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It might be a simple substitution cipher.

She tried the usual method of which words and letters were most common, but when English words didn’t spring to life, she realized that it depended on which language the message was in.

French, she supposed correctly—but after half an hour’s work the message proved to be a love letter!

A shockingly explicit one, describing in detail Restive’s prowess in bed and the writer’s desperate hope that the war would end soon, so she could lie with her incomparable lover once again.

Well! How, Lucinda wondered, did Restive manage to support his mistress and illegitimate child in France with a war going on? Perhaps he sent payment via the smugglers, and meanwhile, he disported himself disgracefully in England.

Seemingly, he wasn’t a traitor after all. And yet, why did he protect that disreputable lad?

Ah, well, she thought, gentlemen often associated with people they would never introduce to their mothers and sisters. She shouldn’t be surprised.

She stood, stretching, and rang for Jane to help her undress.

She would stick to her original plan, bring the book to Lord Restive tomorrow, and warn him about Mother.

He wasn’t likely to suspect that she had decoded the message.

Hopefully she could refrain from blushing at the thought of that letter.

“What’s this piece of paper?” Jane asked as she tidied the room and folded Lucinda’s clothing. The folded bookmark had fallen to the floor.

“I’m using it to mark my place,” Lucinda said, taking it and glancing idly at the columns of sums. Restive’s mistress, she mused, must be somewhat educated to know how to put a message in code.

Also, her grammar and spelling—in both English and French—were correct.

Evidently, she was teaching her young son how to do his sums.

Lucinda glanced idly at the figures. A few were multiplication, not addition, and it was one of those that struck her.

Whatever Marie might be teaching Davy, he wasn’t learning it.

She knew without even thinking that 15 times 3 equals 45 – not 72.

The other multiplication problem was incorrect, too.

She totaled one of the shorter columns of addition in her head. Again, the result on the paper was incorrect.

To think she hadn’t even noticed something so obvious!

Papa must be turning in his grave at her inattention.

A numerical code—one, she was willing to wager, related to the book Marie had recommended he read.

The clues were right in front of her, and she’d been distracted by a lascivious love note. How shameful!

“Are you well, Miss Lucinda?” Jane asked.

“Yes, perfectly,” she said, folding the paper and putting it back in the book. “I was thinking of my sister and hoping she’s happy with her Humphrey.”

Jane sighed her agreement, and Lucinda waited impatiently until the maid bade her goodnight and left.

Luckily, she had a copy of Wollstonecraft’s book—hidden under a floorboard, for Mother had strictly forbidden her to read it.

On her mettle now, Lucinda copied the numbers of the first few sums on the front, from top to bottom, including the incorrect totals, and matched them with the first letters of the corresponding words in Wollstonecraft’s introduction.

Nothing coherent emerged, so she tried left to right instead, then the reverse from top to bottom.

Still nothing. She pondered, then added the columns again and realized that some of the totals were correct. This time, she varied the direction of deciphering depending on whether the total of any given column was correct.

Yes! Words, barely recognizable but vaguely familiar, began to appear.

The message proved to be in Anglo-Saxon—very old English, so old that most people wouldn’t be able to read it.

It was sheer happenstance—or luck at having such a wonderful, educated father—that she had not only read some Anglo-Saxon in the past, but this very passage!

She had to account for the modern version of a few letters used in Anglo-Saxon, but otherwise the message was a well-known verse from the Bible, the one about the man who built his house upon rock.

Except...the passage had been further altered by the addition of a few words inserted here and there. The first was cymru , which she didn’t recognize. The others, which translated as jolly wench , moonrise , and Beltane eve —she did.

She didn’t understand the significance of the jolly wench, but the other clues seemed clear: something important was about to happen at moonrise on the evening before Beltane, which was commonly known as May Day.

Something secret, almost certainly dangerous, most likely harmful to England. And only a few days away!

Only one course of action lay open to her—to foil the traitors and spies. No doubt the young lad who’d stolen a ride in her coach was also involved.

She took a fresh half-sheet of foolscap, copied the notes from Marie in what she hoped resembled the woman’s handwriting, and then covered the rest of the paper, both sides, with sums, some in a childish hand, some not.

Sums which meant absolutely nothing at all.

