The Baffling Burglaries of Bath

by Leighann Dobbs

  “Don’t do that to me, you rascal.”

  Emma spat out something sparkly onto the runner. With a sinking feeling, Katherine reached for the moist item and lifted a diamond earring. The intricate spray of metal and precious stone dangled two inches long. Katherine groaned.

  “I could have gotten a parrot. Philomena Graylocke has one, and the worst he has ever done is insult someone.”

  The pug grinned, her pink tongue hanging out one side of her mouth.

  “This is not something to be proud of,” Katherine admonished.

  Emma didn’t appear to notice her chiding tone. She rolled on her back, asking for a rub. Instead, Katherine scooped her up and deposited her in her room. With the door shut and the thieving dog safely on the other side, she stared down the daunting line of doors. From whom had Emma stolen the earring? Katherine prayed it hadn’t been taken directly from some poor woman’s ear, though she suspected she’d have heard a great deal more screaming if that were the case.

  Across the hall, Pru’s muffled voice pierced the wooden door between them. “This is a disaster! I need Katherine’s help. Where is she?”

  Katherine didn’t have time to walk down the line of doors and knock on each in search of the earring’s owner. Instead, she slipped it into her reticule and opened the door to tend to her charge.

  Pru looked close to tears. Clad in her undergarments, she held a shawl in front of her like a shield and faced off against Harriet and her hairbrush. The moment Katherine shut the door, Pru met her gaze and blurted, “Harriet keeps trying to make me beautiful.”

  The maid scowled. “What woman deliberately wants to look unappealing?”

  “I do,” Pru snapped. “I don’t want Lord Annandale to think of me as a desirable woman in any way.” She raised her gaze, beseeching. “Katherine, please, won’t you help me dress unattractively, like you do?”

  “Like me?” Katherine didn’t look that unappealing, did she?

  Harriet snorted. “I advised you to wear something in a brighter color.”

  She had. Her first choice had been a dove-gray dress with a spray of lace around the collar. However, when Harriet had mentioned that she looked as if she were in mourning, Katherine had chosen a faint sea green instead. Her earrings were gold studs; she wore no other ornament.

  Pru made a face as she looked at the bed, atop which draped a dress. “Harriet wants me to wear the puce, but it’s the finest dress I own. What do you do to make yourself look so… dowdy?”

  When Katherine glanced at Harriet, she had her face downcast as she stepped to the side, out of the way. In any other woman, Katherine might mistake that expression for meekness. However as she stepped closer, she caught the smirk curving Harriet’s lips. Her maid was enjoying this!

  Scowling, Katherine turned her attention to the other woman. Despite her disparaging words, Pru didn’t look as though she meant to insult. She genuinely looked as though she hoped for Katherine’s guidance. Katherine sighed. “Show me your dresses. We’ll pick the least offensive.”

  “The most offensive,” Pru countered. “I want him to think me the ugliest woman alive.”

  “Better he not think of you at all.” Upon crossing to the open trunk, Katherine rifled through the contents, looking for a plain gown. “You haven’t yet been introduced, so he’ll have no reason to notice you exist if you don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  “Plenty of gentlemen seek out inoffensive brides, the sort that fade into the background and they don’t believe they’ll have to bother with after the wedding.” She tugged a beige dress out of Katherine’s hand and dropped it back into the trunk. “I want something that makes me such an eyesore they can’t stand to look at me. Something that makes me look — oh! Like a pumpkin!” With a triumphant grin, she fished out an orange dress.

  Truthfully, the dress might be better described as peach than orange, but if it was an eyesore Pru hoped to present, this gown seemed her best bet. Katherine pointed at the bodice. “What are those?”

  “The flowers?” Pru shook her head with a sigh. “You see, I gained a bit of weight since last Season. My mother had to replace the buttons. She bought a lot of these, thinks it’s the latest fashion. Wears them herself. Honestly, I had to wrestle her to the ground to keep her from sewing them on everything I owned.”

  Buttons seemed like such an innocuous term. The size of Katherine’s fist, the flowers were made of a gleaming marbled ivory material. They shimmered in the candlelight, catching it along their polished surfaces and making them as much a noticeable fixture as the gaudy jewelry of the other patrons. Pru would fit in splendidly.

