With tentative peace on the continent, Whitehall work ought to have become lighter but Lord Rainham appeared as busy as the devil in a high wind. Papers were piled high on his desk with colour-coded tags. Maps crowded the walls, pins sticking out in regimental straightness.
“Winterbourne, sorry to have kept you waiting.” Rainham sauntered in, a quarter after the hour of eleven, appearing markedly dishevelled for once,sansjacket and neckcloth loose – the rascal.
“No matter, you had a decent claret.” He raised a half-full glass. “So, what’s this mission? A crooked countess? A dangerous duchess? Or a wicked widow? I’m more partial to the latter if there’s a choice.”
“An innocent young girl.”
Jack stared aghast and drained the claret.
“And it requires you to leave the confines of London…for the countryside.”
He poured himself another.
The country had never held much appeal, excepting an hour or so’s carriage excursion to woo the ladies. Mud, midges, brambles and all that…fresh air. “Unto where exactly?”
“Cornwall.”
“Gads, the ends of the earth, my dear Rainham. I might drop off the edge, never to be of a lady’s service again.”
His superior unsuccessfully hid a grin and made himself comfortable behind the congested desk. “I’ve calculated it’s nine days and one morn by carriage,” he stated, steepling his fingers. “Given that you’ll change horses three times a day, commence at sun-up and no rain falls.”
Considering this was September, the latter seemed unlikely.
With a clank of keys, Rainham unlocked a desk drawer, its wooden runners groaning with the weight. A folder emerged – substantial with yellowing paper.
“Six years ago,” his superior began briskly, no doubt impatient to start his honeymoon and who could blame him, “there was an incident in the south-west of Cornwall. A girl and boy were out riding when they interrupted what we now know was a French spy ring. The enemy was using a cove and hidden inlets to run men back and forth across the English Channel.”
Jack nodded. Cornwall was fairly cut-off and protecting its jagged coastline from the enemy proved problematic. Local smuggling also remained rife and Crown meddling along its shores met with resistance from both villagers and lords alike. Even his own jonquil silk waistcoat doubtless arrived via a midnight dash, as did one or two of his fine cognacs.
“Were they killed?” He steeled himself for the answer. Soldiers fought, knowing the risks, and spies took their chances, but innocent children?
“The boy was found with a broken neck, but the girl, a Miss Tamsyn Penrose, was left alive.” Rainham smoothed the folder with a palm and tucked in a sheet that dared to peek out.
“And?” Wasn’t there always an “and” to Rainham’s tales?
“She remained delirious for many weeks but during that time, her father said she occasionally mumbled of a bat haunting her.”
“Lud, you don’t think…”
But it was evident Rainham did.
Last year a hell-born Frenchman by the name ofLa Chauve-Souris– The Bat – had kidnapped the now Duchess of Rakecombe. The fiend had ended up in the Thames with a bullet in his shoulder, but Rainham had never been convinced of his demise. The river usually gave up its dead in some form but no corpse had ever been found.
Could this be the same Bat the girl had talked of?
“ButLa Chauve-Sourisnever left anyone alive.” Jack swallowed. “He cut all loose ends.”
“I know,” said Rainham, neatening his rumpled neckcloth, “that is what always interested me about this incident. My predecessor sent Carlsbrook to investigate but the girl refused, according to him, to speak. However, I met her father some months later in London. He was searching for a doctor, as it wasn’t mere refusal, more… The fright had rendered her silent. She’d become mute, and Sir Jago was worried she would simply fade away.”
Rainham switched his gaze to the single lily in a Spode urn upon the desk, and one could see his knowledge box functioning on a different level to everyone else’s in London, if not England – connections, probabilities, coincidence…
Conclusions.
“But Rainham, I don’t see–”
“She’s no longer mute.” Hazel eyes sharpened. “I meet Sir Jago now and then when he’s in town, and he revealed that she’d begun to regain her voice a short while ago.”
Jack had a horrible feeling he knew what this mission would entail, and in truth, he’d rather battle a ten-foot villain in the alleyways of the Rookery with nothing but a silver-gilt teaspoon.
