She felt the mild censure in his voice and remained rooted in place as he turned on his heel and stalked back to his own office.
When he handed her the loose-leaf folio, there was a look in his eye that told her he suspected secrets were being kept. Or perhaps it was her own guilty conscience. She accepted the book and let her eyes fall away from his, keeping them downcast until she heard him leave the room.
She thought again of Lady Ridgeway. She was the type who’d play a game like this with ease.
Olivia Collins was a novice at it.
For the rest of the morning, Olivia listened keenly to the sounds beyond her own small room in Fitzgerald’s offices, dreading the idea of being alone with him. So when he announced he was going to visit a client and should not be expected to return for the rest of the day, she cursed herself for breathing a small sigh of relief.
How on earth was she to agree to the formalizing of an engagement next month if the very thought of spending time alone with her would-be fiancé filled her with unease? How could she bear to have him touch her with any intimacy when all she could think about was the desire she experienced in Adam’s arms?
Her thoughts turned to the strange Lady Ridgeway. Did her salvation lie there? It certainly wasn’t to be found at the post office where the letters contained only regrets that the position had already been filled. What if Lady Ridgeway made no offer of work? What was she to do then?
Olivia put down her pen, feeling the beginning of a headache building at her temples.
Since there was little more she could do on her history of Kenstec without one of the missing sketches, she decided to make a hopeful visit to the post office once again on the way to join the early afternoon coach back to Ponsnowyth.
As the coach rounded the bend past the woods and into the hedgerows that marked the border of Kenstec House, Olivia shouted out for the coachman to stop.
She disembarked and remained on the side of the road until she could no longer see the coach and the plumes of dust kicked up in its wake began to settle. It was hot in the sun. She felt a bead of perspiration tickle the nape of her neck. Grasshoppers, bees, and dragonflies filled the air with sound.
The ruin in the middle of the woods beckoned her. She determined to go there and say a final goodbye to Constance, and to the tragedy which bound them together. She would pray that the poor girl’s soul would find peace, and that her lost and dispossessed son had somehow made a good life for himself.
She found the overgrown path from the road without much difficulty and picked her way through, brushing past ferns and hardy wildflowers. The dappled light through the trees illuminated one of the grey stones ahead. The sound of the stream drew her on also. She was thirsty and the thought of its cold sweetness spurred her forward.
Only a few yards from the clearing, she heard male voices.
“No one comes through here, only the occasional poacher.”
She knew that voice! It was Adam. But there was an edge to his tone, a harshness she’d never before heard.
“Well, they’d better be keepin’ away if they know what’s good for ’em.” The threat by a second man was unmistakable.
Olivia moved off the path, away from them, toward the back corner of the ancient ruin. She could hide there.
At a distance, she could see Adam’s face. The man he spoke to had his back to her, but the barrel of the musket he carried in his hand was more than ample proof that his threat was not an idle one.
“Why don’t you go tell Wilkinson the northern boundary is clear?” said Adam. “I’ll be back.” He began to walk away across her line of sight. She ducked behind a half-wall in case he glanced in her direction.
“Where are ye goin’?” the other man called.
“I’m taking a piss.”
Olivia heard the man grumble and the sounds of him walking away swiftly followed. Then she only heard the sound of her own breathing while she counted down a minute, hoping it was enough time for Adam to have left the clearing.
Squatters at Kenstec House? Why was Adam with them? Olivia swallowed bitterness, she could think of quite a few reasons and none of them good. She rose to her feet slowly and peered toward the clearing by the stream. There was no one to be seen.
The afternoon sun was low in the sky, blinding her retreat back to the road, but she ran for it. She would tell Jory and the others in the village.
Before another thought formed, Olivia was wrenched backwards, a large hand clamped over her mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Olivia! It’s me.”
Adam’s harsh whisper filled her ears. She fought an involuntary tremor by squeezing her eyes shut tight until they watered.
“I need you to be silent. I’m going to hold you until you’re still and quite sure you won’t scream. Agreed?”
She nodded and breathed in deeply through her nose once, then twice. Adam’s hand slowly lifted itself from her mouth. She continued to take in big lungsful of air until she was sure she could stand without trembling.
“Oh hell, sweetheart, what are you doing here?” he whispered, before looking behind him toward the path that came from the house. He grabbed her hand and took her further into the thicker part of the woods where the stone from the priory was covered in moss. It was cold here, even the heat of the afternoon sun offered little comfort and light.
“What sort of trouble are you in, Adam?”
Adam’s head moved a degree, as though surprised by the question.
“I saw the letter your man gave to Jory. That was not your writing and not your words.”
He huffed out a breath of his own. “I’ve spent weeks wishing I could see your face and now you’re here, I’m frightened for the both of us.”
Olivia frowned. He continued. “The men I’m with are French spies and English traitors. I am not one of them. I’m with them to discover plans for an invasion of Cornwall.”
Adam drew her closer. Olivia realized she was trembling again. “You have to stay away from here. Promise me you will.”
