Twenty-Seven

Peter’s pace increased the closer he got to home. If he were making excuses, he could blame it on any number of things—the dark clouds knuckling the horizon, the idea for a Locryn James short story he needed to jot down before he forgot it, the fact that no Penroses had been at home, so there’d been no reason to linger.

But he knew well it was because he hoped Rosemary had emerged from the cottage.

He was nearly jogging by the time he came out of the woods and onto the expanse of lawn that went by her cottage. Then he came to an abrupt halt when he spotted the man leaning against her back door. Average height, slender, in a grey suit of clothes at once impeccable and unremarkable. A bowler over silver-gold hair.

Peter drew in a breath and let his brows draw a frown. Not the bowler or hair he’d grown accustomed to seeing dogging his steps. So who was he, to stand so calmly outside Rosemary’s cottage? To look over at him without the slightest hint of surprise?

To come a step forward with a hand outstretched? “Good day, Mr. Holstein.”

“Good . . . good day.” Peter shook the hand, knowing his question must be on his face. “And y-you are?”

The man offered a smile as nondescript as his suit. “They call me V.”

Peter blinked. “Like the . . . letter?”

“Precisely.”

This was going to be an odd meeting, he suspected. “Succinct.”

V chuckled and motioned with an arm. “Would you walk with me, Mr. Holstein?”

He had no reason to refuse. Exactly. Though his gaze darted of its own will to Rosemary’s windows.

“Ah.” V adjusted his jacket and stepped away from the house. “You’ll find Miss Gresham isn’t within at the moment, I’m afraid. Though I daresay she’ll have followed me back and will burst upon us at any moment. I’m rather surprised she hasn’t stormed up already, in all honesty. Though she was a bit winded—did she forget to eat again today?”

Suspicion crouched on Peter’s shoulders. “Who . . . who are you? Her uncle—Pauly?”

V’s lips twitched. “Do I look like a Cockney barkeeper, Mr. Holstein?”

Not exactly. But Rosemary didn’t look like a Cockney barkeeper’s niece either. Nor, usually, did she sound like one. Until she did. And this man . . . he had that flat non-accent that spoke of a careful education meant to cover one’s native cadence.

Peter made no reply.

V chuckled and, hands clasped behind his back, led the way around the cottage. “I am not her uncle. I am her employer.”

That crouching suspicion dug claws into his shoulders. He had rather thought he was her employer. Currently, anyway. “P-Previously . . . you mean?”

“No. I mean I am the one who sent her to Cornwall, to Kensey Manor. To get me the answers I needed about you.”

Peter’s feet had brought him to the front edge of the cottage, but there they stopped. And grew roots. “I beg your p-pardon?”

V looked around him, as if expecting someone to come leaping out of the shrubbery. “You needn’t be put out about it, Mr. Holstein. She thought she was here to find evidence that you were disloyal to England and instead ended up—as I rather expected she would—your most strident defender. But I had to be certain, you understand. About your loyalties, and about your pastimes.”

She had . . . Peter’s breath seeped out. Not a chuff, but that tired hiss of the last of the steam escaping. Blast it, Gryff had been right.

Peter shook his head. “Why?”

V’s face creased into a perfectly pleasant, meaningless smile. “And there is the crux of the matter. England needs you, Mr. Holstein. Or rather—Mr. Hollow. I had to be sure you were he, and you’ve left such a convoluted trail of barristers that I couldn’t be certain I’d traced you properly back to you.”

It should have shocked him, to hear someone other than Gryff address him with his nom de plume. It should have appalled him.

But he could feel nothing. Not just now. Not about that. “England . . . has me. Already.”

V scanned the gardens again. And beyond. “One more minute, I think. So I’ll make this quick. Austria and Germany have declared war on Serbia—it will be in the papers tomorrow, I expect. Russia will declare war on them. From there, dominoes. Every major power in Europe will be at odds. This will be a war far different from those we’ve seen in the past. We’ll need to fight it differently as well.”

Dominoes. Peter put his hands in his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them.

Where was she? Why was she not here, butting in with her own explanation?

