Page 39 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

‘I think Cooper does, but Crawford is a second cousin, and he’s made a promise to his mother to guide the younger man’s path in the army. I couldn’t think of a worse guardian myself. This was the point that the government was concerned enough to send me out and where I added myself to the number.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘There was no entrance exam, just willingness to agree with them. I gave a few stirring speeches at a debate club we all attended, the theme on the anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille being the brotherhood of man and the march of progress, and I was welcomed to the fold. I assured my place by presenting myself as an admirer of Political Justice and Rights of Man .’

‘That’s not hard to do as they are both fine pieces of political writing,’ said Jacob.

‘Oh, I agree. In a perfect society where men wish each other well and don’t feel any evil passions, such things would come to be.’

‘Then why hound them?’

‘It is not the theory that poses the problem, but the methods people choose to realise the goals. Ask the late Prime Minister.’

‘We don’t need to. We were there,’ said Dora.

Moss threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘I wouldn’t advertise that fact if I were you. Those flags against your names might change colour.’

‘I hope you are joking,’ said Dora.

‘I hope so too.’

‘What about Wright?’ asked Jacob, returning them to their subject. ‘How does he fit in?’

‘A late addition to our circle. He and Barton are both from a manufacturing background and neither are short of funds. When he turned up in Ambleside this summer, he was immediately regarded as a natural recruit, and a friend of liberty. He says he wants to write because his father has a great admiration for literature and would like nothing better to have a man of letters in the family; but, sadly for Wright senior, the evidence points to this being a delaying tactic to put off the day when Junior is to join the family business. If he has written anything longer than a limerick in his life, then I’m Shakespeare.

’ Moss looked down at the dregs in his empty flagon.

‘And I fear he might’ve been permanently silenced. ’

‘And who are you, Mr Moss?’ Dora asked. ‘You seem to know a lot about us, but we know next to nothing about you. We know you are a government agent– a spy– but what makes a man want to pass his time in such a dangerous fashion, pretending to be something he isn’t?’

His dark eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘That question from an actress? Tut-tut, Miss Fitz-Pennington.’

‘You already said there was no applause or bouquets in this for any of us, so why do it?’

‘Would you believe it if I said that it was because I felt it my patriotic duty?’

Dora studied him more closely, his mobile features, his saturnine looks.

Her first thought was how she would assign a role to him.

In her troupe, he would be cast as all the devilish charmers or charming devils.

He didn’t have that air of righteousness that she associated with the most zealously patriotic. ‘It would strain my credulity.’

‘You didn’t mention where you went to university,’ said Jacob suddenly.

‘No, I didn’t, did I?’ Moss shook the last drops of ale into his cup.

‘Yet you are clearly an educated man, probably educated beyond the average clerk in the Alien Office. That suggests you are a dissenter, a Roman Catholic, or something else?’

‘Correct, I am something else.’

‘Moss.’ Jacob tapped his fingers on his thigh.

She loved it when she could see his brain working through and discarding theories like this.

It made her want to wrestle him into bed and undo his logical brain with passion.

Not the time, Dora , she reminded herself.

But maybe later? ‘It seems a good old English name,’ he continued, ‘but I’ve heard that some Jewish families who settled in England chose that surname in honour of Moses. ’

Moss gave Jacob a bow. ‘You see before you that perennial outsider, the Wandering Jew– not the one of legend, naturally, but one of the people who doesn’t quite fit in the English political system but whom the men in power find very useful all the same.’

‘In what way useful?’ asked Dora. There were plenty of Jewish people in the world of the theatre, many of whom were her friends, so she deeply disliked the prejudice found in society against the Tribe of Israel. Those she knew best were witty, talented and blessed with a wonderful sense of humour.

‘We live in different worlds, as you no doubt realise.’ That was like the stage– the acting fraternity was a world apart.

‘None of the men in this circle know my family and friends, mining engineers and geologists for the most part, nor do they have access to them through the usual network of schools and colleges. If questions are asked about me among those who do know me, no one would answer. These Jacobin plotters cannot sound out my true affiliations.’

‘But they know you work in government?’

‘I’m just a little cog in the machine. Some hope that I will become a spanner in the works.