She returned his embrace, her arms around him.
“And what of you? Is there nothing I can do? Is there anyone I can call on to help you?”
He answered with kisses across her forehead and cheeks before finding her mouth. She returned his desperate passion just as ardently. Only the need for air caused her to pull her lips away.
Adam’s forehead was creased.
“No one must know. It will mean my death and danger to everyone in Ponsnowyth. And worse than that, I think someone I know – I don’t know who – may also be a traitor.”
“What are we going to do now?”
Adam rested his forehead against hers a moment as if, by their heads touching, they could come up with a plan between them.
“Hardacre! How long does it take to piss?” an impatient voice yelled out.
Adam growled profanities under his breath before shouting back “I’ll be done when I’m bloody good and ready, Dunbar. Unless you want to come over here and see what a real man looks like!”
If their situation wasn’t so grave, Olivia might have been tempted to laugh at Adam’s look of apology at her for his words.
“I have to go,” he whispered. “This man can’t catch you here.”
He brought her hand to his lips as he started to back away. “The mounting block at the inn. Look about tomorrow. I’ll hide a note there overnight.”
Olivia nodded.
“And Constance’s writing box – do you have it?”
“Yes.”
“Take it straight to Charteris House in Truro. Ask to see—”
“Hardacre! Where the hell are ye?” The man’s voice now seemed closer. Adam took off at a run to intercept him without looking back at her.
As soon as she could no longer see him through the trees, she cut through the wood to the road, not even daring to look down the driveway to Kenstec House as she made her way down to the village.
Alone in her room,
Olivia pulled out the writing box from where she had buried it in her trunk. For weeks, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to even look at it. Now she stared at the locked wooden cube.
Take it straight to Charteris House in Truro.
Charteris House? As soon as Adam had said it she recalled the card Lady Ridgeway had given her. What had any of this to do with her?
She gazed at the shield-shaped escutcheon, willing it to reveal some secret. If only she had time to ask Adam about it today.
Think!
It was a plain box, made by a young country carpenter’s apprentice. The lock would be simple, inexpensive as the brass escutcheon. Perhaps any key would work. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t tried that before. A glance told her the trunk key was too large. Since it was a carpenter’s piece, perhaps the carpenter had a replacement.
She took her box and walked a couple of streets over to Mr. Trezise’s house. While she sat and chatted with the lady of the house, her husband disappeared to his workshop in search of suitable keys. He soon came back with half a dozen possibilities and, on the fourth try, the candidate turned in the lock.
“There you are, Miss Olivia,” he said proudly. “As good as new.”
The man refused payment for the old key; his wife insisted she stay for supper. Olivia didn’t have the heart to refuse the generosity and tried for the rest of the evening to keep from looking at the box as it sat on their sideboard.
Finally, alone back at the tavern, Olivia carefully lowered the writing slope and increased the wick on her lamp to better illuminate the inside of the box. There was nothing out of the ordinary here. Olivia pulled out one drawer, then another.
Then, secreted behind Constance’s letters, she found another slim volume. She thumbed through it. The engraved arms of the semaphore towers flickered and moved, changing positions as she leafed through it once and twice over.
Was this what Adam was concerned with protecting?
*
Had he done the right thing? Adam didn’t know.
As he jogged toward the clearing, the answer he came up with was no comfort at all. The moment he saw Olivia’s face, he knew she could not be a participant in this ring. And now she was involved whether she wanted to be or not.
Did it even matter about the code book hidden in the writing box? They had their own copy now. He had no doubt it wasn’t his. Wilkinson would have said if it was. No. Most worrying of all was his growing belief Peter Fitzgerald was somehow associated with the gang. That was the only explanation he could figure for them fearlessly occupying Kenstec. And he suspected Fitzgerald had been the one who’d obtained Olivia’s sketches.
Telling her to go to Charteris House was a risk. But the only person he could trust to really keep her safe was Sir Daniel.
And, if he had misjudged her completely, then that would become Ridgeway’s problem to deal with because Adam knew what the gang would do with him….
Dunbar stood by the stream and glared before spitting a black stream of tobacco into the clear water.
Adam ignored him as he made his way back to the house at a slightly faster clip than he would have otherwise. He wanted to be the one to volunteer to patrol the northern woods tonight. He would argue he knew the area better than any of them.
He headed up to the attic rooms and climbed up the circular staircase to the roof where Wilkinson spared him a glance before returning a telescope to his eye.
In the distance before Adam, the river Fal was as bright as burnished gold, nearly obscuring the harbor at Falmouth.
“At least the standard flag semaphores don’t change,” observed Wilkinson. “The Andromeda has been sighted a few miles off shore. She’s taken some damage but is still intact. How does that make you feel, Hardacre?”
Was this some kind of test?
“I know the ship and the men who sail on her,” he answered. “I know what she’s capable of and I know she will have acquitted herself well.”
“But she’s also now the enemy.”
“Be that as it may, Major, but a man should always have proper respect for his enemies, and I certainly don’t underestimate mine.”
