Mrs. Pembroke shook her head. “Child, Mrs. Fenwick took care of it.” She looked toward the broken, blue-edged plate still on the floor. “Anna, fetch the broom.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Anna hurried off, grateful for the ordinary task. But as she crossed the hall, she glanced toward the front door.
The British were suspicious now. And Nathaniel Reed, British courier and a very inconvenient complication, had protected her twice.
She no longer knew whether disliking him was practical, wise, or entirely necessary. She only knew it was becoming increasingly difficult.
Captain Whitby said little on the ride from Pembroke House to the village. Rothborne, on the other hand, said far too much.
Nathaniel listened to him list possibilities as they rode: spies among servants, careless officers, disloyal merchants, rebellious farmers, a traitor in the harbor post, a traitor in the counting house, a traitor in the very air they breathed.
Nathaniel let him talk and talk and talk. Surprisingly, so did Captain Whitby.
This puzzled Nathaniel at first. The captain wasn’t known for patience, but perhaps he was merely trying to tune the man’s prattle out as they rode.
“Someone knew,” Rothborne said for the third time as they neared the village. “Someone knew the shipment had been moved.”
Whitby’s jaw at last tightened. “The shipment was not moved, you fool. It was delayed.”
“It was diverted,” Rothborne said.
“It was delayed!” Captain Whitby reined in his horse so hard the beast tossed its head. “Lieutenant, if I wished every unhappy event repeated back to me in a more irritating tone, I would hire a parrot.”
Nathaniel glanced toward the far side of the road so neither man would see his smile.
Rothborne’s face darkened, but he fell silent. The village looked as it had the day before. Men crossed the road with sacks over their shoulders. A woman argued over the price of flour. A child chased a hoop past the blacksmith’s yard. All ordinary, peaceful, and entirely false.
Somewhere beyond that ordinary morning, powder meant for British hands had failed to arrive where expected. That meant Caleb received the message, or someone close enough to him had. It also meant the locket found its way out of Pembroke House after all.
Nathaniel thought of Anna in the hall, pale and steady while Rothborne tried to frighten the truth out of her.
She’d lied well. Too well for comfort. That was not a skill a maid acquired by accident.
Whitby sent Rothborne toward the harbor post with instructions to speak to Major Ellis. Then he handed Nathaniel a folded note. “Sloane,” Whitby said. “Put it in his hands and wait for his reply.”
“Yes, Captain.” Nathaniel rode to the counting house but didn’t enter it right away. He tied his horse to the hitching rail and took a moment to adjust the strap of his saddlebag. Anyone watching would see a courier checking buckles.
No one would notice the boy with the basket of kindling who brushed past him at the corner. “Bell still lives,” the boy muttered.
Nathaniel didn’t look at him as the boy continued down the street and vanished behind the baker’s shop.
Nathaniel’s hand stilled on the strap. Bell lived to see another day. That was something.
Inside the counting house, Mr. Sloane was in a temper. That, too, was something. “You may tell Captain Whitby,” Sloane said after reading the note, “that I do not conjure ships, wagons, tides, or obedience from thin air.”
“I will be sure to use those exact words, sir,” Nathaniel said.
Sloane glared at him.
Nathaniel smiled back. “Or perhaps I shall soften them a touch.”
“Do that,” Mr. Sloane said.
The clerk wisely kept his head down. The broad-faced wharfman from the day before was absent.
Two ledgers lay open on the desk, one atop the other. Nathaniel watched Sloane shift from one foot to the next as he examined them. He could make out little more than a column of dates and a name half hidden beneath a blot of ink.
Kingfisher.
