Page 59 of Holding Onto Love

“I-I will press him tonight. If you are ready for—”

“Unless you keep delaying me.”

“Don’t be such an arse, Crispin. You may be adept at spying—”

“I’m not a spy,” he said derisively. “Must you always be so melodramatic?”

“What do you call it?”

“I’m a field officer.” He gave an off-handed shrug. “Sometimes one or the other of my superiors has a question. Usually, it’s something they could find out for themselves if they tried. But I answered one too many questions for them and now they dump them all on me.”

“But you’re not a spy? I don’t need to worry you’ll be executed without trial?”

“I’m not putting on false mustaches and slipping behind enemy lines.” Crispin smiled sourly. “No. I will not be shot except in the usual way.”

With that fear out of the way, Jasper confessed. “I’m concerned I will err and your plans for Hilyer will go awry. Your instructions were not at all detailed.”

“Because flexibility may be required. You can adapt.”

“Crispin! I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I cannot give you details. You aren’t supposed to know any of this.”

“I don’t need to know details. I need to know…how you think.”

Crispin glanced across his shoulder. His smirk was telling.

“Mock me another day, Crispin. I cannot convincingly imply knowledge I do not have if I cannot fathom how I might have obtained it.”

Crispin frowned. “That actually makes sense.”

“Can you at least tell me how you think where to look?”

They walked in silence. Jasper watched Crispin’s mind churn. Then his brother tapped his arm and they stopped again, by a garden wall. Crispin hauled himself up a few inches to look over it, then lowered his feet back to the ground. He leaned against the wall.

“Bare bones, Jasper.”

“All right.”

“Rum comes from sugar cane. Men with property in the West Indies might be suspect. But how would that work? Poor quality sugar yields watery rum? Unlikely. So let’s look at the distilleries. Most are in the Americas. We aren’t importing much from them currently. That leaves Australia. But Australia is too far away. I could hardly go there and snoop in their barrels.”

“God, Crispin.” Haphazard guesswork and expediency? Maybe he didn’t want to know how Crispin’s mind worked.

“Ah, but barrels!” Crispin lifted a finger in the air. “I had barrels. Barrels full of water. And barrels are marked with a distinctive cooperage signature.”

“Are they?”

Crispin nodded. “They are.”

“Aren’t they also stamped with the name of the distillers?”

“Don’t make this too easy, Jasper. Of course, they are.”

“Well, then?”

“I didn’t think the distillers would be stupid enough to sell water for rum directly to the king’s procurer. The barrels would be switched somewhere between the distillery and the Peninsula.”

“Oh.” Jasper tried on his own. “But coopers are not contracted to sell liquor.”