Hardly a Husband (Free Fellows League 3)

"I'm fine," Jarrod replied, even as his rumbling stomach betrayed him.

"Won't you please take a few minutes to eat something, Lord Shepherdston?" Gillian asked as Colin walked over to the sideboard and began to fill a plate from the variety of breakfast foods warming in the chafing dishes. "Colin and I have spent most of the morning going over the documents he brought home. We were just about to sit down to breakfast ourselves." She smiled at Jarrod. "We'd be pleased to have you join us."

Jarrod glanced around the room, looking for a clock, and found one on the marble mantel at the far end of the room. "I've appointments at the War Office at ten."

Gillian looked down at the elegant jeweled timepiece pinned to the bodice of her dress. "Please accept our invitation to breakfast and trust that we won't allow you to be late for your appointment."

"You might as well give in gracefully," Colin advised Jarrod as he carried his wife's plate to the table and set it down in front of her, then went back to the sideboard and picked up another plate. "It's a matter of courtesy. You're a marquess. She's a viscountess. She won't sit down to breakfast unless you join us," Colin continued. "Gillian's hungry. I'm hungry, and judging from the rumbling in your stomach, I'd say you're hungry. So stop being an arse and sit down. We can talk while we eat. I'll serve your plate. What will you have? Eggs? Sausage? Kidneys? Kippers?"

Jarrod sat down. "I'll have whatever you're having."

Colin nodded and began piling the plate full of food.

"Coffee or tea?" Gillian asked, reaching for another cup and saucer.

"Coffee," Jarrod answered. "No cream or sugar."

Gillian filled his cup from the silver coffeepot and handed it to him, then poured more tea for herself.

Colin delivered Jarrod's breakfast and went back to the sideboard, where he filled a plate for himself. He carried his plate back to the table, sat down beside his wife, and began to eat.

Jarrod placed his napkin in his lap, picked up his fork, and attacked the food on his plate, spearing a forkful of eggs. "Excellent." He looked at Gillian. "Thank you for breakfast and for your hard work."

"It isn't difficult work," she told him. "Just tedious."

Jarrod begged to differ. He'd seen any number of men fail at code breaking. But Colin's wife succeeded time and again with seeming ease. "Were you able to accomplish much in the short amount of time I gave you?"

"Quite a bit," Colin answered, "considering."

Jarrod quirked an eyebrow in query.

"We enciphered the dummy letters for the couriers to carry back to France using a mix of old codes and newly created ones." Colin smiled at Gillian.

"Oh?" Jarrod asked.

"They're quite convincing," Colin told him. "They'll fool everyone except the most dedicated code breakers."

"We composed them as a mix of all clear and code," Gillian said, "and made it possible to decipher bits and pieces in order to whet their appetites." She smiled, clearly relishing her role in helping defeat the French. "Then we entered meaningless codes after the closing."

It was British policy to enclose false messages along with the real ones in the military dispatches the couriers carried back to their commanders in the hopes that if the couriers were captured, the information they carried would confuse, rather than help the enemy. Commanding officers in possession of key codes were the only people able to differentiate between the false and the real documents and only because Scovell, Colquhoun, and their most trusted network of spies and messengers — including the Free Fellows — delivered the key codes and cipher tables separately. They knew the French had a similar policy. Original cipher charts rarely fell into enemy hands and most of the information they obtained from captured couriers proved useless when deciphered.

"But they should keep them busy for a while," Colin said.

"What about the dispatches I was deciphering?" Jarrod asked.

"We completed the deciphering on all but the one written entirely in code," Colin reported.

Jarrod knew the letter he meant. Because ciphering took time and a certain level of skill, most letters contained a combination of French and code, where only the most sensitive information was written in cipher. Since they'd begun work deciphering, the Free Fellows had discovered almost all battlefield missives contained more French than code. Political dispatches, letters outlining battle strategy and specific plans, and any messages detailing Bonaparte's movements were more code. And the French Grand Chiffre, or Grand Code, had proven extremely adaptable and difficult to break. Of the half dozen letters in the dispatch, only one had been written entirely in code. Jarrod spent a good deal of time on that letter and had been working on it when Sarah had arrived. He'd locked it in his desk drawer where it had stayed until Colin had retrieved it after the Free Fellows meeting. "Any luck at all?"

Colin ate a bite of sausage before answering. "We know it's from King Joseph of Spain to one of his subordinates. But we don't know which subordinate."

"Unfortunately," Gillian added, "a king is surrounded by nothing but subordinates. We've been forced to go down the list of those whose names we know and that takes time."

"You've uncovered more information than I was able to discover," Jarrod told them, pleased with the progress they'd made.

"Because your cipher table is incorrect," Gillian told him. "The code has changed since our last batch of intercepted mail. I took the liberty of correcting several deciphering errors in the letters you deciphered."

Jarrod arched an eyebrow in query.