She hefted the strap off her shoulder and handed it over.
Olivia walked down to Fitzgerald’s office thinking of the excuses she’d have to make to beg off arrangements for lunch.
He had suggested last week they should dine at his house since it would be the home they would share in the autumn. And besides, it would be a good opportunity to introduce herself to the housekeeper who could brief her on how he preferred his household to be run.
Despite the warmth of the early August day, she shuddered. A desiccated life, one she had supposed she could live with. Was future security worth that compromise to her soul? To her heart?
When she arrived, it was quiet. Foskett sat at his desk transcribing some documents. The door to Fitzgerald’s office was closed.
“Is Mr. Fitzgerald not in this morning?” she inquired.
Foskett looked up from his task. “No, Miss – he asked me to convey his apologies for breaking your arrangements for the day, but he received a letter requiring him to attend some urgent business. But he did say he would call on you at Ponsnowyth tomorrow, if that would be convenient.”
She thanked the clerk for the message and went into the small office where she had worked on her history of Kenstec House. She would tinker with that and count down the hours to her appointment with the mysterious Sir Daniel Ridgeway and the peculiar Lady Abigail.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Olivia arrived just as the town hall clock struck the hour. She was shown to the private dining room. The servants had just finished laying the table and, lastly, a maid set down a silver epergne filled with the sweet scent of summer flowers.
An imposing man, seemingly as broad-shouldered as he was tall, entered the room first. His suit was of the finest cut, but not ostentatiously so. He carried himself with unmistakable authority.
Olivia dropped a curtsy. At his shoulder, before moving past him into the room, was Lady Abigail. Striking as ever, she wore a fine muslin gown, plum in color. Her white curls were held in place with a matching ribbon.
“Olivia, my dear! It is a pleasure to see you again. I hope you haven’t been put off by all this cloak and dagger business. I confess it can be quite tiresome on occasion.”
Ridgeway quirked a knowing smile that suggested his wife thought it anything but tiresome.
“Daniel, I wish to introduce you to a friend of mine and, it would appear, a very good friend of Adam Hardacre,” Lady Abigail continued. “Miss Olivia Collins, this is Sir Daniel Ridgeway.”
A further curtsy seemed the only appropriate response. Ridgeway bowed over her hand and sat at the head of the table. His wife sat in the place to his right. Olivia followed the lead of her hosts and sat to Ridgeway’s left, with Abigail opposite. Waiters brought the first course.
When the plates were before them, Olivia could no longer contain her curiosity.
“If you will forgive me, I am not sure what interest you could possibly have in me,” she said, addressing them both.
“It is your interest in our Adam Hardacre which brought you to our attention,” said Ridgeway.
“Your Adam Hardacre?”
He ignored her question. “I’m afraid we were rather suspicious of you at first.”
“Of me? Why?”
“Your dogged pursuit of what happened to his child, for one. You were a step ahead of us and we feared you were intending blackmail.”
Olivia set down her fork before it slipped from her fingers. “You know about his son? What business is it of yours?”
Lady Abigail took up the business of responding while her husband speared a morsel of food with his fork and ate.
“It’s no business of yours, either,” she retorted evenly, “yet here we are, strangers united by two things. Our desire to see our Mr. Hardacre safe, and to protect England from the dictator, Bonaparte. Like it or not, you are now in a league with spies.”
Olivia wiped her hands on the napkin in her lap then took a sip of chilled water. Really, she ought to be more shocked by the revelation than she was.
“Your composure does you credit,” commented Ridgeway. “Not everyone we encounter is so sanguine.”
Olivia took up her fork once more. “Sir Daniel, if the matter concerned me alone, you have my assurance that I would be more…taken aback. I’m merely a governess and the thought of a governess as a spy is—”
“—As ridiculous as a Lady spy?” Lady Abigail added dryly. “My dear, the very absurdity of it is its genius – take the most unlikely people you could imagine and turn them into masterful agents of espionage.”
“My principal concern is Adam.”
Of the two, it was Ridgeway’s face that softened.
“You’re in love with him,” he said gently.
Fortunately, she was prevented from answering by the arrival of the second course.
When the footman left, Olivia had fashioned her answer. “All I know is he is a fine man who deserved some good to come his way but he is now surrounded by men who would kill him if they found out he was in your service.”
“Your tender feelings are reciprocated – that’s why you’re here,” said Lady Abigail.
Olivia looked back and forth at the pair. They appeared to finish one another’s thoughts.
“Adam believes you would be safest brought into our confidence and into our protection,” added Ridgeway. “There is a master traitor operating out of Falmouth. We’ve spent the better part of the year trying to ferret out his identity, but he’s been clever.
“He’s also instrumental in another plot against our country, so we needed a man on the inside. One who would quickly win the confidence of this turncoat and bring him far enough out into the open to be indentified and his threat neutralized.
“The…” Ridgeway paused. “…scoundrel…” – Olivia suspected that on his own, Ridgeway might have employed another epithet – “has managed to obtain a code book. The one you brought to us today in the writing box means there was only one other place where it could have come from.”
