked the packet into his coat. “I have always had a fondness for surviving, sir.”
“So have rats.”
Nathaniel shrugged. “Useful creatures, rats. Hard to catch.”
Sloane didn’t smile.
Nathaniel left before the man decided to test the theory.
Once outside, he mounted his horse and headed toward the lane that would take him past the mill. He could spare only a few minutes, but those minutes might save lives.
A scrap of paper waited inside a split rail near the old stone wall. Four words only.
More watch. Girl named.
Nathaniel closed his hand around the paper until it crumbled.
So, Caleb and the network knew.
Rothborne had spoken Anna’s name in a house full of ears, and now the warning had already traveled.
Good. But not good enough.
He tucked the scrap beneath his saddle and turned his horse back toward the road. Anna believed invisibility would save her, while Mrs. Pembroke believed management could. Nathaniel feared both were wrong.
By the time he returned to Pembroke House, he’d made one decision with absolute certainty.
Whatever else happened, Anna was not going to become the next person everyone regretted failing to protect.