by Eva Devon
“You're allowed to respect her fighting ability, Lord Elliott. But I don't think Dalton would enjoy knowing that you are, well, a bit smitten.”
Elliott made a gentle scoffing noise. “Nonsense. Not possible. Absolute rubbish.”
Damn. He couldn't even convince himself. Smitten.
At best she was a clever criminal. At worst, a dangerous enemy. Now he truly had to find her. It was time to figure her out, for good and all.
Amie should have felt safe when she at last entered the Jackham house. After all, she'd gone to enormous lengths to lose any possible tail. She'd walked for hours, running from doorway to doorway, dashing through shops. She'd even traded her warm brown coat for a thin blue one from a woman who seemed surprised but willing.
It was her last good coat, blast it. Ruby had her old one, for her sister had outgrown everything in the last year. Now Amie ached with cold and terror. With only part of her attention she caught the sweet smell of Christmas cooking and...what was that? Pine?
“Evergreen,” Emma said as she looked up from the bowl she was whisking. “Apparently it's all the rage in fashionable circles to cut down a tree and bring it into the house to shed needles everywhere and then to drape bits and bobs all over it.”
“According to whom?” Her voice sounded faint even to her own ears.
It was enough to make Emma look at her more closely. “Where did you get that coat? You didn't go out like that.” She hustled forward. “Why it's naught but thin canvas! Oh, you must be freezing!”
“Who's freezing?” Ruby bounced into the room. There were pine needles in her hair. “Amie! You're white as a sheet!”
Amie let them coddle her. The fire and the hot tea helped enough that her hands stopped shaking and she could feel her aching feet again. However, it did nothing for the knot of fear that sank like cold lead deep in her belly. She took another sip of tea, hoping to melt that worrisome lump.
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “This is actual tea.” She looked up, glancing around the kitchen. Belatedly, she noticed a ham on the table and a bowl piled high with potatoes and leeks. There were sacks by the stove that looked to be flour and even sugar. Oh, no. “You bought food.”
Emma looked at her a bit sideways. “We thought we might as well. After all you were selling the jewelry today and...well, it's Christmas. I just thought we could have a few things the way we used to, like a ham and mince pie.” She lifted her chin. “I should probably tell you now that there's a goose hanging in the larder. And I purchased a crock of redcurrant jelly. A small one. Well, fairly small.”
Jelly. In winter. It was a mad splurge, to be sure. Amie blinked and her gaze slid to her youngest sister. “And we have a tree in the house?”
Ruby squirmed a little in her chair, her clasped fingers rubbing together in her lap. They looked to be sticky with pitch and bits of colored paper. She had several lengths of faded old hair ribbon draped over her wrist.
“I’ve seen— I've heard that other people have them in their houses. I remember hearing about it when I was little. Papa told me he saw one in a duke's house. It's ever so pretty, and it smells so nice. And I just thought— No, I should've gotten a simple garland.” Ruby's face, usually so cheerful, took on a crestfallen frown. “I should have asked first.”
“Ruby got it on credit. With a discount. I think she could talk a cat into swimming the channel!” Emma stood up briskly. “Yes, we went a bit round the bend. There's nothing to be done for it now. And what's the harm? You sold the jewelry, didn't you?”
Amie reached into her reticule and pulled out a handkerchief-wrapped bundle. It was all too small and far too light. Pinching a corner of it, she let the contents roll out onto the table. Her sisters leaned forward. There were a few guineas, a bit of silver, but mostly coppers gleamed in the candlelight.
“Oh.” Ruby's voice was very small.
“Did you try Connors? And Becket?” Emma shook her head quickly. “No, of course you did. Those blasted old thieves!”
She'd failed so miserably. Amie's breath caught in her throat. “I’m sorry. I'm so sorry.”
At her broken tone, her sisters swept her into their arms and held her close, petting her hair and murmuring denials. It felt good to be surrounded with reassurance, very good to be forgiven. It would likely feel even better if she could forgive herself.
