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When she turned to stride away, Richard Owen thrust out an arm to block her. “Mrs. Tarrant, where are you going?”
Isabella side-stepped him. “To see the colonel and Sheridan Ingram.”
“You don’t want to do that.” His voice had darkened.
She stopped. “I don’t?”
“You don’t.”
“Mr. Ingram’s letter accused him of adultery.”
“Among other nefarious deeds.”
“Such as yours?”
He nodded.
“I need more answers, Mr. Owen.”
“Not those answers, Mrs. Tarrant.”
“Then I will speak only to the colonel. You look around, Mr. Owen, for someone you’ve only half-seen and not remembered. An older woman. A secretary or filing clerk. Someone who worked in an office you reported to.”
As she headed to find Col. Werthy, to task him with lying to her about his letters, she realized the unknown older woman theory didn’t work for accusing Mr. Owen of spying for the Germans. Why accuse him of that? What grudge might this unknown person have against him?
Did they merely want to ruin his reputation? That was bitter hatred, born of a personal grudge, a need to strike back ... because no other means of retaliation was available.
Were they trying to ruin Sheridan Ingram’s reputation? Threatening him with exposure for adulterous affaires as well as being a spy. Isabella supposed more ammunition would be needed to ruin the son of a wealthy financier like Hyatt Ingram.
Richard Owen had a double accusation: spy and traitor.
What would be the second accusation against Werthy?
Then she saw a froth of white on a deck chair, white string coming from a quilted bag that held a skein of yarn, and Isabella knew she already had all the pieces she needed: an overlooked secretary of a secretive office in wartime France. A bitter mind masked by frippery talk. On this trip because she was forced from a position she must have relished. Three men from her past, either by coincidence or by plan traveling together on this Mediterranean voyage. Their future bright with potential while she had only long, disappointing years before her.
Miss Swandon’s crochet hook flashed in and out.
Isabella stopped at the foot of her deck chair.
The elderly woman looked up with a beaming smile. “Mrs. Tarrant! Isn’t it a wonderful day?”
She sank down on a neighboring chaise, sitting to face Miss Swandon. The quilted workbag rested on the deck between the chairs. Isabella spotted a notebook with a pencil tucked in it. She took the notebook out of the bag and idly flipped the pages, filled with writing that dashed across the pages, strong lines crossing the T’s, underlining certain words.
Miss Swandon stopped her work. Her lips compressed, creating deep lines slashing down from the corners of her thin mouth. “That’s private, Mrs. Tarrant. My private writing. My ideas.”
“Planning your next letter, Miss Swandon?”
The crocheted square crumpled when the spinster lowered her hands to her lap. Her watery eyes shut briefly then opened to glare at Isabella. The anger wasn’t as powerful as Richard Owen’s, but it was there, deep and bitter, eating away like acid. “How much do you know?”
“How many letters were you planning to write?” she countered. “I suppose the last three letters would be to The Times in London, after you made them squirm.”
“Do you know—?” She stopped, for her voice had spiraled up. When she started again, her voice was lower and hoarse, the anger under control. “Do you know what they did?”
“Nefarious deeds for their country.” She used Richard Owen’s words to avoid specific details. “I may not condone what they had to do, but it was war. Hopefully, it brought about the ceasefire more quickly.”
“That’s one thing it did,” a man said.
Isabella looked around and saw Werthy at the foot of the chaise longue. Behind his shoulder stood Richard Owen.
“I won’t talk to you.” Miss Swandon’s voice shook.
“As long as you send no more letters.” Werthy perched on the deck chair’s footrest. “I am saddened to hear that you are leaving the ship in Egypt, Miss Swandon.” Iron hardened his voice. Isabella was glad she couldn’t see his glass-clear eyes.
“My plans take me—.”
“It might be better,” he interrupted, voice smooth, “if you did leave then. Or have you forgotten the agreement you signed when you retired from your position with Sir George? No mention, anywhere, at any time, of anything.”
The woman didn’t want to answer. She bit her compressed lips. Her eyes darted around, but eventually she bowed her head. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“Then we know your plans, don’t we?” Werthy’s palm slid under Isabella’s elbow and pressed upward. They stood, and he confiscated the notebook. “I will keep this. Miss Swandon, good afternoon. Mr. Owen will escort you to your cabin. I do not expect to see you again.” Then he steered Isabella from the deck chairs.
She had a glimpse of Miss Swandon stuffing the crochet willy-nilly into the quilted bag, then Werthy was zooming her along the deck, past the youths at shuffleboard and the chatter of girls who cheered them on, past the young lovers mooning in the bright sunshine, past the couples strolling along the deck, and to the railing beyond the stairs to the bridge. There they stopped.
And he stared over the waters, the notebook turning and turning in his hand.
She thought he would fling it overboard, but he didn’t.
When he eventually looked at her, those glass-grey eyes were hooded. “Owen said you knew we were spies.”
“And you tried to deceive me. You claimed you didn’t receive a letter. He said you received two.” She paused, but he said nothing. She hit him with the next point that maddened her. “How many nights has Miss Swandon sat across from you at dinner? Unrecognized? Unnoticed? For a trained spy, Werthy, you are remarkably unobservant.”
The shadow left his eyes. He had the gall to grin. “I was in the office only a few times, and I paid her no heed. My error. In future I will not make that mistake. We men,” he added blandly, with never a cringe, “are distracted by pretty faces.”
Isabella rolled her eyes and straightened away from the railing.
“Wait. How did you know?”
“I guessed.” Never would she share the disparate clues she’d put together: learning crochet in France, personal secretary to an unassuming man who made deadly decisions daily, and forced into retirement after the war. There were other clues, miniscule, but hearing those three, the important three, Werthy would laugh at her. “When I saw her, watching Richard Owen, whom she shouldn’t know, everything clicked.” She motioned to the notebook. “What will you do with that?”
“In the wrong hands, I think this information would be dangerous. The ship has a furnace. I’ll throw it in myself.” He tucked it inside his jacket then withdrew his cigarette case, silver flashing in the sunlight.
With a nonchalant cast to her voice, she said, “Miss Swandon is not the person who wrote the letter to me.”
Werthy winced. “No. The handwriting is different. Any ideas for your own pen pal?” He selected a thin brown cigarillo.
Isabella gave a crooked smile. “That might be fixed if you would spread your flirtations a little more widely rather than dancing every night with a young brown-eyed blonde.”
“But Savina is lovely,” he protested, a mock light in his eyes.
“And wealthy.” She watched him strike a match before she added, “A double danger.”
“Triple.” Col. Werthy shook out the match then blew smoke into the wind. “I think she might be mad.”
