“He is one of the Government’s most trusted advisors, Frank, and privy to the councils of war. He has spent the better part of the past year on the Peninsula, communicating the movements of the French. Indeed, I believe your Admiralty consigns a principal part of its Secret Funds to Lord Harold.”

“What do you know of the Secret Funds?” he demanded testily. And so, as we strolled the length of the High with a leg of mutton tied up in waxed paper, I related the baffling particulars of the past week: the sudden meeting aboard the Windlass, Lord Harold’s suspicions of Sophia Challoner, the oddities of Mr. Ord, and the cloaked figure I had encountered this morning in the depths of the subterranean passage. When I had done, Frank gazed at me with no little awe.

“You are a dark horse, Jane! But if your Lord Harold has had the use of a naval vessel — and no less a brig than Windlass—then his currency is good as gold. I know Captain Strong, and though he is but a Master and Commander, and young at that, I am certain he should never engage in any havey-cavey business along the privateering line. I may add that no less a Tory than Castlereagh professes to hold his lordship in high regard — and Castlereagh, in my books, can never err.”[22]

I murmured assent to the wisdom of Tory ministers.

“But I should not have suspected you, Jane, of skullduggery by night or day — though I have always said that you possess the Devil’s own pluck! And the stories you have fobbed off on Mamma — all with a view to making her believe his lordship is smitten with you—!”

“I did not have to work very hard at that, ” I retorted, somewhat nettled. “Mamma is ready to find evidence of love in the slightest male attention.”

Frank disregarded this aside; his moment of levity had passed. “Lord Harold truly believes Mrs. Challoner to have ordered the murder of old Dixon — the firing of the seventy-four — and the liberation of the prison hulks? I should be terrified to enter her drawing-room tomorrow; and I wonder at his lordship securing the services of a gentlewoman in pursuit of his spy, when he might have had a brigade of marines secured around Netley Lodge, merely for the asking!”

We had come up with the Dolphin Inn as he spoke, and almost without thinking, my feet slowed. I gazed towards the bow-fronted windows of the Assembly Room, and wondered which of the many glinting panes above disguised Lord Harold’s bedchamber. Had he returned from London? “A brigade of marines should never serve, Frank. Mrs. Challoner demands subtlety and care.”

“I apprehend. No mere cutting-out expedition, no shot across the bows, what? Don’t wish the birds to fly before we’ve clipped their feathers?”

My gaze fell from the Dolphin’s front to its side yard, where a group of ostlers loitered. They were the usual Southampton sort: roughly-dressed and fractured in their speech; sailors, some of them, turned onto land by dint of wounds. One of them lacked an arm; another had lost his leg below the knee, and supplied the want of a limb with an elegantly-carved peg. My brother no longer noticed such injuries; he witnessed them too often, once his deck was cleared for battle. The men of a ship of the line were torn asunder with a careless rapidity that defied belief in any God.

An oddity among the familiar grouping claimed my attention: the figure of a girl in a Prussian-blue cloak, a simple poke bonnet tied beneath her chin. She stood as though in suspense, being unwilling to venture the roughness of the stable yard’s men, but determined to gain admittance. Her gaze was trained on the windows of the inn above, and it was clear at a glance that she sought someone within. The slightness of her frame suggested extreme youth; and when she darted a furtive look over her shoulder, as though fearful of being watched, I gasped aloud.

“Flora Bastable! The maid dismissed from Netley Lodge! I should know those eyes anywhere — the exact colour of gentians, Frank, on a summer morn. But what can have brought her a full three miles from her home in Hound?”

“What the Devil do you care for a maidservant’s business, Jane?” he demanded impatiently.

At that moment, a chaise turned into the yard, blocking the girl from my view. When the way had cleared, she had vanished. Was it I who had driven her to flight? Had she sped deeper into the yard — or beyond it, to the alleyways and passages that led to the town’s walls?

And whom had she sought within? Her late mistress’s enemy — Lord Harold ?

“She certainly did not come here idly,” I mused, “and I read fear in her looks. Frank — say that you will help me! If the theatre is your object, persuade Mary that she is well enough to sit in French Street tonight; and insist upon my going to Netley Lodge tomorrow evening, despite Mamma’s protestations.”

My brother placed his hands upon my shoulders.

“I dislike the notion of you walking into such a den of vipers, Jane.”

“I dislike it myself. But I dislike the murder of good men — and the burning of ships — even more.”

“When you put it thus, my dear — I have no choice.” He drew my arm through his, and led me towards the Water.

Chapter 20

Message from an Unknown

Wednesday, 2 November 1808

At six o’clock this evening, my brother walked to Roger’s Coachyard to secure a hack chaise for my journey to Netley Lodge. Mary settled on my bed to watch me dress for Sophia Challoner’s party. I had laid my new black gown over a chair, and spread the paisley shawl across its folds.

“It is a lovely gown, Jane.” She fingered it wistfully. “And the hat is too cunning for words! Mrs. Challoner must hold you in excessive regard, to send you such a gift!”

“Possibly,” I returned, “but I believe it is the power of giving that she most truly enjoys. She informed me that she had not two groats to rub together when she married her late husband; and that spending her fortune is now the chief pleasure of her life.”

“Then you do her a kindness in accepting of her generosity. Has she no children?”

“None at all.”

“Poor creature! A fortune should be nothing, if one were all alone in the world.”

As I was unlikely ever to have a child myself, I found I could not agree with Mary; the spending of a fortune, in the absence of more demanding preoccupations, might be engaging in the extreme. “Mrs. Challoner should disagree with you. She places the virtues of solitude — or freedom, as she prefers to call it — above all else.”

“She sounds an odd sort of lady. Do you admire her?”

I hesitated. What did I feel for Sophia Challoner, beyond a persistent doubt as to her motives?

“I admire her bravery, certainly. She fears neither man nor woman; handles her mettlesome horses herself; presides over an elegant establishment alone, with utter disregard for the opinions of others; and went so far as to view the battle of Vimeiro at close hand. She snaps her fingers at propriety and cuts a considerable dash. She is the sort of woman that may never enter a room without a dozen heads turning; indeed, she seems to thrive upon notice as others must upon air. But I do not think she possesses an easy soul, Mary. She is in search of something — sensation, the regard of others, a purpose to her restless life. I do not begin to understand her; but admire her?

Yes — if you would mean the sort of admiration one reserves for a wild thing of great beauty.”

“I have never heard you speak thus about anyone,” Mary said in a small voice. “You are so... so relentless, Jane, in the expression of your opinions. You may reduce a paragon to shivering shreds, with the well-placed application of a word.”