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“Some say it’s nonsense,” Ballard added. “Others say the fellow who writes these knows somebody close to the magistrates.”
“Every newspaper writer claims to know somebody close to somebody important. It saves the inconvenience of proving anything.”
Harland studied him. “You don’t believe it?”
Baines smiled and returned the paper. “I believe half of what I hear, a quarter of what I read, and absolutely nothing anyone tells me after midnight.”
“It sounds to me as if another Peterloo is brewing.”
That restored the table’s amusement, but Baines’ own had vanished.
Someone had heard Sir George. Someone had remembered his words, and someone had got them into print with alarming speed—or had they? Could it have been Sir George’s source that had informed the paper?
By the time Baines left the Black Lion, he stepped into the afternoon light and glanced back at the newspaper visible through the window.
NO MORE PIECEMEAL ARRESTS!
The phrase was no longer merely evidence of indiscretion. When the circular reached the men the magistrates intended to seize, they would know not to gather.
For the first time since arriving at Blackthorn, the investigation had ceased to feel like an entertaining puzzle. Baines turned towards the Hall and quickened his pace.
CHAPTER 8
Judith needed to escape from the house and a certain gentleman, so she decided a walk to the village was in order. The house could manage without her for a few hours.
She had just overheard Baines with Pembroke in the library, and while Pembroke had risen in her estimation greatly, neither did she think he was the one sending insurrectionist letters to the circulars. His opinions might be liberal enough to alarm Sir George, but Pembroke had spoken of violence with genuine disgust and of reform with the rather earnest conviction of a gentleman who still believed sensible arguments ought to persuade sensible governments.
Baines had plainly been investigating him. Indeed, Baines appeared to be investigating everyone, though he had the remarkable gift of making interrogation seem like idle conversation. Judith had stood outside the library longer than she ought to have done, listening while he led Pembroke from books to politics and from politics to reform without once appearing to lead him anywhere at all. It was skilfully done, which irritated her almost as much as the fact that she admired it.
Never had she felt so ill content with the world around her or with the narrowness of her own situation. For years, she had managed Blackthorn, solved practical difficulties, soothed disputes, balanced accounts, assisted tenants, found work for people where she could and money where she could not, and generally made herself useful in every direction available to her. Yet useful was not the same as effective, and the distinction had lately begun to plague her.
She was restless because the problems around her had become too large for household remedies. A sack of flour helped one family, but not twenty. A few guineas from Sir Lionel might keep children fed through the spring, but it could not mend a system in which men without work remained hungry and men without influence remained unheard. Her letters had seemed a reasonable beginning once; now, after Scotland, the unrest in Yorkshire, and learning that someone at Blackthorn was passing far more dangerous information than anything she had ever written, even that small act had become morally complicated.
There could be no denying it. Information was leaving Blackthorn, and the person responsible was almost certainly someone who passed through its rooms with enough freedom to hear private conversations and enough discretion to transmit them without attracting notice.
Judith changed into sturdy half-boots, exchanged her morning dress for an older walking gown, and went downstairs, where she encountered Edward in the hall with a fishing rod in one hand and an expression of entirely fraudulent innocence upon his face.
They stopped at the same moment. Judith looked at the rod. Edward looked at the basket hanging from her arm.
“You appear to be going somewhere,” he remarked.
“So do you, and yours appears to require tackle.”
“I am going to the river.”
“With a fishing rod? How very ingenious of you.”
“I had thought of taking a parasol, but alas the trout do not jump into it.”
Judith folded her arms. “You promised Sir George you would ride with him this morning.”
Edward’s expression altered at once. “Did I?”
“You did, and with sufficient enthusiasm that he believed you.”
“That was clearly my error. Do you suppose you might tell him I have been taken suddenly ill?”
“You appear offensively healthy.”
