A Lady of His Own

over it. The knots were sailors’ knots; he unraveled those at the stern, then peeled the cover back.

Mast, rigging, sails, oars-all the necessary paraphernalia. But he suspected there would be more. Eventually, he found what he was looking for; leaning into the yacht, reaching beneath the forward bench, he pulled out a crumpled bundle of line and material, a set of signals.

Penny saw; she stood, dusting off her breeches as he strung out the line. She came around the boat to peer at the flags, colored squares carrying various designs. “What are they? I don’t recognize them.”

He hesitated, then said, “French naval signals.” He recognized enough to be sure. “Flying these, the yacht wouldn’t need to make actual contact with any French ship, just come within spyglass sight of them.”

Penny reached out and tapped one flag. “And this?”

Charles paused, then said, “You know what that is.”

She nodded. “The Selborne crest.” Drawing breath was suddenly difficult. “How could they?”

He regathered the flags, bundling them up. Evenly said, “We don’t yet know exactly what they did.”

She felt her face harden. “Yes, we do. Whenever Amberly gave Papa a secret worth selling, he sent Smollet out to sail close to the Isles, running these signals in sight of some French ship. The flags told the French when and where to send the lugger, and then Papa went out with one of the smuggling gangs and spoke with some Frenchman and gave our enemies English government secrets in exchange for pillboxes. Later, when it was Granville, he sent Gimby to fetch the French-and now Gimby’s been murdered.”

Disgust and revulsion colored her words, the emotions so strong she could almost taste them.

“Actually”-Charles’s voice, in contrast, was cool, his tones incisive-“while your mechanism is almost certainly correct, we don’t yet know what they were passing.”

“Something the French were willing to pay for with jeweled antiquities-you’ve seen the pillboxes.” She looked away.

“True, but-” He thrust the bundled flags into her hands, then caught her arms, forcing her to look at him. “Penny, I know this type of game-I’ve been playing it for the last thirteen years. Things are often not what they seem.”

She couldn’t read his eyes, but could feel his gaze on her face.

His grip gentled. “I need to send a messenger to London-there’s a possibility Dalziel might not have checked. You heard Dennis Gibbs. Your father might have been involved in something deeper than the obvious.”

He was trying to find excuses so she wouldn’t feel so devastated, so totally betrayed by her father and brother. It was an actual pain in her chest, quite acute. Charles was trying his best to ease it, but…numbly, she nodded.

She watched while he covered the yacht and lashed the canvas down. Grateful for the dark; grateful for the quiet. She felt dreadful. She’d had her suspicions, not just recently but for years; over the last months, it seemed every few weeks she’d discover something more, uncover something worse that painted her father and brother in ever-more-dastardly shades.

In some distant recess of her mind, she was aware that her deep-seated reaction to the whole notion of treason was tied up with what she’d felt-if she was truthful still felt-for Charles. The idea that her father and brother could, purely for their own gain, have done things that would have put Charles and those like him in danger-even more danger than they’d already faced-rocked her to her core, filled her with something far more violent than mere fury, something far more powerful and corrosive than disdain.

Charles straightened, checked his knots, then tested the ropes holding the yacht. She wondered vaguely at the fate that had landed her there, a hundred yards from her brother’s fishing friend who’d almost certainly been murdered for his part in their scheme, with the evidence of their perfidy in her hands-and it was Charles beside her in the night.

“Come on.” He lifted the signals from her, took her arm. “Let’s go home.”

He meant the Abbey, and she was glad of it. Wallingham Hall was her home, yet her thoughts of her father and Granville were presently so disturbing she doubted she’d find any peace there.

Reaching the horses, Charles tied the signals to his saddle, tossed her up to hers, then mounted and led the way, not back but on. A little farther along, the river path connected with another wider track leading back to the Lostwithiel road.

They clattered into the Abbey stable yard in the small hours. Again Charles waved his stableman back to his bed. Catching the mare’s reins, he led both horses in and turned them into their stalls.

Penny went to unsaddle, only then realized she was shaking. It was, apparently, one thing to speculate and wonder, even to acknowledge and investigate, but quite another to find a recently murdered henchman along with indisputable proof of her father and brother’s complicity in treason.

Her mind felt battered, oddly detached. Dragging in a breath, she held it, and forced her hands to work, to unsaddle the mare and rub her down.

Charles glanced her way, but said nothing.

When he finished with his horse, he came to help her, without a word taking over rubbing the mare down. She relinquished the task, checked the feed and water, then leaned against the side of the stall and waited.

He’d left the tangle of signal flags on top of the stall wall. From amid the jumble, the Selborne crest mocked her. She turned away.

Charles came out of the stall, shut the door, picked up the flags, with his other hand took hers. They walked up to the house and entered through the garden door; in the front hall, he tugged her away from the stairs. “Come into the library.”

She went, too exhausted even to wonder why. He towed her across the room, paused beside his desk to thrust the signal flags into a drawer, then towed her farther-to the tantalus.

Releasing her, he poured two glasses of brandy. Catching one of her hands, he lifted it and pressed one glass into it. “Drink.”

She stared at the glass. “I don’t drink brandy.”

He sipped his own drink, met her gaze. “Would you prefer I tip it down your throat?”

She stared at him through the shadows, wondered if he was bluffing…realized, rather dizzyingly, that he wasn’t. She sipped. Pulled a face. “It’s ghastly.”

Nose wrinkling, she held the glass away.

He shifted nearer.

Eyes flaring, she whipped the glass back to her lips, and sipped.

He stood there, a foot away, sipping his own drink, watching her until she’d drained the glass.

“Good.” He took it from her, put both glasses down, then took her hand again.

She was getting rather tired of being towed, but on the other hand, it meant she didn’t have to think.

Her acquiescence worried Charles. He knew what she believed, knew it was eating at her. He didn’t like seeing her in this state; she seemed so internally fragile, as if something inside might shatter at any moment. He’d always seen her as someone he should protect; for that very reason, he couldn’t utter the platitudes he might have used to calm another. He couldn’t offer her false hope.

He would send a rider to London tomorrow; although there shouldn’t have been any contact with the French that Dalziel hadn’t known about, hadn’t, indeed, been in charge of, it was possible there had been something going on that Dalziel hadn’t got wind of.

A long shot, but a possibility, one he needed checked.

Meanwhile, Penny’s state of mind was only one of his worries, and potentially the easiest to address.

His state of mind was even more uncertain.

He pulled her to a halt in the gallery, in front of a window so the moonlight, now fading, spilled in and lit her face. He studied it as, surprised, she blinked up at him.

Foreseeing the battle looming, he hissed out a frustrated breath. Releasing her, he raked a hand through his hair. “I’m no longer sure it’s a wise idea for you to go back to Wallingham Hall.”

Her attention abruptly refocused; she frowned as she followed his train of thought. “You mean because Gimby was murdered?” Her frown grew more definite. “You think Nicholas did it.”

“Other than you and me, who else has been asking after Granville’s associates?”

“Why?”

“To stop us learning whatever Gimby knew-whatever he presumably learned from Gimby before he killed