“I don’t know,” Ace said, returning to his bed. Sitting on a bed without falling through was one of the first lessons at Higglebottom’s.
“We don’t have time for being wrong about what he can do,” Snout said. “Pudding has to take one of the four tests. Which one do we give him?”
Ace gave it a moment’s thought. “Snout, you’re best at Artful Dodging. Bathwater, your strength is Churchyard Chase. I should probably take Is That the Wind, or Is This Place Haunted?”
“What does that leave me?” Pudding asked, another Bakewell tart disappearing into his mouth.
“Shroud Wearing,” Ace said.
“And what does a fellow have to do in ‘Shroud Wearing’?”
In unison, all three of them said, “Wear a shroud.”
Pudding laughed. “No jesting. What’s the challenge?”
“We’re telling you the truth,” Ace said. “The test is wearing a shroud.”
“A fellow puts on a shroud and says, ‘There you have it’?”
“Keeping something on that isn’t made of phantom fabric is a difficult thing,” Bathwater said. “My head still slips through at least half the time. Sometimes, I raise my arms to look bigger and more threatening, and the shroud doesn’t come with me. Humiliating.”
“Oh, blast it all, we’re thick.” Ace let himself drop through the bed and onto the floor beneath. This time, he didn’t leave any pieces of himself behind. He slid out from under the bed, addressing them all. “Shroud wearing. Perishables don’t need practice not floating through their clothes. We can toss a shroud on Pudding, here, and he could walk out, make the circuit, and come back the reigning king of First Form shroud wearers without having to learn a blasted thing.”
Bathwater and Pudding whooped, both clearly seeing the genius in his suggestion.
Snout still looked skeptical. “A First Form shouldn’t be perfect at it, though. That’d make the professors start thinking too hard about who this unfamiliar student is.”
Ace nodded. It was a valid point. “So we figure out how to make it look like he’s slipping into the ground a little. They’ll assume he’s concentrating so hard on staying inside the shroud that he’s neglecting his feet a bit.”
“And he’d be entirely covered up,” Bathwater said.
Ace looked at each of his friends in turn. “What do you say?”
“It’s brilliant!” Pudding declared. “And if it means staying here, out of the rain, with food to eat, I’ll pretend to float through all the ground you want me to.”
Ace was getting excited. They were going to sneak a Perishable into the Spirit Trials, and they were going to get away with it.
Ace, Snout, Bathwater, and Pudding were about to become Higglebottom legends!
Ana held fast to Mother’s paste brooch. It had been more difficult to find than the other items taken from them. Father wouldn’t talk about the details of its loss. She’d only managed to learn two things: his former partner had stolen it and then had lost it in a game of cards.
The woman who had most recently acquired it had told a friend she was considering ridding her jewelry box of items she didn’t overly care for. That friend had told a friend, whose lady’s maid had overheard the conversation, and word of it had, through the servants’ gossip network, reached Wallace, who had told Ana.
Mother had loved the little brooch. As Ana had heard the tale told, Father had purchased it in the first days of their marriage, when his business ventures were still small but growing. The token had been a monetary sacrifice, a purchase that had caused a noticeable financial pinch. That had added meaning for Mother and had made its loss all the more heartbreaking. It had little value beyond the sentimental.
Ana returned home with the treasure held in a desperate grip, all the while keenly aware that Hollis was likely across the street attempting to rescue his brother while risking his own feeble fortune. She could hardly fault him for engaging in slightly underhanded endeavors for the sake of his family; she was guilty of the same.
Father was in his room, as always.
Ana sat beside him, then withdrew from her pocket the handkerchief-wrapped bundle. She slowly and carefully unfolded the linen. Seeing the blue-and-white cameo brooch again, even though she’d looked at it all the way from the home where she’d bought it, still brought a stirring of emotion. Mother had worn it so often, so proudly.
“Mercy,” he said. “Is that Beatrice’s?”
“It is.” She set it in his hand.
“Where did you find it?”
In a pile of unwanted trinkets Mrs. Castleton sold for a pittance. “I was fortunate enough to come across it.”
Wallace eyed her from over Father’s shoulder. She met his gaze, amusedly daring him to press for more information. Though they’d not discussed it in any detail, she felt certain he realized she hadn’t merely “found” many of the things she’d returned to this house.
“I hope you didn’t pay too much for it,” Father said. “It is merely paste after all.”
“I paid what it is worth to those who haven’t our attachment to it.” She made the declaration as much to Wallace as to him. She had, after all, honestly paid for this reacquisition. “Mother would be so pleased to know we have it back again.”
“That she would, assuming she had forgiven me for losing it in the first place.” He smiled sadly. “Her heart was broken already. Losing this only shattered it further.”
“It was hardly your fault.” Ana reached over and patted his arm. “None of us suspected Mr. Kellogg would do all the damage he did.”
“He lost it on the turn of a card.” Father pinned the brooch to his lapel. Anyone seeing it would think him utterly out of his mind, but to Ana, it was sweetly touching. “I’ve heard from many people who were there that they suspect the game was not a fair one.”
What was this?
