Grace tucked a laugh away behind the tips of her fingers. “I’m afraid it’s been rather contentious until just recently,” she said.

  “Has it?” Alicia blinked, startled. “I had no idea.”

  “We are neighbors, of a sort,” Grace clarified. “His house is across the street from mine. And he loathes my cat.” She offered an abashed little shrug. “In his lordship’s defense, Tansy often makes a menace of herself. She very much enjoys his lordship’s garden, and frequently slips away to enjoy it.”

  “She sounds delightful,” Alicia said. “I would have a cat, if they didn’t make Nigel sneeze as though he were in the grips of a dreadful head cold. Once, on a walk through the park, I found the sweetest, smallest little kitten.” She sighed in remembrance. “Just a tiny ginger kitten, all by himself. I brought him home with me in the hopes that I might keep him, but the very moment Nigel came home from his club, he began to sneeze something awful. In the end, I had to give the poor little thing away.”

  “I’d offer to let you borrow Tansy whenever you like,” Grace said, “but I’m sorry to say she is not the most sociable of animals. Lord Lockhart has intimated on more than one occasion that she isn’t so much a cat as she is a demon.”

  “Surely she is not so bad as all that,” Alicia protested.

  “I can name at least a dozen of my nearest and dearest who would heartily agree with his lordship’s assessment.” A rousing shout from elsewhere in the house camouflaged Alicia’s chuckle. Loud enough even to pierce the closed doors of the drawing room in which the ladies had secluded themselves away after dinner. One of the gentlemen had either won a great deal of money on the turn of a card—or lost a great deal. Either way, it was a prompt reminder that Grace ought to be getting about her business. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “Is there somewhere private I might attend to my—er, personal needs?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes, of course.” Alicia gave a little gesture toward the door. “The retiring room is just down the hall,” she said. “Third door on the left.”

  That would put it just before the card room, if she was not mistaken. “Thank you,” she said. “And might I trouble you to tell my sister, Mercy, that I will return shortly?

  “Of course, my dear.” Alicia patted her hand fondly as she rose from her seat.

  Perfect. Mercy would no doubt keep Alicia occupied for at least the next ten minutes, and Grace rather thought the two of them would enjoy one another’s company. Perhaps Mercy would even send an invitation to Alicia for tea herself.

  Grace slipped from the room quietly and discreetly, sliding her hand into the deep pockets sewn into her gown as she went—not toward the retiring room to which she had been sent, but toward the stairs.

  And not a soul had seen her go.

  ∞∞∞

  Owing to the changing of the dealer between games, Henry had had to do very little cheating in the end. Between the bottle of port that Uncle Nigel had downed mostly on his own, the flickering beeswax candles that lit the room, and the fact that the man played cards about as well as he played billiards—which was to say, passably at best—Uncle Nigel had lost a substantial sum without too much of Henry’s interference at all.

  He was down nearly three hundred pounds already, and they both knew he didn’t have it to lose. Though he was attempting to behave as if it didn’t matter, the flickering flames of the candles made the little beads of sweat which had broken out upon his brow appear to dance.

  “Your deal, I believe, Lockhart.” One of the gentlemen present pushed the deck of cards toward him, and Henry began to shuffle them in that swift false-shuffle riffle that still felt somewhat clumsy to his fingers. It was tempting to rub his fingers over his coat, where Grace’s queen of hearts lay hidden within an interior pocket. For luck.

  Had Grace made her move yet? Henry wished it was possible to know. Each moment that passed felt loaded with suspense, as if he were only waiting for a hue and cry to erupt elsewhere in the house. His heart pounded out a strained rhythm in his chest, concern squeezing the wretched organ tight.

  He was meant to buy Grace as much time as possible, he reminded himself. Centering his attention on the task at hand, Henry dealt the cards one at a time. The winner this round, he decided, would be Mr. Woodhouse. He and Uncle Nigel had been exchanging subtle barbs with one another all evening, and the situation seemed ripe for exploitation.

