Page 60 of Faceless

She took Falstaff down into Craighead in the early afternoon, because the alternative was staying indoors with the question. The coast road was slick with the previous night’s rain; the wind came off the sea in the long, cold gusts she had learned to lean into rather than brace against. Falstaff took the road at the pace of a young animal who had never been asked to match his stride to a woman’s and was not prepared to begin now. She walked faster than was quite comfortable, to keep up with him and to keep ahead of her own thoughts.

Mrs Fraser was on the church step with her daughter, who was some age between twelve and fifteen and had been mending something. Mrs Fraser stopped her.

“Mrs Carlisle, I’d be obliged if ye would pass on our thanks to the laird — the south wall at our place was in such a state, I had mentioned it to the minister in the summer only, and by Michaelmas we had two men from the laird’s own tenantry at the house with lime and timber, and it was rebuilt inside a fortnight. The bairns will sleep warm this year.” She hesitated, as though uncertain whether any of this was the kind of thing one mentioned to a baroness. “I did not ask. I had not thought he would have heard of it.”

“He hears a great deal,” Elizabeth said, before she had decided whether that was true. “But I will still tell him.”

“Ye are kind. Mind the road home. The cart ruts will be cream by dusk.”

Elizabeth walked back slower than she had come. She was halfway up the coast road, Falstaff labouring at her heel and muddy to the shoulder, before she admitted to herself what she had been adding to what she already had.

She had been passing on thanks for a month. The Fraser wall had been the fourth. Before this one, there had been a small bridge on the south road, a disputed boundary stone reset, and a widowed mother’s quarter paid when the quarter had been disputed. Each time, she had taken the thanks home, and each time she had passed it across the table at supper, and he had said good or thank you or sometimes nothing at all and let the subject move on. He did not want to be praised for it. He did not appear even to want to be known for it.

Her father had done this. In smaller ways, because Longbourn had less to give, but in the same spirit — noticing a thing that was failing, having the thing seen to, and declining to be thanked for it. Papa had been a man who believed a gentleman’s obligations ran in both directions and were not to be performed as a courtesy he might have withheld.

She thought about Jane’s question the rest of the way home.

Three weeks into September, another letter from Webb arrived.

GC,

The clerk has been moved again, and the manner of it tells me more than the fact. My man had the new direction from the Redcliffe keeper willingly enough, which means Sterling is not troubled by our finding the address. That concerns me, insofar as Sterling may well be aware of independent efforts after your interests, which could lead him to certain conclusions. The clerk's cooperation is now secured by something other than money. What that something is, I have not yet established.

The impoundment of the Constant, the Mary Rose, and the Alicia Jane holds, with no sign of movement from the Home Office. The captains have accepted that their vessels will not sail until the investigation closes.

I have been making enquiries at the Exchange and in shipping circles in a commercial capacity about freight costs and the reliability of routes. MacNeil I have spoken to directly, briefly. He is a careful man, but he is also an angry one. The impoundment has cost him a voyage to Rotterdam that he had already contracted for, and the compensation from the investigation is not forthcoming and may not be. MacNeil has debts I believe Sterling has been servicing; gaming debts, the kind that do not respond well to being called in suddenly. If Sterling withdraws that support, MacNeil has difficulties.

Foss, I know less of. Harker, I know most about, and I am least certain of him; he is the most frightened and the most liable to go whichever way offers him the clearest safety. In my estimation, MacNeil is the one whose discomfort is most likely to become useful, but I cannot approach him further in my present capacity without it appearing as exactly what it is.

The ships sitting idle is an opportunity. Men who are not sailing can be found in port. But I cannot be the one to find them. A man followed me from the Exchange on Tuesday and again on Thursday, and though I lost him both times, I know what it means. Sterling has people on me, and any approach I make to the captains from this point will be reported.

I need another avenue. I mention this not as instruction but as information. You will draw your own conclusions.

Colonel Fitzwilliam came to the Bermondsey address. I turned him away as instructed. He did not appear surprised, nor was he satisfied. He will come back, or he will find another way to the same end.

W.

The ships sitting idle in port. Harker, MacNeil, Foss. Three men watching their vessels do nothing, while Sterling sat untouched in London preparing his ground, while the Home Office worked through manifests that had been constructed with care to survive scrutiny. Three angry men, if Webb’s reading of MacNeil was right. Three men who had been paid to look the other way and were now paying for it themselves, in the currency of lost voyages and frozen income, and who knew with absolute clarity who had arranged for that to happen.

And Webb under surveillance. Webb unable to approach them further without revealing the line of enquiry.

I need another avenue.

Richard. Richard, with his army connexions and his access to men who moved in circles Webb could not enter. Richard who had come to the Bermondsey address more than once and not been surprised to be turned away, because Richard had known since the Dover road that there was a door there and had been looking for a way through it for months.

And Richard, turned from that door, would find another. Richard had the scent of it. He had the evidence of his own instincts, and he had the obstinacy of a military officer who had already made the determination to keep pulling threads until one of them gave. Webb had been the first thread, and Webb had not given. The second would be Hodges again, or whatever Richard could reach without asking Webb.

The third would be somewhere Darcy could not predict. Or he could, and he did not like his guess. Richard would think of Auchengray soon enough, and he would come north to test the fact, and Auchengray was where Elizabeth was, and Elizabeth was the one person Darcy was not yet prepared to let his cousin meet. Not in this house. Not in a marriage Darcy had not given her any of the truth about.

He gave the option long thought. Letting Webb hand his cousin the outline, the work the operation needed a military hand for — Richard with a task was Richard who could be directed.

But to bring Richard in was to put his cousin in the path of a charge that could ruin him alongside Darcy if it went wrong.

He pulled a fresh sheet towards him.

He was not going to bring Richard in tonight. He would write to Webb and tell him to hold the line, and to send word the moment Richard moved.

That evening, she tried to draw him out.