  “Very well. That dress will do.”

  As to the weight, it couldn’t have been terribly much. Certainly, Pru was no shrinking violet. She was big-boned, with her weight distributed solidly along her frame, and couldn’t be called petite in any sense of the word. To any man who preferred a woman to have a bit of meat on their bones — admittedly, most of them — she had an ideal figure.

  If she recalled to smile instead of scowl.

  Harriet laid down the hairbrush on the writing desk and navigated the crush near the bed to help Pru don the dress. As she did so, she seemed a bit wilting. The buttons on the back were the same hideous ones as the ornamental three on the front.

  With a wan smile, Harriet quipped, “Well, you certainly don’t need a man to send you a posy. You are one all on your own.”

  Pru glowered. “Of course I don’t need a man. I don’t need one for anything. What use is a posy, in any case?”

  Harriet cast Katherine a despairing look. Tucking away a smile, Katherine continued to rummage through the chest in search of some earrings that wouldn’t draw too much attention. Fortunately, Pru seemed to own no other kind.

  The moment Harriet finished with the dress, she cajoled, “What do you say to a bit of cosmetics?”

  Pru frowned as she turned to Katherine, assessing. Katherine had declined cosmetics, on account of coming to Bath to investigate rather than socialize. She didn’t care how she looked, so long as she didn’t manage to draw the Marquess of Bath’s admiring eye in the process, as his grandmother seemed adamant to promote.

  With a nod, Pru answered, “Perhaps a little. Can you make me look as sallow as Katherine does in that dress?”

  Perhaps she ought to change into the dove gray, after all.

  The opening and shutting of a door along the corridor alerted her to the fact that the other women were readying to leave. She had no time to change dresses, even if Harriet could be spared from her task. “Hurry, if you can,” she instructed her maid. “We don’t want to be late.”

  However, Pru didn’t make the task easy. She twisted, trying to meet Katherine’s gaze. “How else should I act unappealing tonight? You must know.”

  She means well, Katherine reminded herself. At the steely look in Pru’s eye, she recalled the ultimatum the young woman had given. Very well, if it was the cost to keep Pru from stepping on Katherine’s toes, she would make her the least marriageable woman in the room.

  Forgive me, Mrs. Burwick. With luck, she would be able to enact this trick without tarnishing Pru’s reputation overmuch.

  “Lords want ladylike wives.” The conventional ones did, at least. “If you act contrary to everything that you’ve been taught, you ought to be able to repulse them.”

  Pru pursed her lips. “What does that mean?”

  “In essence, act like they do when not in mixed company.”

  The young woman seemed a bit out of her depth at that very notion. “My father used to smoke and drink in his study.”

  “That will do.” Though how Pru thought to find a cheroot, Katherine didn’t know. She only hoped the young woman wouldn’t ask her for help on that measure. Katherine didn’t smoke, nor did she wish to take up the habit.

  “What of loo?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Five-card loo, the game. Is that unladylike?”

  Considering that
it was usually played in gaming hells and not at polite events… “Yes. Do you play?”

  “I do. I’m quite good at it, in fact.”

  Katherine laughed and shook her head as Harriet finished and stepped away. “If you have the opportunity tonight, flaunt your prowess.” It couldn’t hinder her goal.

  The first to exit into the corridor, Katherine nearly collided with Lord Annandale’s blond friend, Sir Hugh. She took a step to the right, offering him the ability to pass, but he did the same. She stepped to the left instead, as did he. It was like dancing with a much paler mirror. Katherine stopped and smiled. “Sir, if you want to dance, perhaps you ought to put your name on my dance card.”

  The thin curve of his lips he gave in return couldn’t be called a smile, for it fell far short of his eyes. If Pru thought Katherine looked sallow, she clearly hadn’t compared her to Sir Hugh. The dandy’s skin looked waxen, which made his blue eyes seem all the brighter and the curl of blond hair draping over his forehead seem like straw. His pinched expression was nothing like the easy manner he had adopted while in Lord Annandale’s company.

