Whispers from the Shadows (43 page)

She shook her head as she curled her fingers into the fabric of his jacket. “They assumed I didn't even know Papa was dead. I said the news had reached us, which is true enough. Though I—”

“You did exactly right.” Had she made an accusation, no doubt Gates would have had that pistol aimed at her head in half a second, and he would not have hesitated to shoot her. Thad knew that down to his very core, otherwise he never would have let the man walk away—but he could not risk Gwyneth's life. There would be another chance to apprehend her uncle.

“No. I did not.” Steadier now, she sat up enough to look him in the eye. “I figured out the trunk, and Papa has much in there for you. The top sheets came loose, and there was a mask, a cutout shape to go over that letter he sent you. It had a note on it indicating he had sent you a duplicate that must never have made it to you. I had it in my hand, Thad, and Uncle took it. He ripped it to shreds and then tossed it to the wind.”

His heart lurched. A mask. Of course. He ought to have known. Not that knowing would have helped him without the actual one in hand. And not that any of it mattered in the face of his wife's distress. He cupped her cheek and soothed the pad of his thumb over it. “But there is other information he included? We needn't worry about one mask then.”

She shook her head, trailing the pointer finger of her right hand over his chest in a dip, a curve, an angle. “The rest will likely make no sense without the instructions. I know how my father did things. He would not send anything, even hidden, that could be easily understood by anyone to come across it. The key is in that letter, I know it. But without the mask…”

Her finger returned to its original position and then began trailing along again. In the same pattern. Thad glanced down at her hand and then up to her clouded eyes. And he nearly cried out “Eureka!” as Father was wont to do in his laboratory. Standing with her in his arms, he grinned. “I don't think we are without it at all, sweet.”

“Pardon?”

Why waste time on words? He merely carried her to her
secretaire
, set her carefully down on the chair, pulled a blank sheet of paper in front of her, and put a pencil in that twitching hand. “Draw.”

“Draw? Thad this is hardly the time.” But her fingers closed around the pencil. And how could it then do anything but what that shrouded part of her mind told it? A sweep, a curve, a sharp angle.

He leaned over to watch her, planting a kiss upon her head. “That is my girl. You know what it looked like. You never need more than a glance to duplicate something. Let it come.”

She looked down at her hand with a wide-eyed gaze. As he watched, realization dawned. And if for a moment he feared that conscious thought would make her freeze, he needn't have worried. That light of recognition caused only a pause, and then she bent over the paper and increased her speed. Within seconds she had drawn a complete mask, and even the slightly off-center rectangle around it that must indicate the size of the paper. It looked right to him, the same size as the letter in his desk.

“I need a blade.”

He pulled out his knife and set it beside her. “I will fetch the letter.” He ran out, ducking through the door and down the hall to his study. It took him only seconds to grab the key from its place on the lintel and insert it in the drawer, to pull out the letter from Fairchild, and then to retrace his steps. By the time he arrived at Gwyneth's elbow, she was putting his knife back down.

He handed her the letter and she put it behind the mask. And together they read.

“Good heavens.” Thad shook his head while she flipped the letter over and reapplied the mask. Before they continued reading, he said, “They are using the war to fund the slave trade. Stealing from the North to sell to the South.”

“And stealing from England too.” She rested her head in her hand, her breath coming out tremulously. “With a
son
. He and Aunt Gates have never had children, which means he…he has an American son. One in the slave trade.”

Her thoughts galloped across her face, her question obvious. Thad shook his head. “It couldn't be him. Mercer may not be our favorite person, but—”

“When I first saw him, I thought he was Uncle Gates. Not because they looked so much alike, but because of the way he moved, his demeanor. Something about him.” Her gaze went vulnerable. “Tell me it is impossible, Thad. Tell me you know his father, and he is the very image of him.”

Would that he could. “From what I have gleaned, they moved to Maryland from one of the Carolinas when Mercer was very small. I did not meet him until I moved to Baltimore. His mother is a widow.” Or, if Gwyneth's suspicions were right, she merely claimed to be.

She forced out a shaky smile. “Well. I imagine Papa knew this son's name and will mention it somewhere.”

At that cue, they kept reading. About Fairchild's fear of the lengths Gates would go to for his greed, fear that Gwyneth was in danger. That the general would be sending his daughter to Thad with all his evidence of Gates's crime, and that it began in a code using as key the book Ben had sent him.

“What book?” He straightened, looking around as if the answer would be written upon the walls. He could ask his father, of course, and no doubt he would remember without a single hesitation—books
being top priority, after all. But who knew when he and Mother would be home?

Gwyneth shuffled through the papers on her desk, the stack of drawings that had grown so deep. She went all the way to the bottom, to that first one she had drawn her first night here, of her father's study with its lines of shelves.

Her breath came out in a startled huff, and she tapped that strange shadow at the bottom, the one with the scalloped edge. The edge that now looked so familiar. “It is the mask. I must have seen it, must have known…oh.” Her eyes slid shut as her fingers fisted. “The night before Papa told me I must go. It was out on his desk, and we heard Uncle come in. He put it away so very quickly, when usually he had not bothered with such things around Uncle Gates. A book had been out too. This one.” Her finger moved to the drawn shelf and tapped a tome that looked to be sitting an inch farther out than the others.

Thad breathed a laugh as he read the French title. “Of course it is. What
but
Lavoisier would my father ever send to his dear friend? One moment.” He dashed out to his library cum laboratory and quickly located the volume of
Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique
that Father had made certain he had on his shelves. When he spotted a second, identical-if-well-worn copy on the table, he grabbed that one too.

