A Safe Passage

Lupin sat dazedly on the hard, tapestried cushions and looked into the flames. “Lord Grefham was here again, you see,” she said emptily. Uncle Mortimor’s brows rose and his lips compressed. He sat carefully on the edge of the couch and looked at the opposite wall for a moment. “He did not find anything, then, I would imagine?” Lupin looked at him sideways, and crossed her arms tightly across her stomach, but nodded slightly, the movement seemed to pain her. “Yes, I see,” Uncle Mortimor remarked. “Then we must finish our stay here and know he believes us not to be here…” Lupin’s gaze, staring into the flames numbly, had sharpened on something within the fire. Suddenly she leapt forward, and seemed ready to reach into it, but coming to herself at the last moment, clasped the coal shovel instead and raked out a shovelful of embers. Within them glinted something hard and rather shiny, but fast fading with a jacket of soot. She reached into the embers quickly, and brushed out the small, round object, onto the stone bricking around the grait. With quick and erratic movements she managed to pick up the small object and juggle from palm to palm long enough to clear the ember soot off of it, and reveal it to be a shining, silver metal button. She looked at it shocked, and then grabbed the button side of her own coat, hanging loose at her right side. There, third button down, there was an obvious gap. She matched the button to the remains of the thread still lurking there. It was unarguably her own.
“This jacket was one I wore at Lord Grefham’s,” she said quietly, and sat back on her heals. He must have found it in London or here, I suppose.” She could still feel the energy of the fire in the metal – and the frantic purpose of Lord Grefhams seemed to cling to it as well, she thought for a moment – but dismissed that as an imagination. Uncle Mortimor was looking at her sharply. He seemed disturbed by the far away look in her eyes as she looked at the button and turned it over. He said nothing, however. “You should dine, my dear,” he said quickly, and rising, brought the tray to the settee and waited obviously by it. Lupin looked up, her brows snapping together. But she gritted her teeth and nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said, and rose to do her best by the meal. The food was dry in her mouth, however, and she was able to swallow little of it. While she sipped at the warm wine, Uncle Mortimor turned away and busied himself setting out clothing and changing the linens on the bed.
That night, Lupin slept in her clothing in the bed while Uncle Mortimor took up the settee. They had set a chair in front of the door and tied the latch in case a maid should try to enter to stoke the fire in the morning. In any case, they expected to be waiting at the channel long before then.
True to their expectations, they were on a wharf along the channel by the time the sun was fully up – in their respective guises, of course. Uncle Mortimor, grave and almost imposing in a solemn way, in his gray travel clothes, and Lupin, in her now usual environment of trunk swabs, at the bottom of a pile of luggage gathered rather close to the water’s edge. The ship that was to ferry them across was a beautiful bark, also carrying a load of cargo meant for the French coast and some various other passengers of assorted ilk. Uncle Mortimor, thankfully, had ordered a stateroom, and Lupin was no less than grateful that she could pass the crossing in a rather larger atmosphere.
They were soon loaded onto the ship, and by the time the sun was quarter way up into the sky, they had set off across the choppy waters. Lupin waited a good half hour into their journey before venturing out of her traveling box. Uncle Mortimor had left to take a walk upon the decks – or so he had commented to himself before exiting the cabin. Lupin tumbled out dazedly and wished that she could promenade aboveships, also. However, the crossing would prove quite challenging enough in the way of their hoax without the added problem of an extra passenger.
The passage did, in fact, pass without event. Uncle Mortimor, never one for ships, weathered testily his bout with seasickness, and Lupin, looking out of the porthole at the passing gray and white water, weathered a different sickness deep in the pit of her stomach that simply refused to leave since her unexpected rendezvous with Lord Grefham. The fear of his presence – the fear for his presence – would not leave her, and she sat or paced quietly over the waters of the La Manche.