STOLEN HEARTS

by Michelle Martin

  Her heart mutinied.

  "From what you've said," Jane continued, "Tess Alcott is not your real name?"

  "Hardly," Tess replied and even managed a grin. "At Oxford I used Preen, Wentworth, Finch, Harley, and Charles. After I graduated I used … let's see … Marshall, Woodcock, Danby, Clark, Brugger, Horst … oh, and Jeanne-Marie St. Juste. No one was more surprised than me when I came up with that one."

  Jane laughed. "Just how many names have you had?"

  "Dozens. I keep a log so I don't reuse a name that the authorities might remember in quite the wrong way. Usually I've kept Tess, but I've also used Julia, Suzanne, Marguerite, Sophia, and a few less colorful others. As for the last names, I've been through the alphabet three times now."

  "Hence the A for Alcott?"

  "Yes, and no. When I turned myself in to WEB, I was only up to T for Tyler, but I figured a new start and a new life required the first letter of the alphabet, so I went back to A."

  "And how did you choose Alcott?"

  Tess grinned. Her heartbeat was back to normal. She could breathe easily. Relief washed over her. It looked like this was going to work after all. "I was rereading Little Women for the umpteenth time and the name just sort of came to me."

  Jane returned her smile. "And so you've been Alcott ever since?"

  "I like it. It's such down-to-earth, honest Americana that most marks can't help but trust it."

  "I thought," Luke politely put in, "that you had reformed your career and that marks were no longer of interest to you."

  "Old habits die hard," Tess retorted, forcing herself to meet his challenging green gaze.

  "I must say, it will be nice having young people to stay for a few weeks," Jane said brightly. "This house is just too big for one old woman."

  "People?" Tess said, trying not to choke on a sip of lemonade.

  "Yes. Luke will be staying, too. We should have some fine times together."

  "I'm having my apartment redecorated," Luke said as he settled back against the sofa, his smile almost malicious, "and Jane graciously asked me to stay with her until it's done."

  "How kind of her," Tess murmured.

  So, he meant to be Jane's watchdog, did he? And he didn't give a damn if she believed his lie or not? Fine. She preferred open warfare to hidden animosity any day of the week. Every job required some readjustment of tactics, even of tactics forged the day before. She had lived without a libido for years before this, she could hide it away for the next two weeks. Really she could. She raised her glass of lemonade in toast, once again forcing herself to look directly at Luke. She would have to get used to it.

  "The more the merrier," she said lightly.

  "I'm looking forward to hearing more about your colorful past," Luke said with equal lightness. "It just fascinates me. I've even been doing a little checking up on your exploits."

  "Oh, now there's a shock," Tess said. "I trust WEB was forthcoming about my exemplary work?"

  "They gave you a glowing review."

  "What a swell bunch of people. I love them like family. Who have you got checking up on me?"

  "Baldwin Security."

  His poker face didn't fool her. "Very good," Tess said, keeping every single one of the expletives raging in her brain from showing on her face. "It's one of the best."

  "I'll tell Leroy you said so."

  "That's enough fencing for now, children," Jane said.

  "On the contrary," Luke grimly retorted, "Ms. Alcott is going to be living with you for two weeks, Jane. I think you should know more than her phony name, if only to sleep well at night, don't you?"

  "Luke—"

  "So, tell me, Ms. Alcott," he said, "what was it like growing up as a female Oliver to a pair of modern-day Fagins?"

  Tess's stomach turned over. She could see Barbara Carswell's tight, furious face, feel her hand slapping her again and again as Ernie Carswell looked on, bored. She had been free of those monsters for more than fourteen years and still— "The Carswells were all right, I suppose," she said with a shrug, forcing back the nausea. "They never had fewer than ten kids working for them at any one time. We tended to look out for each other, and the Carswells kept us all clothed and fed. I even acquired a rudimentary understanding of reading, writing, and arithmetic. That's more than a lot of kids in this country can claim."

  "It sounds like you knew some of those others," Jane said quietly.