Wilkinson shrugged, as though bored with the conversation already. He trained his glass to the east where the white-painted signal arms on top of the stone semaphore tower at Feock shone in the setting sun.
“Dunbar and I did the rounds of the estate; looks like no one has been here recently. But I want to patrol the back woods tonight. Old man Denton always used to go on about poachers.”
“Do it,” Wilkinson said simply before putting down the glass and scribbling a sketch of the signal.
Finding himself dismissed, Adam descended the stairs and avoided the small pile of sawn planks, rope and nails. They’d not yet been told, but he suspected they were to rig up a temporary semaphore station of their own to signal to a French ship lurking off shore.
His only hope was to get a message to Ridgeway.
Earlier that day, Adam laid claim to Olivia’s room. Not being one of the grandest spaces, his choice was uncontested. He lay on the bed where they had made love just weeks before and closed his eyes.
The faint smell of her soap still lingered on the sheets, and the sight of her today in the wood made it feel like her presence was with him in the room. Tension coursed through his veins as it did every time the Andromeda sailed into battle.
He was not a religious man but he joined in the prayer before battle and he recalled the words which resonated with him deeply.
O let not our sins now cry against us for vengeance; but hear us thy poor servants begging mercy, and imploring thy help, and that thou wouldest be a defense unto us against the face of the enemy. Make it appear that thou art our Savior and mighty Deliverer; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
A defense unto us against the face of the enemy…never before had Adam been so close to his enemy, and Wilkinson was the most dangerous because he could turn the hearts of decent men to evil.
When Wilkinson was not on watch, the man spent his time translating Napoleon’s newssheet, the grandiloquently named Journal of Napoleon and the Virtuous Men into English for the rest of them who did not speak French.
The major was a true believer in the cause which he took on with the zeal of a missionary. Indeed, he was adept at pointing out the faults of English law and English politics. His arguments were unarguably compelling. But Adam had heard enough of the horrors of the Reign of Terror to know the blood-soaked road to which fanaticism led.
He stared up at the ceiling until sleep claimed him.
His dreams were disturbing. He struggled for air in some, drowning in the sea. In others, he was too late to save Olivia from the guillotine.
When he awoke, the room was dark. The activity echoing though the house suggested it was still early evening.
He quickly set up a lamp and retrieved the stub of a pencil he’d stolen from Wilkinson a week ago. From the empty wardrobe, he tore a piece of lining paper and wrote a coded letter before slipping it down the side of his left boot. The right contained the letter in French he had stolen from the other house.
By his calculations, he had not more than half an hour before he would be missed and the distance to the village was nearly a mile. There was little margin for error.
*
Olivia stood in front of the building early the next morning and looked down at the card Lady Ridgeway had given her.
Charteris House.
She tentatively entered, and the bell on the door tinkled merrily. The place looked like a chandler’s and chartmakers establishment, but there was no one about.
Although Adam had told her to take the entire writing box to this place, she suspected it was the code book which was the item of real interest. She had that and Adam’s letter, retrieved from the mounting block at the inn, in a large satchel.
On the stroke of nine, a dozen clocks ticked over the hour in perfect synchronization, filling the store with the sound of chimes so l
oud she didn’t hear the shopkeeper even enter the room.
“Can I help you, Miss?”
Olivia started. She turned her back to the clocks to look at the man. He was shorter than she was by at least half a head; his thick glasses made it difficult to even know what his eye color was.
“I’m here to see someone.”
“Who would that be?” the little man inquired with a doubtful expression.
She didn’t know. Adam had rushed away before telling her.
But she had the card.
“Lady Ridgeway.”
“Lady Ridgeway?” The man sounded surprised. He looked about as if searching for such a person. “I’m sure this is no place for a lady.”
“She gave me a card.”
The odd little man held his hand out for it, examined it in great detail, then handed it back to her.
“Yes, this is the place.”
He blinked at her owlishly before indicating the way to the front door.
“Wait! I was also told to come here by Adam Hardacre.”
At that, the man halted.
When he turned back, it seemed the shopkeeper was different somehow – taller, more alert, a lot less the absent merchant of just a moment ago.
“Please wait here a moment, Miss Collins.”
The man disappeared through the door of what Olivia presumed was a stockroom before she could even ask his name or, more shockingly, how he knew her name. Within moments, he came back.
“Miss Collins, you are to go to the White Hart Inn at one o’clock today. You will be escorted to a private room on the first floor to dine with Sir Daniel Ridgeway and his wife, Lady Abigail. Do you have any message from Mr. Hardacre?”
“I have a letter. And a writing box.”
“Thank you,” said the man, looking speculatively at her satchel. “I’ll relieve you of the items now.”
He held out his hand.
“No! Not until I know your name; not until I know how you know mine.”
“My name is Bassett, Miss Collins. At your service,” he bowed. “And as for the rest, you must speak with Sir Daniel.”
He smiled at her. “The satchel?”
Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two Page 90