It was clean—he must have left the door open last night. She rather missed the mess. This wasn’t the way she wanted to remember it. It wasn’t its usual state.
But she had no time for that regret either. It would take her half an hour to walk to that tree on the corner of the property, and she meant to be there before Mr. V.
She set the documents on his desk, the letter on the typewriter. And then paused, fingers hovering over the handle to the drawer. A tug. And there they were. All the letters she’d written to him. With a sigh, she shut it again and fingered the opposite handle. It would, of course, be locked. As it should be.
Except it wasn’t. One little tug, meant only to assure herself of its semi-security, and the drawer slid open easily. Revealing a gaping emptiness within.
“No. No, no no.” He could have taken it out. He could have. Or . . .
She flew from the room, out the nearest door, and ran toward the wood. Of course Mr. V hadn’t trusted her to get it—why would he? He had made it quite clear that he believed in spying on his thieves, so why wouldn’t he just send in another to do the job if he thought she’d gone soft?
The woods had never seemed so vast, nor the roots so gnarled and grasping. She tripped half a dozen times as she ran deeper into the trees, away from the cliffs. But she couldn’t pause, could only keep running through the stitch in her side, toward the far side of the property.
By the time she reached that ancient oak with the heart scored in its bark, she was gasping for breath. The August heat pressed down upon her, making those long, layered sleeves feel more ridiculous than pretty. Making her wish she had chosen some other dress, given the high lacy collar trying to choke her.
Mr. V was already there.
For a moment, he wavered before her eyes. She’d forgotten to eat again today. Or rather, couldn’t, despite the tray Mrs. Teague had brought over. Just now she regretted it. “You.” She dragged in what air she could through her splitting side. “What have you done? He’s a good man!”
Mr. V’s countenance, cool as ever, wobbled before her. She shook it away, reached out to steady herself on a tree, and blinked her eyes back into focus.
He was closer now, and not looking so collected. “Miss Gresham, easy. What in the world’s the matter with you? I meant to light a fire under you, not send you into a fit.”
“I’m fine.” Or would be, if she could reconcile this tenor of concern in his voice with the harsh words he’d said to her on Monday. “Where is it?” she demanded. “What’ve you done with it?”
Now his expression shifted again, to something that on a normal man would have looked like excitement. He gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her upright. “Have you found something? You have. A manuscript? Tell me it’s a manuscript.”
“Tell you . . .” He didn’t have it. Wherever it was, it wasn’t here with him, or he wouldn’t be in this state. Which meant she could yet salvage this. She drew in another long breath. “Look, sir, I don’t know who you are or what your purpose here is. But I can tell you that Peter Holstein is a good—”
“Yes, I know, a good man. Get on with it.” His hands pressed her shoulders, then retreated entirely and, just like that, he was calm again. “Forgive me. And again forgive me. I have put you under a false assumption, and I did so deliberately.”
She backed up a step, leaning again on a tree. “You’re not Mr. Jasper, are you? Or working for him.”
He breathed a laugh. “That war-monger? No. I assure you.”
That was something, then. If she could believe him. Which she rather did. “Good. Then . . . then let me take this time to thank you. For helping with Olivia’s bills.” Another something that didn’t quite reconcile—the kind man with the one who threatened prison.
He lifted his brows. “Miss Gresham, I only delivered that money. As I told your sister, it came anonymously.”
“But that makes no sense. Who else would—” She paused. Of course. And where else could he send it but to one of the addresses she’d provided in reference?
Mr. V loosed a dry, soft chuckle. “That was my guess as well. He is a good man—I’ve known that for years. What I need to know now, Miss Gresham—what the king needs to know—is if he’s Branok Hollow.”
“The king?” She leaned her head on the tree, letting the rough bark bite her. “Which king?”
He still looked amused as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Your king. Though I mean his government more than the man himself.”
Unbelievable. And not. “Who exactly are you, Mr. V?”
“Someone who knows how to get things—in most cases, information.”