“The weapons are one thing—and they will be frightening enough. But this kind of war . . . it’s going to require more than new guns and ammunition, Mr. Holstein. It’s going to require changing the basic way our people think about it, and—ah, there he is.” V straightened, though Peter hadn’t thought him slouching before, and nodded toward the front of Kensey, where . . .

Mr. Arnold was emerging? Peter frowned.

V sighed. “I could not forestall this small interruption, much as I tried—your own fault, really, for sending that message to his company. But don’t be alarmed. The authorities are waiting even now in your outbuildings. Though do stay out of swinging range of that cane of his—he’s a blade within it, you know.”

“He—what?” And what message had Peter sent to his company? Peter hadn’t even known Mr. Arnold had a company. Unless . . . “Wait. You m-mean he is . . . is AGD?”

That made no sense at all. Why would Mr. Arnold, who was the most vocal man he’d ever heard against Germany, be buying up stock in a German steel mill? In his German steel mill?

The old man strode toward him far faster than he’d seen him move in a decade, his hand gripping the shaft of his cane but not using it for support. “Mr. Holstein!” he bellowed. “What is the meaning of this?”

He’d rather like to know the same. Uprooting his stubborn feet, Peter strode over the lawn between them. He didn’t know what he meant to say.

And needn’t have worried. The red-faced old man was at no loss for words. “I knew it! I always knew your family was still loyal to Germany, and this proves it! That you would sell to the Krupp concern—your steel will be used to make German battleships, is that what you want? You are worse than your grandfather!”

When Mr. Arnold pointed his cane at him, Peter halted a good ten paces away. Not because of the threat of a blade within—because it was the first time he really remembered seeing the handle. Usually Mr. Arnold held it so tightly. Or, when sitting, had the top angled toward himself. He had surely glimpsed it at some point over the years, but if so, he had never noted the design embossed in the gold.

The inverted triangle. The concentric circles. “You . . . d-did Mr. Jasper come . . . to you?”

Mr. Arnold shook. Not his outstretched arm, but all of him. “I went to him. I always knew your family was too loyal to Germany—making sure you were born there, preserving your citizenship. And then when you began visiting the king! You are a traitor. A weak, cowardly traitor. But I will not let you get away with it. You will sell that mill to me, so that I may at least mitigate the damage it does. Keep its steel from harming Britain. Perhaps arrange for sabotage, if I can. You will not sell to Krupp.”

Peter shook his head. Sabotage? Was he daft? If he tried to implement something like that, he would likely get people killed. “I am not . . . not selling to Krupp.” Or to GHH—though he’d had Gryff send messages out to all the bidders with both bits of false information, to flush out who AGD really was, whether they were part of one of those dominant concerns.

He certainly hadn’t expected this.

“You certainly are not.” Puffing out his chest, Mr. Arnold pointed with the cane again. “You will sell to me. Do you understand? Or my associate will tear your precious librarian limb from limb.”

“What?” V charged past Peter, gripped Mr. Arnold by the shirtfront. “My amusement with you has reached an end, old man.”

Policemen spilled from the woodwork, led by Constable Newth himself.

Peter sucked in a long breath. It was only a threat. He didn’t actually have her. He couldn’t actually have Rosemary; there was no way she’d let herself be caught by a couple of country boys whom Mr. Arnold had likely employed to do his dirty work.

The old man lifted his cane again, aiming it at V’s head.

His captor knocked it out of his hand with minimal effort and tossed the old man backward, into one of the bobbies, who steadied him—and gripped his arm to hold him still.

Arnold looked shocked at their audacity. “What are you doing? I am a loyal subject! I am trying to help England!”

V growled. “You are a criminal and a war-monger, along with your entire ridiculous brotherhood. Did you tell them that this so-called Ancient Order was of the old Austrian realm? Founded by your grandfather? Founded solely on the idea of hating Germany?”

The old man sneered. “A sentiment shared by plenty in London. People were begging to join. As anyone would, were they not a traitor like this coward. I should have told young Pomeroy to aim for him instead of a tree!”

