A shiver rumbled through her. She could be arrested. Detained. Thrown into prison. Worse. It would be a public scandal that no one, least of all her or her family, would recover from. She might be protected by a powerful name, but that would not stop her from being ousted from British society. None of her friends would be allowed to be seen with her for fear of damaging their own reputations by association. She would be completely and utterly shunned.

But some risks were worth it. Sometimes, putting oneself on the line for the sake of others who needed one’s help was worth it. That was the definition of a true ally. She could take the easy way out and walk away—she would not be harmed regardless and that choice was hers to make—but what would that make her? Complicit. Weak.

A coward.

You asked for this. People are depending on you.

Once the porters had cleared the stateroom on the heels of her lady’s maid, Bronwyn was alone. She retrieved the folded parchment, which had come open thanks to the heat of her own body the night before. She could read it, reseal it, and no one would be the wiser.

Sod it. Better to know what she was getting into than not.

Bronwyn opened the correspondence and sagged against the paneling as she read. Oh, dear God above. It wasn’t nothing. It was everything. Damn, damn, damn! She couldn’t walk away from this. Rereading the missive, she committed the details to memory. A man named John Wilkes Booth, an acquaintance of the deported Brent Sommers who had been arrested by the Duke of Thornbury, was planning to abduct President Abraham Lincoln on March 17 from a place called Campbell General Hospital in Washington, DC.

Bronwyn’s stomach curled in upon itself. It was already the tenth of March.

She couldn’t fail.

Good gracious, what if she did fail?

Courage, Bronwyn!

Her contact in Philadelphia was Mary Richards, a free Black woman who worked with the notorious Elizabeth Van Lew, an abolitionist and head of the espionage network out of Richmond, Virginia. Mary had been north several times at the behest of her employer. Wentworth had told her that both Mary and Elizabeth were indispensable to the Union cause, sending coded invisible correspondence north that could only be seen when milk was applied. Unfortunately, that was not the case with Bronwyn’s message, which was written in clear, black ink and visible to all. Should it be discovered in her possession by the wrong forces, the repercussions would be horrific.