A Whisper of Treason

by Connolly, Lynne

  She wouldn’t regret that for a minute.

  Cautiously, she left the room, slipping through the door that linked their bedrooms.

  When she turned around, she discovered she wasn’t alone. Her maid was already up, fresh clothes were laid out and the woman was busy folding a stack of clean linen and putting it in a drawer. Delphi had reason to be glad for the thick walls in this building when Rossi shrieked in alarm. Not loudly, but enough to wake anyone who slept less soundly than Adam.

  “Clothes, and a wash,” Delphi ordered briskly.

  An hour later, Delphi got to work on the codes. She’d hypothesized a pattern, but needed to cross-check to be certain.

  Her morning settled into a rhythm. While she’d have liked to go out to take the air, she’d promised Adam she wouldn’t do it and, in any case, she had plenty to keep her busy.

  The rosy light of dawn melted into the sharper sunlight of full day. Delphi barely noticed, just stopped to snuff out the single candle she’d put next to her on the desk. The work engrossed her, the challenge far better now that she had more to work with. One document made her task impossible. Three made it intriguing. Before they’d left for the ball last night, she’d had an idea, but she’d had no time to confirm it until now.

  Today, she confirmed it. While she was still some way to solving the puzzle, she knew she could do it.

  A servant delivered a tray of tea and some bread and butter. Delphi got so engrossed in what she was doing that she barely noticed eating and drinking. When she looked up from her work to ease her tired eyes, the plate was empty and so was the teapot.

  The door opened to admit her husband. He didn’t look happy. “I woke alone.”

  He was wearing a banyan that reached to just below his knees. Strong calves that made her recall how she’d rubbed her bare legs against his last night. A chill passed through her, an entirely pleasurable one. She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

  His expression softened. “You could come back to bed now,” he said, crossing the room to her. “What are you doing?” He caught sight of the notes and the sheets of papers she had scrawled ideas and patterns on. Delphi wasn’t a tidy worker. “Ah.” He lifted the lid of the teapot, and stared into the empty depths. “We need more.”

  “You need to dress.”

  “Do I?” He ran a finger down the front of the loose gown she’d donned. “I feel no stays. Are you naked under there?”

  She didn’t want to admit it, but all she wore beneath the gown was a shift and a pair of slippers. But neither did she want to shake him off.

  After a light laugh, he bent to kiss her, and then stood up and went to the door, opening it and calling for more tea and bread and butter. “And some bacon and eggs,” he told the footman standing outside. Then he closed the door and dragged a chair over to sit next to her. “Show me what you’ve been doing,” he said.

  With relief, she did. While she would gladly have given up her work if he did to her some of the things he’d done last night, she wanted this business finished, the conspirators unmasked and Frederick out of danger. Or at least, back with the army.

  “Unfortunately, he signed the notes with his code name without encoding it, or I could have used that. But see those lines at the bottom?”

  He nodded.

  “They could say ‘God Save The King!’ Because Jacobites do that, don’t they? They cram that phrase in whenever they can.”

  “In default of having the reality. Good Lord.” He looked closer. Counted. “The number of letters is correct, though the spacing is wrong.”

  She was glad he’d seen it. She dragged a sheet of paper across. “See? That was how I got the pattern. Not all of it, but some. I’m still missing the key. I started by translating the Latin into English, but that didn’t work, whatever I did. And there were some words I couldn’t translate. Because they don’t exist. This is made to look like Latin, but it isn’t.”

  “God!”

  Adam clapped his hand to his forehead. “What a fool I am! Of course, you don’t want English!”

  She eyed him curiously. “You mean it’s a different language?” She frowned. “I know French, and enough Italian and German to survive if I need to. I know what Spanish looks like. I would have recognized those.”

  Heath himself brought in the tea and victuals, but paused and nodded at the table. Delphi took the hint and threw a cloth over the papers. Foolish to take any risks now.

