Thick as Thieves

by Catherine Gayle

  He didn’t miss the jab at his own abilities, even though she had quickly attempted to turn their conversation in a different direction.

  “We’ll have to see about that sometime,” the earl said.

  Preston merely nodded in her direction as he took another sip of his whiskey. He had never been one to back away from a challenge, even if it was issued by a lady. It all went back to his days at Harrow with the other boys.

  Mark caught Preston’s eye and raised a brow in question before speaking. “Goddard tells me the servants have uncovered a great many other interesting items upstairs today. Old maps, framed portraits, a marble bust that’s in excellent condition, some jewelry… We should go up to look at what they’ve found. I’m sure I can spare at least some, if not all, of it for Darlingshire House.”

  Lady Frederica shifted in her seat, which drew Preston’s gaze. She could hide neither how keen her eyes had suddenly become nor her interest in the direction the conversation had gone.

  “Did your father’s interest in relics extend to maps and busts, my lady?” he drawled.

  If she’d been drinking anything, he had no doubt she would have choked upon it.

  After sparing Preston a queer look, Mark turned his attention to the lady. “Your father enjoyed relics?” he enquired.

  She blinked rapidly. “Yes—well, anything old—antique. I mean…”

  Upton Grey took pity on her—something Preston would not have done, given the circumstances. She might be far more beautiful than was good for his future, but there was also something very questionable about her.

  “And you’ve developed a similar interest?” Upton Grey smiled at her. “You should come up with us. I’m sure there are any number of unique and interesting items to examine.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose—”

  “Come. Please.” Mark stood and held out an arm for her. “It would make me happy as your host to show you something you might enjoy.”

  She reached for his arm shyly…but she still took it and stood. If Lady Frederica was going upstairs to look at Mark’s discoveries, then there was no chance Preston would be staying behind.

  He wanted to see what her interest really was.

  And he wanted to see more of her, damn it all.

  Freddie’s fingers trailed over the ruby-encrusted brooch while she marveled at how the gemstones could glimmer and glint so much, even after years of dust and grime accumulating upon them. This was a true treasure.

  One of the two men grunted, and the squeak of a table shifting across the hardwood flooring broke into her thoughts.

  “That’s even more exquisite than how Goddard described it to me.”

  “Once the dust is off it, imagine how beautiful it will be.”

  They were looking at marble busts and enormous, gilt-framed portraits on the opposite side of this abandoned library, leaving Freddie to marvel over the precious jewels near the window.

  They had brought in a few candles with them, and the moon was particularly bright tonight. The play of the lighting against the red, blue, green stones—every color of the rainbow—made them appear to almost dance like a flickering fire.

  She couldn’t look away if she tried.

  Which, of course, she didn’t.

  In her mind, she was attempting to calculate the value of all of these stones. They each had to be worth a few hundred pounds, maybe more. And this was just what Mr. Goddard and the servants had discovered in this unused library today. Deep within its cavernous confines, there were stacks of abandoned furnishings, rugs, draperies…endless places in which more treasures might be stored.

  Heavens, but there could be thousands of pounds worth of diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and Lord only knew what else.

  Freddie felt almost faint at the thought of such a grand amount of money.

  “If you sell all of this at auction, you’ll easily have enough to see to the needs of Darlingshire House for five years or more,” Lord Upton Grey said, breaking through her fog of money-lust. “You could possibly even think about starting another house in another county, so you could help even more women in need.”

  “I couldn’t take it all, though.”

  Like the jewels?

  As soon as she’d thought it, Freddie mentally berated herself. Even if Lord Preston didn’t auction the jewels for this Darlingshire House, whatever that may be, the stones wouldn’t belong to her. She had no business even looking at them, let alone thinking about what they could do for her mother and Edie.

  “Of course you can. I didn’t even know I had it, so I couldn’t possibly need it or miss it. I’d rather it all be used for something where it can help.”

  The two men came back over to where Freddie stood, still gawking at the glittering array on the table. Her hand hovered over them, almost touching but not quite.

  “Emeralds are the best for you.”

  Freddie jerked her hand back at Lord Upton Grey’s pronouncement. “I wasn’t—”

  “You were thinking about what they would look like on you, I would imagine. I’ve never known a lady who didn’t like wearing jewels such as these.” He picked up the ear bobs she’d just been admiring and held them up to her ears. “The emeralds. They’re the perfect gem for you. Don’t you agree, Preston?”

  Once again, Lord Preston’s gaze was burning into her very soul, only this time with accusation instead of whatever it had been earlier. “I don’t know. Rubies seem more appropriate for some reason.”

  He’d noticed that she had been nearly holding the brooch. He had to have. Why else would he say such a thing?

  Her chest ached, like she couldn’t take a good breath. She had to get out of here. Now.

  “I’m sorry. I should go back down to the drawing room before Mama misses me. I wouldn’t want her to worry.” Freddie backed away with her candlestick and skirted out of the musty library before either of the gentlemen could stop her.

  Only when she had collapsed upon her bed in her chamber did she realize she’d been so flustered that instead of returning to the drawing room as she’d claimed she would, she had gone somewhere else entirely.