There was still more. She hesitated. There was nothing they could do about it tonight. She could keep the real problem under cover just a little longer, and let her sisters enjoy the feast and the silly tree.
But the burden was too much to bear alone. And they should know. They should be prepared. They would be frightened, but they would be together and they would figure something out. Together.
She lifted her head. “It gets worse.” Her voice was flat. “I was shadowed…by a Liar.”
The fire still crackled. The oven still baked. The chill that swept the room had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with dread.
Chapter 6
“We cannot leave.” Ruby's tone was adamant. And since Ruby did not wax adamant very often, Amie and Emma were forced to take her quite seriously, despite her mere eighteen years.
Emma, as always, took the rational approach. “Ruby, there are many places we could live. We could move to the country and survive quite nicely, far from any possibility of being found by the Liar's Club.”
Ruby looked at Emma with cool disdain. “We would be no safer in Staffordshire than we are in London. Papa always says it is easier to hide in a crowded city that in some village where everyone knows your business.”
Amie and Emma shared a glance. Best to stay away from the sensitive topic of Papa. Amie added, “There are other cities. We could move to Edinburgh. Or Brighton. Or Leeds.”
Both her sisters looked at her in horror. “Leeds?”
Amie backed down slightly. “Or...somewhere not Leeds. The point is that it might be best to relocate. I, for one, would rather like to live a long and happy life with my sisters.”
Emma snorted. “Long and happy, yes. I rather hope we might have different futures then spending our spinster years together, but for the time being we must stick together.”
Now Ruby and Amie stared at Emma.
“Different futures?” Ruby looked horrified.
Emma squirmed slightly. “I simply mean that perhaps some day we may do something else with our lives than to carry on the family business, so to speak.”
Amie had never heard the like from Emma before. Emma was the criminal mastermind of the three. It was Emma who selected the targets, researched the events, decided on the costume, with a little help from Ruby, and generally carried the authority of being an excellent planner.
Something else? Something else…like dancing at a ball with a young man who knew her real name? Like a life not overshadowed by the constant threat of discovery? A life where the choices were more than steal or starve?
A life where she was not a thief?
Amie knew she had a rather highly developed sense of right and wrong, especially for the daughter of jewel thief. But she hated stealing even though she was rather good at it. That was why she was the one who insisted that their targets be entirely terrible people, who had probably come by their wealth by means of plunder rather than honest labor. It was a small lie to herself that it was somehow morally superior than being a cut-purse that targeted poor flower sellers in Covent Garden.
It must be better. She had to believe that. Except deep down, she rather didn't.
Ruby, who could be quite stubborn in those rare moments, folded her arms and sat back in her chair. “I won't leave. I don't want a different future. When Papa comes back, what will he think if he finds strangers in this house and the three of us blown to the four winds?”
“Well, three winds, anyway.” Emma murmured.
Amie shot Emma a reproving glance. This was no time for sarcasm. Ruby's devotion to the dream of Papa's return was a fantasy that they could no long
er afford to allow. When Papa comes back.
Not if. When. Poor Ruby.
She leaned forward. “Ruby, you know that Papa is gone.”
Ruby lifted her chin and regarded her with scorn. “Say what you mean. You mean 'dead', don't you?”
“Don't be cruel, Ruby.” Emma's tone was tart yet kind. “We all loved Papa. We all feel pain and abandonment and grief. Do not think for one moment that your loss is any greater than mine or Amie’s.”
Emma's cool but gentle reproof reminded Amie so much of Mama that her chest ached just that much more. Mama had died when Ruby was but seven years of age. Her youngest sister scarcely remembered anything of that time but that she'd been very much loved.
Emma, three years older than Ruby, remembered Mama a bit better. She even looked most like her. But Amie had had fourteen wonderful years with her mother. Those years left her richer than her sisters, surely, yet sometimes it seemed she missed Mama the most.