Newth stepped forward, his face in hard lines. “You’re under arrest, Mr. Arnold. For arson, attempted murder—”

“Add charges of espionage to the list, Constable.” V narrowed his eyes at them.

The old man’s face mottled. “I would never!”

“Really? But you seem to care only for how things look. And you look ever so suspicious, Mr. Arnold. Trying to buy a German steel mill. Threatening a known friend of the king of England. And you are Austrian.”

“An old Austrian—I hate Germany!”

“Yes, well. Austria and Germany are one and the same these days. How do you think that will look to the courts?” V turned his gaze on the constable. “Jasper and his man—did you track them?”

Jasper was here? Peter’s blood went cold.

Newth nodded. “They went toward where Mr. Holstein’s property meets Mr. Arnold’s. I dispatched two men to follow.”

It was probably technically laughter that came from Arnold’s throat. But it sounded far more like venom would, if it were audible. “They’ll have her by now. And if I don’t come soon to tell them I’ve got the deed to the mill, they’ll kill her.”

No. It couldn’t be—but Peter’s feet didn’t agree. They leapt into motion even as his mind denied the possibility, speeding him over the lawn like the ever-gusting wind, through the wood full of elms and oaks and the occasional cabbage tree that had baffled her so. Toward that corner of the property where his land met Mr. Arnold’s—where the oak with the heart took up residence on the Holstein side. Where, a few minutes’ walk away, one would find the plum orchard he and Gryff had so disastrously robbed as boys.

Toward the woman who could apparently rob much more seriously. Much more successfully. The woman who had entered his life solely to steal his secrets.

He would have given them all to her had she but asked.

But there was no one at the tree. No indication of where she could be. Were he Locryn, he would be able to look at the ground and see intent in the scattering of leaves. Direction in the placement of twigs. He would take a glance and know exactly where she had gone from here.

Peter saw only leaves. Twigs. And the gleam of silver amid the litter.

Silver? He leapt toward it, snatched it up. It was the size and shape of a florin—but of course, not one. No, it was another of those blasted tokens of Mr. Arnold’s Ancient Order.

Footsteps pounded up behind him. Peter swallowed. “They . . . they have her. They really d-do.”

“She can handle herself, Mr. Holstein, I assure you. They may have grabbed her in a moment of weakness, but she’ll make them wish they hadn’t.”

But they had her—because of him.

V was barely breathing hard after his sprint. And he looked around exactly as Locryn would have done, as if he could see something beyond the obvious. Who knew there were really men who could do so?

He nodded to the north. Toward Mr. Arnold’s property. “What lies that direction? Anything that would aid them?”

“An . . . an orchard. A small shed.”

“A likely place to begin, then. But do tread carefully, Mr. Holstein—Jasper is likely livid.”

He started toward the property line—more slowly for the sake of quiet. “You know him?”

“Of him. He is ambitious, which is always dangerous. And a war-monger long before Arnold sank his claws in. You are not the only man of German heritage he has targeted—nor the only family’s records he had stolen from the Archives.” V’s lips, when Peter looked over at him, were twitching. “He will answer for that too. He thinks he got away with it, but he hired amateurs.”

Peter shook his head and faced the path before him again. “Unlike . . . unlike you?”

Rather than answer, V held up a hand, motioned ahead. A racket reached them, muted by distance and the whistle of the wind but quite obviously the sound of someone pounding upon wood. Rosemary, he’d bet, in the shed.

Two policemen came into view within another few steps, hunkered down behind a mass of scrub. They turned their heads when they heard them, and Peter recognized both—local men, though they lived in the next village. They weren’t likely to know the property all that well.

The younger of the two, with ginger hair peeking from his cap, nodded. “Four men, all armed with pistols. The sons of Pomeroy and Foote, that chap the constable said he’d been keeping an eye on, and one we’ve never seen. Well dressed.”

“Mr. Jasper.” V crouched down beside them.

“We saw them put the young lady in a shed. We hoped Newth would send reinforcements soon. Two guns to four didn’t seem good odds.”

