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“I suspect that it’s one of the early maps he sent your mother before they married,” said her uncle. “Perhaps even the first one.”

“And he sent her other maps?” Hazelwood asked. With one finger he traced down the center of the map from the Banbury Road along St. Giles street through the town to where the River Cherwell met the Thames in the south.

“It was their way,” her uncle replied. “Do you see these notes?” He pointed to a pair of initials inked onto the map, like those Jane had found in her book. “EF, JL?”

“Yes, I see them. What’s the significance?” Hazelwood asked.

“All family members’ initials, you see.”

“Oh?”

“EF, why that’s your grandmamma, Jane, Lady Eliza Fawkener. And JL, that’s your mother’s mother, Julia Leigh.”

Jane nodded. She did see. The inked pairs of initials dotted the map the way the pairs of initials dotted the pages of her Husband Hunter’s Guide.

“George and Julia would have a good laugh about those initials, I guess. The families, you see, didn’t want them to marry. Neither the Fawkeners nor the Drummonds. Julia was supposed to marry some fellow our parents picked out, so Fawkener and Julia invented a secret way of communicating.”

“Communicating what?” Hazelwood asked.

“When they were apart, and he was up at Oxford, he would write to her that he planned to visit some family member. It was his way of telling her where he’d be and when. He had initials for special places in London where they could meet when he was in town.”

“So,” said Hazelwood, “she had the map, and when she received a letter, she would go to the map and know where to meet him?”

“Just so. He’d write something like—will visit Uncle Matthew for tea. Then she would know to go to St. Martin’s or some such place. Or he’d write that he was coming to visit Henry, and she’d know that he meant for her to meet him in Old St. George’s burial ground where Henry is buried.” Thaddeus grinned at them, pleased to be able to explain. “This Oxford map was just the first. He gave her one when he went abroad, too, just after they married on his first mission.” Uncle Thaddeus cleared his throat. “That is, adventure, wanted her to be sure she knew how to follow his journey. Damned uncertain times to be on the continent.”

Jane studied the map. She recognized the same sets of initials she had detected in her book. “Uncle Thaddeus, do you know who all these people are? RD and HD?”

Thaddeus’s brow wrinkled. “It’s been a long time since I thought much about ‘em, but those are my dead brothers—Richard and Henry.” He tapped the map where JW appeared. “That’s your Great Uncle John Walhouse, I think. And,” he tapped another set of initials, “that’s Frederick Walhouse that died young. Your grandmamma will have all these people noted either in her peerage or her Bible.”

Jane kept her gaze on the map. She had not been wrong. Her little book was full of clues to her father’s route, and now she understood her father’s two-part system. To trace a journey of his, you needed the marked map, and the letters with their deceptive air of chatty news about the family. It helped to know the family tree, in which he had trained her well.

She looked up and found Hazelwood watching her, reminding her of one more thing she had—a protocol officer, who was the government’s man and who now possessed the key to her father’s secret methods of communication.

“You’re welcome to take the map, niece. It was your mother’s after all.” Uncle Thaddeus gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder and began rolling up the map.

“Thank you, Uncle. I’d like that. I have little that belonged to her.”

Thaddeus cleared his throat. “Niece, would you mind doing your uncle a bit of a favor?”

“If I can, I will, uncle.”

Uncle Thaddeus tied a black ribbon around the rolled map and pointed with it to the bare wood above his mantel. “There’s a picture of mine that your papa was keeping for me. Now your cousins have it, and I’d like it back.”

“Picture, uncle?”

“It’s called Nelson Turning a Blind Eye. Clever as can be. There he is the great man himself, in the thick of the battle, putting his blind eye to the telescope, so that he can disregard orders and win the day. Painted by one of those big-canvas, history painters, you know.”

“How did it end up with the cousins?” Hazelwood asked.

Thaddeus shook his head. “When they took over Fawkener house, they claimed the furnishings, too. I was supposed to be there for the reading of your father’s will, niece. Damned quick it was. Somebody from the Foreign Office must have told them your papa was gone, because they were reading the will before any news of him reached the papers. I was lucky to catch wind of it from talk at the Admiralty, but I was too late to get the picture with Lady Phoebe already in possession.”

“Uncle, is it the large painting above the staircase?”

“That’s the one. Quite on the grand scale, must be five feet across and nearly seven feet high, I think. Thing is, I can’t see Phoebe caring about a picture like that. Not her style at all.”

Jane nodded. She remembered that painting, more for what was behind it than what it looked like from the stairs. She would not be leaving the house tonight with her uncle’s picture tucked under her cloak.

In the carriage, Hazelwood turned to her. “You do realize that your dear Uncle Thaddeus appears to be low on funds at the moment.”