  Good heavens.

  Lord Preston thought she meant to take the ruby brooch. He must think that, after how he’d reacted.

  The worst part of it all was she wasn’t entirely certain he was wrong.

  In fact, she was halfway positive he was right.

  Once Freddie gathered her wits from where they’d apparently fallen to the floor to be trampled by a herd of elephants, she made her way back down to the drawing room.

  Lord Preston and Lord Upton Grey had both made their return sooner than she had. They were seated in chintz chairs near the pianoforte deep in conversation with Mama and the Dowager Countess. As soon as Freddie came through the doors, Preston’s eyes met hers.

  That alone was enough to cause her pulse to hammer through her veins at an unnatural pace. But when he immediately stood and crossed over to her? She felt liable to succumb to a fit of the vapors.

  How was this man so singularly capable of making her forget every thought in her head? And her turn towards the lack-witted wasn’t merely because he was sure to find her behaviors suspicious. Freddie couldn’t fool herself into thinking such a thing even for a few minutes.

  Even something so small as him looking at her made her want to both run away and hide, never to be seen again, and at the same time move closer to him. It was the worst sort of contradictory emotions roiling through her, and she didn’t have the first clue how to calm them.

  “It seems you were not in as much of a hurry to ease your mother’s concerns as I was led to believe,” he said quietly once he stood close enough she could feel his warmth radiating between them.

  “I…”

  Her thoughts became even more muddled than they already had been when he placed his hand against the small of her back and led her into a more private area of the drawing room. The heat of his hand was enough to scald her.

/>   Mama caught her eye as they walked past her, and she gave an encouraging nod. Good heavens! She must think Lord Preston was flirting with her or something of that manner. Mama’s assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth. How was it that everyone at Padmore Glen seemed to think he had formed a tendre for her when reality lay firmly on the opposite end of the spectrum?

  When they were close to the bay window, he nudged her to sit and then took the seat across from her.

  Those hazel eyes, almost amber in the dim light of the room, bored straight through her. Her hands trembled.

  “It is not a terrible thing for one to wish for things which rightfully belong to someone else,” he said slowly.

  “I didn’t want—”

  “Let us be clear on this, Lady Frederica.” He leaned back in his chair and put his elbows on its arms, his hands forming a steeple in front of him. “I do not begrudge you wanting jewels of your very own. I’m sure that someday, when you have a husband, he will provide you with all the jewels you could ever dream of. But I will not sit idly by while you plot to steal from my brother-in-law.”

  “I only wanted to look at them.”

  Her claim even rang hollow to her own ears. He wouldn’t believe her protestations for a moment.

  Indeed, his eyes narrowed until his brow was almost a single line above them. “I have no idea why you think I should believe you, but do not think for one moment that you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes, my lady.”

  “What sort of gentleman issues threats to a lady who has done nothing wrong?” Any sense of bravado she might have once felt was fading fast.

  “Yet,” he muttered beneath his breath, but not so quietly she didn’t hear him. “Perhaps the sort who is all too aware of just what sort of treachery even a gentle-bred lady can inflict upon someone who is ill-prepared for the assault.”

  Aha. So mayhap Lord Preston had been jilted by a lady who’d stolen from him before she left? Freddie felt she was getting closer to answering the riddle of his aversion to marriage by the day.

  The riddle she truly needed to solve was what she could do to take care of Mama and Edie, if they should lose their home—a possibility which seemed to be becoming closer to reality by the day, if only in her imagination.

  Lord Preston stood then, his great height towering over her in a posture she felt certain was meant to intimidate. “I intend to keep a very close watch over you. I won’t allow anyone to hurt those I love.”

  Freddie refused to cower beneath him as he plainly wanted her to do. She stood, and her forehead nearly bumped against his chin since he didn’t back away. “I’m sure you’ll be quite bored in no time, my lord. Good evening to you.”

  “Let’s hope you are correct.”

  Then she edged around him, begged Mama and Lady Upton Grey to allow her to retire early once more, and stalked from the drawing room.

  Lord Preston was nothing more than a nuisance.

  He was watching her, all right, but damn if he wasn’t watching the sway of her hips when he ought to be paying more attention to the guile in her eyes.

  For the next three days, they had all been stuck in the house at Padmore Glen because of a heavy snow that had decided to fall from the heavens. And throughout each of those three days anywhere Lady Frederica went, Preston was sure to follow…aside from following her into her chamber. He couldn’t very well do that if he didn’t want to end up leg-shackled to her.

  Briefly, he’d tossed about the idea of standing guard outside her door, in case she had any grand designs on traipsing through the estate in the middle of the night in the hopes that he would be fast asleep. That idea had been quashed just as quickly as it had come, however, because being discovered near the young, unmarried ladies’ rooms would mean just as swift a visit to the altar as following her into her room.

  Then he’d thought to set up his guard upstairs near the entry to the library where the jewels were discovered. No sooner had he convinced himself that was his best plan than he’d remembered the reliquary—which had held an equal interest for her—was downstairs in the abandoned study in the blue corridor.

