The oddness rose up in a wave, and Brenda let the knife fall. “What are you doing here?”
Gavin looked up. “I had to see you.”
“No. I don’t mean that.” She clenched folds of her apron in her fists. “It took you three years of catching at every possible chance? So you escaped nine years ago. Where have you been these nine years?”
“The West Indies first,” he said. “America later. Vienna, most recently. I have been…learning things. Working with…clever people.”
Working with the Continental Resistance, then. Continuing the struggle against the French that had gotten him transported in the first place. He had been free on the Continent, working against the French, for nine years with never a word to her. “You could not have sent me a letter?”
“It didn’t seem a wise plan,” he said, and she ha