“Three to four is doable though.” V drew a pistol from under his jacket and glanced at Peter. “I don’t suppose you have one?”

Locryn was never without his sidearm and machete—Peter could boast only a pencil in his pocket and a folded sheet of paper already half-scribbled upon. Unplanned inspiration was the only emergency he usually faced. “I don’t . . . don’t need one. I’ll be the . . . the distraction.” He met the gaze of the ginger-haired bobby. “You two can . . . can sneak around behind. I’ll . . . confront them. V will . . . cover me.”

The second officer peeked over the scrub. “Is there cover in that direction? We hesitated to venture beyond this point, not knowing what is past that rock outcropping.”

He could tell them, but it would be just as simple to show them. And so he motioned for them to follow him and led them at ninety degrees from the shed, through the bit of woods stretching from his land and then into the plum orchard.

Here the trees were neat and orderly, their golden fruit hanging a week or two from ripeness. Thanks to the slope of it, they could easily remain out of sight of the shed and make their way around, then head to the path that led up the hill from the Arnold house, toward the shed.

Rosemary’s banging was louder here, and punctuated with a stream of Cockney-flavored threats more creative than crude. Male curses stained the air too as Cornish voices told her to quiet down.

Peter motioned toward the path. “Give me . . . a few minutes. To get their atten . . . attention.”

They nodded and proceeded toward the shed, careful to stay out of sight. Peter turned back the way he’d come. And paused at the last tree in the orchard. When he’d been six, the limbs had seemed impossibly high. He’d had to climb up on Gryff’s shoulders to steal those unripe plums.

Today he had only to lift his arm and pluck one. He hadn’t known as a child that he’d no need to steal them—Mr. Arnold had told his family they could have whatever they wanted. Had always, always made himself seem to be such a good friend to the Holsteins.

And why? When all this time he suspected the worst of them? Hated them because of the country from which they hailed?

The plum he pulled off was beautiful, its flesh golden and dappled with red. But it was hard yet. It would be as sour as those stolen ones. He slipped it into his pocket along with the silver coin and hurried back to V.

He was greeted with a lifted brow. “What exactly is your plan, Mr. Holstein?”

Peter didn’t bother hunkering down again. He rather stepped past the scrub, back on the deer trail that would lead more or less to the shed. “Simple. Let them . . . think they’ve won.”

V drew in a long breath. “Be careful. England can’t afford to lose you.”

When this was over, he needed more of an explanation than that from the man. But for now, he had to free Rosemary from that dark little prison. He started forward with a whispered prayer, stepping on every twig and leaf he saw to warn them of his approach. Still, he doubted they could hear him over the din she was making.

They spotted him, though, the moment he cleared the rock outcropping and came into view. He held up his arms, away from his sides—even so, two of the four men promptly pointed their weapons at him. Jasper and his grey-haired lackey. The two local boys were occupied holding closed the door that shook with every pound from within.

Months had passed since Peter had last seen Jasper’s sneering face, and he’d rather hoped a few more would go by before he saw it again. The fine suit of clothes, the expensive hat that couldn’t cover the darkness in the man’s eyes. “Stop right there, Holstein!”

Peter could barely hear him over Rosemary, but he made it out well enough to obey.

Jasper turned his head just a bit, toward Foote. “Get her out of there so she’ll shut up!”

“But—”

“You heard me.”

Exchanging a wary look, Foote and Pomeroy obeyed. Slowly. They let off the door, flipped the latch. Rosemary came hurtling out, obviously not expecting the door to have moved. The men caught her by the arms, holding her so tightly it would no doubt bruise her arms.

Though to be fair, both men had a nice collection of scratches on their faces, proving Rosemary had not gone into the shed without a fight. He would bet their shins were sporting bruises as well, and any other place she’d managed to land a kick.

But she went silent and still when she spotted him. And perhaps the weapons aimed at him. Proof that she cared? Or that, like her employer, she thought him valuable to the country somehow?

His nostrils flared. “You have what you . . . what you want, J-Jasper. I gave . . . gave Arnold the deed. To the mill.”

