When his uncle and guardian, Lord Parkerton, had officially named him heir, the tide of opinion shifted more in the favor of Alexander Sommerville, but by then, his ways and nature had been set.
He’d not cared for the opinions of others, nor had he seen himself as above or below anyone. He’d been a committed soldier, a capable landowner and master, and a damned good operative. The best that they had ever seen, Weaver had told Jeremy. His loss had been felt throughout the entire chain of command in England, though it could never be acknowledged publicly.
But then, his death had not been, either.
No funeral, no memorial service, no corpse to bury.
Only one person outside of the ranks had been informed of the loss.
Miss Poppy Edgewood.
And even that had rankled some.
From what Jeremy understood, Miss Edgewood had been informed that her intended had died at sea, and, as is customary, he had been buried there. The lie was easy to tell, easier to live, because they had no proof otherwise.
But the League had felt bound to Miss Edgewood from that day on, given the sincere and apparently quite profound attachment between Trace and herself, and so to this day, she was watched over by no less than three contacts of theirs up here in Cheshire. Every other month or so, one of the League members would travel up to Cheshire and “tend the flowers,” which had been the phrase intimated in the last will and testament, according to Rogue, who happened to be Trace’s cousin and the only family member of significance.
What exactly that had meant had been a little less clear, but there was no doubt Trace had meant for them all to mind the woman he loved and had left behind without ties to bind her to his estate, fortune, or impending title.
So, they had kept her well-guarded, ensured her safety at all times, and occasionally provided her with additional funds by inconspicuous means. Not that she was aware of their intervention in any way, just as she had never been informed of the true nature of what her late intended had been involved in.
Poppy Edgewood would not recognize a single one of them if they had knocked on her door, and nor would she be in any way useful to their enemy.
Even so, she was now the responsibility of the League, in honor of Trace.
Jeremy looked around the house with a new perspective, something tingling in the back of his mind. If Trace was as devoted to Miss Edgewood as he’d been led to believe, she might have been in this house several times. According to the file, she was a clever woman, bright and lively, and surely would have noticed if Trace had behaved in any way suspicious. She might have even been able to weed out a hiding place, if her curiosity had been piqued enough to look for one.
If she were anything at all like Helen, she most certainly would have tried.
Helen…
Jeremy jerked his attention away from the all-too-tempting thoughts of her and forced himself to focus on the house.
He looked up at the grand staircase, now a rather poor imitation of its former days. The dark wood of the railing and its spindles, now a musty grey from its coating of dust, would have once glinted and shone with a well-polished finish in the candlelight. Given the number of sconces on the wall, that light would have been abundant. The stairs themselves were of the same dark wood, and while several parts were warped and splintering, they would have been smooth and polished, perfect for Helen to have made a grand entrance before they set off to attend a ball or other social occasion.
She would have been loveliness itself no matter what she had chosen from her wardrobe, which he had to presume was extensive, given the sheer volume of luggage she had travelled to York with. He wouldn’t care what she wore, only that she was his.
Frowning, he shook his head quickly, striding up the stairs back towards the bedrooms, wondering faintly if the pained creaking of those stairs could indicate some structural instability.
There would have been too much irony in falling to his death in Trace’s house.
While thinking of Helen.
He had to be focused. He had to think of Trace, of the investigation, of unearthing something that could help them win this bloody fight that no one else knew about.
The master bedchamber gave him nothing to go off of on his second pass, but he hadn’t expected it to. He doubted that Trace would have hidden his notes in the bureau or under the mattress of his bed, no matter how other operatives seemed to think he might. He turned the mattress back over, coughing slightly when the dust kicked up in a fury, and sank down onto its filthy surface.
Clothing was still in the bureau, though none of it was neat or tidy anymore. Trace’s clothing. As though he ought to have just shortly returned from London and taken up his comfortable and quiet existence in the country.
Jeremy smiled a little at that. Country living or not, there was nothing ever quiet or comfortable about their lifestyle. Cap lived in the country with his family when not in London, and the Faction had found them there. There was always a plot to mull over, some case that needed consideration, some danger hanging over their heads.
It was thrilling to be part of, and Jeremy, for one, loved the constant state of activity it gave him.
But at the moment…
Had Trace had reservations about his assignments, given the future he had planned for himself and Miss Edgewood? He’d never refused an assignment, as far as the records indicated, and had, at times, volunteered for the riskiest ones. But had he feared the outcomes? Had he been hesitant to take anything up?
Had love made him question it all?
Jeremy, as the Rook, had no ties to concern him. He’d never hesitated, questioned, worried, or balked in any way at what was being asked of him. His life was given up in the service of the Crown freely, and he’d never been concerned about that.
But now…
He saw Helen everywhere, in everything, and thought of her constantly. Even in a rundown, turned over, abandoned place like this, he saw her. The ballroom would have been her favorite room, and he had spent too long imagining her waltzing about on her own to tease him about the lack of opportunities she had to dance. The music room had her walking the perimeter with a scowl on her face, poking him about the state of things, then laughing at the demolished pianoforte, finding it rather perfect for her talents.
