Amanda Scott (27 page)

He nodded his grizzled head. “Aye, miss, I’ll wait. Like as not, ye’d not wish to be standin’ in the street a-whistlin’ up another ’ack.”

She agreed to this understatement with a smile, shut the window, and settled back again. Twenty minutes later the hackney coach was drawn up before a tall, narrow brick building with white trim. Climbing to the pavement unassisted, Meriel looked up at her coachman. “You will wish to walk your horses. There is a chill in the breeze.”

“Aye, m’lady, and perhaps I’d best give a penny to some lad to ’old ’em and come along o’ you m’self.”

She laughed. “Indeed, you are very kind, but you need do no such thing. I daresay I am in no more danger here than I would be entering a bank.”

“Which wouldn’t be no more proper for a lady to do unescorted, I’m thinkin’,” said the coachman dourly.

Grinning saucily at him, she turned away toward a pair of tall doors. As she approached these, one of them opened and a young uniformed soldier stepped out. Regarding her in some surprise, he seemed to realize that she meant to enter and stood aside, holding the door for her. Thanking him, she stepped inside.

The sole occupant of the rather plain office she found herself in was not wearing a uniform, but he wore with a certain military air the dark coat and buff breeches that constituted a gentleman’s morning dress. His neckcloth was simply tied, and his shirt points were of a conservative height. He sat behind a large, dilapidated desk and regarded her with raised brows for a moment before he seemed to realize that she was a lady and came to his feet.

“May I be of service to you, ma’am?” he inquired with a startled air.

“I am looking for Mr. George Murray,” she said simply.

“He is no longer here, I’m afraid,” the man said. “Perhaps I can be of some service to you.”

“No, I have merely brought a letter to him from a friend. If you will tell me his new direction, I will send it to him.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the man said. His attitude was more alert now, and he moved several steps around the desk toward her, holding out his hand. “I’ll be happy to take care of it for you, ma’am, if you will just give that letter to me.”

The change in his manner disturbed her, and she stepped back. “I have been asked to give it to Mr. Murray,” she said, replacing the letter in her reticule and hoping he would not attempt to wrest it from her as, indeed, he looked perfectly capable of doing. “If you will tell me where he can be found—”

“Mr. Murray has rejoined his regiment,” the man said, “and is no doubt at this very moment on his way to the Continent, where his services are needed. So you see, you must entrust that letter to me. It will have to be sent with the diplomatic post.”

“I don’t see that at all,” Meriel said, taking another step backward. “This is merely a letter from an old friend, and I cannot see that by giving it to you I should be doing the right thing. What is Mr. Murray’s regiment, if you please? Surely I can simply send it to his regimental headquarters.”

With a sigh of reluctant resignation the man turned back to his desk, pulled a green record book toward himself, and flipped two or three pages before finding the information she required. His entire posture made it clear to Meriel that he was not pleased with her. Still, she experienced a certain amount of satisfaction at having bested him. Armed with Mr. Murray’s regimental address, she left the office and returned to the street, where she found her hackney coachman patiently awaiting her.

Telling the man she wished to return home, she allowed him to hand her inside, where she settled back, thinking furiously. The attitude of the man in the plain little office had stirred her suspicions, and although she certainly hoped she was wrong, she could think of only one way to discover the truth. Containing her soul in patience until she reached the safety of her bedchamber, she shut and bolted her door to ensure privacy. Then without so much as taking off her pelisse, she pulled the letter from her reticule and stood staring at it for some moments. Every ounce of breeding told her that no acceptable reason existed for opening someone else’s letter, but every instinct screamed to open it. Scanning her memory rapidly from that first evening in Barmouth, she remembered all the messages she had carried. First the letter from Murray to the priest, then the letter from the priest to Monsieur Deguise. Next there had been the letter of explanation from Deguise to the priest, and now this letter in her hand—a letter that a perfect stranger had seemed rather more than ordinarily interested in taking from her. Altogether, now that she came to reflect upon the matter, she appeared to have been more courier than tourist.