Jasper snorted and shifted from one foot to the other. The pistol, gleaming silver and deadly, looked out of place in his hands. He was, despite his behavior just now, a gentleman, city-bred. His shoes weren’t built for tromping through the countryside, and perspiration darkened his jacket. He was a man with money, with power enough to make Peter’s life miserable in London. Why had he decided to focus it where he had?

“That’s what Mr. Arnold wanted—but not me. I won’t be happy until you’re out of England, Holstein, where you can’t fill the king’s ear with your peace nonsense anymore.” He relaxed his arm for a moment—or seemed to. But then he simply swung the gun around and pressed it to Rosemary’s temple.

Peter lunged forward a step, then stopped when the grey-haired man chuckled. As if inviting him to come farther, to test them.

Jasper’s lips twitched. “Here’s what you’re going to do. My man Fisher here is going to accompany you back to your house, where you will have ten minutes to pack a bag. He’s going to see you to a train, and then to a boat. I don’t much care where you go, but it’s going to be away from England—and there will be no point in your coming back. With the documentation I have against you, you’d be shuttled off to an internment camp, at the best. Imprisoned for espionage at the worst. So you will send me a wire as soon as you arrive in your new home. Knowing that each and every day you don’t, beginning tomorrow, this little woman here is going to lose a finger. And then we’ll move on to her toes. And if we run out of those—”

“Idiot.” Rosemary stood tall, straight, not struggling against the ruffians nor flinching away from the barrel of the gun. She managed to look defiant, proud as she turned his sneer back on him. “Do you really think he’ll give up his home to save me?”

Jasper pressed harder, forcing her head to angle. “I think he’d give it up to save anyone, even that stupid pickpocket in the village jail. Isn’t that right, Mr. Holstein?”

He wanted to glance past Jasper, to assure himself that the bobbies were as close as he thought they were. He caught only a glimpse of uniform, but surely he wouldn’t have seen even that if they weren’t in position. “Of . . . of course I would. A life . . . is worth more . . . than a house.”

“A noble sentiment that I’m afraid you won’t have the opportunity to prove.” V’s voice came from a good ways behind Peter—no doubt he’d just stepped out from behind the boulder.

Fisher’s aim shifted to V, Jasper’s to Peter.

The two policemen stole along the sides of the shed.

Peter met Rosemary’s gaze. He didn’t have the time to read anything within it. Only to widen his own, to yell, “Down!”

Then it was a blur. A shot from Fisher. Another from behind Peter. The policemen charged forward, tackling the local boys to the ground. Rosemary dived away.

And then Jasper moved again, swinging that arm back toward her. Pointing his gun at her again, and this time Peter knew he meant to fire. To hurt him however he could before he went down, and no doubt knowing it would hurt worse to shoot Rosemary than Peter.

He had no time to think, just to act. To pull the plum from his pocket and lob the unlikely missile at Jasper. It couldn’t do much damage—but it hit him squarely, hard, and made him flinch.

His shot went wild. And then in the next second Peter’s feet carried him forward, shoulder down much like young Tim’s had been when he’d rammed him in Mr. Arnold’s front hall.

Perhaps Jasper hadn’t brothers—or friends—to wrestle with as a boy. He oomphed at the collision, stumbled back, fell. The pistol went sliding out of his hand, and then slid farther still with the help of Rosemary’s half-boot.

“I suggest you stay right where you are.” V edged into Peter’s periphery, his pistol extended.

Though his lip curled, Jasper obeyed. “Defending him is futile. Even if he stays in England, he’ll end up relocated. He is a German.”

V’s lips curled up in a mean little smile. “You are as ignorant as you are amateur, Mr. Jasper. This man is a more loyal subject than you could ever hope to be.”

Footsteps pounded their way from the direction of Peter’s property—Newth must have dispatched more men to come and help them. Peter spared only a glance over his shoulder to verify and then straightened.

His gaze snagged on Rosemary again. Her hair was more down than up, the green linen of her dress stained brown by dirt and struggle, and shadows ringed her eyes.

