My Lady Thief

by Emily Larkin

  Her conduct had been vulgar and wholly unjustified. It wasn’t St. Just’s fault that waltzing with him made her feel so uncomfortable.

  Arabella pulled a face. I owe him an apology.

  * * *

  A LIGHT DRIZZLE was falling, but Adam barely noticed. He ignored the offer of a hackney and strode down Clarges Street. Fury vibrated inside him. How dared Arabella Knightley imply that he—a St. Just—was no better than a crossing-sweeper!

  The walk did nothing to improve his temper. The doorman at White’s took one look at his face and confined his welcome to a mere, “Good evening, sir.”

  Adam strode into the card room. “Brandy,” he said curtly, stripping off his gloves. “A bottle.”

  The hour was early and only a few tables were occupied. Lord Alvanley and a number of gentlemen were seated at a green baize faro table lit by a branching candelabrum. “St. Just!” Alvanley called out, waving his hand expansively. “Join us.”

  Adam drew up a chair and grunted in response to the greetings. Alvanley was holding the bank; a pile of gold coins, banknotes, and vowels lay scattered before him. “The stakes?”

  It wasn’t until his third glass of brandy that Adam began to relax. To his annoyance, his luck was in. He imagined the satisfaction it would give him to tell Miss Knightley tomorrow that he’d lost several thousand pounds at faro.

  Revelstoke joined the table an hour later. “You left the ball early,” he said, pulling up a chair.

  Adam grunted.

  “How was your waltz with the delectable Miss Knightley?”

  Adam glanced at him. “If you value our friendship,” he said flatly, “you won’t ever do that to me again.”

  Jeremy blinked. For once he didn’t offer a joke in reply. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Adam grunted again.

  As if the marquis’s arrival had signaled a change, his luck turned. He began to lose steadily.

  Alvanley tallied up the losses at two o’clock. “Three hundred guineas,” he said, glancing at him.

  Adam could almost hear Miss Knightley’s voice in his ear: I wonder how many families you could feed with that money, Mr. St. Just?

  He gritted his teeth, poured himself another glass of brandy, and settled more deeply into his chair, determined to enjoy himself. But he found that he couldn’t. Each turn of the cards represented money. Families’ worth of money.

  At three o’clock, with another hundred guineas lost, he pushed back his chair in disgust. “That’s me for the night.”

  His announcement was greeted by startled expressions. “So soon?” Alvanley said.

  “Are you all right?” Jeremy asked quietly.

  “Fine,” Adam said, pulling on his gloves. That damned girl has merely ruined any pleasure I might have in playing faro.

  The drizzle had become a light rain. “Shall I order a hackney, sir?” the doorman asked.

  “No.” The walk, the rain, would clear his head.

  Adam scowled as he strode down St. James’s Street. It was his own money, damn it. Why shouldn’t he throw it away on the turn of a card?

  “Light your way, guv’nor?” a shrill voice cried behind him. He heard the soft patter of feet and turned his head. A linkboy.

  Adam opened his mouth to refuse, but a glance at the boy’s face—thin, eager—made him bite back the words. “I’m going to Berkeley Square,” he said instead.

  He walked along St. James’s Street with the linkboy trotting ahead, the torch casting a flickering light. The boy’s feet were bare and filthy, his clothing ragged. Damp hair clung to his skull.

  The devil take Arabella Knightley! If it wasn’t for her he’d still be at White’s, deep in a game of faro. Instead he was looking at a linkboy’s bare feet and feeling guilty.

  “What’s your name, boy?” he asked curtly.

  The linkboy glanced back at him, his eyes large in a too-thin face. “Sir?”

  “Your name?”

  “Ned.”

  Adam walked another block in silence, then he asked, “How old are you, Ned?”

  The boy shrugged. “I dunno, guv’nor.”

  About nine years old, Adam guessed. Perhaps ten. The same age as his cousin the Duke of Frew’s son, Gervase. For a moment he saw Gervase in his mind’s eye: sturdy and fair-haired.

  Gervase was touring the continent with his parents; Ned was running barefoot through wet London streets. Better, or merely luckier? Arabella Knightley’s voice asked him.

  He knew what answer his father would have given, what answer the Duke of Frew would give: Better.

  Ned was an unprepossessing child, skinny and grubby, his accent straight from the slums—but would Gervase be any better under the same circumstances? Duke’s son or not, without regular meals and clean clothes, Gervase would be just as thin, just as dirty, and his language would be as coarse as Ned’s.

  It was past three o’clock in the morning. It was raining. The boy’s torch was in danger of guttering. He should be tucked up in bed, warm and dry, not trying to earn a farthing or two.