“For the government?”
His lips twitched. “Often. Which of course means that you have been working for them too this past year.”
She turned against the tree trunk, away from him. It should make her feel better. And would, likely, once she stopped being so angry she could spit in his face. “You told me I was here to prove him a traitor.”
“Because if you were looking for proof against him, I’d know I could trust what you found in his favor. Now . . .” He stepped into her view again. Cool and calm, except for his eyes. “I need to know. Not to harm him, but to entreat him for help—are Peter Holstein and Branok Hollow the same man?”
Her instinct still said to play dumb, stay mum. But something else, something from that place inside that wasn’t dark anymore, gave a funny little pulse. And she nodded.
His eyes lit still more. “You’re certain? You’ve seen a manuscript?”
Another nod against the tree.
Mr. V breathed a small, victorious laugh. “Well done, Miss Gresham. Well done indeed. Your government thanks you, your pay will be waiting for you in London, and you can be sure I shall call on you again soon when I’ve another task that needs your particular expertise.”
“Don’t.” The world was still a bit wobbly around the edges, but not so much that she’d forgotten that decision that had settled so sure last night. “I’m finished. With stealing, I mean.”
That light in his eyes flickered. “You can’t be serious—you’ve more talent for it than anyone in England. It took me years to track you down after the museum job.”
A few days ago, the compliment would have warmed her. Today it left her cool. “Will you arrest me for it?”
His eyes were amused. “Don’t be foolish—I destroyed all the evidence a year ago, before I hired you. I couldn’t have one of my agents arrested for such a crime.”
“Your agent.” Her eyes slid shut. “I can’t be that either. I can’t, not now. But . . .” But the income from Mr. V, if it continued, could mean life to her family. And if Willa’s reaction were any indication, they wouldn’t all be turning over new leaves just because she was. She opened her eyes again. “I didn’t do it alone, you know. The museum job.”
Mr. V regarded her, unblinking. “Someone in your so-called family, I presume.”
“Perhaps.”
He smiled. “Then I’ll go to them, shall I, when I need a thief?”
She said nothing. Until he nodded and spun away. “Wait. Where are you going now?”
He didn’t turn back. Instead, he took off at a run—a sight she wouldn’t have believed possible for such a dignified personage if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. Though he did yell over his shoulder, “To speak with Mr. Holstein, of course. I’ve a proposition for him.”
“No, wait!” But he was already disappearing among the trees, and she was none too sure she could handle another sprint on an empty stomach. Instead, she granted herself the respite of bending in half to stretch her side and prayed that he wouldn’t mention her in whatever this proposition was. Not until she’d had a chance to tell Peter first what she really was. Or had been.
She coughed, then coughed again. Smoke. Dread in her stomach, she came upright.
A man stood before her, lit cigarette dangling from his lips. Dark hair, lean figure. Blast. She folded her arms over her
chest. “Let me guess—Robin Hood.”
The man grinned a wicked little grin as another bloke stepped from behind a tree. This one had grey hair, a bowler hat. And flipped a silver coin into the air, letting it fall to the forest floor. “And his merry men.”
Something came down over her head. And all was darkness.
Twenty-Seven
Peter’s pace increased the closer he got to home. If he were making excuses, he could blame it on any number of things—the dark clouds knuckling the horizon, the idea for a Locryn James short story he needed to jot down before he forgot it, the fact that no Penroses had been at home, so there’d been no reason to linger.
But he knew well it was because he hoped Rosemary had emerged from the cottage.
He was nearly jogging by the time he came out of the woods and onto the expanse of lawn that went by her cottage. Then he came to an abrupt halt when he spotted the man leaning against her back door. Average height, slender, in a grey suit of clothes at once impeccable and unremarkable. A bowler over silver-gold hair.
Peter drew in a breath and let his brows draw a frown. Not the bowler or hair he’d grown accustomed to seeing dogging his steps. So who was he, to stand so calmly outside Rosemary’s cottage? To look over at him without the slightest hint of surprise?