  The players placed their bets, and the few onlookers peering over the table only reduced the candlelight further, better disguising the quick, subtle movements of Henry’s hands as he dealt out the requested cards. If he had done it correctly, Uncle Nigel had a hand which would avail him nothing once the cards were revealed—and Mr. Woodhouse had gotten the ace he had needed to clinch the game.

  A terrible queer silence fell as the players at last revealed their hands. Uncle Nigel had lost another hundred pounds. His losses this evening amounted to most of what he had wrested from Mother. Probably he’d come calling again, hands outstretched, vague threats coating his poisonous tongue.

  Henry intended to have him refused at the door.

  Mr. Woodhouse chuckled to himself as he pushed his cards back toward the center of the table. “I’ll take my money now, Marsden.”

  Uncle Nigel’s jaw twitched. Henry thought he heard the faint grind of the man’s teeth. “I haven’t got quite so much blunt on me,” he said in a rough, sulky tone. “You’ll have to accept my vowels.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” Woodhouse said in a snide little voice, “but due to some rather nasty rumors I’ve heard of late, I’d prefer a bank draft.”

  Henry froze in the act of scraping together the cards once more. That was tantamount to suggesting that Uncle Nigel did not—or could not—pay his debts; an outrageous thing to suggest in the man’s own home, even if it were true.

  “I say, Woodhouse,” another gentleman blustered. “That was rather uncalled for, don’t you think?”

  “You’ll have your damned bank draft, Woodhouse,” Uncle Nigel snarled, his thin mustache twitching over his lips. He shoved himself out of his chair, yanking at the snowy fabric of his cravat as he rose.

  Hell. He’d almost certainly be headed straight for his study.

  Henry’s heart skittered through a rapid succession of panicked beats. “Surely there’s no need for that,” he said as he attempted to position himself before the door, striving to rid his voice of its strained tone. “Such business can wait, can it not?”

  “I won’t have my honor impugned in my own home,” Uncle Nigel gritted out. “Woodhouse can take his damned bank draft and leave.” He elbowed Henry aside and threw open the door.

  Too late. It was too damned late to avert the brewing catastrophe. He could only hope that Grace had made short work of what she’d come to do and would be safely ensconced once again with the ladies.

  To conceal the pronounced trembling of his knees, Henry sat heavily back in his chair, holding his breath as he listened to Uncle Nigel’s footsteps grow distant and tried to give the appearance of lending his attention to the conversation which had resumed around the table. His stomach curdled, pitched and rolled. His very skin itched with nerves.

  “Thief! Thief!” The outraged shout from the upper floors made Henry leap up from his chair. Grace had been discovered. It was over. He had dragged her into his mess, and now—and now—

  He was not the only one who had leapt to his feet. A flood of gentlemen rushed past him toward the stairs, eager to get a glimpse at what had caused the commotion. Down the hall, a door cracked open. Aunt Alicia’s voice, tremulous and uncertain, wavered in the air. “Nigel, whatever is the matter?”

  “Someone has invaded my office,” Uncle Nigel shouted down. “Send for a constable!”

  Henry braced his hand upon the door jamb. Someone, he’d said. Someone—not Grace. Not Miss Seymour. Alone now in the card room, he let himself breathe a sigh of relief.

  A faint tapping sound came from the window behind him.

  Startled, Henry turned to see Grace standing there outside on the terrace gesturing to him animatedly. Faster than he could have imagined, Henry flew toward the window, his trembling fingers fumbling with the latch.

  “Pull me up,” Grace hissed as she stretched her arms up toward him. “And do be quick about it.”

  Henry grabbed her arms and yanked. “What the devil have you done?” he asked. “How did you get out there?”

  “Oh, well—” She wheezed as the sill caught her in the midsection. “I heard footsteps approaching. There wasn’t time to lock the door, and there was nowhere suitable to hide, so I went out the window. Thankfully, there was a convenient tree.”

  Out the damned window! “Are you mad? You could have been killed.” A strange feeling replaced the sting of defeat that had settled in the pit of his stomach; half fury, half worry. “You said you didn’t bloody climb!”

