Uncle Winn glanced at the targets behind them, and Lucy sighed. “Won’t you even give me a chance?”
“I will do more than that. I am sending you out, but I didn’t want your brother to accompany you because I thought you needed a protector. It’s because the prime minister has requested two agents.”
“The prime minister?”
“Yes, I’ll explain more inside with your partner.”
“My partner. Who will that be? Mr. Stimple? Miss Vaughn?”
“Mr. Slorach.”
Lucy stumbled back as though she’d been punched hard in the stomach.
“Don’t look like that, Lucy. He’s a very good agent.”
“Uncle Winn, no! Not him. Anyone but him.”
“This is why I wanted to speak to you privately. I don’t know why, but you seem to have an aversion to Mr. Slorach.”
“Because he—”
Uncle Winn, very much Baron now and not Uncle Winn, held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Mr. Slorach is perfect for this mission. He is excellent with knives and pistols. He excels at breaking codes, and while he isn’t your equal at interrogation or languages, he gets top marks in evasive maneuvers. Your skill sets are quite complementary. Mr. Slorach is part of this mission. Now, do you want in or no?”
Lucy wanted to say no, but she knew that though Uncle Winn had a soft spot for her, if she was not willing to obey orders and do the work assigned to her, she would not ever be a Royal Saboteur. And for years all Lucy had wanted was to serve and protect the Crown from enemies, foreign and domestic. For eighteen months she’d learned every method possible to sabotage any effort to harm her queen or her country. Now she was being given the chance to put all that training into practice. If she said no, Uncle Winn would be kind, out of respect for his longtime friendship with her parents, but he would assume, and rightly so, that she cared more about having her own way than the good of the country.
“I want in,” Lucy said, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat.
“And I can trust you to work with Mr. Slorach?”
“Absolutely.” She looked Uncle Winn directly in the eyes, and she meant what she said. She might not particularly care for Duncan Slorach. He might think he was God’s gift to the Crown and be annoyingly good at just about everything. Worst of all, he was annoyingly handsome and seemed to know it. But all of that aside, she could not deny he was a good agent. If he wasn’t the best, she wouldn’t have wanted to beat him.
“Now, what’s this mission?”
“Come inside with me, and we’ll talk.”
Lucy started for the farmhouse that held Uncle Winn’s office as well as the room she shared with Margaret Vaughn.
“Lucy, aren’t you forgetting someone?” Uncle Winn said.
Lucy paused and raised her brows.
“Please go tell Mr. Slorach I need to speak to him.”
Lucy opened her mouth to protest then realized this was a test. Oh, Uncle Winn was good. Very good. But so was she.
“Of course, Uncle Winn.” Smiling, Lucy marched back across the rocky field dotted with windswept trees until she reached the line of men throwing knives at targets. When she didn’t arrow for her own place, the instructor turned to her. “Baron wants to speak with Mr. Slorach and me at the farmhouse,” she said.
“Very well. Slorach!”
Duncan was just about to throw his knife, and Lucy bit her lip, hoping the distraction would cause him to miss. But he threw the knife with perfect form. It landed right beside his other knives, in the exact center of the hay target. Lucy gritted her teeth.
“Yes, sir?” Mr. Slorach asked, turning now that he’d completed his throw.
“Baron wants you at the farmhouse. You and Miss Galloway are excused.”
Without waiting for Duncan, Lucy turned and began marching up the slight rise to the farmhouse, hoping to catch up with Uncle Winn, who had somehow managed to walk quite quickly and leave her behind.
