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His thoughts abandoned national security with humiliating speed. He remembered kissing that mouth beside the stream. His concentration suffered another grievous defeat. “Were you waiting up for me?”

“You flatter yourself. The dogs would not cease barking, so I came downstairs to appease them. Lady Dunsmore does not wish them to be housed in the stables.”

“I would think she would prefer them in her room.”

“She has a megrim. What has happened?”

“A new handbill appeared in Newcastle before dawn.”

She paused. “Which destination?”

“All of them.”

Judith stared at him for several seconds, her remaining drowsiness disappearing beneath the quickening interest he had come to recognize. “That is impossible. Cranford heard Glasgow, Pembroke heard Carlisle, and Lady Beckenham was told that the troops would remain near Newcastle. Unless all three have suddenly formed a society for the exchange of false military intelligence, the handbill cannot contain every version.”

“Not every version precisely, which is what makes it interesting. Someone has taken pieces of all three and arranged them into something new.”

He crossed the room and handed her the folded sheet. Judith opened it upon the ledger, angling the page towards the nearest lamp while the spaniel to her right opened one eye, apparently decided that treason did not warrant interruption of his sleep, and closed it again.

Baines pointed to the relevant passage. “The western roads belong to Pembroke. The cavalry within reach of the Scottish manufacturing districts sounds remarkably similar to what Cranford heard, while the reference to troops remaining near Newcastle comes from Lady Beckenham’s version. None appears exactly as we planted it, but all three are there.”

Judith read the passage twice before lowering the paper. “Then our trap failed.”

“That was my first conclusion, though Renforth prefers the more charitable view that it succeeded in telling us something we did not expect.”

“What does he believe it told us?”

“That I am a fool.”

“I cannot imagine he required a handbill to establish that.”

Baines looked at her. The shy smile returned.

There it was again, that new ease between them which had appeared after the kiss beside the stream. Judith still possessed an alarming capacity to puncture his dignity, but there was warmth beneath it now, something private and almost conspiratorial, which had not existed when she had regarded him merely as an irritating officer who had invaded her uncle’s house.

Baines found that he liked the change far too much.

“The actual conclusion,” he continued, “is that we made an assumption which may have been wrong from the beginning. We have been concentrating upon the people who possess the information, when the person sending it may never have possessed any of it directly.”

Judith frowned. “Please explain.”

“Cranford repeats what he heard to someone else. Pembroke boasts of his knowledge to another person, and Lady Beckenham mentions her version in a conversation which seems entirely harmless. Somewhere along the way, one person hears enough of those fragments to assemble them. He does not know that they contradict one another because he does not know they were deliberately invented.”

Understanding crossed her expression. “So he reconciles them. Cavalry may move towards Glasgow while other troops secure the western roads, and Newcastle remains protected in case unrest spreads south.”

“Precisely. We planted three lies and someone obligingly turned them into one plausible report.”

Judith looked again at the handbill. “This means Cranford, Pembroke and Lady Beckenham could all be innocent.”

“I would not go so far as innocent. Cranford remains Cranford, and Pembroke could probably disclose the disposition of the entire British Army while believing he was merely demonstrating his acquaintance with someone at Horse Guards, but neither failing constitutes treason.”

“What did Colonel Renforth say?”

“That we have been watching the people speaking when we ought to consider who might be listening.”

Judith’s gaze lifted slowly from the page. “The old passages,” she said, her eyes widening in dawning understanding.

Baines smiled. “That was my thought.”