  Tess shrugged again. "The Carswells never chose anything remotely palatial to work from. It's hard to hide ten kids in a middle-class suburb. So we mostly hung out on the wrong side of the Miami barrio and learned about the realities of life. The barrio wasn't exactly clean, or safe for that matter. But oh my, the food when you got it was great."

  "Did the Carswells ever tell you how they … acquired you?" Luke demanded, his face as frozen as that iceberg Jane called a butler.

  "Sure. They bought me."

  Luke and Jane stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" he said.

  "You've lived too long in your ivory tower, Mansfield," Tess said, unable to keep all the bitterness from her voice. "There are people who snatch kids all the time and sell them to people like the Carswells, or to porn rings, or to people who want a child so badly they have no problem in not asking questions when a kid is suddenly placed in their arms. It's sort of like cattle rustling. Just change the brand and who's to know the difference?"

  "The children, to start," Jane said grimly.

  "Wrong. Most of us couldn't have told you where we came from if you put a gun to our heads. The shrinks call it traumatic amnesia. The information just simply wasn't there for us. It was as if we had suddenly landed on a new and terrifying planet."

  Tess heard the anger in her voice and inwardly cringed. Keep it light! she ordered herself. Just because they were treading perilously close to her greatest vulnerability—her amnesia—was no reason to lose sight of the role, she was playing.

  Luke regarded her a moment with an odd expression she couldn't decipher. "Did you ever wonder about your parents?"

  "Oh, sure. I decided long ago they had probably sold me to the Carswells for drug money. Don't look so shocked! It happens all the time. And in the end, it didn't matter. I was with the Carswells and there was nowhere else to go."

  Jane looked a little pale. "You're very … adaptable, Tess. You don't think your parents might have been John and Eugenie Cushman?"

  "I've seen my blood. It's the farthest thing from blue."

  "But you fit in very well amidst all this luxury and wealth," Luke observed with a mocking smile.

  Tess allowed herself to skewer him with one of her own killing gazes. "Like Jane said, I'm adaptable."

  "A necessary skill in your career, I'm sure," Luke said, unrattled. "So, you claim to have no family. What about friends who can vouch for your sterling character?"

  "None."

  "No family, no friends?" Jane said. "What do you have?"

  "My work."

  "Ah yes, your career," Luke said. "Tell me all about your humble beginnings, Ms. Alcott. How old were you when you first started to work for the Carswells?"

  "Maybe four, probably five. I was small for my age. Still am."

  "That makes it twenty years ago, then. Another big surprise in your résumé. What time of year was it?"

  "Who could tell? It was Miami! I'd never been to Miami before."

  Tess stopped. How on earth did she know she had never been to Miami prior to the Carswells buying her?

  "But you lived there for five or six years, you got used to the seasons. Compare them. When did the Carswells buy you?" Luke demanded.

  "Hot," she muttered, still nonplussed by this sudden piece of her childhood surfacing. She hadn't been to Miami before! "It was real hot. Maybe late summer. July, August, I don't know."

  "Luke, I know you have to get back to your office," Jane said firmly. "I will expect you for dinner. I shall do my poor best to entertain Tess while you are gone."

  Tess hid her smile
by taking another sip of lemonade. It seemed Mr. Mansfield could be as neatly trapped as she. Luke had no choice but to glower at Jane, bid Tess a curt good-bye, and decamp.

  "It should be an interesting two weeks," Tess said, watching him stride from the room.

  "Yes, I think so, too," Jane said, mischief lighting her eyes.

  Tess turned to her and grinned. "Do you get some kind of weird kick putting two Siamese Fighting Fish in the same aquarium?"

  "This wasn't my idea," Jane said guilelessly.

  "No doubt. But you're going to love every minute of it."

  Jane laughed. "Yes, I am. Come along, let me show you your room."

  Standing up together, Jane looped Tess's arm through hers and led her from the living room. Tess had to force herself not to pull free. Physical contact bred security and Jane had to become secure in the belief that she was trustworthy. That she was Elizabeth. Instead, Tess wanted to recoil from the old woman's touch, to fend off this casual intimacy as they walked up the stairs to the second floor.