  Katherine frowned as her investigator’s instincts buzzed. Something was amiss. “Are you quite all right, sir?”

  He laughed, but the sound rang hollow. “Of course, I’m in the pink of health.”

  “You seem agitated.”

  “I’m set to meet a friend before venturing to the Assembly Rooms this evening. I don’t want to be late. If you’ll excuse me, ladies.”

  He tipped his head, his forelock dripping to obscure his eyes as he stepped past. As he did, Katherine noticed the wear on the silver fastenings of his emerald jacket. Although once covered in gilt, the oblong buttons had chipped in places to show dark metal beneath. It wasn’t the only sign of ill fortune. The coat was faded along the shoulders and back, where the sun might have shone, and darker beneath the arms. Her gaze caught on a darned hole near the elbow as he passed.

  Sir Hugh wasn’t as flush in the pockets as he appeared to be. However, if so, why hadn’t he begged residence with his friend Lord Annandale? In her cursory inquiry into the Scottish marquess, Katherine had learned that he’d let a townhouse in Sydney Place for the duration of his stay in Bath. Certainly, if the pair was as close as they seemed, Sir Hugh would have been welcome in that townhouse. Was pride stopping Sir Hugh from begging assistance? Or had he rented a room at the Sydney Hotel because he didn’t want his friend to look too deeply at his dealings?

  “That was odd,” Pru muttered as she shut the door behind her.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Should we follow him?”

  If he truly meant to visit the Assembly Rooms, he would be traveling in the same direction where they meant to go. Katherine nodded. “Yes. Discreetly.” She took the lead, following in the dandy’s wake as he descended the stairs to the ground floor. At the mouth of the staircase, an older lady and gentleman stepped in front of them.

  Sard it, move faster! The old couple blocked the staircase. Katherine and Pru couldn’t slip past until the first floor. As she excused herself, hurrying down, Pru followed in her wake. However, they were too late. The moment they exited into the brisk pre-autumn air, their breaths fogging in front of their faces, Katherine caught sight of Sir Hugh through the door to a closed carriage as a footman shut it. The driver flicked the reins, and the matched pair of horses lurched into motion.

  “Tarnation,” Pru cursed, not as softly as she might have. She drew the eye of another couple stepping into a second black carriage. They sniffed and begged the footman to shut the door at once.

  “Mind your language.”

  Pru scowled. “If ever there was a time to use that word, it is now. He’s gotten away.”

  “We don’t know that he has anything to do with—” She paused to scan her surroundings. Aside from the third and last carriage waiting on the cobblestones in front of the towering hotel, the old couple they had passed on the way out exited the building. Lowering her voice, Katherine finished, “Recent events. At any rate, he’ll be at the Assembly Rooms, and you promised not to interfere.”

  Although she heaved a long sigh, Pru didn’t speak a word in contradiction.

  The old woman’s face fell as she beheld the scene. “Oh, dear. Did Lady Dalhousie leave without us?”

  Hers must have been the carriage Pru had scared off with her foul language. Using a word Katherine had inadvertently taught her, no less. Masking a pang of guilt, Katherine beckoned to the couple. “Do you mean to attend the event at the Assembly Rooms tonight?”

  The woman, in her fifties and graying, though her figure was much more limber than that of her husband, who seemed a bit older and who leaned on her arm, answered, “Yes, indeed.” She, like the rest of the bacon-brained ladies who had come to Bath, had swathed herself in jewels. Sapphires winked at her ears and on her finger. Several strings of shining gray pearls drew attention to her long neck. “It’s much too far to walk, especially in my condition.”

  Her condition? She didn’t seem unable to walk, but perhaps her husband’s difficulty masked hers.

  Katherine gestured to the carriage. “Would you care to come in my carriage?”

  “Oh, what a sweet girl. Thank you. Is that the Earl of Dorchester’s seal I espy on the door?”

  As prompted, Katherine used the inquiry to expedite the introductions. “It is. I am his daughter, Lady Katherine, and this is Miss Burwick. Do you know my father?”

  A carriage was one more thing into which she would have to delve once she lived on her own. How much did it cost to keep a team of horses and a carriage? She didn’t want to overreach her dowry, but the ease of having one’s own carriage was worth considering. She didn’t want to rely on her father for anything other than occasional companionship and advice.

