Page 55 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
“How does she convey them to France?” asked Langley. “She has couriers here in England?”
“One she told me about,” Clive said. “Perhaps there are more, but I doubt she knows them all.”
“Who is the one?” Halsey pressed him.
Clive gave his first sad laugh of the morning. “A smuggler. Evidently the best. Very successful at running the blockades. He brought Giselle across the Channel last autumn. He runs many a gauntlet through the lines and brings with him news of all types. Useful man. It was one of his whom Giselle was to meet one night in Brighton. But he never appeared. Arrested he was, by revenuers, and so she never heard from any of his men again.”
“Who is this smuggler?” Langley asked.
“A fellow by the name of Jacques Durand.”
Halsey shook a finger. “I’ve heard of him. French. An aristo. A prince of the blood. Bourbon, maybe? Hates the little emperor with a blind passion.”
Langley frowned. “Does Giselle know that you work for Mulgrave and the Foreign Office?”
“No.” Clive had kept that from her. It was prudent. What she did not know, she could not reveal under torture. “The fewer people who know a secret, the safer it is from harm. But to the moment here, we have work to do. Three men to track.” He shot up from his chair, groaning as the pain in his ribs doubled him over.
“Hell,” Langley cursed. “Are you sure you are able?”
“I’ve already searched a few clues. After the attack, I went downstairs.”
“What? How? You look ragged, old man.” Halsey looked skeptical as to Clive’s health. “Do sit down.”
Clive could not. “I know, I know. But time is fleeting for Giselle. So I caught my breath this morning, and I hurried to dress. I went downstairs to summon the manager and I demanded he call his staff together. As I suspected, one was missing. A footman whom he’d recently hired had appeared at his regular time last night at eleven. But then this morning at five forty, he was nowhere to be found. The key to my rooms was missing from the front desk, too.”
“Does the manager know where this fellow lodges?” Langley asked.
“He does. I had him hire a hack for me straight away, and he and I both went north to the outskirts, to an old inn where the man told him he lived. The owner of the pub told us his lodger had paid his bills and left with his belongings last night. He also had three friends. French, they were. Not a word of English among them.”
Halsey frowned. “Did the innkeeper have any idea where they were headed or what they planned next?”
“They spoke of taking a packet out of Hastings,” Clive said.
“Bah! Must be a smuggler’s boat. But why Hastings?” asked Langley. “Wouldn’t you want to bypass the thickest part of the blockade? Why not go to the North Sea, where fewer ships of the line patrol the waters?”
“Hastings,” Halsey mused. “We need more than this mention of a trip out of Hastings. But what? What? Wait… Let us consider if this is anything to do with that bookshop business.”
“I see no relationship of this to the Hastings drawings remaining in the bookshop. Unless the agent who was to take them has been deterred…” Langley speculated, his eyes widening.
Halsey nodded. “Or knows the drawings or the site have been discovered or compromised.”
“And who would know that?” Clive asked himself, and stared atthe others. “Only a French agent? Of course! A coordinator. One who has been living here, working here, learning the coastal geography. One who has enough agents in their employ to monitor the bookshop and trace who put them there or who designed them. Dear God. Could that be true? A master French agent in Hastings works among us?”
Halsey grumbled. “It’s what I have feared for so long. I’ve my agents following so many of them, but any in Hastings escape me.”
“Who might know?” Clive asked, frustrated, as he paced to the window and back. But he halted. The forces set against his darling Giselle set his mind reeling. “Lord Ashley?”
“Let’s go to him. If we must, we’ll go over him to Scarlett Hawthorne,” Halsey muttered. “We must ask them. Even if they have no idea of a French agent in Hastings, both will want to know what has happened to Giselle.”
Langley grimaced. “All the more reason to consult them.”
Halsey sniffed. “God knows, I’ve tried to negotiate with Miss Hawthorne. Stunning, but prickly woman.”
“To save her own agent,” Clive declared, “she’ll want to help us.”
*
Clive and Langleyclimbed down from their hired traveling coach that evening at seven twenty.