  A maid trotted in, carrying a folding table, which she set under the windows. Heath dismissed her and placed the heavy tray carefully down. “Breakfast,” he said, “is here. May I serve you, Madam? Sir?”

  Delphi hadn’t given him permission to address her as “Madam”, but she was glad he’d taken the initiative. Being addressed as “your grace” all the time would grow tedious. She pulled the cloth away.

  “We’ll serve ourselves, Heath,” Adam said, not at all disconcerted at anyone finding them in undress. Of course he wouldn’t, but Delphi had the soul of a bourgeoise, despite being born into a different part of society. She put her hand to the fastening of her gown at the top, ensuring it was secure.

  Adam leaned back, his arm draped over the back of her chair. “Any news?”

  “Some.” Heath glanced at Delphi, and then back at Adam. “I sent a message to Lord Frederick via the shop in the piazza. Received a verbal reply that he was fine, and his disguise was still working. But that was two days ago. I asked for a daily report, but I didn’t receive one yesterday.”

  He scanned the documents spread over the table. “He has received no more notes, otherwise he’d have passed on the copies.”

  “I know what this is,” Adam said. “Or part of it. This is Latin via Gaelic, the language the Highlanders use. In the south we have Scots, but they have made themselves a language all their own. It’s as ancient as Latin, so they say. Perhaps older.”

  Delphi passed him the paper with her translation of the Latin. “So if we translated this to Gaelic, it might make more sense.”

  “Perhaps.” He glanced at Heath. “Just as well you’re here.”

  Delphi frowned. “You’re Scottish, aren’t you?”

  Adam gave her an indulgent smile. “Lowlander, my dear. I speak Scots, and a very little Gaelic. I do have a castle in the north, but I grew up in the mansion close to Edinburgh. Gaelic is a forbidden language. It goes with wearing the plaid and selling whisky.”

  Heath made a strangulated sound, very odd, as if he were stifling his response.

  “I think Heath is trying to say that he wouldn’t be caught dead in a plaid. Though I have known him to take a snifter or two of whisky. I don’t distill it, but I’m sure he knows someone who does.”

  “And yet you have a name that sounds very English,” she said.

  Adam snorted with laughter. “You are one of those people who assumes that everyone living in the Highlands has a surname beginning with Mac, aren’t you?”

  She wasn’t about to admit that. “I know there’s a Clan Campbell.”

  Heath choked, and colored up. “You don’t want to mention that collection of scoundrels in my hearing.”

  Adam waved a hand, dismissing his majordomo’s concerns. “We’re not in Scotland now.” His expression turned serious. Adam went on unbidden. “Heath took me to his home after Culloden, when the army was out chasing family members. My mother went to her family in Edinburgh and I was going, too, but they didn’t think it was safe. Frederick went with her, but I went with Heath. I was his son for a year.”

  “But you had done nothing wrong!” she exclaimed. “Why would they want you?”

  He shook his head. “Because if they had me, they could make a case for the whole family being traitors. Once attainted, the estate, title and everything else would be gone, and the family’s reputation with it. When it was safe to travel, Heath and I went to London and straight to court. I had friends there.”

  “You were just a boy!”

  “Twenty. A man, in most people’s
eyes. I petitioned the king directly, pledged my loyalty and we were safe again.”

  He’d told the story so matter-of-factly that Delphi could scarce believe it. Stories had spread about the brutality of the army after Culloden. Their leader, the king’s second son, the Duke of Cumberland, was renowned as a competent and even innovative military man. But the stomach-turning accounts of rape and murder that spread after the Scottish battle besmirched his reputation. Delphi had met him on her presentation at court, and he’d seemed affable, but distant.

  Adam could have become a victim of that persecution. If they’d found him and killed him, his family would have lost everything. He’d be labeled a traitor, and everything he owned would be forfeit to the Crown.

  She pressed a hand to her stomach as queasiness turned her cold.

  “And yet, here we are,” Adam said, his voice so cheerful that he brought Delphi out of her terror. “The problems we face are paltry compared to that.”