This wasn’t even his house, for pity’s sake! He shouldn’t be imagining Helen anywhere in here. He was supposed to be focusing on Trace and the mysteries his death had left them all enshrouded in.
But knowing about Miss Edgewood, and Trace’s feelings for her, made Helen more a part of this than Jeremy could have imagined.
It was interfering with everything.
Yet he had never been more grateful.
He hesitated now with the thought of plunging headlong into danger and violence, though there was no understanding between them. He could not see how he could give himself up with the same fervor to his work, his missions, knowing what he would leave behind.
Had his late colleague felt the same? Did his current colleagues feel similarly?
Yet they pressed forward just as they had always done, without much by way of turbulence and no hint of reluctance.
It did not seem possible at the moment.
But his own emotions and confusion could not interfere now. He had done what was best by seeing Helen safe and secure with her family, and then pressing forward with the investigation. He had seen Mr. Gilbert properly interrogated, though perhaps with a bit more of a personal sentiment than the Rook had usually taken up with the process, which would undoubtedly make its way into the report to Weaver. No matter, as Weaver tended to enjoy the variation to interrogation, but it would raise questions. The contacts had seen Gilbert back to London for his fate, and off to Cheshire Jeremy had gone.
He’d not admitted his feelings to Helen or given her any reason to think of him in any particular way. She was safe from the danger of his life, and that was what mattered.
Had Miss Edgewood been similarly kept safe from Trace’s life?<
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If she had, and if she had ever been a regular guest at Parkerton, there was no way in hell that he would have kept compromising evidence within its walls, especially if she were to become his wife.
He might have risked his own life, but he would never have risked hers.
In the event that his identity had been compromised, he wouldn’t have stashed anything in the house to further complicate matters. Certainly nothing to make his loved ones in any way part of the danger. Nothing…
Jeremy’s eyes widened and he stilled, though he hadn’t exactly been moving. Nothing in the house.
He wouldn’t have left anything in the house.
They would have found it by now if he had, and it was too obvious for a careful operative like Trace. His assignments might have been risky, but he never had been with himself or anything else. He was thorough, detailed, prepared, and that innate alertness in him kept him safe in every dangerous venture, apart from the last.
No, he would never have left it here. He was not a man to sit within a house that may never have been a home for him, poring over documents in a study like a landowner might do with ledgers.
Trace was active and engaged.
And madly in love.
Jeremy felt a new and sudden kinship with his fallen comrade, and before he knew what he was about, he was flying back down the rickety stairs, ignoring the peeling paper, dusty tapestries, and general disarray. He pushed open a glass-paned door, though the glass was nearly all broken or cracked, and moved out onto the terrace, overgrown with wisteria and ivy. He barely saw any of that; he was more concerned with the gardens and lands.
All overgrown and wild, but something told him he was on the right path.
He skimmed through the notes in his head, reminding himself what he knew. The house and lands were part of the Parkerton title, but the lands were not particularly expansive. They did, however, neighbor a very pretty estate known as Whitesdown, where the Edgewood family lived. They were undoubtedly the predominant family in the area, aside from Lord Parkerton, but the orphaned son of Parkerton’s unfortunate brother would not have been a prospect for such a family’s eldest daughter, until he’d been named heir.
But before then, he’d simply been an unsuitable suitor, which seemed to have been precisely what Poppy Edgewood liked.
Young lovers across these lands? The rolling hills and breeze swept grasses, dotted with wildflowers and magnificent trees, would have been all too picturesque, and exactly what they would wish for themselves.
Helen would love this place, and he would have loved to have her here. Running across the lands, exploring with all the eagerness of a child, laughing gaily through the fields, that long, blonde hair billowing out behind her…
He would have followed her to the ends of the earth for such a chance, such a look. He would have spent every waking moment with her, had she been his neighbor. Had they grown up together, she would already have been his. He would never have let her escape, never given her up, never left her without ensuring she knew exactly how he felt.
Every moment would be…
Precious.
Jeremy stopped his wandering of the gardens, much of which had been overturned with shovels or spades, and stared off in the distance, eyeing Whitesdown.
He put the imposing and terrifying image of Trace out of his mind and concentrated on the much more human and relatable Alex Sommerville. He had a girl he loved and knew his time with her was not to be wasted.
He’d never sit around in his own house, on his own lands, letting his work get in the way of time with her, just as he would never have kept incriminating or dangerous evidence in a place easily discovered.
And yet, he was not the sort to go waltzing into Whitesdown when her family did not approve.
“So where did you go, Alex, hmm?” Jeremy mused aloud, clasping his hands behind him as he strode away from the garden at Parkerton. “You want to see your girl as often as you can, you need to retrieve information or go over it, provided you hadn’t memorized it, or you need to put new things away… You’re not wasteful, you make the most of everything, so…”
He trailed off, walking towards Whitesdown carefully, knowing the Edgewoods had long since given up the house and gone off to Derbyshire, though Poppy had remained on a farm just outside of the village. Cast off by the family, ridiculed by those of her class, and suspected of behavior not becoming of a young lady, due to her abject mourning.