Father sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I would have felt bad for the horrid man, being cheated at cards, but he deserved every spot of bad luck he had, even if it did cost your mother this lovely little bauble.”
“Cheated?” Ana hadn’t heard a whisper about cheating at that infamous game.
“Wallace has it from the servants at White’s.” Father motioned to him. “The game wasn’t fair or noble. Kellogg lost a great many things that day, but the only thing he likely should have lost was his dignity.”
Cheating. Card sharps. Heavens, that sounded familiar.
“Who was he playing against?” she asked.
Father looked over his shoulder at his ever-faithful valet.
“Some bloke what called himself the Crow,” Wallace said. “He weren’t one of Mr. Kellogg’s regular opponents. Ruined a handful of genn’elmen before White’s took his membership and tossed him out.”
That sounded very much like the sort of man Hollis was attempting to run to ground. Perhaps Wallace might remember something about “the Crow” that would help track down the man doing the same thing now.
“Kellogg ought to have known better,” Father said. “A fellow who won’t use his proper name to conduct business oughtn’t be trusted.”
Ana tossed him a smile. “I believe some of the penny dreadfuls you read are penned by people not using their proper names.”
“That is different,” Father insisted with a hint of amusement. “Noms de plume are long-established in the world of literature. Using one is not underhanded; it is tradition.”
“I will grant you that.” A bit of clamoring caught their attention. “There’s our ghost again.”
She’d heard the occasional something or other since moving back home. It wasn’t a ghost, though. Nor was it vermin. She was absolutely certain someone was in the house. And she was further certain whoever the unknown occupant was, he or she was here with Wallace’s blessing. A friend fallen on hard times, perhaps. Maybe a sweeth
eart who’d lost her position elsewhere.
How did one go about introducing so potentially tender a topic? He was hiding something of significance from his employers and making use of their house without permission. While Ana wished only to make the arrangements more comfortable for his guest, Wallace would think himself in trouble.
Her best course of action might well be to simply discover the hideaways and force the conversation.
She rose from her seat and took up her basket. “I will just put these things in the kitchen.”
“I can do that, Miss Newport,” Wallace said.
“I know you can, but you’re seeing to the laundry just now. You keep to that.”
He accepted her suggestion and continued placing Father’s things in the clothes press. Ana hooked her arm through the basket handle and moved to the door. She knew perfectly well where the sound had come from: the bedchamber that had been her mother’s.
She slipped from Father’s room and moved to the one directly beside his. Careful to be as quiet as she could manage, she took hold of the handle and, in one quick movement, opened the door.
The room inside was not as empty as usual. The small table now boasted two chairs. The rug that had been in the sitting room now lay on the floor, with two bundles of blankets and two pillows set to one side. And, standing sentinel at the window, was Mr. O’Donnell.
He looked over at her in shock, that instantly gave way to amusement. That amusement grew to a grin, and, if she was not mistaken, he barely held back a laugh.
“Come in,” he whispered, waving her closer. “And shut the door.”
She did so without hesitation. Crossing toward him, she set her basket on the table. Two chairs. Two blanket bundles. Though he was alone now, he was not always.
“You are our ghost?” She stood on the opposite side of the window, facing him.
“Is that the explanation Wallace has been giving?”
“That is the explanation my father laughingly concocted—he has been reading Lafayette Jones’s latest, after all—and we have all continued to embrace that explanation, though not one of us believes it.”
“I bumped into the table a moment ago,” Mr. O’Donnell said, his voice shockingly quiet despite the fact he was not actually whispering. How did he manage that?
She peeked around the curtain. “You are watching the Thompsons’ place?”
He nodded. “Trying to sort out the gambling establishment that’s been set up there. It’s not precisely the aboveboard kind.”
“Hollis is doing the same—” In a moment of lightning-quick clarity, she pieced together an entire puzzle. “He’s the other one staying here. That’s why he was so near at hand when I arrived with Eloise. He had not, in fact, arrived by coincidence.”
“You’ve a mind for spy work, it seems.”
She shrugged. “Clandestine undertakings are not unfamiliar to me.”
That gained her a bit more scrutiny than she cared for.
“M’ sister suspected as much,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “She tells me you’ve a cool head and a steady hand. That’s high praise from her.”
“Your sister?” Again, pieces fell instantly into place. “Móirín.”
He nodded. “She’s a bit terrifying, i’n’t she?”
“A little, yes.”
“But hers is a heart of gold.” Mr. O’Donnell turned his sights back to the house across the street. “Too many don’t get to see that.”
“Have you or Hollis learned anything useful about the activity at the Thompsons’?” she asked.
“We’ve our doubts the current occupant is actually Mr. Thompson’s cousin. Hollis’s certain this is where his brother got himself in trouble, he’s worried the housekeeper is being mistreated—likely others on the staff as well—and he’s concerned Mr. Lewiston is near to being ruined.”
“Sounds like Mr. Kellogg and the Crow.”
“The Crow?”