Olivia wanted to ask the obvious question, “where,” but she knew it wouldn’t be answered, even if Ridgeway knew it. That’s not how this game worked, so she asked another question instead.
“What can I do to help Adam?”
“There is little any of us can do for the moment,” Ridgeway answered. “Adam knows what he has to do, and he’s quite capable of doing it. We’re reducing a weight from his mind by keeping you safe.”
“You’re staying at the inn in Ponsnowyth,” said Abigail. “How soon could you have your belongings ready?”
“Not long. There’s not much to pack.”
“Good. This evening, a coachman will collect you and your belongings. He will bring with him a note from your Aunt Runella. Obey its instructions to the letter.”
Aunt Runella. Adam mentioned that name a month ago. And she was?
…a face like a boxer and possessed of a sour disposition…
Olivia glanced once more at the large, well-built peer. Oh.
Lady Abigail commanded her attention with a small lift of her head. Olivia suddenly had a sense that the older woman, despite the crispness of her speech, sympathized with her plight.
“I think you’re being very kind,” she said.
Abigail made a moue of distaste. “That’s only because you don’t know me well.”
They continued eating their meal in silence. As coffee was served, Olivia asked the question bothering her most after Adam’s safety.
“Did you find out anything more about Adam’s son?”
Olivia watched the couple exchange glances. It seemed to be the silent communication of a married couple in tune with each other.
“We have people checking,” said Ridgeway, as though that were enough. The expression on Lady Abigail’s face told her it was not the agreement she and her husband had silently reached.
“All we can confirm thus far is that the boy…Christopher?” Ridgeway looked to his wife, not her, for confirmati
on, “was apprenticed as a cabin boy on a Mediterranean merchant ship in 1794.”
“Wouldn’t he have been rather young?”
Ridgeway shrugged. “He was tall and precocious for his age by all accounts.”
The clock from the floor below struck three.
“Sir Daniel, Lady Ridgeway, I must take my leave if I am to take the next coach back to Ponsnowyth.”
Ridgeway rose to his feet, took Olivia’s hand, and bowed over it. “It goes without saying, of course, that you are to tell no one of our meeting today – and that is as much for Adam’s sake as it is for our own.”
“You have my word, Sir Daniel. And thank you…for everything.”
Lady Abigail took Olivia’s hand in turn and gave it a squeeze.
“Don’t be so swift to thank us,” she said, her eyes betraying a mischievous twinkle. “I was serious about a position, but not as a chaperone. I shall be personally testing how good your French is. We have more documents than we have translators. I plan to keep you so thoroughly occupied you will have no time to moon after your Adam Hardacre.”
Olivia gave a tight smile in response and hoped her face did not color.
She emerged into the early afternoon with an air of expectation. It was as though the veil had been thrown back and she finally saw the world as it was, not as she believed it to be. Every face she saw, she gazed at in doubt.
Was anyone who they pretended to be? Spies! In Truro, in Falmouth, indeed in the very home she had lived in for ten years…
She walked past the coaching house on her way back to Fitzgerald’s office. If she were to “disappear” for a while, she ought to take everything with her, and that included her sketchpad and history of Kenstec House.
When she walked in, Foskett was absent from his desk and, on hearing voices in Fitzgerald’s office, she assumed the solicitor had returned early from his appointment and was instructing his clerk.
Olivia pulled the workroom door to nearly closed, but not quite. If she was quiet, she could be in and out of the office and Fitzgerald would never know she was there.
She gathered her materials together and was nearly done when the voices became louder and more distinct. A moment later, she heard Fitzgerald’s office door open.
“Alors nous sommes d’accord, Hardacre sera emmené en France à la prochaine nouvelle lune.”
Olivia started. She recognized the voice but couldn’t place it.
Then we are agreed. Hardacre will be taken to France on the next new moon.
Her heart hammered in her chest, her mind screamed to her body to move, but she was rooted to the spot as she listened to Fitzgerald and this unknown Frenchman talking.
“Yes, that is the instruction,” said the Frenchman. “We know there is more he can tell us with proper incentive.”
“Good; bon,” Fitzgerald replied in a mix of French and English. “I will deal with any loose ends, any détailer à régler, eh?”
“Are there any?” the Frenchman asked.
“One, but it will be of no consequence after September.”
“Then that is our business concluded, non?”
“Yes. And thank you for the final payment. Before you go, shall we celebrate over a glass of brandy?”
For a moment, there was silence then the clink of a decanter against the rim of a glass. Another brief silence then the sound of two glasses meeting and a toast.
“Vive la Liberté!”
Olivia put her hands to her mouth to prevent a sound leaving her lips. She remained paralyzed until Fitzgerald’s door swung closed once again. A burst of laughter from the men was enough to spur Olivia into motion.
She swept up her portfolio and hurried for the door.
Olivia did not stop hurrying until she was at the door of Charteris House. It was locked. She peered through the window.
“Miss Olivia!”
Olivia nearly jumped out of her skin. She spun around to see Harold Bickmore.
“What an unexpected surprise!” he grinned. “A chandlery was not the place I expected to see you.”
“Oh, Lieutenant Bickmore, I was…” she looked down at her sketchpad and the loose pages beginning to spill, “I thought someone might…”
With her composure returning, Olivia offered Harold a small smile. “You will excuse me. I really do need to see someone about this.”