To come a step forward with a hand outstretched? “Good day, Mr. Holstein.”
“Good . . . good day.” Peter shook the hand, knowing his question must be on his face. “And y-you are?”
The man offered a smile as nondescript as his suit. “They call me V.”
Peter blinked. “Like the . . . letter?”
“Precisely.”
This was going to be an odd meeting, he suspected. “Succinct.”
V chuckled and motioned with an arm. “Would you walk with me, Mr. Holstein?”
He had no reason to refuse. Exactly. Though his gaze darted of its own will to Rosemary’s windows.
“Ah.” V adjusted his jacket and stepped away from the house. “You’ll find Miss Gresham isn’t within at the moment, I’m afraid. Though I daresay she’ll have followed me back and will burst upon us at any moment. I’m rather surprised she hasn’t stormed up already, in all honesty. Though she was a bit winded—did she forget to eat again today?”
Suspicion crouched on Peter’s shoulders. “Who . . . who are you? Her uncle—Pauly?”
V’s lips twitched. “Do I look like a Cockney barkeeper, Mr. Holstein?”
Not exactly. But Rosemary didn’t look like a Cockney barkeeper’s niece either. Nor, usually, did she sound like one. Until she did. And this man . . . he had that flat non-accent that spoke of a careful education meant to cover one’s native cadence.
Peter made no reply.
V chuckled and, hands clasped behind his back, led the way around the cottage. “I am not her uncle. I am her employer.”
That crouching suspicion dug claws into his shoulders. He had rather thought he was her employer. Currently, anyway. “P-Previously . . . you mean?”
“No. I mean I am the one who sent her to Cornwall, to Kensey Manor. To get me the answers I needed about you.”
Peter’s feet had brought him to the front edge of the cottage, but there they stopped. And grew roots. “I beg your p-pardon?”
V looked around him, as if expecting someone to come leaping out of the shrubbery. “You needn’t be put out about it, Mr. Holstein. She thought she was here to find evidence that you were disloyal to England and instead ended up—as I rather expected she would—your most strident defender. But I had to be certain, you understand. About your loyalties, and about your pastimes.”
She had . . . Peter’s breath seeped out. Not a chuff, but that tired hiss of the last of the steam escaping. Blast it, Gryff had been right.
Peter shook his head. “Why?”
V’s face creased into a perfectly pleasant, meaningless smile. “And there is the crux of the matter. England needs you, Mr. Holstein. Or rather—Mr. Hollow. I had to be sure you were he, and you’ve left such a convoluted trail of barristers that I couldn’t be certain I’d traced you properly back to you.”
It should have shocked him, to hear someone other than Gryff address him with his nom de plume. It should have appalled him.
But he could feel nothing. Not just now. Not about that. “England . . . has me. Already.”
V scanned the gardens again. And beyond. “One more minute, I think. So I’ll make this quick. Austria and Germany have declared war on Serbia—it will be in the papers tomorrow, I expect. Russia will declare war on them. From there, dominoes. Every major power in Europe will be at odds. This will be a war far different from those we’ve seen in the past. We’ll need to fight it differently as well.”
Dominoes. Peter put his hands in his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them.
Where was she? Why was she not here, butting in with her own explanation?
“The weapons are one thing—and they will be frightening enough. But this kind of war . . . it’s going to require more than new guns and ammunition, Mr. Holstein. It’s going to require changing the basic way our people think about it, and—ah, there he is.” V straightened, though Peter hadn’t thought him slouching before, and nodded toward the front of Kensey, where . . .
Mr. Arnold was emerging? Peter frowned.
V sighed. “I could not forestall this small interruption, much as I tried—your own fault, really, for sending that message to his company. But don’t be alarmed. The authorities are waiting even now in your outbuildings. Though do stay out of swinging range of that cane of his—he’s a blade within it, you know.”
“He—what?” And what message had Peter sent to his company? Peter hadn’t even known Mr. Arnold had a company. Unless . . . “Wait. You m-mean he is . . . is AGD?”