If Mr. O’Donnell was in league with Hollis, then Ana felt certain she could trust him. “My father’s one-time business partner lost everything but his boots in a game of cards he thought was on the up-and-up, but as I understand it now, he’d played against a cheat. That man was known as the Crow, though he must have had an actual name. The game was held at a club. When his cheating was discovered, the Crow lost his membership and was tossed out, but by then he’d ruined a long chain of gentlemen in what turned out to be manipulated games.”
Mr. O’Donnell stood frozen, brow pulled down in thought. “Could you take a message to Elizabeth at Thurloe?”
Mercy, was Elizabeth part of this network as well? Then again, of course she was. It all made perfect sense.
“I can,” she answered.
“Tell her the Raven was likely once the Crow. Tell her Hollis needs to check the membership history at—which club held that infamous match?”
“White’s.”
He nodded. “The membership history at White’s. If he can find the identity of that card sharp, we’ll know who we’re dealing with now.”
“Anything else?”
He offered a lopsided smile. “Offer m’ sister a ‘Dia dhuit’ from me.”
Ana grinned. “I don’t think I could repeat that if you paid me.”
“Then just tell her to behave her troublesome self—not that she’ll listen.”
Of all the people who might have been hiding away in her house, Mr. O’Donnell was a fine option. And if his being there helped keep Hollis safe in the den of villainy across the street, Ana would see to it Mr. O’Donnell had everything he needed to remain precisely where he was.
by Mr. King
Installment VII,
in which our brave Hero and intrepid Heroine face Danger and Mystery on the Moors!
Pip sat on Tillie’s lap, wrapped in her protective arms while they reassured him he wouldn’t be required to face down the sprite he’d stolen from its home.
“We simply need to know how you captured it,” Wellington said. “It cannot continue roaming about, causing mischief. Its antics are causing people a great deal of distress.”
Pip nodded. “It steals things.”
“I’d wager it don’t know it oughtn’t take those things,” Tillie said. “The little creature is away from the only place it knows, trying to make sense of somewhere so strange.”
The boy looked up at her. “Do you think it’s scared?”
“Might be. It’s a frightening thing being surrounded by people you”—her eyes met Wellington’s—“know you don’t belong with. That’s likely why it’s hiding.”
He fully understood the layer beneath her words. She too had been hiding, ever since his Society acquaintances arrived. Just as Mr. and Mrs. Smith had observed, she “knew” she didn’t belong among them. Oh, how his heart ached for her!
“If only our little thief realized we wouldn’t harm it for all the world,” Wellington said. “That we only want what is best for it.”
“But having it here is causing so much trouble.” She didn’t look away, didn’t drop her gaze. “What is ‘best’ is for it to return home.”
“Is that why it’s scared?” Pip asked. “It wants to go home?”
The thought of that idea applying to Tillie sat heavy on Wellington’s heart. “Is it scared, dear?” he asked her.
She held the little boy closer. In a voice quiet and less confident than he’d ever heard it, she said, “Terrified.”
Wellington sat near enough to reach out and gently brush his fingers along her cheek. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”
Pip broke into what would otherwise have been a very tender moment. “But it’s so far from home. All the way across the moors.”
Tillie looked at the little boy. “You know where its home is?”
He nodded. “A mine, over near Ipsley.”
A mine. Just as Mr. Combs had said.
“Do you suppose,” Wellington said, “if we could catch it and return it to the Ipsley mine, it might remain there and stop causing mischief here?”
“If I had a home,” Pip said, “I’d always want to be there.”
Tillie held him closer. “You can have your home with me, Pip.”
What would it take for her to offer him a home “with us”? How could Wellington show Tillie that such a future was not only possible but perfect?
“You’ll not make me go back to the workhouse?” Pip looked from one of them to the other, worry and hope warring in his expression.
“No, Pip. We’d not want you so far away as Ipsley,” Tillie said.
The boy sighed and leaned against her. He looked less burdened. “It likes things that are shiny. That’s how I got it to come out of the mine—with shiny things. And I had a shiny box that it went into. And I closed the lid so it couldn’t get out, and then I ran with it. But it wasn’t happy in the shiny box. It bumped around inside. I ran and ran, but then I dropped the box and the lid came off and the blue flame came out and darted into your house.” He looked to Wellington. “I should’ve told you, but I was afraid.”
“How long were you out on the moors by yourself?” The creature had, after all, been undertaking its thefts for weeks.
“I hid in the stables.” Pip curled into an ever-smaller ball on Tillie’s lap. “The blue flame was angry. I didn’t want it to find me.”
“We’ll lure it away,” Tillie promised. “And we’ll get it back home. Nothing will happen to you, dearie.”
Pip climbed down. He assumed the determined stance of one attempting to be brave. “You’ll need shiny things. And a box.”
Tillie nodded solemnly. “We’ll fetch ’em.” She stood and took Wellington’s hand in hers. “Let’s catch us a tiny blue monster.” Tillie waved Pip along. “You can stay here with my papa.”
“He likes me,” Pip declared.
“We all do,” Wellington said.
Tillie squeezed his hand and smiled up at him. A man could quickly grow accustomed to such a look from such a woman. Pip skipped off down the corridor, his joyfulness restored.
The Gentleman and the Thief Page 20