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Chapter Sixteen
She stood still for a long, long time then righted the screen and undressed. When she removed her boot, she found the paper she’d secreted there. She didn’t know how she could have forgotten it. Wrapping her shawl about her, she took the paper to the table and moved the lamp where she could see the writing.
The text was meaningless.
Saturday it rained. A ship sails to the east. Watch for the broken rail. The chickens ran about the yard. Yards of fabric may be purchased in the shop.
She’d risked everything to take this paper, and it would prove useless. The entire mission was in danger now because of her. She’d heard Baron tell agents a hundred times not to allow the personal to impact the mission.
And that was exactly what she had done. She was no agent, and she’d never be one.
She needed to write to Baron and update him on their progress. She was afraid the much-anticipated meeting tonight had not ended as they’d hoped. She took out a clean slip of parchment and her pen, but as she was about to begin coding her letter to Baron, another idea occurred to her.
What if Sean MacDonald’s paper was in code?
She should have thought of this before. After all, she’d been trained in ciphering. She pulled the pilfered paper before her again and used the blank sheet to try out several simple codes. None of them worked.
She sat back and took one sentence, rearranging letters, omitting some, replacing them with others. She hadn’t cracked the code yet, but she could feel she was making progress. She didn’t know how or why. She simply knew from experience she was edging closer.
And then the door opened, and all her concentration fled when Callahan Kelly stepped back inside. His hair was wet, which meant it must have begun to rain again.
“I think I almost have it,” she said without preamble.
He stopped mid-step, clearly expecting some other response. He probably thought she would continue their earlier discussion, but at the moment, she couldn’t even remember what it had been about.
“The code is tricky,” she said, trying another strategy on the test paper. “But I’m closing in.”
Callahan removed his hat and coat and came to stand beside her. “What’s this then?”
“I took it from Sean MacDonald’s study.” She turned the paper upside down and studied it from that angle. “Aoife left to bring you the whiskey, and I used the opportunity to poke about.”
“That was brave of you.” He sat in the chair opposite. “What if you’d been caught?”
“I was.” She rotated the paper again. “I told Aoife I was looking for the retiring room and had taken a wrong turn.”
“May I see it?” He held out a hand and she passed it to him, tapping her fingers on the table as she tried to work out the code.
“You think this is a code?”
“I do, though I could be wrong.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
She sighed. “I’m an awful agent. I let my worries about your drinking interfere with the mission. It won’t happen again.”
He handed the letter back. When she took it, he caught her hand. “I might have liked your worrying about me.”
Her skin felt warm, and she drew her hand back gently. “It wasn’t fair to compare you to...to someone else.”
“I accept your apology. At least I think that’s what you mean to offer me.”
“Hmmm.” Her attention was already back on the paper. She was vaguely aware that he rose and moved about. A little while later he put a cup of tea beside her and sat again with one for himself. “Thank you,” she said, absently.
“What is that?” He pointed to her attempts to test out possible coding strategies.
“Simple codes I’ve discarded.” She pointed to the first one. “This is one where the given letters stand for other letters. It doesn’t work. This one omits every other letter. It didn’t work.” She moved down the paper. “This one puts the first sentence last and the last sentence first and so on.”
“But it didn’t work. May I see again?”