No more than an instant of such reflection was necessary before Meriel broke the seal and unfolded the letter, to find that it was written in English and that there were scarcely more than ten lines. The brevity surprised her, for she had been certain that the priest had scribbled rapidly and at some length, that the letter had been crossed and recrossed. Moreover, considering the fact that he had made such a point of hurrying to get a message to Mr. Murray, the contents were certainly innocuous. Indeed, it was no more than an inane description of the priest’s health and the French weather. Meriel read it again, looking for possible hidden meaning. There seemed to be nothing at all out of the ordinary.

Holding it up to the light from one of her windows, she saw that there were indentations and scratch marks between the lines of writing. No doubt it was simply the way the paper had been made that caused it to appear so, but now that her suspicions were aroused, she wondered if there might be more to the message than first appeared.

On that thought, she removed her pelisse, tidied her hair, and went to find her aunt. Lady Cadogan, having seen the last of her morning callers, had ordered a small luncheon served to her in the drawing room, and there it was that Meriel found her, enjoying her meal in solitary splendor.

“You are all alone, ma’am?”

“As you see. ’Tis prodigious peaceful, my dear.”

Meriel chuckled. “I am persuaded that you found your charges very troublesome, Aunt. It was thoughtless of me to have left you with them for such a long time.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Lady Cadogan replied as she applied a thick layer of butter to a bit of roll. “Once Tallyn arrived and took the children in hand, there was nothing for me to do at all, except enjoy myself taking dearest Eliza about.”

“Well, you were a week or more alone with them before that.”

“Ah, but they behaved rather well until they got their London feet, as it were. The two younger ones were in such awe, you know, and didn’t know how to get about. And dear Mr. Glendower was able to manage quite nicely for a time, though Mr. Scott has more energy when it comes to that scamp Davy, I must say,” she added, smiling. “Did you wish to speak to me about something in particular?”

Meriel pulled up a chair beside her and helped herself to a cup of tea from the tray. “As a matter of fact, I do,” she said, thinking rapidly and coming to the conclusion that there was no way in which to ask her question that would not stir her aunt to ask a number of awkward questions of her own. “I cannot give you a reason,” she said, “but I wish to know if you have ever heard of a way by which one might write something that others could not see. Have you come across such a thing in all your reading? A kind of ink that would fade after one had written what one wished to write?”

Lady Cadogan chuckled. “I daresay there are any number of ways, you know. I have read of invisible ink, though I do not know that it is any such thing at all. I believe lemon juice can be used. If one heats it later, over a candle, you know, then a sort of brown writing appears. Schoolboys use such a method, writing notes to one another in school. I daresay most masters know the trick of it now, however,” she added placidly.

“I do not think the method I am looking for would be so simple as that,” Meriel said thoughtfully.

“I should suggest asking Tallyn,” said her ladyship. “He no doubt learned a number of odd things in America.”

But this Meriel could not bring herself to do. She could not imagine any way in which she might question her brother on the subject without having him cross-question her in such a way that she would end up showing him the letter. And she wanted to know what it contained before she gave it into anyone else’s keeping.

Thus it was that she kept her own counsel until later that afternoon when Sir Antony came to take her out driving in his curricle. By then she had thought of a way to ask her questions that she hoped would not lead to that gentleman’s suspicions being aroused. She waited, enjoying the expert way he managed his team of roan geldings, until he had negotiated the traffic of several narrow residential streets and turned into Park Lane. Then she began to chat about commonplace things till they passed through the gates to Hyde Park. As the curricle bowled gently along Rotten Row, she mentioned that her sister was once again reading a lurid romance, despite her older brother’s orders that she was to forgo such pleasures.

“Tallyn disapproves of gothic romance?” Sir Antony said, turning to smile at her.