Mama had been practical and calm and yes, occasionally a bit tart. Papa had been a creature of recklessness and laughter and clever blarney. It had been Mama who had kept his feet on the ground.
Both her parents were gone. She was, in effect, the parent now. “Ruby, I know you want him to come back. I know that we were not allowed to say goodbye, or attend a funeral, or mark a grave for him. We feel unfinished by that. Our grief seems without end because we will never fully understand what happened to him.”
Except that she did know. She knew more than the other two, at least. She'd saved them from that knowledge for nearly two years, but perhaps now was the time to tell the truth.
She looked down at her hands, clasping them tightly together on the table. “They did find him,” she told them in a low voice. “A few days after he went missing there was a...a body pulled from the Thames. His body.”
Both her sisters regarded her with widened eyes. Emma's indrawn gasp of shock rasped against the silence of the room like gravel.
“A body? I don't believe it! It could be anyone!” Ruby shoved her chair back with a scrape and with a defiant toss of her head, stalked from the room.
Amie started to rise to follow her, but Emma put a hand on her arm.
“Let her be. I'm not sure anything could actually convince her. I wish you had told me a long time ago, but I think I understand why you didn’t.”
Amie sank back into her chair and dropped her head into her hands. “I don't know what to do. I never know what I'm doing. If I thought that someone had ever written down the recipe for a life such as ours, I would follow it to the letter. Unfortunately, I believe we may be the first.”
Emma scoffed gently. “Things are not so bad as that. So far we have made do quite nicely. Well enough, at any rate. And eventually you are going to tell me everything you know about Papa's death. But at the moment, we have a much larger problem.”
Amie looked up. “Larger than Ruby never speaking to me again?”
Emma poked a finger into the pile of coins that still lay upon the table. “This isn't enough. We can pay the creditors a bit to aid their patience and we can lay in some food to last a few more months, but then what?”
Then what? It was always thus, with stealing and then inevitably spending. There always seemed to be a bit more stealing at her future.
“I have to go out again.”
“Yes.” Emma's voice was soft. “You'll have to go out again, even while the Liars search for us.”
Amie shook her head vehemently. “No, not us. Only me.”
Emma regarded her somberly. “If you should be recognized, it would be dire. I could go in your stead.”
“Leave it, Em. You know it must be me. We could both be caught and convicted. What would happen to Ruby then?”
“All right.” Emma sighed and relented in the face of Amie's ferocity.
Amie was prepared to pay the price should she ever be apprehended. But she would never give her sisters up. Never.
Shortly thereafter, in Papa's study, Amie carefully unfolded The List. She smoothed the creased sheet flat on the desk. Ruby's investigative notes were written in her tiny neat hand carefully between each name. Their youngest sister had even gone so far as to draw a decorative border on the paper, turning a list of scrawled names into something very nearly reverential.
“She's been at it again.” Emma reached a finger to trace a line of tiny cats that ran down one side of the page. “These weren't here the last time I looked at it.”
Amie shook her head. “Let her do what she likes. She's still just a girl.”
Emma raised a brow. “I’m just a girl, for that matter.”
Amie couldn't say the same. She felt as old as time, weighed down with responsibility and incessant dread. Papa had burdened her with a bit too much knowledge, and had assigned her with protecting her sisters from that same information. But how long could she continue to do so? When would they be old enough to share her worry and what would be the good of it if they did? Would they be in any less danger? Would their circumstances be any less real? Wouldn't she simply be parceling out her fears in order to have company in her misery?
She didn't always feel this way. While she felt enormous guilt about stealing, she had to admit to herself that there were moments…
She loved the balls. Oh, to stroll through those glittering rooms, to dance to beautiful music, to smile and laugh as if she were another person—a person without a worry in the world.
And then there was The Moment. The thrill of that moment! Her blood rushing through her veins, the heightened senses, the giddy reckless freeing excitement that came with getting away with it. No matter the crush of guilt after. No matter her fear of consequences. In that moment, she was brilliant and powerful and unfettered.