  The older man shook his head, his white whiskers trembling with the motion. “We don’t quite move in those circles, I’m afraid. Mr. Oliver, at your service, and this is my wife.”

  Mrs. Oliver added, “We have heard tremendous things about your family. Is it true you are a successful matchmaker?”

  Pru looked as sour at the suggestion as Katherine felt. “Indeed, I am.” The words tasted bitter on her tongue. “I am here to arrange a match for Miss Burwick, in fact.”

  If Pru pressed her lips together any harder, her entire face would turn as white as the rim around them. Hoping to defuse the situation, Katherine motioned for the Olivers to precede her into the carriage. After handing his wife into the conveyance, Mr. Oliver insisted the ladies go next.

  Mrs. Oliver had chosen the seat facing forward, so Katherine and Pru had no choice but to face the rear of the carriage. They pressed hip to hip as Mr. Oliver huffed getting into the carriage. Once he was seated across from her, a hotel footman shut the door, and the driver directed the coach onto the road.

  Determined to make the most of the situation, Katherine steered the conversation in a different direction. “Have you been in Bath long?”

  “Not terribly long, I don’t say.”

  “I’m surprised the thefts haven’t frightened you off. The first must have been quite the cause for alarm.”

  Mrs. Oliver fluttered her hand over her chest. “Oh, dear me, I think it might have, if we’d been in town for that misfortune. What a shock! No, no, we’ve only been in Bath since the end of the Season.”

  “You aren’t afraid of the risk?”

  “Aren’t you?” Mrs. Oliver countered, but from her tone, she didn’t seem terribly concerned.

  Not wanting to reveal her true purpose, Katherine grasped at an excuse. “I left my most expensive jewelry at home.”

  The older woman glanced at Katherine’s bare neck. “Well, I shall say you’ll never find yourself robbed then.”

  She sounded almost as if that would be a disappointment.

  Pru found her voice before Katherine. “What sort of imbecile would want to find themselves robbed?”

  With a sniff, Mrs. Oliver turned her face
toward the small window. “Only the best jewels are robbed. The burglar has impeccable taste, which reflects upon the person he robs, wouldn’t you say?”

  The women of the ton were more vapid than Katherine thought. No wonder she usually avoided them.

  Katherine narrowed her eyes. “Forgive my boldness, but have you been one of the victims?”

  The silence soured like curdled milk. After a moment, the older woman snapped, “No. But neither has Lady Dalhousie, and she’s practically throwing that atrocious necklace into his hands. He doesn’t want it.” She sounded smug.

  Clearly, there was some sort of rivalry between the two women. Perhaps Katherine ought to delve into the matter further another night.

  Instead, she asked, “Who has lost their jewels, then?”

  “Well…” Mrs. Oliver drew out the word. “I cannot speak for those who ventured here before I arrived, of course.”

  “Of course,” Katherine muttered, trying to encourage her.

  Seemingly content to be the bearer of such news, the woman informed them, “Mrs. Tatton was robbed of her prized sapphire-and-diamond earrings last month. And only a few weeks ago, Lady Carleton lost that atrocious ring her husband gave her upon the tenth anniversary of their wedding. You know the one, the emerald encircled by diamonds?”

  Although she wasn’t familiar with either victim, Katherine nodded.

  Pru muttered, “That seems more a travesty than a blessing. Imagine the cost of replacing such items!”

  “Cost,” Mrs. Oliver scoffed. “Dear me, anyone with any sense has those sorts of valuables insured these days, with all the threats of highway robbery.”

  Katherine bristled. “The streets of London are perfectly safe, both in and around the city.” Lyle and his compatriots saw to that, relentlessly hunting down all reports of highway robbery and seeing the culprits to justice.

  Mrs. Oliver harrumphed.

  The carriage turned a corner and started to slow. As it did, Katherine recalled the earring in her reticule. She straightened and fished it out. “Oh, while I have your attention, I found something, and I think it might be yours.” She lifted the earring near to the window, to allow for the meager light streaming in to catch upon the jewels. “Do you recognize this?”