  Before Delphi could say anything, he picked up the papers. “Heath, does this make sense to you?” He motioned to a chair on the other side of the table. “Take a look.”

  Heath thumbed through the translations Delphi had done, then the original document. “Oh, yes,” he said. “These are perfectly clear. His lordship knows the Gaelic well.”

  “He likes languages,” Adam explained. “He is far more fluent and understands more than I do.”

  “May I?” Heath indicated the inkwell. At Delphi’s nod, he plucked a pen out of the stand, examined the nib and then dipped it into the ink. Referencing the original note, he scrawled something down. “It’s very simple,” he said. “If you know Gaelic, that is. Cross out the Latin endings to the words, like ‘a’, ‘um’, ‘us’, and you’re left with the Gaelic. But he’s done it as it’s spoken, not how it’s written.”

  So clever, but using an obscure language made interpretation impossible to anyone without the key.

  All that effort, and the key turned out to be this.

  “I made another copy,” Delphi said. “I made lots of copies, trying to make sense of it, but I haven’t used this one yet.”

  Heath took the clean copy and struck out the word endings with his pen. Then he read the result aloud, in Gaelic. While Delphi couldn’t understand a word of it, the mellifluous sound echoed around the room like a visitor from the past.

  At her side, Adam stiffened, his fist clenching on the table. “I heard that sound all the time when I was a boy.”

  Not all those memories would be welcome to him. Delphi thought of his fraught childhood, when his father was chasing the Stuarts, conspiring with them, sending them money and his loyalty. Clearly, her husband had turned his back on those memories, but the sound had reopened the wound.

  She’d never considered what his father’s betrayal had meant to Adam the man and why he’d rejected his father’s beliefs so thoroughly. “Why did you not learn it?” she asked now. “When your brother did?”

  “I could not risk being caught understanding it. Ten years ago, even knowing Gaelic condemned you as a traitor in some people’s eyes. They could have tried me, too, and sent me to the scaffold with my father.” He paused. “I met The Young Pretender once, when he was young and confident. Women loved him. They threw themselves at him. He took what they offered, but I don’t think he has ever had time for anyone but himself in his heart. I saw it, and I saw the way he left without leaving word or aid to the people who had followed him all the way to Coventry.” That was where the abortive march to London had ended, and the Scottish army had turned back in the rout that had ended at Culloden.

  While she was in her cozy house in London, Adam was facing all this. And he’d managed the immediate crisis beautifully, with Heath’s help, then gone on to rebuild what was broken.

  She hadn’t believed she could respect him more, but what he’d done then and the light way he coped with the reminiscences today filled her with pride. It took boldness, bravery and a great deal of cleverness to do what he’d done. Even more to make it look easy.

  “What does it say?” Adam demanded.

  “Not much.” Heath glanced at the note again. “And I don’t know what it means. It reads, ‘The gealbhonn has the list of names, including the leader.’ Gealbhonn means sparrow.” He looked up, frowning. “A sparrow? There are plenty of sparrows in Rome. How do we know which one?”

  “Does it say anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  So short, and with no clues, where did they begin?

  Adam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I can’t recall anything about a sparrow. Nothing from our childhood, nothing between us. The note was labeled ‘Winchester’, on the outside, so it was meant for me and not another of his correspondents.” He opened his eyes, staring bleakly at Heath. “You?”

  The majordomo shook his head. “Nothing. There are a lot of sparrows in Scotland, but I don’t recall one in particular.”

  “Is there a monument or a statue in Rome pertaining to sparrows?”

  Delphi pursed her lips in thought. “I don’t know of any, but that does not mean there isn’t one. I can study the maps, see if I can find anything.”

  “Please do.” He got to his feet. “I’ll go to the statue shop, and see if I can find any more information.” He grinned and touched her shoulder. “Don’t forget to eat something.”

  “Take the footmen with you.”

