said Holly as casually as she could manage, picking up a different letter and breaking the seal. “You may go.” The moment she was alone, she dropped the letter she was holding and tore open Noel’s. So eager was she to know the contents that it took her a moment to realize that Noel had written it in their old childhood code—the code they had shared with no one else. It had been years since Holly had seen it, and though she herself had helped to devise it, for one panicked instant she feared that she had forgotten how it worked. The memory came rushing back. It would read from bottom to top, of course, and from right to left. Every third word would be a nonsense word, and the others, their letters staggered by four so that A equalled D and Y equalled B, alternated French, Italian, German and English, in all of which she and Noel were fluent. Really, it was a rather clever code, she thought, particularly given that they were but fourteen years old when they invented it. Carefully, she worked out the message.