They have no idea as to what the Alien Office does apart from administer the complicated affairs of those made homeless by war.

Thank you for not blurting that out in front of them, by the way.

I’ve spent over a year making my work sound extremely boring.

None of them have asked for details. To their credit, they hold no prejudice against my race. ’

‘You do not believe that a victory by Napoleon would be better for the Jewish people?’ asked Jacob. ‘I understood that he had supported some liberal laws as regards the treatment of Jews in his empire.’

‘And clawed back the gains with some others,’ said Moss. ‘You are asking if my loyalty to England can be trusted, or if I could not be a double agent stirring up these young men?’

Dora hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort, but maybe Jacob’s familiarity with politics had led him to that conclusion. ‘You wouldn’t tell us if you were,’ she said.

‘I will tell you that I don’t like murder. Thou shalt not kill . I don’t like revolution. My people are too often blamed as being behind everything that goes wrong for someone else. I favour stability and gradual reform, not an invasion by an enemy force.’

‘You sound a model Englishman to me.’ Dora smiled encouragingly at him, aware Jacob wasn’t venturing an opinion.

‘Ignore Jacob. It’s not prejudice keeping him silent but the fact that we’ve had our fill of double-faced liars recently.

His suspicion is earned by events and he might take longer to trust you.

May we return to our unfortunate victims?

We have one murdered magistrate, one missing rich young man with a poetic talent, one comatose wealthy young man who only pretended to write so he could spend the summer drinking: do I have that correct? ’

The men nodded, finding agreement here at least.

‘We have one poem that seems to be suggesting the methods chosen in the violent attacks. It went missing and now it returns miraculously into a missing man’s valise. We must give that back to Dorothy immediately.’

‘I’ll do that next,’ promised Jacob.

‘Now for my news. The one who most obviously ties these things together is Luke Knotte.’ She grimaced at the unintentional pun. ‘I spent an hour alone with him today and he revealed that he is obsessed with Wordsworth and has persuaded himself that the poet is his father.’

Jacob made an exclamation of surprise, but Moss did not seem shocked by the news. ‘He muttered something like that to me,’ said Moss. ‘Is he?’

‘Is he what? Crazed? Or Wordsworth’s son?’ asked Dora.

‘Pick one.’

‘I’d say crazed. He has taken a few kindnesses and a coincidence of his mother and young Wordsworth living in the same place for a time when she became pregnant and made it into this story of his true birth.

He is on the path to seeing himself as a poetic Messiah.

He is reading special messages into the poet’s work for him, so it would follow that he might do something similar with the autobiographical poem.

’ Dora warmed to her theory. ‘Plus, wouldn’t he be the most likely one to steal it?

If Barton had hinted that he had this poem in his possession which related the very parts of his supposed father’s life that Knotte wanted to know about, he would break all codes of friendship and gentlemanly behaviour to take it. He might in some way consider it his.’

‘Dora and I have been thinking him the most likely suspect as he connects the different parts of this mystery. Leyburn was the one who funded his education,’ said Jacob.

‘Which, by the way, Knotte is convinced really came from Wordsworth. Leyburn was only the agent on his behalf to keep it secret.’

Moss frowned. ‘It does make a mad kind of sense. The only problem is that I’ve never considered Knotte a man of physical prowess; he’s not the kind who would feel able to hit someone over the head with crooks and skates and be sure that he would put down his adversary.

He is clumsy, falls out of boats, drops things, struggles to keep up when we go on longer walks.

I could see him fumbling the attempt and being caught. There is something hapless about him.’

Dora had to agree, but then she remembered the creepy feeling she got from him when he was with her at the sheepfold.

‘Is it not possible that he has another side to his character? He’s the ineffectual shepherd poet who weeps over a pile of clothes and can’t help search, but can when roused become something quite different, someone whose personality is split in two? ’

‘Indeed, it is possible,’ said Jacob. ‘I’ve known patients like that, wives shackled to someone who can be charming in society and cruel at home.’

‘If we agree that he could be our man, then that leads to the most important question. How do we prove it?’ asked Moss.

‘Actually,’ said Dora, ‘I think the most important is “how do we stop him killing again?”’