Page 82
She considered her uncle. “Uncle could not preserve a false secret if you nailed it inside his desk.”
“He would also have been unlikely to call me here only to potentially implicate himself. We therefore test Cranford, Sir George and Lady Beckenham.”
“None of the others?” Judith frowned.
“They are less likely, and we are taught to concentrate on the more probable first.”
“It would seem a reasonable philosophy.”
“I possess very few philosophies, but I am attached to all of them.”
They spent the next quarter-hour constructing the bait.
Lord Cranford would hear that a cavalry troop travelling through Newcastle had received sudden orders to continue north towards Glasgow and reinforce the approaches to the city.
Sir George would hear that the same troop had been redirected west to secure the Carlisle road, where the government feared English radicals might attempt to join the Scottish strike.
Lady Beckenham would be told that no reinforcement was intended at all; instead, a small mounted force would remain near Newcastle because Whitehall believed the greater threat lay in northern English manufacturing towns.
None of the statements was entirely impossible, but only one was true. Most importantly, each could be identified by destination.
Time would reveal the traitor—a commodity of which they had little.
CHAPTER 11
Baines knew something had changed before Sir Lionel reached the breakfast table.
It was not that his host’s appearance betrayed any particular alarm, for Sir Lionel was properly dressed—his cravat neatly arranged. He greeted Lady Stanhope, apologized to Lady Dunsmore for nearly stepping upon one of her spaniels, and took his customary place at the head of the table without attracting any particular notice. Only then, while sorting through the collection of letters and newspapers beside his plate, did he glance towards Baines.
It was a brief look, but Baines had spent too many years watching men attempt to conceal unwelcome intelligence to mistake it. He lowered his coffee cup.
Across the table, Judith glanced at him. He had done nothing beyond setting down his cup, yet somehow she must have caught an alteration in him and followed his attention towards her uncle. When she looked back, she lifted one brow in silent inquiry. How did she do that?
Baines ignored the question in her eyes and reached for the toast, hoping she might accept the gesture as evidence that nothing of consequence had occurred. Judith watched him butter it with unnecessary attention.
“You are going to tear the bread,” she said.
Baines looked down at his toast. “I have been buttering bread without assistance for a number of years, you know.”
“I meant, pretending that nothing has happened.”
Lady Dunsmore paused in her repast, a muffin halfway to her plate. “Has something happened?”
“Apparently not,” Baines said. “Miss Finch has merely developed an alarming interest in my breakfast.”
“I have no interest whatsoever in your breakfast. I am interested in why you have been watching my uncle.”
Sir Lionel, who had only just taken a sip of coffee, lowered his cup.
Lady Stanhope looked from Judith to Baines and then towards Sir Lionel. “Now I am interested in this odd conversation.”
“As am I,” Lady Dunsmore said as she slipped a piece of bacon beneath the table to the more persistent of her spaniels. “Although I should like it noted that I was perfectly content before Judith mentioned it.”
“Nothing has happened,” Sir Lionel assured them.
“That is precisely what Major Baines is pretending,” Judith said.
Baines regarded her across the table. There were moments when he suspected Judith Finch could detect a conspiracy from the manner in which a man reached for the salt. “You have a remarkable capacity for discovering intrigue where a less suspicious woman might see only buttered toast.”