  “I said I didn’t do it well,” she snipped back as she plucked a handful of leaves from her hair, which had gotten a bit mussed. “And I didn’t. My petticoat is torn, but it won’t be noticed by anyone but my lady’s maid.” She tossed the handful of leaves out the window and closed it up again. “Now go,” she said as she headed for the door. “You must join everyone else as soon as possible. Make yourself seen. You mustn’t be missed.” Without a backward glance she scampered soundlessly out of the room and disappeared.

  How had she been so damned calm? Henry’s heart raced, and his palms were slick with sweat. His stomach roiled in a manner which suggested he was in imminent danger of casting up his accounts. But he could only follow where Grace had led, considering she had far more familiarity with such ruses than did he.

  In the chaos of the moment, it was a simple enough task to slip in with the rest of the crowd milling about and clogging up the staircase.

  He needed to make himself seen. Henry nudged his way through the crowd, heedless of the shoulders he bumped. “Uncle Nigel, what has happened?” he called out above the din.

  “A damned thief has gone out the window of my study,” Uncle Nigel snarled back as he struggled to make his way down the stairs once more.

  “I say, Marsden,” Woodhouse said from his position upon the stairs just a few up from Henry. “I hope this is not some sort of story concocted to get out of paying your debts.”

  Uncle Nigel’s face went red as a cherry, then proceeded to purple like an overripe plum. “I need a damned constable,” he roared. “And would the lot of you get off of the bloody stairs!”

  The crowd receded in a wave toward the ground floor, first in a trickle and then in a rush as it became clear that Uncle Nigel didn’t particularly care who he shoved in order to pass. Little murmurs of discontent washed around above the crowd, clucks of disapproval interspersed with grumbles.

  “Is anyone missing from our number?” Uncle Nigel shouted above the crowd as he cast his gaze about suspiciously. “There may well have been a burglar in our midst this very evening.” For a long, fraught second, Uncle Nigel’s gaze landed upon him. “The Seymour girl,” he gritted out through a sneer.

  “Hmm?” Grace rounded the corner, smoothing at her skirts. In the few moments she’d been gone, she had managed to repair her hair to its prior perfection. “Has something happened?” she asked sweetly, blinking those large green eyes in a perfect imitation of innocence. Her nose twitched. “I heard a terrible commotion while I was in the retiring room.”

  A muscle jumped in Uncle Nigel’s cheek. He wanted to accuse her, Henry knew. But he could not work out how Grace might have gone through a window on an upper floor only to reappear within the house mere minutes later and none the worse for the wear.

  Henry wasn’t certain he would have believed it himself, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

  Uncle Nigel’s suspicions—whatever they might have been, however true they were—could not stand up against the guileless picture Grace presented. His shoulders slumped; his head drooped. With one hand, he waved away Aunt Alicia, who hovered near him in a fret.

  As she sidled up to her sister’s side, Grace caught his eye—and winked.

  Relief swept over Henry in a crashing wave. She’d done it. She’d done it, and they had made it through this fraught evening with no one the wiser.

  They were safe. For now.

  Chapter Eleven

  Grace tucked the large stack of pilfered letters into the drawer of her nightstand as she readied herself for bed. It hadn’t been her finest heist, perhaps, nor her most subtle. She’d had only a few minutes to peruse Mr. Marsden’s study before she had been interrupted, after all. Not nearly enough time to make a thorough accounting of everything within, but sufficient enough to have made a search of every place which might have concealed a safe—and when she had come up empty there, that had left only the sole locked drawer in the office, on the right side of Mr. Marsden’s desk.

  Had she had only a little more time—had she known what, exactly, she had been meant to be looking for—she might’ve been able to conceal her thievery better. But once she had heard the creak of the stairs, time had become a determining factor. She had had only a few moments to scrape up the contents of the drawer and make for the window.

