“Idiot,” she told him with affection, “you won’t get it out like that, it’s too far back.” She knelt and nudged him to the side with one hand while she reached beneath the settee with the other, feeling for the ball. Out in the entry hall the bell beside the front door rang and Frisque gave the low rumbling woof he used when threats felt close at hand, his louder barking always kept reserved for challenging those things that were too far away to answer him. She stroked his head and shushed him, warning him to silence, for she did not wish to be a nuisance to their host and hostess. Frisque gave one more grumble but obeyed, and when the door into the drawing room was opened he made no sound, though his ears twitched forward.

“…comfortable in here,” Sir Redmond Everard was saying as he showed an unseen guest into the room. A woman, from the rustle of her gown and petticoat; the click of smaller heels across the floor.

Mary, feeling anything but comfortable, debated what to do. They had not seen her crouched behind the tall settee, and as embarrassing as her position was she knew she should stand and announce her presence before they began to—

“There,” Sir Redmond said, “now we have privacy.”

Behind the shelter of the settee Mary sank back on her heels and felt her cheeks flame as she tried hard not to think of why a married man might wish to be in private with a woman not his wife. If she had felt uncomfortable before, it had been nothing to the level of discomfort she felt now, and she could see no easy end to it that let her keep her dignity, although her mind was whirring in its search for one.

Sir Redmond told the woman, “I’d expected Mrs. Farrand.”

“Mrs. Farrand has been taken, sir.” The woman spoke in English with a pleasant lilt. Her voice was clear and confident, and sounded young. “When last she crossed to Dover she was met there by a Messenger who had been sent to stop her and arrest her as a spy, and she’s been taken now to London to await examination.”

“She’s in prison?”

“Aye, sir.”

“That is most unfortunate.”

The woman’s voice acquired what Mary took to be the slightest edge. “You underestimate her, sir, if you imagine Mrs. Farrand will tell anything of value to the government, however ill they treat her.”

“Then you know her?”

“Aye, I do, sir.”

“And have you brought any proof of this?”

“I have. My introductions, which were given me when I passed through Boulogne.”

There was a pause, and the faint crinkle of a paper being smoothed along its folds. Sir Redmond commented, “From Father Graeme and from General Gordon. These are both good men. How do you come to know them, Mistress—?”

Clearly he was waiting for her name, but she did not supply it. Her reply was simply, “You’ll forgive me, but as Mrs. Farrand was herself so recently betrayed, I would prefer to keep my own connections private. They are good men, as you say. And I do know them, as their letters prove.”

“Well then, that must suffice.” Sir Redmond’s voice held admiration and amusement. “Come then, give me what you’ve carried all this way. Unless you’ve got them in your stays, as Mrs. Farrand always carried them? Should I turn round?”

“They are not in my stays, and I can do the turning round, if you will give me but a moment.” She had evidently sewn whatever they were both referring to within the lining of her gown or petticoat, for Mary heard the rustling of the fabric as the woman turned, and then the tearing of a seam, and the crinkle of paper again.

Frisque, growing bored, reached with his paw again beneath the settee’s legs in an attempt to gain his ball, and Mary pressed more firmly on his head to quiet him and hold him to his silence while she closed her eyes and sent a wish to any fairy godmother who might be like to listen that Sir Redmond and his guest would soon conclude their business—or that a convenient hole might open in the floor beneath herself and Frisque, and so end her embarrassment.

The woman said, “There are five letters, and the latest cipher, for the one that Mrs. Farrand carried with her is no longer safe to use.”

“Of course. I’ll—”

What he was about to say was interrupted by a fall of footsteps in the corridor, and then the door swung open and Sir Redmond’s wife exclaimed, “Oh, do excuse me, dear, I did not know we had a guest.”

“My wife,” Sir Redmond made the introductions, “this is Mistress—”

“Jamieson,” the woman now replied, in friendly tones, after what Mary thought had been the faintest pause. “It is an honor, Lady Everard.”

The knight said, “Mistress Jamieson is a great friend of Mrs. Farrand.”

“Ah, dear Mrs. Farrand,” said his wife. “I have not seen her for some weeks. Does she not travel with you?”

“She is indisposed, just at the moment,” was the younger woman’s answer, and Sir Redmond’s wife made sounds of sympathy that made it plain she was not privy to her husband’s business and was unaware that Mrs. Farrand—and indeed the woman she was being introduced to—were in fact clandestine couriers.

The younger woman carried on, “But knowing I would be in this vicinity, she asked me if I’d stop and ask your husband for a letter that attests to the good character of her son Thomas, who does seek to marry a young lady at Calais whose father yet requires convincing.”

“Yes, of course. For Mrs. Farrand, anything. You’ll do that for her, won’t you, darling?”