Miss De Wilde—would she ever give him leave to call her Margot?—shifted on her seat a bit. “I don’t believe Dot ever mentioned which ship you were on. I’m afraid I’m not aware of any that saw action last week.”

Sometimes the Lord answered prayers at an alarming rate. He cleared his throat and tracked Dot with his gaze as she came back from her bedroom, all smiles. For now. “The Royal Oak. Though, actually . . .” Blast, but the truth was hard sometimes. He’d pay her the respect of looking her in the eye when he delivered it though. “Actually, I wasn’t on a ship at all.”

Dot reclaimed her chair, looking only mildly curious. “Oh? Where were you, then?”

He wanted to look at something else, anything else. But he didn’t. “On a train from Bilbao.”

A bit of bafflement entered her eyes. “Were you visiting Abuelo on a leave? You didn’t mention such intentions. And how would you have got shot on a train?”

“It wasn’t leave. Or a visit.” His fingers tightened around the delicate china cup she’d given him. “I haven’t been on a ship for years, Dot.”

Now her expression flattened into disbelief. “Nonsense. You are always such a joker.”

“I’m not joking. DID has instructed me to tell you the truth. He pulled me from the Royal Oak in my first months aboard. Because he needed men on the ground in Spain, gathering intelligence. And my records included that I’d been educated there.”

Dot went still. Utterly still.

Miss De Wilde—Margot, in his thoughts if not in his speech—leaned forward. “Interesting. You’re part of Thoroton’s network, then?”

For a beat, he stared at her, surprised she knew the name. But then, she’d probably typed up the decrypts of his reports or something. Perhaps that was why the admiral had smirked when he’d asked if it was all right for her to know the truth. She most likely already knew a large part of it, just not his name. He shook himself and nodded. “Stationed in Bilbao mostly, where I could stay with Abuelo and use my already-existent reputation there as a cover for my real work.”

Dot had folded her hands into her lap, but it wasn’t a peaceful pose. Her every muscle looked tense, and her breath came too fast. “Do you really mean to tell me that you’re one of the admiral’s spies?”

“Agents.” Semantics, but spy had such a negative connotation. It implied untrustworthiness, deceitfulness, duplicity.

His sister didn’t seem to care about his correction. Her nostrils flared. “And you were shot how, exactly?”