  “I have no intention of risking my life.” He paused at the door. “I have too much to live for.” The last was spoken in such a soft tone, Delphi melted inside. He meant her.

  As much to rest her aching eyes as for any other reason, after she’d locked the notes away, Delphi went to her room and dressed. Choosing a gown of pale yellow silk printed with tiny flowers and leaves gave her a sense of home. She didn’t have much of a knowledge of flowers, certainly not to match her sister, Dorcas’, but she rather thought they were rosebuds and daisies. The matching petticoat of the same fabric didn’t give her any more clues.

  She had her maid leave off the deep ruffles because she’d only get them stained with ink. Otherwise, she waited patiently for her hair to be coiled back, the little lace cap to be attached, and a string of pearls to be fastened around her neck.

  Then she rose and went back downstairs, eager to resume her studies.

  In the book room, she found several maps of Rome, and a couple of books in English meant for the use of visitors, pointing out all the principal places of interest. She settled to read.

  While she found some of the information interesting and some misleading, at the end of the first hour she had found nothing about a sparrow monument, street or anything else. She read about the starlings of Rome, which would soon begin their daily sweeps over the city in a stupendous display of bird power. But starlings weren’t sparrows, so she marked the place to look at later.

  Sparrow…something lingered at the back of her mind, but try as she might, she couldn’t bring it to the forefront. Did one of the gods have a sparrow as a symbol, perhaps?

  She added a book on mythology to her pile, and found a copy of Ovid. She knew the Metamorphoses almost by heart, but she could have missed something. And a day spent with Ovid was never a day wasted.

  When the door downstairs clanged, announcing a visitor, Delphi ignored it. Perhaps someone sending a message, since she and Adam were now officially a couple, or an invitation or something of that nature. She wasn’t at home and she had no time to thumb through invitations and calling cards.

  After a light tap at the door, Heath entered. She had already learned he was no ordinary servant; barely a servant at all, more of a colleague. But she would have preferred he stayed outside the door until she bade him come in.

  Still, he meant a lot to Adam. She would learn to live with it.

  “Madam, you have a visitor.” By the primming of his thin mouth, she understood he did not approve of whoever it was.

  “And?” she prompted.

  “He is distressed
about something, but he said he would only share it with you. I fear…”

  She jumped to a conclusion. “Adam? Who is it?”

  “Lord Joshua Stuart. I am under orders to refuse to admit him, but I will tell you before I turn him away.”

  “We were perfectly cordial at the Beauchamp ball,” she pointed out.

  “Nevertheless, your grace, I intend to follow orders.”

  She could do nothing about that and, in truth, she didn’t want to see Lord Joshua in the house again.

  An hour later, she received a note from Trensom. “You need air,” he’d written. “Come to the house for dinner and walk in the garden with Matilda.”

  That sounded inviting.

  Ordering Heath to arrange for a footman to accompany her, she went upstairs to find her hat and gloves. Heath waited for her in the hall. “Take care, Madam,” he said. She nodded. “Indeed, I will.”

  The clock in the hall chimed the half-hour. She would be in time to share tea with Matilda.

  She left the house by the main entrance and climbed the Steps, her footman following behind.

  The British district was thronged with the fashionable taking the afternoon air. When the weather was hot, people accustomed themselves to waking early and resting in the middle of the day, and even now, when the heat was not so oppressive, they persisted in the habit.

  A couple of carriages stood at the top of the Steps, no doubt waiting for their owners to finish their perambulations.

  The footman, whose name, she recalled, was Frith, was wearing the blue and silver livery of Adam’s household.

  At the top of the Steps, she encountered Signor Raffetti. She paused to speak with him. He bowed and declared himself glad to see her. “I will be driving to Lord and Lady Billingham’s country house shortly. I am invited for dinner, and to stay overnight. May I give them your regards?”

  As she curtseyed, her silks rustled, making her glad she’d dressed well today, instead of in the old clothes she used when she settled to studying.