Alex snorted softly. “There’s never time with things like this. You’re probably strapped for information and losing footing, if not operatives, and I probably hold the key to getting a leg up on the whole Faction, right?”
“Something like that.”
Leave it to Cap to not soften the blow.
Alex dropped his head with a groan. “Didn’t you all find my notes and ledgers?”
“Yes,” Cap said simply. “A few weeks ago.”
That wasn’t the answer that he’d expected, and Alex looked up at the senior operative of one of the most secret organizations devised by the Shopkeepers and heads of state in England.
“What do you mean a few weeks ago?”
“Just that,” Cap replied, folding his arms. “Weaver had Rook looking into you and your investigations without telling the rest of us, thinking we were all too biased and too close to the situation to see it for what it was.”
“Which was probably true,” Alex interjected.
Cap smirked. “Which was absolutely true.” He sobered, leaning his head back against the barn. “Rook came up here and somehow found the bench everyone else, including all of us, missed.”
Alex scoffed loudly. “You didn’t think I’d hide my stash in Parkerton, did you?”
Silence met his question, and Alex sat back, thumping his head against the wall. “You did, didn’t you?”
“We didn’t realize you’d had a particular spot,” Cap admitted apologetically. “None of us could see it.”
“Rook did, though.” Alex shook his head slowly. “A man who didn’t know me at all could find the bench.” He looked up at Cap in disbelief. “What did you think I meant when I said to tend the flowers?”
Cap’s high brow furrowed. “To look after Poppy Edgewood, of course.”
Alex groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Why the hell would I need you lot to tend Poppy? I’ve had measures put into place for that from the beginning. You gave her Stanton, but did you know I put John Barry here? And Thomas Burton, Amos Clayton, and Peter Melville.”
“Good heavens, Alex.”
“I had Poppy taken care of,” Alex said firmly. “But that bench that I built myself, with the secret compartment, that has a very particular carving of a flower on it…”
Cap swore softly, cutting Alex off at once.
“Quite,” Alex answered, laughing once. “That was instruction to find the information you needed.”
“You know the irony here?” Cap told him, releasing a reluctant chuckle. “The only reason Rook said he found it was because he was so distracted in thinking of Helen that he thought of your feelings for Poppy. Analyzing what those might have been and how they would have affected you, thinking you must have wanted to make the most of your time with her…”
“All true,” Alex murmured, looking off towards the cottage with sudden pangs of longing.
“And that is how he found the bench,” Cap finished with a nod. “It was less about being a spy, and more about being a man in love.”
Alex sighed, nodding himself. “I’ve always been the latter, Cap. The former came into my life long after.”
“And now?”
There was no easy way to answer that question, especially as Alex had no idea what he was or how he felt, what he should do… Nothing from his past was the same, and there was nothing he could hold on to now but the day itself.
“Now,” Alex sighed, rising slowly, “I’m a poor imitation of both, and not much good for anything.”
Cap gripped his shoulder again. “Not true, but I won’t waste breath arguing.” He eyed Alex up and down. “Are you fit enough to work the rest of the afternoon? You look done for.”
Alex gave him a very thin smile. “I always look done for these days. My face doesn’t know any other way to look.”
Cap wasn’t amused by that response. “I’m serious. I will put you back into the cottage and have Stanton stand guard. Or have Miss Edgewood do so.”
“You can’t order me about here, Cap,” Alex told him with a scowl. “I’m not in the League now.”
“I was your commanding officer before I was senior operative,” Cap reminded him with all the superiority and firmness he’d ever managed. “I know you haven’t forgotten that.”
“I can work just fine,” Alex snapped. “I’ve worked in a far worse condition and lived to tell the tale. Nothing makes me feel worse than being idle now.”
Cap nodded and gestured for him to return to the field. “Tonight, we should talk, Alex. About everything, if you can manage.”
Alex nodded once, swallowing. “Bring rum, and I’ll sing like a canary. I don’t need secrets anymore. Not that many remain.”
Chapter Nine
Branbury Hall was dark and gloomy, though the year-round staff kept it up admirably. Alex hadn’t ever been in it before, but it looked much the same as any other fine house a man of status would inhabit.
And Tailor had purchased it, had he? To keep an eye on Poppy? The interference of everyone into Poppy’s life was astonishing. It was no wonder she was upset with the discovery. Alex couldn’t manage the same effrontery, but he could at least acknowledge the truth of the matter as it stood. Poppy’s life was not her own in any sense of the word.
And that was his fault.
“When did Tailor purchase the house?” Alex asked as the others pulled chairs around the large fireplace in the great room.
“Roughly four and a half years ago,” Weaver said with a glance and a grin at him over a wingback chair he’d commandeered from somewhere.
Alex didn’t smile back at the line. “Why?”
“Why?” Gent repeated with a laugh as he settled himself in his own chair. “Because you were dead, and we didn’t know if you had been compromised and sensitive information would be seized, or if your Miss Edgewood would be in danger, or…”
“All right, all right,” Alex interrupted waving him off. “It just seems excessive for one operative.”
