If she had seen Carvelle, she would recognize him. He’d chased Carvelle’s trail of snail slime across Holland without once seeing him.
“Charley’s wife was once promised to him. Father was looking for him. His cousin was a traitor and so is he. He’s a vile man.”
“Come,” he said. “Let’s hurry.”
Minutes later,Perry turned the key in the lock on the grand entrance door and went to stand next to Jenny at the windows in the nearby parlor.
“Like shadows, they are,” Jenny said approvingly.
“Yes.” What they were truly up to, she couldn’t be sure. Both men had donned the darkest of jumpers and trousers, black watch caps jammed tight over their already dark hair, and all done in minutes. Men’s clothing was so freeing.
“Are we really in danger?” the girl asked.
“Of course not.”
In the gloom, she couldn’t see Jenny’s expression, but her skepticism was palpable.
Her answer had been reflexive, unnecessary, almost disrespectfulnoblesse oblige.She was forgetting, this was Jenny, former urchin of the Seven Dials. Didn’t she herself hate being treated like a child?
“Well, maybe.”
Besides, Jenny might know more about this—didn’t the servants always know more than they let on?
“Did you hear tell in the servant’s hall of Gregory Carvelle?”
The girl stiffened. “Miss Gracie’s fiancé, who beat her? The one they never found?”
She sighed. “Is there anything the servants don’t talk about?”
“I only listened, my lady. Is Gregory Carvelle the one Mr. Fox and MacEwen are after?”
“So he told me.”
“He told you? Then you got more out of him than I did MacEwen. You promised to teach me to load the pistols, miss.”
“Indeed I did.”
Upstairs in her bedchamber, they closed the curtains, turned up the lamp just enough to see, and she showed Jenny how to load and prime a fine pair of Mantons she’d filched from Shaldon House.
“Shall we wait in the kitchen?” Jenny asked. “I can make us another pot by the light of the fire.”
Fox had warned them about keeping the house dark, so as not to draw interest out at sea. He’d issued a password, with instructions for them to keep the door closed to anyone who didn’t know it.
Her gaze landed on the sketchpad she’d pushed to the side. What other secrets was Fox hiding? He would go down the cliff side, do whatever he had to do, and would have to climb back up. She had plenty of time to investigate.
“I’m going upstairs, Jenny.”
The girl picked up a pistol and held it carefully pointed at the floor. “I’ll go with you, miss.”
Jenny wentto the curtains in Fox’s room.
“Wait,” Perry said. “Don’t close them. He’ll notice they were disturbed.”
She shuttered the lantern as much as she could. Surely, they were high enough not to be seen, but she would risk a dim light anyway. As her eyes adjusted, she saw Fox’s coats and white shirt tossed carelessly on the bed.
“He’s made his own bed,” Jenny said.
Perry had noticed that before. “So he has.”