R estive woke early. There was no time to waste. He’d had his valet pack a small valise for him last night. He would hasten to London in his curricle; the valet would follow later in the traveling carriage.

But first he had to retrieve the damned book with the coded message. He took another of Molière’s plays from his bookshelf to offer as an exchange, had one of the grooms saddle a horse, and set off down the lane.

Mist still lay in the hollow where the lane met the road. A small figure—a woman—on a pony emerged out of the mist, gasped, and pulled her pony to a halt.

Restive stopped as well, but not too close. “Lucy?” he said, appalled. What sort of trap was this? Her notion of vengeance? He resorted to formality. “Miss Belair, that is.”

He realized then that she appeared almost as aghast as he. “Heavens, you startled me,” she said, a tremor in her voice. “But this is most fortunate. I brought your book.”

She pulled it out of a pocket in her cloak and urged her pony forward. “Here it is. I have also come to warn you.”

He stowed the book in his own pocket with a word of thanks. “Warn me of what?”

She flushed. “My mother. She means to force you to marry me. It won’t work, of course, because I shall persist in my refusal to do so. But it would be better if you were away from here, in London perhaps, or better, the Outer Hebrides. She will eventually give up if you are nowhere to be found.”

He stared, unable to take her words at face value. Was someone hiding around the bend, ready to pounce? But her father was dead, her brother was on the Continent, and the idea that her mother might be out at dawn to trap him was too absurd.

It hardly mattered. He had the book. Time to leave.

“Thank you,” he said flatly, adding, “It was most kind of you to let me know.” Which was sheer nonsense.

She huffed. “Unbelievable. You still think I’m trying to trap you! How conceited and—and utterly idiotic can you possibly be?”

“I’m not conceited,” he said, taken aback. “I don’t rate my personal attributes, such as they are, as better than those of other fellows. If I am rude, it’s from bitter experience. Do you imagine I enjoy being pursued for my money and title?”

She cocked her head to one side. “No, I expect it’s worse than annoying. But surely you—” She shrugged. “Oh, never mind. Good day, my lord.” She turned her pony, and it was then that he noticed the valise lashed clumsily to her saddle.

“Wait, Miss Belair. That valise… Where are you going?”

O h, drat, drat, drat! thought Lucinda. Just when she’d been about to escape! Her heart thudded as if he could read her mind and knew of her intent.

Which was absurd. How could he possibly know? “I-I fail to see what concern that is of yours,” she said.

“None, I suppose, but a valise usually means a journey.” He eyed her, and those sardonic eyes bored into her. She shuddered. Did he suspect that she knew ? He might be idiotic about some things, but he wasn’t a stupid man.

His lips quirked up slightly. “Are you perhaps running away from home?”

Amused, was he? “I’m not running away ,” she retorted. “I’m taking the London stage to stay with my old governess.”

“Surely your mother won’t allow you to travel on the stagecoach,” he said.

She glared at him. “I am not a child, Lord Restive. I may go wherever I please. Miss Pringle has often asked me to visit her, and therefore I shall do so.”

“I can’t say I blame you for running away,” he said, “given your mother’s plans, but a young lady must not travel unescorted, particularly to London. The stagecoach is slow, and it may well be after dark when you arrive. Where does Miss Pringle live?”

“In Kensington. I am no stranger to London,” she said. “I am perfectly capable of taking a hack.”

“I daresay you are,” he said, “but I would be a dastard indeed—far worse than you evidently believe me to be—to allow you to travel to London alone.” He paused, then heaved a sigh. “I’ll take you there.”

How dare he! “So kind,” she retorted, “but no, thank you, I’ll make my own way.”

“My dear girl, don’t be absurd. I assure you, I have no designs on your virtue.”

“I know that.” I suspect you of having other designs entirely. Treasonous ones . “It’s just that—that I don’t wish to be beholden to you.”

“I’m going to London and was planning to do so even before your warning, so it’s no imposition,” he said. “But we’d best hurry, for if we are pursued and caught, you’ll be in a worse fix than anything your mother can invent.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said. “I don’t intend to marry. It’s you who’ll be in a fix, so why risk taking me?”

“Because, believe it or not, I have a conscience, and it doesn’t run to letting the sister of my friend go to London alone.”