Should he be angry with her? Disappointed, betrayed? He could feel none of that just now. Only profound relief that she was well. And so when she flew at him, his arms opened and then closed around her.

He held her close. Breathed in the lemon scent of her hair. “Are you . . . are you all right?”

She clung to him. “Thanks to you. Did you really save me with a plum?”

He chuckled, holding her tight and wishing this moment could last forever. Even as part of him knew it was a fool’s wish. “It’s . . . it’s all I had handy.”

“Locryn would be proud.”

And that was what made him a fool. She knew—had to have known, to have told Mr. V. And that couldn’t go unanswered. He set her back, stepped away.

And the light in her eyes went dim. “Right.” Her arms slipped back down to her sides, and she looked over his shoulder, toward where the sound of feet crunching over last year’s leaves filled the air.

The bobbies taking the thugs away. It took them a long moment to do so, to haul up the bleeding Fisher, the growling Jasper, the silent local boys who were no doubt wishing they’d chosen their side with more care. But eventually they were all tromping away, into the wind and over the leaves.

Except for one set of footsteps that came nearer instead. Peter didn’t have to look to know who it was. He kept his gaze leveled on Rosemary.

She lowered her chin and rubbed her hands against her soiled skirt. “What did you tell him, sir?”

V stopped somewhere behind Peter. “The truth, Miss Gresham. That you were here at my behest. For the good of England.”

The good of England. He said that so easily. “What is it . . . exactly . . . that you want me t-to do, V?”

“What you’ve been doing, Mr. Holstein. Write novels.”

Now he had to turn, to look the stranger in the eye and try to make sense of that. “I . . . planned to.”

V’s lips curved, just slightly, toward a smile. “Unless you decided you must sign up in some way or another. But we can’t allow that. The country—the world is going to need your words. Your stories and novels and novellas. They need Locryn James to show them the way to be a hero.”

Peter shook his head. “But—”

“You’re not the only one we’ll be asking. We’ll be approaching Wells, Conan Doyle—all the popular novelists, especially those with a strong readership in America.” The curve turned up a bit more. “We’re likely to need them, before this is all over. We’ve got to make them think now that it’s a cause worth dying for.”

Peter shifted from one foot to the other. “You mean t-to . . . to tell me what to write?”

V chuckled. “No, nothing so restrictive. We just may ask you, from time to time, to include a certain theme. The nobility of fighting for one’s country, for instance. Or, in the case of the females who cannot, of sending off their men to do it. If you are willing.”

Peter looked at this near-stranger opposite him. Glanced at the bedraggled woman who had become so much more. Listened to the ever-fading sounds of policemen advising villains to behave themselves and many footsteps leading them away.

And he sighed. “I would have . . . would have done . . . it anyway. With . . . without all this.”

V took a step back, hands clasped again behind him. “Well, we had to be sure of that, didn’t we? And now we are.” He took one more step back and pivoted halfway away. “Someone will be in touch, Mr. Holstein. And Miss Gresham—if you rethink your stance, do let me know. I hate to lose you.”

Lose her? Peter waited until he had vanished, until the sounds of everyone’s departure faded away entirely. Then, only then, did he turn to face her. “I believe . . . I believe you have something to tell me.”

Rosemary walked beside him, a foot away. She had thought perhaps it would be easier if they were moving.

She was wrong. Sighing, she rubbed her hands on her skirt again and fastened her gaze on the long, spiky leaves of the Cornish palm. She would miss this place when she was gone. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“I have f-found the . . . the beginning is often a g-good place.”

He was stuttering. Because of her. Rosemary turned her face away, not daring to look at his. Not now. “The beginning. I suppose that’s when I was eight. When my parents died and left me an orphan.”

How could he make one little exhale sound so . . . disappointed? “What ab—bout . . . all those siblings?”

She snapped off a twig as they walked by it, just to give her fingers something to worry. “I found Pauly first. Or he found me, rooting through his rubbish when I was nine. His wife wouldn’t let him take me in. So he left me a meal every day, when someone else didn’t steal it first. Then he found Barclay. Willa. We decided to stick together.”