Regardless, someone else lived in Whitesdown, and they would not take kindly to a stranger coming to see their house and look for secrets within its walls or on its grounds.
Alex would never have done that, so it must have been something else. Something sentimental, yet convenient. Something that would never raise suspicions or seem at all conspicuous.
One mile to Whitesdown, perhaps more, but the hills were such that it could be seen clearly from the south-facing windows of Parkerton, and from the lands. It was a pretty place; the sort that a man from Alex’s background would have found epitomizing all that was unattainable. And yet there would have been the bright, gleaming figure of Poppy Edgewood to bring it down to his level.
He would have done everything to avoid Whitesdown itself.
But surely between the lands, where things were less defined…
Jeremy turned a little to the right, veering west, strolling along as easily as a simple man might do in such countryside, and dressed as he was, no one would have pegged him for a wealthy gentleman. Which was well, as he was suddenly fixated on a very familiar-looking farm in the distance. Odd that he’d never made the connection when he was “tending the flowers,” but she could see the shadows of Parkerton Lodge from her lowly farmhouse.
Yet not Whitesdown.
Significant, he thought. Not particularly useful at the moment, but significant.
He’d have to remember that when…
His thought would remain unfinished, as a rather large oak with rather perfect climbing branches was suddenly before him, almost squarely between Whitesdown and Parkerton. But it was not the branches, nor its position, that made the tree intriguing.
It was the bench beneath it.
From a distance, it appeared completely usual, and fairly common by construction and style. It was an odd placement for a bench, certainly, considering the distance from either estate, or any other dwelling. And the scenery, while admirable, wasn’t any more picturesque than anything else around him, and perhaps even less so.
No reason at all for this bench to be here, fine tree or not.
Jeremy approached both, his senses on alert, his mind whirling. He circled the tree, eyeing it up and down, and, though he highly doubted it would help, he knocked on the trunk. Sure enough, it was solid.
He smiled to himself. “Too easy, Trace, I know.”
He paused as he caught sight of a rough heart carved into the bark, and the letters A and P carved in the middle of it.
“Very romantic, Alex,” Jeremy praised, nodding to himself. “I’m sure Poppy loved that.”
It was a surprisingly sentimental thing, actually, and no relation of Rogue could ever be sentimental. It was too much a stretch, and while Trace had been hailed as the more congenial of the pair, that hardly indicated that he was truly a congenial fellow. Jeremy, for one, found the word a trifle generous for anyone in that family, except, perhaps, for Lady Geraldine.
This tree wasn’t anything special, apart from the romantic carving, so Jeremy turned to the bench itself.
What struck him was how very boring a bench it was. For a sentimental man who carved on the tree, the bench was remarkably unadorned. No carvings of any kind, no initials, no hearts, not even worn places from hours of sitting.
Yet the grass around it was worn enough, and some from recent use. A small bouquet of wildflowers lay to one side of it, and Jeremy avoided them as he would have a headstone in a cemetery.
He circled the bench once, twice, and then stopped, staring at the seat of it.
That was rather thick, unless they expected elephants to sit on it.
Unless Miss Edgewood’s parents were related to a species of water buffalo, that was unnecessary.
Jeremy moved to the bench, looking at the seat with interest. Was it a drawer? Did the planks come loose? Or was the bench a diversion for some rather large rock nearby?
It couldn’t be obvious, or Poppy would have discovered it. So perhaps…
He shook the first plank, then the second, and third…
A soft click met his ears, and he grinned to himself. “Conniving and romantic, Alex. Good man.”
The plank pried off easily, and the one next to it, though it would appear it was unable to be pried off first. The mechanism wasn’t particularly important, though he would have to set it all back when he was done. Poppy must be protected, after all, and if this was a frequent place for her patronage, he’d leave it undisturbed.
No sense in uprooting her peace just because her late intended had secrets.
All told, three planks were removed on one side, and two on the other, given the varied width of the planks. Beneath them was another stretch of wood, though it seemed to be thinner. It wasn’t obvious from the sides, and nor was it obvious beneath.
“Come on, Trace,” Jeremy muttered. “How’d you do this without making a ruddy scene?”
He felt around the edges, then lifted a little, and the whole thing hinged up towards him like the lid to a chest. He knelt before the bench and peered inside, his eyes widening.
Papers and files, illustrations in Hal’s hand, missives in Weaver’s hand, the untidy scrawl of Rogue on scraps and notes…
He shoved aside the familiar things, then his eyes widened further.
A lifetime of work was beneath it all, and it would take months to analyze everything, if not years.
“Oh, saints preserve us,” Jeremy breathed in a perfect imitation of his Irish mother’s brother Patrick. He looked up to the sky, though he had never been a religious man. “Trace, you damned genius, I hate you.”
He looked up at the face of the bench then, and saw, for the first time, a single solitary carving. Very small, very faint, but it was there.
By Hook or By Rook (London League, Book 4) Page 14
