Page 44 of A Rogue at Stonecliffe

“Noelle and Carlisle aren’t there. They went to his estate—which is exactly the sort of insipid place Carlisle would choose for his honeymoon. So there’s no one at the house but Lady Drewsbury. It seems a perfect time for Lady Drewsbury’s mother and niece to visit.”

“Hmm.” Lady Lockwood considered it, her eyes brightening. “It would be nice to get out a bit. See the child.” Annabeth’s grandmother’s softer side always came out around young Gil. “And Adeline, of course,” she added almost as an afterthought.

“Stonecliffe is the safest house I can think of,” Sloane went on. “The servants are all accustomed to being on guard, after the trouble Noelle and Carlisle had there. You can close the gates to the courtyard, leaving only the garden door that needs to be watched. Verity can accompany you for protection, and Nathan can escort you.”

“I told you, I am not running,” Annabeth said in irritation. “And I don’t see how my hiding at Stonecliffe will help you discover Papa’s document.”

“I didn’t say you would stay there,” Sloane said, a teasing glimmer in his eyes. “Verity is going to cease being a maid and become you.”

“What?”

“She’ll dress in your clothes, put on your bonnets, and Nathan will pop over to visit her frequently. They’ll take strolls in the garden and sit on the terrace or in the courtyard. From a distance she could pass for you, so if the enemy follows us, they will be lulled into thinking Annabeth is staying put at Stonecliffe in Kent. In the meantime we will go search your father’s workshop in Sussex.”

“Wonderful!” Annabeth’s chest swelled with excitement.

“No!” Nathan and Verity exclaimed simultaneously.

“If you think I’m going to sit in some castle in the country twiddling my thumbs while you have all the fun, you’re insane,” Verity told Sloane.

“You agreed to help however you could,” Sloane said in a steely voice. “This is what will help. It doesn’t take four people to search a workshop, and Annabeth is the only person who knows where to find what we’re looking for. If people think she’s at Stonecliffe, they won’t be looking for her in Sussex. Besides, you won’t be doing nothing. I suspect that Hunter Winfield might have given a box or two to his sister-in-law.”

“Lord, yes,” Lady Lockwood agreed. “He scattered them everywhere. He was fond of Adeline, and she’s the sort of person who would keep them.”

“You know you’d like to get your hands on some of those boxes,” Sloane told Verity.

“I like puzzles,” Verity admitted.

“And you might want to work on this while you’re sitting about.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out the small notebook they had found that morning. He handed it to Verity.

“What is that?” Nathan moved to Verity’s side to examine the pages. “It’s just gibberish. Why is this important?”

Annabeth said, “Because we found it carefully hidden in one of Papa’s secret compartments, one even I didn’t know about.”

Lady Lockwood harrumphed and banged her cane on the floor, waking Petunia and starting her barking. “Don’t just stand there, Dunbridge. Give that to me.”

Nathan obeyed, but when she saw it, Annabeth’s grandmother looked equally puzzled.

“I thought it might be a code of some kind,” Sloane explained after Lady Lockwood handed the small journal back to him. “I don’t recognize it, though.”

“Neither do I,” Verity said. She looked over Sloane’s shoulder at the pages, clearly intrigued. “Perhaps there’s a key—a book, say. The number could be the page, or the page and a line. The letters could indicate what book.”

“That might explain why two or three of the groups are the same letters,” Sloane said.

“Or perhaps the key is here already, in invisible ink...” Verity took the journal, went over to a lamp, and took off its chimney to hold a page over the flame. The paper began to turn brown, but no new writing appeared.

“Careful, don’t burn it,” Nathan told her.

She sent him a scornful look. “Thank you, Mr. Dunbridge. I wouldn’t have thought of that.” She shut the notebook and stuck it in her pocket. “Still, I don’t need to stay at some boring house in the country to work on this.”

Nathan shot Verity a withering look. “Miss Cole’s state of boredom is not my main concern. Annabeth can’t go running about the countryside alone with Rutherford. Her reputation would be in tatters.”

“Which is why we will be leaving Stonecliffe secretly,” Sloane said, as if speaking to a slow-witted person.

Nathan made a derisive noise. “You can’t sneak in and out of Stonecliffe without someone noticing.”

“I can.” Sloane gave a careless shrug.

“I suppose no one anywhere else along the way will notice the two of you either.”