Page 66

Baines clapped him lightly on the shoulder.

As Will hurried off down the lane, Judith looked again at the folded letter in her hand.

Perhaps she was not a traitor at heart, after all. However, very possibly, somewhere inside Blackthorn someone was.

CHAPTER 9

Baines watched Will Fletcher disappear around the bend in the village road before looking down at the newspaper beneath his arm. The words had not improved with familiarity.

There were moments when intelligence possessed all the intellectual pleasure of a difficult game, each observation fitting gradually against another until a pattern emerged from what had first appeared to be disorder. Baines liked that part. He liked finding the lie hidden beneath an unnecessary detail, watching a man betray knowledge he ought not to possess, or discovering that some trivial object everyone else had overlooked mattered more than the grand political declarations surrounding it.

This was not one of those moments.

Someone at Blackthorn had taken a private conversation concerning proposed arrests and placed it into the hands of men who might shortly find themselves facing soldiers. Whatever sympathy Baines possessed for reform, he could not pretend that such information was harmless.

He glanced towards Judith.

She still held the recovered letter Will had returned to her, though she had folded it into her basket and covered it with one gloved hand as if merely touching it required thought.

“You should return to Blackthorn,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed immediately. “Why?”

“Because I have something to do before I may follow.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a dismissal.”

“It was intended to sound exactly like a dismissal. I had hoped clarity might improve its success.”

“It has not.”

“Indeed, you surprise me.”

Judith studied him. “You are going to report this to Colonel Renforth,” she stated.

Baines sighed. “There are days when I regret your intelligence.”

“Only days?” she queried, her tone falsely sweet.

“Hours, principally,” he responded, “but occasionally minutes.”

She did not smile. “Will you tell him about me?”

The question was quietly asked, and he disliked how much he disliked it.

He had already made that decision once. “No.”

Judith’s gaze searched his face.

“I shall tell him there is a private route by which reformist correspondence travels through Newcastle, because that is relevant. I shall tell him I have satisfied myself that the material passing through it is not the military intelligence we are seeking. I shall not give him your name unless I am forced to do so.”

“Why?”

Baines could have answered with professional judgement. He had used that phrase before, and it remained defensible. Instead, he looked at her standing in the pale sunlight with determination in her grey-green eyes.

“Because I trust you,” he said.

Judith went very still.