  "Impressive little shack you've got here, Jane."

  Jane smiled blandly at her. "I like it."

  Tess's brain kicked in. Jane knew what she was doing! She was using the same intimacy tactic Tess was using on her! Why, the old she-devil! Jane was probably lulling her into a false sense of security just before she released a steel-toothed trap. Luke Mansfield wasn't the only danger in this house.

  Remember, she said to herself, repeating a lifelong mantra, nothing and no one is safe.

  Jane opened a bedroom door and pulled Tess inside. "This was Elizabeth's room," she said simply. "I thought you might like it."

  Tess loathed it on sight. It had been kept very much a child's bedroom. A sky mural with thick, cushy clouds covered three walls. The large bay window and window seat invited an afternoon spent gazing down at the park. There was a large toy box along the side wall. Her suitcase rested on the twin bed. Her garment bag hung in a walk-in closet. Opposite the bed were a tiny table and chairs fit for any five-year-old's tea parties.

  It was a perfect child's haven and all that Tess could think about was a terrified five-year-old girl being torn from the room twenty years earlier. She had known children who had been kidnapped. She had pulled jobs with them. Even now, she could feel their terror, their confusion, their shock at living in a world that wasn't safe. She prayed that Elizabeth had died quickly, easily, after the kidnapping. No child should have to live through the aftermath of such violence.

  "This … isn't what I expected," she managed. She wanted to get out of this hellish room now and away from the memories and feelings of her own nightmarish past that this perfect child's room was dredging up.

  "I'm sure there will be lots of little surprises in the next two weeks," Jane said.

  Tess glanced at her suspiciously. If the coming surprises were anything like what she had already endured today, she should probably just pack it in right now.

  But no, she was being childish. Nothing was more important than this con. Nothing.

  Forcing a smile to her lips, Tess looped her arm through Jane's. "Come on and show me the rest of your stately manor."

  Having memorized the house plans two weeks ago, along with the secret nooks and crannies that had been added over the years, Tess was free to study Jane and to wonder yet again who Bert's informant had been. The wealth of detail he had passed on to her had to have come from an intimate of the household. But who?

  It sure wasn't the matriarch. Tess hid her amusement when Jane failed to point out the safe hidden in the ballroom sidebar. Instead, she uttered her real appreciation of the large, oak-floored ballroom with its huge crystal chandeliers and ceiling frescoes of emerald-green dragons frolicking amidst painted clouds.

  From everything she had studied of them and had seen today, the Cushmans not only exalted real beauty, they knew how to incorporate it into every level of their lives. She had to fight off a growing admiration for the family. Admiration led to friendship, even intimacy. She could afford none of them. Intimacy on a job always blew up in your face. Bert had drummed that little lesson into her head by the time she was twelve. She could not afford to admire or like Jane Cushman. Jane was a mark, end of story. Anything else put the job in jeopardy.

  She had to convince Jane of a fantasy—that she was Elizabeth—and Jane had to believe in that fantasy strongly enough to convince Bert that she was convinced. Papers had to be signed, promises made, a necklace obtained, and it was up to Tess to make sure that all of that happened.

  So she giggled like a schoolgirl at some of Jane's sillier stories, smiled and laughed and told silly stories in turn, forced herself to keep her arm looped through Jane's, and kept her heart carefully hidden away.

  "Who is that elegant gentleman?" she asked, pointing to a life-sized portrait of an elderly man which hung in the library opposite an extensive gun collection in a glass case with a pitiful lock.

  "My late husband, Edward," Jane replied.

  Tess studied him with interest. The portrait must have been painted in the last years of his life. Even in his eighties, Edward Cushman had been a handsome, vigorous man. He looked, Tess thought with a grin, like he could give Jane a good deal of trouble if pressed to it, and she said so.

  Jane smiled fondly up at her late husband. "He was a rascal," she stated. "He loved arguing with me just to get my dander up. He could tease me into a fury and then kiss me into a pool of butter. He was … incomparable."

