Chapter 9 #2
I wished he was closer to me. I wished he would meet my eye.
But Sidney turned his head to gaze at one of the eighteenth-century hand-painted pole screens which sat on either side of the hearth rather than look at me.
I suspected this was to conceal his distress, and not because he was angry with me, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was to blame, nonetheless.
I’d played with fire—taken too many risks—and I’d gotten burned.
“What happened after I was taken away?” I ventured to ask for the first time. There hadn’t been time yet to ask all the questions I’d wanted to.
This succeeded in drawing Sidney’s gaze back to me.
“They forced Mrs. Boyle and Ginny down to the kitchen and wouldn’t let me accompany them.
Afterward, Mrs. Boyle said the men made a lot of frightening threats, but they didn’t actually physically harm them.
Nimble and I were restrained in the dining room, where they gathered up the map and your other documents.
I attempted to reason with them about what they were, but they wouldn’t listen. ”
His next breath seemed to be a bit of a struggle as he tried to expel some of the tension ratcheting his frame.
“They were about to drag us off to the Castle after you, when Maxwell showed up. Had a bit of a row with the officer in charge, but he managed to convince him to release us. I followed him straight to the Castle to retrieve you, but they wouldn’t listen to either of us or allow us to see you.
I was denied entry entirely. So I returned here and began telephoning and wiring everyone I could think of who I thought might be able to help. ”
“Including C, and Max, and George,” I said, tipping my head to the men present in turn.
“I telephoned him,” George corrected. “I’d received your telegram”—the one I’d sent prior to my arrest—“and wanted to warn you that I’d already mailed a few sheets of decryption. That’s when he told me what happened.”
George had been working to decode a journal that had belonged to Lieutenant James Smith, a former henchman of Ardmore’s.
It had taken some months to uncover the book that would unlock its cipher, but once we had, George had been able to decrypt the critical pages that had helped lead me and Sidney to the phosgene.
As if our mention of the apparatus had woken it from its slumber, the telephone on the desk began to ring.
“That’s been ringing incessantly,” Max remarked.
“Ever since the newspapers caught wind of your detainment, and especially after they reported it,” Sidney confirmed, and then responded to my unspoken query. “Nimble will answer it in the hall. He won’t bother us with it unless it’s important.”
True to his words, the jangling stopped, and I heard the faint rumble of Nimble’s voice floating up from downstairs.
“We’re going to have a large number of people to contact in the next few days to assure of your well-being,” Sidney told me gently.
“My family?” I dreaded hearing the answer, knowing what I must have put them through.
He nodded. “They’ve called every day at least once. Just yesterday I had to convince your father and Freddy”—my older brother and Sidney’s friend—“that their coming here wouldn’t make a difference.”
“I’ll telephone them shortly.” I pressed my hand to the side of my face. “Though I’m not sure how I’m going to explain why we’re not returning to England.”
“Blame me.”
I frowned at Sidney. “They think you can do no wrong. Or at least, Mother does.”
“All the better then.”
I snorted.
“You should also issue a statement to the press,” George suggested.
“Speaking of which”—I swung my legs over the side of the chaise to rise—“I need to send a message to Wick’s editor. I understand he’s been detained and—”
“He was released,” Sidney said.
I halted. “He was?”
“Yesterday.”
I closed my eyes. “Thank heavens! Then I need to send him a message. It’s my ineptness that caused him to be arrested.”
“They had been looking for an excuse to detain him for some time, Ver.”
I pushed to my feet. “Yes, well, I gave them that excuse.” I wondered if Wick would even speak to me.
“What you need is to rest,” Sidney argued testily as I crossed the room toward the desk.
“I’ll rest better after I’ve at least apologized.” I pulled out the desk chair, ruminating aloud to myself as much as them. “I should wire Daphne as well and she can relay the message about my release to our other friends.”
“Leave her be, Sidney,” I heard Max say gently as I pulled a sheet of paper from the desk. “She’s not wrong.”
My husband harrumphed, striding across the room toward the door. “I’m ordering Ginny to draw you a bath, and then you are going to rest.”
I nodded absently, my thoughts already focused on another conundrum.
How was I going to warn Alec not to go anywhere near his usual haunts for a time, especially the places I might have been traced to?
We might have been tasked with uncovering what we could about Collins and the rest of the rebels, but that didn’t mean O wasn’t also attempting to catch us doing the exact opposite.
In fact, I was almost certain he had men watching our house even now.
Men who may have been instructed to search anyone leaving the premises and read any correspondence they found on them.
If confronted about this, O would probably argue he was merely projecting an air of suspicion for the benefit of the rebels.
As such, I had to be careful what I wrote in the messages I gave Nimble to take to the telegraph office.
A missive to Alec might have to wait.