When he returned, Gwyneth was not in her chair, though he heard her step on the stair. She came in with her arms laden with paper, of which he happily relieved her, though the sheer mass made him shake his head. “Thunder and turf, let us hope it is not
all
encoded, or we will not get through it for years to come.”

“Papa was an orderly sort. He likely put the most important things on top.” She pulled out the first page, which was filled with numbers rather than letters. From the expression on her face, Gwyneth's father had certainly not given her the lessons in cryptology Thad's father had given him. “Can you make sense of this?”

“Not at a glance, but it is a simple methodology.” He tapped the first combination of numbers. “The first number is for the page, the second for the line, the third for the word on the line.”

“And when there is a fourth number?”

“The letter in the word, which he would use to spell out words not in the book, such as names.” He sighed. “Of course, this will be in French.”

She angled a grin up at him. “Do not tell me that cows you, my love. I have heard you speaking French with Arnaud.”

“Very little.” He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose. “We will leave that part to you, who can no doubt translate French to English in your sleep.”

She smiled and rested her hand on the Lavoisier. “Should we start now or head out to the banks as planned?”

“The banks will be there in an hour or two. We have waited long enough to know your father's mind. You work from the top down, and I will work from the bottom up.”

It was tedious business, full of flipping and counting and note taking, especially laborious any time Fairchild had had to spell out a word. But with two of them at work, they made good progress. Once the entire sheet had been deciphered into French, Thad scooted their page to Gwyneth. “If you would, my darling.”

Though she flashed him a smile, anxiousness tinged it. “Certainly.” With a deep breath, she scanned ahead and then began. “ ‘I pray you are in receipt of my letter and the mask you need to unravel its message about my wife's brother's schemes. I send this information to you, good sir, because I know the legacy your parents would have passed to you, and I know too the esteem in which you are held by all who know you. Most of all, I know you seek first and foremost the will of the Lord. I believe this war to be one of vengeance rather than justice, and though I have done all I can here, Gates's influence runs too deep. Yet his motives for continuing the war are pure avarice and malice.' ”

She paused, swallowed, and shook her head before continuing. “ ‘If you are reading this letter, it is because my daughter has safely arrived at your home. I pray you, look after her and keep her out of the clutches of her uncle, who would destroy her and any other of my family who gets in his way. I know in my heart you will fast become friends and have a feeling more could easily develop between you. If so, know you have my blessing. If not, dismiss this as the rambling of a desperate old man who only wants his precious child to be safe and happy.' ”

Thad rested his hands on her shoulders and gave them a long, gentle squeeze. He could not fathom how the man had suspected what would happen when he scarcely knew Thad except through his parents' letters. But how wonderful that he had.

Gwyneth cleared her throat and swiped at her cheeks. “ ‘I have also sent with Gwyneth a copy of my will, wherein you will find that your parents have been named as her guardians, unless Gates has passed away before they can come for her, in which case my elder brother would receive the guardianship. I have left instructions with my solicitors in England that they are not to read that section of the will unless Gwyneth is present, so if she is with you, then my family is still unaware of this stipulation. I trust you can imagine why I would make it.' ”

Her eyes fell to the final few lines. “And here he says that the rest of the evidence will either use the corresponding masks or a dictionary which he sent to your father a year ago as a key.”

He circled his thumb over the base of her neck and let a loose tendril curl around it. “Good. Not so much spelling out will be required.”

But he already knew what the information in the documents would tell him—that he had to stop Gates. Stop the war, stop the crime. And pray, with all his being, that the Lord would heal the nation this man would rend asunder.

Thirty-One

A
rthur stared into the fire long after the camp behind him settled into silence. He watched each dancing flame, each pop of spark. And he wondered which tiny ember might land upon him next and set him off like a keg of gunpowder. That was what his Uncle Hart had called him, was it not? Volatile. Dangerous.

No. His hand fisted against his leg, and he tamped that lid back down, if a keg he was.

You are not brave
, his uncle had declared the very day he was knighted.
You are simply a fool whose irresponsible behavior happened to save a few lives this time. But such folly must cease, Arthur, if you are to be my heir.

He had never liked the viscount. Not as a lad, and certainly not when the man cast a shadow on what ought to have been his proudest
moment. Not when he insisted Arthur sell his commission and stay in England to familiarize himself with the estates, though all he had wanted, once healed from his wound, was to rejoin his comrades. But duty was ingrained too deep. Staying was a necessity, not an option. Though still he had tried to argue the point of his folly.

And still his uncle's reply was burned into his mind.
Face the facts, boy.

Face the facts.

One—he had charged into a situation with a reckless abandon.

Two—it was nothing but good-fortune that turned the tide in his favor and won him accolade rather than death and dishonor.

Three—his happy acceptance into society had been more due to his cousin's death and his presumed inheritance of a title than his own earning of a knighthood.

Four—he had apparently charged in without reason yet again when it came to Gwyneth.

He was a fool. A fool who had chased an illusion halfway around the world and now would face the consequences for it.
Those
were the facts.

“Have you finished brooding yet?” Gates's voice came quiet as a ghost, his form but a shadow as he settled beside Arthur on the log.

He shot the man a glare.

Gates deflected it with the arch of a single brow. “I have given you two days. Now remember yourself and move on. This petulance does not become you.”