  "You must miss him very much," Tess said quietly.

  "It hurts like hell," Jane said frankly, turning from the portrait and back to her. "I absolutely forbade him to die before me, but Edward always was an independent beast. I intend to give him a good piece of my mind when I finally join him."

  "I hope that's not for years and years yet," Tess said, looping her arm through Jane's once again and forcing herself not to cringe. She had meant it, dammit. She had meant it!

  Having been warned beforehand that Jane maintained the old-fashioned habit of dressing for dinner, Tess appeared in the family dining room that evening in a simple blue sheath dress, a strand of pearls at her throat, her hair pulled back in a bun that was doing a poor job of holding it in one place. Jane was already seated at the head of the oak table. Luke sat at the foot of the table. He, too, wore evening clothes. And wore them well.

  Luke raised one sardonic brow, his green eyes sweeping over her with an approval she hadn't sought, and was desperately glad to have received.

  She mechanically took her place at the middle of the table. Oh yes, she was attracted to Luke Mansfield. She was feeling like a woman for the first time in her life and it was terrifying. Fortunately, Jane began a conversation about the upcoming sale of some important pieces from an even more important English estate and Tess was knowledgeable enough about art and the current market to keep the conversation lively and directed very much away from herself. Luke spoke little, but his gaze seemed to be on her throughout the meal, slowly shredding her façade.

  "I think the Monet will bring an excellent price, don't you?" Jane said.

  "Hm?" Tess said and then quickly marshaled her thoughts. "Oh, as far as I'm concerned, the Monet should bring a fabulous price. I'm a slave to Monet."

  "I enjoy his work as well," Jane said, "but I'm not what you would call a groupie."

  Tess laughed. "I am. I stole six of his pieces while I was active, and now I own three, with my eye on future purchases. Maybe I should attend the auction and do a bit of bidding myself. Assuming, of course, there would be no conflict of interest."

  "Not yet, at any rate," Jane calmly replied. "Why are you so devoted to Monet?"

  Tess sighed in happy memory. "When I worked for the Carswells, my main turf was the museums: the Bass Museum of Art, the Lowe Art Museum, the South Florida Art Center."

  "Museums?" Luke said. "My, you were precocious."

  "Hardly," Tess retorted. "I was just very savvy. Museums offer a wealth of opportunity for a talented pickpo
cket. Surely you've seen the signs warning visitors to guard their wallets and purses? Most people don't pay much attention, which was fortunate for me. I almost never failed to make my quota."

  "The Carswells had you on a quota system?" Luke demanded with surprise.

  "Of course," Tess said. "It was the best way to get kids to work. Tell them they have to steal at least a hundred dollars' worth of goods or money a day, or they don't eat, and those kids will steal a hundred dollars' worth of goods a day. I picked up the trade well enough so I didn't go hungry too often. Some of the others weren't so lucky. Either you've got a knack for stealing or you don't, and some of them didn't."

  "So you learned to steal out of necessity?" Jane said.

  "I'm a firm believer in survival."

  "At any cost?" Luke demanded.

  She looked him square in the eye. "Yes."

  "But I don't understand," Jane broke in quietly, "how working the museums to make your daily quota made you a Monet devotee."

  Tess turned from Luke to Jane with relief. "I discovered his work in the Bass Museum of Art when I was nine. They have a lovely collection of old masters, even Rococo and Baroque, a few Impressionists. Only at nine, I wasn't very impressed. It was a weekday, and it was raining, and the pickings were slim. I was getting pretty desperate because it was almost closing time and I'd only made about half my quota for the day. The day before had been equally dismal, so I was hungry." Tess stared into her crystal water goblet for a moment. "Anyway," she said, giving herself a mental shake, "there I was, desperate, depressed, convinced there was no good and no beauty in life, and I turned a corner and there, on the wall, was one of Monet's huge water lilies canvases. Suddenly I felt myself immersed in the painting. I was gliding through the water, lilies brushing gently against me. It was absolutely one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I've been addicted ever since."

  "And did you make your quota?" Luke asked quietly.