If she never went a-thieving again for the rest of her days, as she surely wished, it would be that moment she missed the most.
Emma didn't want to play the part of thief. She liked the triumph of a well-laid plan. She liked the organization, the plotting, the thinking of things through. She also liked the jewels. The beauty and the artistry of the jeweler and the stone-cutter appealed to her sister.
As for Ruby, Amie believed that the escapades served to keep Papa alive for their youngest sister. After all, what could be more affirming of his presence than to carry on his teachings?
Poor Ruby. Amie understood the lure of that fantasy. If Papa would return, they would be a family again. If Papa came home, they would no longer be alone in the world.
“The body in the Thames—” she blurted suddenly to her sister. “It was him.”
Emma did not look up from the list, but her hands went still. “How can you be sure? You didn't see...did you?”
Amie shook her head violently. “No! Heaven's no, I could not have borne it! But I spoke to the woman who—” She swallowed hard. “The woman who prepares the bodies for a pauper's burial.”
The pauper's burial was the resting place of the anonymous and unclaimed. It consisted of a churchyard burial with no witnesses, with only the most meager of a junior cleric's rote blessing, and bodies layered like logs filling in a single hole.
“What did you learn from this woman?”
Amie pulled her thoughts from the dark earth. “She told me of a man, a victim of unknown demise, pulled unrecognizable from the water. She told me that the only thing memorable about the—the person—was a particularly ugly and vivid weskit, patterned in violet and yellow.”
“His favorite.” Emma's breath caught slightly. Papa had been so fond of his ugly waistcoats, each louder and more vile than the last. Amie reached for her sister's hand, closing it gently into her own.
Emma took a deep breath. “So.”
Amie exhaled in time with her sister. “So.”
Emma pulled her hand away and quickly dashed away a tear or two. Then with quick, precise movements, she laid the list to one side and opened two of the most recent tattle sheets.
Amie gave a sigh. “I’d meant to pick and choose, to go
slow.” She looked at Emma. “I don't want any excess attention. As long as everyone stays focused on the Vixen we can shield ourselves under that umbrella. If we're careful.”
Emma nodded. “Bless the Vixen. She's a clever one, choosing such wicked targets. It's easy to laugh at the rich losing baubles.”
Amie knew what she meant. Regular folk enjoyed the tales of the Vixen. She was almost a folk hero to some, making her jabs at the wealthy and objectionable.
But they could no longer afford to ride the mysterious thief's coattails. Now they needed a big take, the prize of a lifetime. Gold, jewels, banknotes—anything of worth that could be carried out of London by three young women.
There would be no time to sell their plunder in the city, and no inside introductions to the buyers in a new place. They would need liquid assets, not simply jewels, to live on until they made the proper connections. Secretly, Amie rather hoped that they would not be required to connect themselves to thieves and pawnbrokers ever again.
Emma was humming a holiday tune to herself, as she scanned the tattle sheets and the list at the same time. Her left finger ran down the list even as her right finger ran down the page of the newssheet. Her fingers stopped moving. “Aha.”
Amie leaned forward. There was only one name on the list with the required wealth that would be hosting an event this week. Amie felt her eyebrows rise. “Oh my, we are hunting big game.”
“You're going to have to come up with a costume.”
Amie regarded her sister dryly. “The frocks are always costumes.” Giddy debutante or drunken demi-rep. Inwardly, she wondered what if she would ever be allowed to be herself outside these walls.
“A real costume. See?” Emma swiveled the newssheet for Amie's view. “A Grand Masquerade.”
“Oh, for pity's sake!” Amie felt weary down to her bones. Blast it. Could it never be easy? “And where can I possibly find a wretched costume with naught but a week's notice?”
Chapter 7
The secret rear portion of the Liar's Club had gone dark, even as the false front business began to heat up.