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She read it carefully. “There have been arrests.”

“Yes.”

“The authorities will therefore become more determined to discover who has been corresponding with radical groups.” Judith folded the paper and returned it.

Her own secret correspondence had not vanished merely because they had found evidence of a more dangerous disclosure. Will Fletcher still existed and so did the printer’s connections in Newcastle. Judith had passed on information because she believed the condition of working families ought to be known beyond drawing rooms and estate offices. Bonnymuir would make such distinctions considerably less attractive to frightened magistrates.

Baines watched Judith lay Renforth’s message upon the table, aligning it almost unconsciously, it seemed, with the edge of the nearest ledger before withdrawing her hand. The small gesture was so characteristic that, under other circumstances, he might have teased her for attempting to impose order upon a rebellion by straightening the correspondence concerning it, but the jest never quite reached his tongue.

Bonnymuir had altered something for her as well.

Until this morning, Judith had occupied a narrow but defensible ground between two convictions. She believed reform necessary because she had seen too much suffering to accept that England’s arrangements were merely unfortunate inconveniences requiring patience, yet she feared violent revolution because she possessed enough intelligence to understand that men who began by demanding justice did not always retain control of events once weapons appeared. She had passed on information about the conditions of working families because she wanted those conditions exposed, while drawing a line at military information because she understood precisely what might happen if such knowledge reached men prepared to use force.

Now, that distinction had acquired blood and Baines wondered whether she knew how precarious her own position had become.

“What will happen to the men they arrested?” she asked.

“I cannot tell you yet. Renforth’s information is too early, and the authorities themselves probably do not know the full extent of what occurred. If the reports are correct and the men were armed against government forces, however, I doubt anyone will treat the matter lightly.”

“High treason?”

“Possibly.”

Judith looked down at the papers spread across the table. “Their grievances do not become false because some of them carried pikes.”

“No.”

“And carrying pikes does not become sensible merely because their grievances were real.”

Baines regarded her for a moment, struck again by one of the qualities he admired most in her. Judith did not require the world to become simple before deciding what she believed, nor did she alter inconvenient facts merely because they interfered with her sympathies. She could pity a hungry labourer and condemn the man who placed a weapon in his hands; she could believe Parliament deaf to legitimate grievances without concluding that a musket offered a superior form of debate.

“That is why I trust you.”

Her gaze lifted sharply. “What is?”

“You possess the unusual ability to hold two thoughts in your head simultaneously without insisting one of them must murder the other.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Spend an evening in Parliament.”

“I would rather not, even were I allowed.” Judith drew her shawl more closely around her shoulders and glanced again at Renforth’s message. “Will could be questioned as well as Uncle and I.”

Baines had known they would eventually reach this point. He moved around the table until only its corner separated them. “If anyone asks whether you have corresponded with reformers, you will tell me before answering anything.”

Her eyebrows rose. “That sounds remarkably like an order.”

“It was meant to.”

“You have no authority over me.”

“An oversight I increasingly regret.” He resisted the temptation to smile because this mattered too much to allow humour to obscure what he intended her to understand.

“You passed information concerning working conditions and the circumstances of local families,” he said. “You did not provide troop movements, arrest plans or military dispositions, and when you realized your words might have become dangerous, you stopped. Those distinctions matter, whatever some frightened magistrate may decide in the first days after an armed rising does not.”

“You cannot guarantee that.”

“No, I cannot.”