  The only way he could guard both doors would be to split himself in half. That was not an idea he savored.

  Another possibility would be to explain to Goddard what was going on, and the two of them could each guard a door. But Preston had not, as yet, determined how loyal Goddard was to Upton Grey. Would the butler immediately go to his employer with what Preston told him? That was a risk he couldn’t take, because at present, Lady Frederica remained innocent of any wrongdoing. He wouldn’t tarnish her character—that was a task which she would have to do herself. If Preston went to him, would Goddard instead insist that footmen be stationed by the rooms? While Preston would appreciate being able to sleep in a comfortable bed each night, he didn’t want to alert anyone unnecessary to his suspicions.

  As such, he had finally settled on the fact that he really couldn’t guard the doors. Even if he attempted to do so without obtaining assistance, one of the servants might come upon him in the night, and that would rouse any number of uncomfortable questions.

  In the end he’d decided to sleep in his chamber, but to rise in the morning before Lady Frederica did. In that way, he could visit both the unused library upstairs and the study in the blue corridor downstairs and make certain nothing was amiss. He had even taken to escorting her up to the ladies’ corridor at the end of the night, just to be certain she didn’t take any detours along the way.

  Of course, all this time he’d been spending in her presence in combination with the way he was always watching to see if she would do anything suspicious had led his sisters to speculate that their plan was proving successful.

  “You can hardly take your eyes off her, Preston,” Mary had said only this afternoon at tea. “I’ve been watching you.”

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed he always goes with her when she retires for the night, too,” Rachel had put in. Her smile was somehow equally self-satisfied and loving. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s when he tries to steal a kiss with no one watching.”

  He’d done his best to dissuade them from thinking this was a budding courtship and impending marriage, but Preston doubted he’d gotten through to them at all.

  Why should they believe his denials when everything they saw was correct insofar as they could know? Even he couldn’t deny that there was an attraction—a physical attraction, nothing more—whether he had any intention of acting upon the temptation or not.

  If he wasn’t mistaken, Lady Frederica felt a similar pull to him, despite her frequent attempts to slip out from under his eye. More and more often, she was allowing herself to smile while she was around him. He’d only thought her beautiful before. When she smiled, her entire face lit up like a clear summer’s day. He was starting to wish that she felt more comfortable in his presence. If she did, then perhaps he would be on the receiving end of more of those smiles.

  Preston still didn’t trust her though, and as long as he couldn’t trust her, he couldn’t change his demeanor in her presence. There was always that hint of misgiving which came across in the way he would speak to her, or in their conversation when no one else was listening, and so she remained heavily on her guard.

  Even with all his doubts about her character, though, for whatever reason, he was starting to enjoy his time with Lady Frederica. It shocked him when he realized it at supper, as the two of them were engaged in a lively discussion of the flaws in Gauss’s proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, that even when they had disagreements she responded in a lively, intelligent, and engaging manner. Not many women of his acquaintance were so well educated on the finer points of complex mathematics. For that matter, there weren’t a great many men in is acquaintance of the sort. She was quite an uncommon lady.

  Another discovery Preston had made during their time together was that she cared as deeply for her sisters and mother as he did for his family. She spent many hours with Lady Edwina,
speaking with her as a friend, and a good deal more hours seeking out Lady Stalbridge’s advice and opinions on various matters. Hardly a day went by that she didn’t write to one of her married sisters or ask if the post had arrived in hopes that she would have news from one of them, even though the postman couldn’t easily get through the snows that were keeping them all indoors.

  There were few times in his life that Preston had ever felt more conflicted about a person than he did about Lady Frederica Bexley-Smythe. Most of the time, she was a charming, intellectual, and gracious lady who stirred his lust in ways he was powerless to prevent. At other times, though, he saw her as little more than a cunning liar intent upon stealing from those who had given her nothing but their generosity.

  He couldn’t reconcile the two as being the same person.

  Was he misguided in assuming she would steal? She was a gently-bred lady, after all. Her father had been a marquess—one whom Preston had admired—and she’d spent many years under his care before her ne’er-do-well brother had inherited and become the head of the family. Certainly her father’s influence would have had an effect upon her. He’d been a good, honorable, honest man.

  Shouldn’t his offspring have followed in the same course?

  But then how could one explain the current Stalbridge and the myriad ways in which he seemed determined to drag both the marquessate and the family name through the mud?

  As far as Lady Frederica was concerned, there was only one thing about which Preston felt absolutely and unequivocally convinced of: there was more to her than what she wanted him to see.

  Now he must discover what she was hiding.

  The snow finally cleared on Sunday, and Freddie couldn’t have been happier.

  Three solid days with no means to escape Lord Preston’s constant hovering had been almost enough to drive her mad. When she added her unceasing thoughts about what would happen to Edie and Mama if she couldn’t do something to help them, and the fact that there were unknown quantities of valuable items upstairs which Lord Upton Grey would never miss since he didn’t even know that they existed as yet, a stay at Bedlam seemed a likely part of her future.