“You weren’t just any operative, Alex,” Gabe told him, taking the seat beside him. “And once it became clear that Poppy would need assistance and to be watched over…”
Alex shook his head slowly. “We’ve all gone to excesses over her, and she’s as poor as a church mouse, as it is.”
“Not exactly,” Weaver admitted, a peculiar smile on his face.
Everyone in the room turned to look at him, only the sound of the fire meeting his odd interjection.
Sensing he had the attention of all, Weaver shrugged and rubbed at the back of his head. “Tailor’s fixed it all rather nicely. Poppy has everything she needs for her lands and farm every year, but she has no idea that, despite her earnings from the farm itself, the tax she pays to her rather absent landlord only goes into a growing account for her future. Tailor has settled some amount on her, though how much I am not aware, and should anything happen to Tailor, Poppy would still be perfectly comfortable for the rest of her days.”
“In a cottage,” Alex pointed out, too numb to feel any sort of gratitude. “On a farm.”
Weaver’s dark eyes held his gaze steadily. “He could hardly bring her into his household, could he? She’s made the decision to stay, she bought the cottage and farm on her own, and unless you wanted her to know all of this far earlier than yesterday, there really wasn’t much else to be done.”
Alex looked away, heat scalding his cheeks and the back of his neck.
Poppy could leave now, whatever her reasons for staying had been. She might wish to leave, considering the state of things. The cottage had been their imagined future, should all things fall away, a laugh they had shared knowing how her parents had felt about him before his inheritance had been assured. Now it was hers, as all things had fallen away in truth, and nothing was as it seemed. Would her pride be wounded by all that had been unearthed?
There was no telling.
The Poppy he had known in his youth had not been hard or particularly stubborn, unless h
er mother were involved, and had been vibrant and alive with an energy that kept her from truly belonging in the height of proper Society. The woman she was now had a tough exterior and a deep determination, no hint of airs or delicacy, and barely resembled the girl she had once been.
He needed to make up for the hardship her ties to him had brought her and do what he could to alleviate the strain on her current financial situation, despite Tailor’s intervention. He would see this harvest done, complete the repairs on the barn, the house, the lands, and anything he could do with his efforts to reduce her suffering.
He owed her no less.
What he would do after that was far less certain.
“Alex.”
He looked up at Cap’s surprisingly gentle tone, and found the entire group staring at him in a sort of worried expectation.
Alex nodded once, even as a frigid chill seeped into his bones. “I’ll only be able to do this once, and some things I’m not discussing. It won’t serve anything to go into it. Understood?”
A general murmur came up from the rest, and a glass of amber liquid was placed in his hand.
Odd that that seemed to ground him more than anything else had yet.
He’d always done his best talking when alcohol had been involved on the Amelie Claire. It seemed only right that now he had some.
To drink at his will, not to be forced down his throat. Or poured down when he’d given up fighting it. Or guzzling desperately while he could, knowing it would deaden the pain that would come.
This… This he could sip at leisure, warm his insides when the coldness became too much.
Or he could go numb, if it all became too much.
How long he’d wished for numbness and never found it.
“They knew who I was,” Alex began, already feeling his hands shake despite the glass he held. “I didn’t know it at the time, I thought my cover was intact. I’d never had a whiff of trouble before, but that night on the docks, when I led you all into the mess, I didn’t know…”
“You couldn’t have known, Alex,” Cap insisted. “None of us did, and none of our contacts did.”
Alex shook his head slowly. “I should have. I knew the Cardieu brothers had too much interest in the Faction, too many sympathies, and their professional interests were spotty at best, though business had been improving for them. There was a foreman that I had been in the process of investigating, Mainsley…”
Rook cleared his throat and sat forward. “He is the key player there, I’m sure of it. He had men come after me, and no one who had ties to you ought to have known me.”
Alex groaned and rubbed his free hand over his face. “Lord, Rook…”
“If an apology is about to come out of your mouth, you’d best swallow that,” Rook said at once with a harsh tone. “I need none, and you’ve got better things to fill your mind with. Move on.”
It occurred to Alex to thank him for that, but the fleeting gratitude died where it grew, and he only nodded.
“I was stabbed in the stomach that night,” Alex continued, hardly recognizing his own voice. “Thought I would die on the deck of that bloody ship, the Jemima. Turns out, that was the best time on a ship I’d have in four and a half years.” His words caught in his throat, and he shook his head. “I was moved to a sister ship, the Georgina, for safekeeping. I’d lost so much blood from the wound, I was unconscious for a full day, at least. But they meticulously tended and nursed me back to health, and the Jemima was burned from keel to stern and sunk to avoid suspicion. When I was fit to be transported, I was transferred to the Amelie Claire and Captain Laurent Battier, the one they call La Belette. Smuggler. No loyalty to anyone except the one who paid the most. And the Faction paid him a great deal at regular intervals.”
“That would explain why the Jemima seemed to vanish,” Gent murmured, nodding in thought. “We searched for it for months.”
“Never came across the name Battier though,” Gabe grunted in irritation. “Odd that such a smuggler would be unknown to us.”