  It was a bloody miracle that Mr. Marsden hadn’t checked the window first once he’d found his study door unlocked, and that he’d lost another few precious seconds in checking his desk before he’d shouted the house down. Those small actions had given Grace the scant time she’d needed to scramble down the convenient tree and out of sight of the window.

  In the chaos which had ensued thereafter, there had been no chance to speak with Lord Lockhart, but she rather thought the sly little wink she’d managed had done the speaking for her. Probably he would be round to pay a call tomorrow to see what she’d managed to retrieve.

  She ought to have been abed already, but the jitter of nerves still sparked beneath her skin—the elation of a job well done combined with the rush of the danger of it all, she supposed. Cinching her velvet wrapper tighter about her waist, she wandered toward her window, which faced the street, delicately peeling up a corner of the curtain to peer through the night toward Lord Lockhart’s house. Had the stress of the evening left him sleepless, as well?

  Apparently not. At such an hour as this, his household had generally gone dark for the evening. Most of the servants would have found their beds hours ago. There wasn’t a single light in a window which suggested anyone at all was still awake.

  There was, however, a large grey cat lounging on her side in a second-floor window, framed dramatically by lacy white curtains. She gave a flick of her ear as if to wave a mocking hello to Grace, and casually stretched out one paw to drag her claws through the delicate fabric of the curtain at her side.

  “Tansy,” Grace muttered reproachfully. “For heaven’s sake, not again.” Not that Tansy could hear her—or would consider herself duly chastened, even if she could.

  Two heists in one night, then, it would have to be. Grace searched the pockets of the gown she had discarded for the evening for the tools she’d left within, tucking them away within the pockets of her wrapper.

  Tansy had been in a second-floor window, she thought as she raced down the stairs. But there was no guarantee that there she would remain. And she was more or less an expert at finding nooks and crannies in which to hide.

  Grace slipped out the front door and lingered on the shadowed steps long enough to peer about for observers. It had hardly been the first time she’d sneaked out of the house, and she doubted it would be the last—but it was always wisest to remain unseen in occasions such as these.

  Not a soul breathed, other than herself. Most of the windows in the surrounding houses had gone dark, and the few behind which burned some sort of lamp or candlelight were shaded by curtains. While the street remained deserted, Grace scampered across it, sliding fluidly into the shadows wreathing his lordship’s house, and creeping toward the gate of the rear garden.

  The latch was easy, but the iron hinges were not; they wanted to shrill an alarm every time they were opened more than halfway, which was scarcely enough room for Grace to squeeze through. She winced as the velvet of her wrapper snared upon the rough stone of the wall into which the gate had been set and resisted the urge to check if it had torn.

  It didn’t matter if it had. No one was going to see her, and she had other wrappers, besides. She only had to retrieve Tansy and make short work of bringing her home again.

  The exterior doors all had proper locks, and while she could have picked them easily enough, it was always safest to pursue the path of least resistance—which meant the dining room window. It had been fashioned to be easily pushed open from the side should the room grow too stuffy, and the latches consisted of a set of simple hook-and-eye closure set into the wall. The thin gap between the window and the frame was just large enough to suit her needs.

  She slid a long, thin piece of metal—a jemmy—from the depths of her pocket and slipped it through the gap, easing it up against the side of the window and tripping the latches one by one. Probably some servant would notice the window was unlocked in the morning, but as she didn’t intend to steal anything from the home other than Tansy–who rightfully belonged to her, besides—it would likely be assumed that someone had overlooked the latching of them this evening.

  Grace climbed carefully onto the sill, slid her legs through the window, and pushed herself into the room. The darkness was nigh overwhelming; the silence pulsed in her ears. She allowed herself a minute, perhaps two, to accustom herself to the inky blackness, then moved slowly through the room, neatly avoiding a collision with the furniture.

  Thank God the house was perhaps half the size of Charity’s. If she had had to search so many rooms as that, probably she would not be home before dawn. Still, she would have liked to see it in the daylight hours for once, see what furniture Lord Lockhart’s family favored, what wall paper-hangings they preferred. Whether there might be portraits of his ancestors tucked away in a gallery somewhere.