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“He seems confident,” said Daniel.
“As am I. I wouldn’t ask him to do this otherwise.” The earl looked thoughtful. “You may not be able to keep your mother’s notebooks from the government in the end, Whitfield. The Foreign Office probably does have some right to them.”
“And if the matter had been broached properly, we might have reached agreement on that.” What had they expected to accomplish by treating him so rudely? “Two weeks ago, I didn’t know they existed.” And how his life had changed since a certain young lady arrived in the neighborhood! “I would like to look them over. Learn something about my mother’s endeavors.”
“And that is what worries the agents, I suppose,” said Macklin.
“They cannot imagine I would reveal anything damaging to my country.”
“I have found that such people can imagine the most extraordinary scenarios. It is, at once, their strength and weakness.”
“Well, we will just have to show them the right of it.” Daniel frowned. “Did you have any inkling of my parents’ true reason for traveling, Macklin?”
“None whatsoever.”
“I’m still finding it hard to take in, even with all evidence before me.”
“I feel just the same.”
They finally decided that Daniel should send over a note asking that Miss Pendleton definitely come to work on the estate records tomorrow morning. They would decide together what should come next.
* * *
Though it had been only a few days since she’d visited Frithgerd, she’d missed the place, Penelope acknowledged the following day. “I have an idea about our filing system,” she said to Whitfield when he joined her in the office. “The estate system, I mean. It would mean building some shelves.”
He nodded, looking distracted. Yet he had asked her particularly to come.
“I think work on the bath is going well? Are there any problems?”
“No. The new doorway is finished, and the wall closing off the corridor is well under way.”
Henry Carson tapped on the open door at this opportune moment and came in. “I’ve found trees for the pipes,” he said. “They were cut last year so they’re well-seasoned. The man’s asking a steep price for them, however.”
“How much?” asked Penelope. When Carson gave her the figure, she frowned. “That is high.”
“We don’t want green wood,” said the builder. “It’s liable to shrink and crack.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she replied. “Leave me his name and direction.”
Carson nodded. “I also need the smith to make me a larger auger to bore them out.”
Penelope looked at Whitfield. He hadn’t participated in the conversation, and now she wondered if he’d even heard. “Tell him his lordship would appreciate a speedy job.”
“Yes, miss.”
The builder departed, passing Lord Macklin coming in. The earl rarely joined them in the records room. Penelope began to suspect that something was wrong.
“Our two visitors from yesterday are back,” Macklin said to the viscount. “They insist upon seeing you.”
“Insist?” echoed Whitfield, obviously offended.
Though it was none of her affair, Penelope was bothered by the air of tension that had entered the chamber. Over the past year she’d become acutely sensitive to such shifts. “What two visitors?” she asked.
Whitfield turned away from her. “Never mind. I’ll speak to them. You stay here.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
The two men went out, leaving Penelope prey to a sense of foreboding. She had no reason for it, but she felt that something bad was about to happen. She made herself sit down to work.