  They turned into Berkeley Square. “Which ’ouse, guv’nor?”

  “The one on the corner,” Adam said. He’d lost four hundred guineas at faro. What would that money have meant to Ned? Food, a warm bed, dry clothes. Not for one day or one week, or even a month—but for years.

  Ned took him to the foot of the steps. A lamp hung beside the door. Rain fell steadily into the bright circle of light.

  The boy waited, shivering, while Adam felt in his pocket. It was almost empty. He found a couple of ha’pennies, a farthing, and a guinea. “Go home, Ned,” he said gruffly, holding out the guinea.

  Ned’s face lit with awe. “A yellow boy? Thank you, guv’nor!”

  “Buy yourself some food—” Adam started to say, but the boy was already running back in the direction of St. James’s Street. “And some shoes,” he said quietly, only to himself. And some warm clothes.

  He watched until Ned had disappeared from sight, then walked up the steps and let himself into the house with his latch key.

  For a moment he stood in the entrance hall. There was a sour taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the brandy he’d drunk. The hush of the sleeping house settled over him, the scent of beeswax polish and flowers. Giltwood gleamed in the light of the lamp left out for him.

  He knew the answer to Arabella Knightley’s question: Not better, merely luckier.

  * * *

  THE DAY DAWNED gray. Adam, feeling equally gray, decided to visit Jackson’s Saloon. A bout with the Champion usually improved his mood; today it didn’t. Thought of the four hundred guineas he’d lost at play—and the one he’d given Ned—kept intruding. He wanted to hit something, and yet it was frustratingly hard to land a blow.

  Gentleman Jack threw him a cross-buttock. Adam hit the floor so hard it jarred his teeth. For a moment he lay where he’d fallen, winded.

  “Your mind’s not on it today, sir, if I may be so bold as to say so.”

  “No, it’s not,” Adam said, when he’d caught his breath. He pushed up onto one elbow. “Maybe I’ll try a round with the staves.”

  “Might be better, sir.”

  Adam accepted Gentleman Jack’s hand and climbed to his feet.

  He was right: singlestick fighting suited his mood better. The clash of wood, the bone-rattling blows, were a more effective outlet for his frustration. By the end of the bout he was panting and sweating—but his frame of mind was much improved.

  He strolled around to White’s. “Afternoon, guv’nor,” a crossing-sweeper cried, hurrying out into the road to clear horse manure from the crossing.

  Adam had walked past the crossing-sweeper a hundred times; this was the first time he actually saw him: the spikes of sandy hair, the gap-toothed grin, the blue eyes. The boy was older than Ned by a number of years, but his clothes were just as ragged, his feet just as bare and filthy, his face just as thin.

  Arabella Knightley’s words of last night came
forcibly to mind.

  Adam dug in his pocket. “What’s your name?”

  The boy gaped at him in surprise. “Sir?”

  “Your name,” Adam repeated. He sorted through his coins and selected a guinea.

  The boy swallowed audibly. “Billy Crabtree,” he said, his eyes fixed on the guinea.

  Adam held it out to him. “Buy yourself some shoes,” he said.

  Billy Crabtree snatched the guinea. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you, sir!” He tugged his forelock and scurried back across the street.

  Adam stood for a moment on the pavement. He’d given away two guineas. That left three hundred and ninety-eight to go.

  * * *

  ALVANLEY AND REVELSTOKE were at the table in the bow window, sharing the day’s newspapers and a bottle of claret. Both men looked up as Adam lowered himself into a chair. “Where’ve you been?” Alvanley asked, with a wide yawn.

  “Gentleman Jack’s,” Adam said, tenderly feeling his ribs.

  Jeremy folded his newspaper and put it aside. “Throw you, did he?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Claret?”

  “Please,” he said, stretching out his legs. He was feeling almost cheerful. It wasn’t the bout of singlestick or the glass of wine Jeremy was holding out to him; it was the guinea he’d given Billy Crabtree.

  No, it wasn’t that. It was the decision he’d made. Three hundred and ninety-eight guineas to go.

  Adam sipped the claret. “What’s new?”

  “We hear you gave Gorrie a direct cut last night,” Jeremy said, leaning forward in his chair. “Why?”

  Adam paused, the wine glass halfway to his mouth. “Er . . . what?”

  “What did Gorrie do? We’re agog with curiosity.”

  That was an exaggeration; Alvanley looked half asleep. Only Jeremy was agog, his eyes bright with interest.

  Adam sipped the claret meditatively. If he told Jeremy, within a day the whole ton would know. And if the ton knew, then Tom would hear of it—and perhaps pay Sir Arnold Gorrie a visit.

