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John has agreed, though he doesn’t fully understand. I must say he is the most reasonable man. I am very fortunate to have found him, my second piece of great luck in the person department.
Your ever friend,
Serena
“Her second piece of luck,” said Whitfield. “Not her third. No thought given to the heir and what I might think of the legacy.” He let his fist fall on the page. “Reasonable. This is all she has to say about my father?”
“It explains why I have Rose Cottage,” said Penelope. She understood his upset, but she was still trying to take in all she’d learned from the correspondence. Her mother had never known of this generous gesture. That was sad. She would have appreciated such a significant sign of their friendship.
“Indeed.” He put the letter with the others. “I thought she loved him. Him, at least.” His face had fallen into hard lines.
“Your father, you mean?”
He nodded. “But he seems to have been a mere…instrument for her schemes.”
“That seems harsh.”
“Can you say so when she treated your mother the same? Allowed her to ruin her health, killed her in fact?” He pushed the pile of letters away.
Penelope’s impression was different. She’d pictured two girls conspiring together—foolish, yes, but not calculating. The accident of the fever made her sad, but not angry. “She didn’t mean to. Everyone makes mistakes.”
His response was silence, his expression closed. He seemed an icy stranger. The correspondence, which might have brought them closer together, had opened a distance instead. Moved by the link with her mother, Penelope felt it keenly.
She wanted to put her arms around him. And she feared that his next words would be a request for her to leave. “We’ve forgotten our purpose,” she said. “We were looking for the key to your mother’s notebooks.”
He shrugged.
“I’m sure they’re related to the secret missions my mother mentioned.”
“Schoolgirl blather,” he replied.
“They’re too intricate. I think your mother was gathering information on her travels. But for whom? The Foreign Office?”
Her host stared at her, incredulous.
Penelope shuffled through the mass of papers on the desk. “We must find that page from the hat.”
“Gathering information for the Foreign Office,” Whitfield said as if he thought the idea incredible.
She nodded as her hands automatically set the papers in order, unfolding, reading, sorting, stacking. She was nearly at the bottom of the pile when she came upon what she wanted. “Ah, here. This looks like it.” She bent over the page, trembling with excitement. “Yes, I recognize phrases from the notebooks.” She reached for one of them to compare. And was stopped by a hand laid on top of hers.
“Are you imagining that my mother was a spy?”
“I don’t think I’m imagining it.” Penelope savored the warmth of his fingers on hers. “Yes. Look at this.” She put a fingertip on one line of the key. “Clouds mean ships. Because of their white sails, do you think?” She smiled at him. “Thrilling, isn’t it?”
“It’s…unbelievable.” Withdrawing his hand, he sat back as if poleaxed.
She opened one of the notebooks and compared entries to the key. “A flock of crows signifies regiments of troops. That’s rather funny. There are little drawings for numbers, which might have been suspicious if she listed them, I suppose. She used real places and dates at the head of each entry, so she could easily prepare a report from her notes.”
“This is insane,” said Whitfield.
“It was a risk,” Penelope replied. “We realized there was a code. Others might have as well if they got hold of her notebooks. That’s why she hid them, I wager.”
Her host stared at her. “We? You did. I never would have thought of it in a thousand years.”
“Men don’t expect a woman’s diary to be important,” Penelope acknowledged. “Particularly powerful men. That was the beauty of it for her, I’d say. I’m sure she still kept them well hidden when she was traveling, as she did here. And I bet she could talk gibberish to match her entries if necessary.”
“All the traveling was for this,” murmured Whitfield.