That made no sense at all. Why would Mr. Arnold, who was the most vocal man he’d ever heard against Germany, be buying up stock in a German steel mill? In his German steel mill?
The old man strode toward him far faster than he’d seen him move in a decade, his hand gripping the shaft of his cane but not using it for support. “Mr. Holstein!” he bellowed. “What is the meaning of this?”
He’d rather like to know the same. Uprooting his stubborn feet, Peter strode over the lawn between them. He didn’t know what he meant to say.
And needn’t have worried. The red-faced old man was at no loss for words. “I knew it! I always knew your family was still loyal to Germany, and this proves it! That you would sell to the Krupp concern—your steel will be used to make German battleships, is that what you want? You are worse than your grandfather!”
When Mr. Arnold pointed his cane at him, Peter halted a good ten paces away. Not because of the threat of a blade within—because it was the first time he really remembered seeing the handle. Usually Mr. Arnold held it so tightly. Or, when sitting, had the top angled toward himself. He had surely glimpsed it at some point over the years, but if so, he had never noted the design embossed in the gold.
The inverted triangle. The concentric circles. “You . . . d-did Mr. Jasper come . . . to you?”
Mr. Arnold shook. Not his outstretched arm, but all of him. “I went to him. I always knew your family was too loyal to Germany—making sure you were born there, preserving your citizenship. And then when you began visiting the king! You are a traitor. A weak, cowardly traitor. But I will not let you get away with it. You will sell that mill to me, so that I may at least mitigate the damage it does. Keep its steel from harming Britain. Perhaps arrange for sabotage, if I can. You will not sell to Krupp.”
Peter shook his head. Sabotage? Was he daft? If he tried to implement something like that, he would likely get people killed. “I am not . . . not selling to Krupp.” Or to GHH—though he’d had Gryff send messages out to all the bidders with both bits of false information, to flush out who AGD really was, whether they were part of one of those dominant concerns.
He certainly hadn’t expected this.
“You certainly are not.” Puffing out his chest, Mr. Arnold pointed with the cane again. “You will sell to me. Do you understand? Or my associate will tear your precious librarian limb from limb.”
“What?” V charged past Peter, gripped Mr. Arnold by the shirtfront. “My amusement with you has reached an end, old man.”
Policemen spilled from the woodwork, led by Constable Newth himself.
Peter sucked in a long breath. It was only a threat. He didn’t actually have her. He couldn’t actually have Rosemary; there was no way she’d let herself be caught by a couple of country boys whom Mr. Arnold had likely employed to do his dirty work.
The old man lifted his cane again, aiming it at V’s head.
His captor knocked it out of his hand with minimal effort and tossed the old man backward, into one of the bobbies, who steadied him—and gripped his arm to hold him still.
Arnold looked shocked at their audacity. “What are you doing? I am a loyal subject! I am trying to help England!”
V growled. “You are a criminal and a war-monger, along with your entire ridiculous brotherhood. Did you tell them that this so-called Ancient Order was of the old Austrian realm? Founded by your grandfather? Founded solely on the idea of hating Germany?”
The old man sneered. “A sentiment shared by plenty in London. People were begging to join. As anyone would, were they not a traitor like this coward. I should have told young Pomeroy to aim for him instead of a tree!”
Newth stepped forward, his face in hard lines. “You’re under arrest, Mr. Arnold. For arson, attempted murder—”
“Add charges of espionage to the list, Constable.” V narrowed his eyes at them.
The old man’s face mottled. “I would never!”
“Really? But you seem to care only for how things look. And you look ever so suspicious, Mr. Arnold. Trying to buy a German steel mill. Threatening a known friend of the king of England. And you are Austrian.”
“An old Austrian—I hate Germany!”
“Yes, well. Austria and Germany are one and the same these days. How do you think that will look to the courts?” V turned his gaze on the constable. “Jasper and his man—did you track them?”
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