“He says ’tis devilish stuff, unfit for feminine minds,” quoted Meriel, laughing. But she shifted her gaze forward, unable to meet his as she continued, “This one, Eliza says, is full of such stuff as spies and secret writing and poison rings—all that sort of muck. I daresay all of it comes straight out of the author’s imagination and has no basis in fact whatsoever.” She shook her head. “All those dreadful poisons the ancients supposedly spilled out of their rings into their unsuspecting guests’ mugs of ale. And secret writing! I ask you, sir, how could anyone write something and have it disappear as soon as the ink dried? And even if such a thing could be done, why, how would the person the letter was sent to read it? It all seems most idiotish to me.”

Sir Antony chuckled. “I daresay it does in such books as your sister must read. I cannot blame Tallyn for trying to put his foot down on the matter. I am ignorant on the subject of ancient poison, I fear, but I know for a fact that invisible writing has been used, even by governments. Indeed, the Americans were notorious for using it in coded letters sent back and forth to England as part of the intelligence-gathering they indulged in during their revolution.”

“Truly? But I do not see how such a business could be managed. Surely anyone could decipher the letters once the secret is known. I know,” she added sapiently, “that school boys use lemon juice and then heat the message over a candle, but since every master must know the trick as well, I cannot see that it does anyone a bit of good.”

“Oh, there are a number of methods,” he replied casually, lifting a hand in greeting to a passing acquaintance as he spoke. “The greatest trick would seem to me to be keeping those you don’t want reading the letter from realizing there is anything the least peculiar about it. The Americans in question were supposedly writing gossip to relatives in England. The secret stuff was scribbled between the lines. Or so I am told.”

Meriel found that she was holding her breath, and let it out slowly. Hoping her voice sounded perfectly normal, she said, “Just what did they use to scribble between the lines, and how could the recipient read the results if what they wrote became invisible?”

“My,” said Sir Antony, looking down at her again, “You really are interested in this little topic, are you not?”

She shrugged. “It just seems like another child’s game to me, sir, and not possible to think of seriously.”

“Well, it was dashed serious to the Americans,” he said. “That was how they got a good deal of their information about what was going on in England.”

“They were spying?”

He nodded. “Oh, they weren’t listening at keyholes or pretending to be what they weren’t. Mostly, the information came from sympathizers to their cause, who saw no harm in telling them certain things that might help.”

“No harm? Then why was it necessary to use invisible ink?”

He turned and smiled at her again. “A home question, is it not? I daresay their consciences smote them from time to time, and they certainly realized that others might take a dim view of what they were doing. So they wrote their messages with milk or lemon juice or whatever seemed the best way to them.”

“Milk works like lemon juice?”

He nodded. “So I’m told. Either one, heated, comes up with writing. But there are other methods, as well, some much more sophisticated, because, as you say, anyone knows enough to try heating a suspect message. One method I heard of,” he added, speaking more slowly now, “used a real ink to do the writing. At least, it would look real to anyone overlooking the writer. Must be a bit odd to see someone writing in lemon juice, you know. But this ink is made up of chemicals that fade away when they dry, leaving nothing but blank paper in their wake.”

“And heating achieves nothing?”

“Not a thing. In this case, another chemical is required to react with the first mixture and bring the writing up again.”

“A chemical?” Dismay filled her. How could she possibly come by an unknown chemical?

But Sir Antony was nodding again. “Usually it is something entirely simple, like an alcohol compound or milk. I once heard of a message coming to light because a man spilled his whiskey on it. And I know the British have used a chemical that reacts with milk. But I can’t pretend to know much about that. Does that book of your sister’s not tell how the message may be read?”

“Oh, she hasn’t got that far in the story,” Meriel responded, thinking hard. When she looked at him again, to discover that he was regarding her somewhat searchingly, she smiled. “This is a lovely day for the park, sir. Thank you for bringing me.”

His expression softened. “You do me honor, my dear. How do you find your family, by the by? Were their affairs in such turmoil as you expected to find them?”

She chuckled, relaxing. “Why, no, sir, my brother had matters well in hand. You must know that he has been home for two weeks already, and the first thing he did was to engage another tutor for my brother. At present Gwenyth, too, takes lessons from him, but Joss says she must go to school at Michaelmas term. And she must go to school in England, of course. He was not best pleased with me for going to France.”