Harold fell into step with her as she headed toward the White Hart Inn but, before she got too far, he took her by the arm.
“Olivia, what’s the matter? You’re upset.”
“I need to see someone.”
“About your history of Kenstec?”
“No. About Adam.”
“Why?” Harold asked swiftly, concern appearing in his eyes. “What’s happened to Adam?”
Olivia clamped her lips shut but allowed Harold to lead her to the nearest tea shop. He ordered for them and remained silent while the tea was poured.
“If the truth be told,” Harold offered, leaning forward to bring her into his confidence, “I’m worried about Adam, too. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there are forces here in England, indeed here in Cornwall who wish to see England defeated. There’s a group called The Society for Public Reform who’ve been courting him. They heard about his poor treatment by the Royal Navy promotion board. They’re Radicals, and I fear they are much, much more than that.”
His concern was plainly genuine, so Olivia considered her response carefully. “I’m concerned about him, too. He…he hasn’t seemed himself, and I thought…”
She took a deep breath. “These people you mentioned…are they dangerous?”
“Deadly, I fear.” The gravity of his words caused her to look up at him. Harold Bickmore suddenly looked dangerous himself.
“Do you know where Adam is?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t seen him for weeks.” Olivia had no idea what possessed her to lie, but she forged ahead with it. “That’s why I’m worried.”
She forced herself to look into Harold’s eyes to see if she could divine his thoughts. Did he believe her? Did he think she was hiding something from him?
“If you have a care for him at all, Olivia, you’ll help me to help you,” Harold said, sotto voce.
“How?”
He reached a hand across the table and covered hers with it.
“Tell me everything you know about Adam, everything he’s told you, and everything he’s done. It might be our only chance to save him.”
Olivia tried to tug her hand away, but Harold held it all the more firmly.
“You do want to help him, don’t you?”
She did want to help Adam. While she had no reason to trust the Ridgeways, Adam evidently did. Moreover, Adam had not taken Harold into his confidence and she had been told by him to speak to no one. Olivia pulled her hand away.
“I need to go now.”
“The inn at Ponsnowyth?”
She confirmed it with a nod.
Harold stood. “Then I’ll take you back there myself, I’ll ask the innkeeper to look in Adam’s room. There may be something that has been overlooked.”
The hardness of his expression softened from naval officer to more like the man she met two months ago.
“Wait for me here,” he said. “I have a curricle. I can get you to Ponsnowyth faster and in more comfort than the coach.”
*
Adam regarded the three beams of timber and consulted his plans. The conversation with Wilkinson had been amusing.
They weren’t planning a semaphore station but they did want to be able to signal with lamps at night to a ship out at sea using some French coding system. He assumed it would be similar to the light codes in Howe’s Signal-Book for Ships of War. Adam had been volunteered to build it due to his carpentry skills.
He had taken only the briefest glimpse at the diagram handed over by the major before tossing it back across the table to him.
“It won’t do,” he said brusquely.
“Why not? Wha
t’s wrong with it? It was drawn up by our friends across the channel.”
“That figures,” Adam replied, noting with satisfaction the little flash of annoyance in Wilkinson’s eyes. “It’s too flimsy. It won’t last.”
“It only needs to last four weeks, man.”
Adam snorted. “That thing won’t last four nights, especially if a wind catches it. And it has to be taken up and assembled each time on the roof, then taken down again straight after so it’s not seen in the day. It won’t stand up to much of that.”
“Well, don’t just criticize, Hardacre – redesign it,” huffed Wilkinson. “But I need it ready in two days.”
Adam had drawn up his own plan and selected additional lumber and ironmongery from a storage shed behind the stables. A dozen ship’s lanterns and oil had been brought up to the room yesterday. They looked like standard Navy lanterns. On closer inspection, Adam realized they were brand new and he surmised if they hadn’t been stolen from the stores down in Falmouth, it would be ironic if they’d actually bought them from the shop front at Charteris House.
The ornate iron spiral staircase had been dismantled, no more than a skeleton of iron heaped in the corner. Adam lashed a sturdy old ladder in its place, all the quicker and easier to get up to the roof. He worked alone in the tower attic room of Kenstec House which, in his present frame of mind, suited him just fine.
He hammered a hinge into place violently, while entertaining fantasies of using the hammer to bludgeon Dunbar. The man had been an insufferable arse all week, and it was taking what little restraint Adam had left to not respond to his goading.
He suspected it was Wilkinson’s way of testing him, seeing how far he could be pushed. And Dunbar pushed and pushed and pushed.
And, if he was not mistaken, there were the man’s booted footsteps coming up the stairs to the upper floor now. A moment later, the “insufferable arse” appeared, sour-faced and arms crossed.
Adam worked on, hefting one of the beams into place and ignoring Dunbar’s critical eye.
He slipped a hammer in his belt and climbed up the ladder to fasten the upper end of the beam to the frame of the hatch. Dunbar came to the bottom of the ladder.
Barons, Brides, and Spies: Regency Series Starter Collection Volume Two Page 91