Alex shook his head slowly. “You’re forgetting the Cardieus. They protected Battier because he was of use to their business and interests. Considering he is funded by the Faction on one side and them on the other, he is powerful enough to be relatively undetected by official means. Ask any smuggler about La Belette, however…”
“I’ve heard that name,” Gabe broke in, sounding hopeful.
“As have I,” Rook added with a nod. “No one could tell me anything about La Belette, other than he was cunning, but never any details.”
Alex swallowed and lifted his glass to his mouth, sipping slowly, finding the equally slow burn against his throat comforting.
“You said they knew who you were,” Weaver said, looking at Alex intently. “Did Battier?”
A slow ripple of distaste washed over him, and he nodded once. “He did. He and Acosta and Janssen, and a handful of others at most. They called me Trace in interrogation, or Le Trace if they were feeling particularly mocking.”
No one said anything for a moment, the logs in the fireplace crackling ominously.
“Interrogated,” Gabe repeated in a low tone.
Alex nodded once. “Often. Regularly. And at times brutally. Their knowledge was very accurate, and the questions they asked were very particular. At first, it was easy to resist, we’ve been trained for that, and they didn’t stray into extremes. Then suddenly, they did. The sessions became more and more difficult to withstand, the tactics more and more agonizing. I had no idea a body could endure so much, and the effect it has on the mind…” He raised his glass again, though it shook tremulously. “I could barely recall one day from the next, let alone who I was. But somehow I knew enough to avoid telling them what they wanted to know.”
Rook whistled low and drew Alex’s attention, Rook’s eyes were wide in the light of the fire. “You didn’t tell them anything? At all?”
“Impossible,” Cap breathed. “Surely they’d have killed you if you’d resisted entirely.”
“They would have, undoubtedly,” Alex told them, “but they found me useful. When I inevitably reached my wit’s end, I’d give them something, and they would leave me alone until they’d passed it on and seen it through.”
The others looked at each other, then back to him, each of them with furrowed brow. “What do you mean by ‘give them something,’ Alex?” Cap asked slowly.
Alex smiled grimly. “I gave them information. Old information, already completed missions, retired operatives, and the like. Combined details of past tasks into a grander-sounding scheme… It became a game for me, though I doubt they found it amusing when everything I gave them proved outdated.”
Gabe swore softly beside him. “It’s astonishing that they didn’t kill you after your first betrayal there.”
He shrugged in response. “It took months to get that sort of information validated, and it was true enough to ensure that I was useful, and how could I be blamed for a mission already completed if I was on their ship? I gave them just enough to ensure I would be kept alive, but not enough to have me be labeled a traitor.” He looked over at Weaver with a faint smile. “You may want to inform the old Hawks company that they shouldn’t regroup for another round.”
Weaver chuckled and gave him a casual salute. “I shall pass that along, thank you.”
“Where were you kept, Alex?” Rook murmured, ignoring the faint humor. “I’ve been on board many ships of late, and I don’t see…”
“The hold,” Alex overrode darkly. “Basically, in a box created for me. Either bound in the corner or hanging from chains. I was tended carefully by the ship’s surgeon, and my every injury was seen to as though I were a valued officer on board. When he approved, which was far sooner than any other physician would have, I was fit to return to my duties.”
Gent sat back slowly, making a soft sound of acknowledgement. “As a crew member.”
Alex nodded, shrugging one shoulder. “Less than any other, apart from the
other prisoners that occasionally came and went. No one else knew me as Trace, but they all gleefully took up the new name I had been given. Torchon.”
“Dishcloth?” Cap translated with a raised brow. “Lovely.”
“Rather apt, too.” Alex swallowed and shuddered in memory. “They knew how to wring me out, scrub me raw, and put me to use however they saw fit.” He cleared his throat and looked up at each of them in turn. “I never betrayed the League in any way. I gave them no names. Not one.”
Gabe grunted, leaning forward. “We never suspected you would.”
“And wouldn’t have blamed you if you had,” Gent murmured softly.
Heads bobbed all about the room.
They could say grand and noble things such as that, but if Alex had given any of them up, if he had betrayed this brotherhood or any of the other offices with covert operatives, their stories would have changed a great deal.
What ate away at him now was the fact that he didn’t know why he hadn’t given in at the end. Why he hadn’t given them a real name that might have allowed Battier and the Faction some real progress. Why had he stayed resolutely silent on the subject of his colleagues and their tasks, their missions, their history? It hadn’t been out of loyalty, he was sure, for he’d forgotten anything so honorable had ever existed in him.
Habit was all he could claim. Habit and training.
And neither of those were a particularly noble reason.
“I was bound,” Alex rushed on, clearing his throat, “every time we came into port. Acosta would string me up, so I was suspended in the hold if he was the one confining me. Janssen was more lenient and would only bind me to the wall. Battier would lash me for good measure before he left, but he didn’t care how I was confined, so long as I was. Before last week, I hadn’t touched land since that night on the docks.”
He trailed off, lost in the memories of his time on the ship, of the other day when he’d realized he was on land once more… Such a simple pleasure, being on land, but the joy it had sent through his system had been potent indeed.
He still felt as though he didn’t quite have his footing, but the joy had receded into only the very furthest corners of his mind. Other emotions had pressed their way into the forefront and were currently reigning supreme.
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