He made no response, not that she could hear. Just kept walking beside her with steady, measured steps.

She might have cried again had she any tears left in her. “He helped us get a flat. It worked, for a while, until the building burned down. Lucy and Retta were both orphaned that night. So they joined us. Then the others over the years, as we found them. They are my family. Just . . . not by blood.”

“How did you . . . survive?”

She let the twig fall again. “The only way we could. We stole.”

A chuff. “That is . . . that is n-never the only . . . way.”

“You’ve never lived on the streets. You don’t know what it’s like.” She shouldn’t be so defensive about it—but it was one of those toes that was still cold. Beginning to tingle from the warmth, as Mrs. Teague would say, but not quite there yet. She huffed back at him and rubbed at her nose. “It was all we knew. And . . . and we were good at it. Good enough that it attracted some attention, apparently.”

From her periphery, she saw him shove his hands into his pockets. “V.”

Which led them to the heart of the matter as they emerged from the trees and into the heather and gorse that led the way to the cliffs in one direction, the house in the other. He stopped, and stopped her with a hand on her arm, and then she had to look up at him. To look and see the blue-green eyes that matched the sea where it crashed against the rocks, and the storms in them that matched the clouds rolling over it. “How m-much . . . how much was a . . . lie?”

She wanted to walk into his arms and hold him tight. She wanted to run down that path to the house, and past it, to where she wouldn’t ever have to face him again. She wanted . . . she wanted the words to be something other than what they were.

She lifted her arms away from her body. Let them fall. “I’m right-handed. I don’t wear spectacles. My name is really Rosemary Gresham, but I’ve never had a day’s proper education in my life. I’m not a librarian. I thought I might suffocate when I walked into that room of yours.”

His hands were still in his pockets. And the storm clouds were still swirling in his eyes.

She sniffed. “Mr. V told me I was here to find evidence against you—but I couldn’t. Because you really are the . . . the best man in the world. That’s the truth.” Maybe she did have a few tears left, because they burned, and she had to sniff again to restrain them. “I’m a thief—but I couldn’t steal your good name. That’s the truth too.”

His nostrils flared. “Is that . . . all?”

“No.” She couldn’t do this, she’d fall to pieces. Sucking in a deep breath that did nothing to help, she said, “I broke into your office the other day. Well, the door was unlocked. I didn’t break into the room—just your desk. I saw the manuscript. But I didn’t take it, I swear to you I didn’t. It isn’t there now, but that wasn’t me—and I only know it’s gone because I was making sure it was still secure, when I left you the note and your documents.”

Silence, but only for a beat. “I . . . I took it all out. So I c-could . . . give everything to you. Tell you. Who I am.” Another beat. “I didn’t . . . didn’t realize y-you already . . .”

And he made her feel more a villain than ever. She backed up a step, kept her gaze focused on the slope behind him, toward his house. “I’m sorry. That’s more the truth than anything. That and . . . and I wrote it all in the note. You can just read it.”

He didn’t move. “I d-don’t . . . don’t want to r-read it.”

She edged another step toward the path. Felt the return of last night’s gasps, even without last night’s sobbing. “Well then. It was—mostly just what I already said. And—and a bit about Barclay at the end—you can ignore that. Mr. V won’t really be going after him after all, not to arrest him. He apparently didn’t even know he worked the museum job with me.”

“The what?”

Much as she wanted to turn and run away, he deserved the chance to look her in the eye and tell her what he thought of her. “British Museum, four years ago. We . . . may have liberated an old German manuscript. Some religious text Luther had written. I had to learn German, a bit of it, to make sure I lifted the right one, and . . . Why are you looking at me like that?” Like she was a specter. Or a monster.

“That was . . . was you? My father . . . he took me to see it. When I was a b-boy. I remember when it . . . went missing.”

