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“Heroic fellow.”

Judith gave him a look of such precise disapproval that Baines experienced the now-familiar urge to kiss her. This reaction was becoming tiresome.

The door opened and Simmons entered.

Baines knew something had happened before the butler spoke.

Simmons possessed one of those faces upon which emotion ordinarily made little impression. This morning, however, his mouth had tightened. A folded paper rested upon a silver salver.

“Major Baines?”

Judith looked up.

“This arrived for you, sir. The messenger said it was urgent.”

“What messenger?”

“A man from the Black Lion. He was instructed to place it directly into your hands.”

Baines took the folded paper. There was no name upon the outside, only a small diagonal mark beside the seal.

Renforth.

“Thank you, Simmons.” The butler inclined his head, hesitated for no more than a fraction of a second, and withdrew.

Baines broke the seal. The message was brief.

Baines read it once and then again.

Judith did not ask immediately. That was one of the things he had come to value about her. Most people rushed to fill silence, as though uncertainty were a hole into which they might fall. Judith allowed it to exist until she understood its shape. Baines laid the paper upon the table.

“There has been an engagement in Scotland,” he said quietly.

Her expression changed. “Where?”

“Bonnymuir, near Falkirk.”

He looked down at Renforth’s neat hand.

Armed radicals marching towards Carron were intercepted by government forces. Cavalry and infantry. The reports are still confused, but shots were exchanged. Several men were wounded, and the radicals were overwhelmed. A number have been taken prisoner.

Judith’s fingers tightened around the edge of the ledger. “Were any killed?”

“Renforth does not say.” The answer sounded too calm. Baines recognized the tone because he had used it before, usually when circumstances were sufficiently bad that emotion would interfere with whatever needed to be done next.

He read the message again. Carron. The word had appeared in rumours for days. Men intended to seize weapons from the Carron works. Hundreds were marching; thousands were marching. Government troops had abandoned one road and reinforced another. Glasgow would rise. Stirling would rise. England would follow. Every report contradicted the one before it, and into that confusion someone at Blackthorn had introduced military intelligence gathered from conversations never intended to leave the house.

Some of it had been genuine. Some of it had been false. All of it had been dangerous.

Judith rose slowly. “This is what you were afraid would happen.”

Baines folded the message. “It was one of several possibilities.”

“That is not what I said.”

“No.” He crossed to the window. The stable yard below presented an almost offensive picture of normality. A groom led a chestnut across the cobbles while another boy carried two buckets towards the pump. Beyond the stable roofs, the Northumberland countryside stretched beneath a pale blue April sky, the fields divided by stone walls and hedges beginning to show their first green. A rook called from the elms in the distance.

A few dozen miles north, men had fired upon one another. The distance seemed absurdly small. Baines placed one hand against the window frame. He had seen battles. He knew what happened when frightened men carrying weapons encountered other frightened men under orders to stop them. He knew how quickly shouting became firing, how little resemblance the first report of a skirmish bore to the reality, and how often courage and stupidity wore precisely the same face until someone began counting the wounded.