“Right, well . . .” She shrugged. “That was me. And Barclay. Mr. V threatened to send me to jail for it if I didn’t give him the information he wanted about you, and I couldn’t do that, so . . . so that’s what was in the note. That I couldn’t, and I was likely already arrested by the time you’d be reading it, and if you would just send a wire to Barclay—but you needn’t. Obviously.”

He just looked at her. And looked at her. And finally said, “Anything . . . else? In th—the . . . the note?”

He could read it when he got down there. Likely would, eventually. He’d know, eventually.

But he deserved this too. To know the truth, even if he despised her for it. “Just that . . . it wasn’t a lie. Anything else. All the things I wrote to you, all the . . . and last night. That definitely wasn’t a lie. That I’ve fallen in love with you, and that I’ve changed, and that I don’t want to be the person I was anymore. And . . .” And still he just stood there. “And won’t you say something?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and he took his hands out of his pockets. “I . . .” He gestured, though he didn’t move any closer. “Y-You . . .” And then he shook his head, and he lifted one finger in that way he’d done her first days here. And he dashed off, like he hadn’t had to do in months, with that look on his face that said his tongue was in knots.

She followed, part of her wanting to yell at him that he’d forced her to just say what was in the note, so he ought to do the same, rather than writing one.

But that wasn’t fair. Writing was who he was, how he best communicated. If he had to write his response, write the words that would send her out of his life, then . . . then she would let him.

He was charging into Kensey while she was still picking her way over the flat granite stones marking the path, and she sighed and debated. She couldn’t go back in there, where she’d have to face Mrs. Teague and Grammy. And there were all those bobbies milling about the front. She couldn’t see much of what was going on, but it looked like Mr. V was shaking the hand of one.

She headed for the cottage, where her valise waited by the door. She’d wait with it. She’d let him write his say, and then she’d leave.

The cottage welcomed her, warm and cozy and not hers. It smelled of the tea Mrs. Teague had made, of the fairings Grammy had sent over.

She picked up one. The thought of eating it still made her stomach turn, but she’d need something for the road.

She’d go back to London—she had nowhere else. Home to her family and their tiny little flat and then . . . She’d try to find work. Honest work. With a seamstress, she supposed, even if she would be miserable in half a day. Jenny would give her a recommendation, she was sure, and . . .

Footsteps hurried along the garden path.

She set the biscuit down again and turned. Stepped back outside.

Peter stopped an arm’s width away. Held out one of those folded rectangles of white.

It looked like a snake, ready to bite her. But she made herself reach out and take it. Drew in a long breath. Let it out. And opened it.

I love you, Rosemary Gresham. And I can think of no greater honor than to have you as my wife.

“Oh!” She lowered the note, pressing a hand to her lips.

He was on a knee before her, reaching for her hand. She gave it to him. And told that ridiculous sob trying to escape that she had no more tears left, so it had better go away. “How can you? How can you want me, knowing what I am?”

He kissed the knuckle where Mrs. Teague had retied the bandage. “That’s not . . . not who you are. It’s just . . . something you did.”

“But—but I’m not the right kind of girl for you, even so. I’m a street rat. I know nothing of your world.”

And yet his eyes gleamed. At her, for her. “And I . . . I love that about you.”

Blast, but her nose felt all stuffy again. She gripped his hand and sniffed. “But I’ll change things—you have to know that too. If you make me mistress of a place like this, I can’t just let things run as they’ve always done.”

And now the corners of his lips turned up. “I’m counting on it.”

She tugged on his hand. “Get up, you idiot. How in the world am I supposed to kiss you if you’re all the way down there?”

He got up, grinning, and stepped close.

She framed his face. But didn’t kiss him quite yet. First she had to look deep into those eyes. “Are you quite serious? Even though I’m the least suitable woman you could possibly choose?”

He pulled her closer. Swallowed. “You’re the . . . the only woman I would . . . I would ever choose. If you’ll . . . have me. Holstein is . . . is not exactly a popular name . . . just now.”

She ran her fingers over his cheek, along his jaw. Over that cleft in his chin. “It’s the noblest name in the world. I’d be honored to take it.”

He rested his forehead against hers, but still she saw his smile. “Then it’s yours.”