  Which is precisely what the man deserves.

  “Very well,” Adam said, straightening in his chair. “What happened was this.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SIR ARNOLD GORRIE had a house in Russell Square in Bloomsbury, an address on the fringe of what was respectable. It was decorated with the same garish ostentation that characterized his appearance. Arabella tiptoed along the second floor corridor. Crimson and gold predominated, and every nook and cranny bristled with statuary. He was clearly aping the Prince Regent.

  Sir Arnold’s bedchamber was the second door she tried. It was illuminated only by a fire dying in the grate. A four-poster bed dominated the room, looming huge in the shadows.

  Quietly, quickly, she locked the door and unlatched a window in case she needed to leave in a hurry. Only then did she take a candle from the bedside table and light it from the fire.

  The four-poster bed was even more monstrous in candlelight than it was in darkness. The crimson canopy was heavy with golden tassels. Arabella bit her lip. How truly vulgar.

  Gorrie’s jewelry wasn’t obvious in the bedchamber, but the shelves in the dressing room held a number of lacquered boxes of promising size.

  The first box Arabella opened contained buckles in a variety of shapes and sizes, all set with diamonds. The second box contained tiepins, the third held fobs. That, she shut and put back in its place on the shelf.

  Arabella looked at the two open boxes. Tiepins, or buckles?

  The tiepins were as vulgar as everything else she’d seen in this house. She examined them closely. The stones were large and gaudy. Sapphires and emeralds, rubies, diamonds, garnets and amethysts. And one elegant tiepin set with a single perfect pearl.

  It was the pearl that decided her.

  Swiftly she scooped up the other tiepins. They made a large handful, almost too many to hold. The pouch tied around her waist could barely take them all.

  Arabella looked with satisfaction at the lone tiepin, lying on its bed of red satin. The pearl gleamed softly. The tiepin was the one elegant thing she’d seen in Sir Arnold’s house. Let him be forced to wear it.

  She’d drawn a number of cards for Gorrie, but brought only one. Carefully she propped it alongside the pearl tiepin. She looked at it for a moment, satisfied—red satin, the creamy square of card, the stark black words: Should payment be made for dishonorable behavior? Tom thinks so.

  There was so much she wanted to say to Sir Arnold. She’d written half a dozen messages, but in the end this was the one she’d brought with her. Like the tiepin, it was simple. She’d expressed her contempt of Sir Arnold, not in words, but in the drawing at the bottom of the message. The black cat had caught a cockerel. It lay at the cat’s feet, belly up, its plumage bedraggled—and unmistakably Gorrie.

  Back in the bedchamber, she stared at the four-poster bed with distaste. Sir Arnold hadn’t seduced Jenny, nor had he resorted to physical force. He’d used words, veiled threats of dismissal, to woo her into his bed. And Jenny, young and newly come from the country, without family or friends in London, had taken the only course she’d thought open to her.

  Arabella thinned her lips. The tiepins weren’t enough. She turned on her heel, heading back for the dressing room and the diamond-encrusted buckles, when the bedside cabinet caught her eye.

  It was vulgar, like everything else she’d seen in the house. Mahogany, in the form of a fluted column, with gilded ionic scrolling.

  Arabella changed direction. She crossed to the bedside cabinet and lifted the hinged top. She saw a handkerchief, some smelling salts, a bottle of laudanum, two guineas, a tin of lozenges, and—

  For a moment she stood frozen, then she reached out and touched a cautious finger to the roll of banknotes nestling in the corner.

  The first banknote was for one pound. The second was for—

  Carefully she counted the banknotes onto the crimson and gold bedspread. Three hundred and twenty-seven pounds.

  Arabella blew out a breath. She glanced at the locked door to the bedroom. Her heart began to beat faster.

  The smaller banknotes—the twos and ones—went back into the cabinet. The larger ones went into her pouch, crammed in beside the jeweled tiepins. Three hundred and twenty pounds’ worth of banknotes. Enough money to give Jenny and her child a future.

  Arabella glanced around for paper and ink. She had to leave a note from Tom, or a servant could be blamed for this theft.

  In a drawer in Sir Arnold’s dresser she found some bills from his tailor. In another drawer was a clutter of cosmetics: rouge, powder, eyebrow pencils.

  The note was much rougher than any she’d left before, but Arabella felt it made its point nicely. An honorable man provides for his children, she wrote in brown eyebrow pencil on the back of a bill for waistcoats. Underneath the words she sketched a cat lying stretched out on its side, watching a kitten play with a ball of string.

  She left the message inside the gilded mahogany plinth, curled into the diminished roll of banknotes.

  * * *

  ARABELLA RODE IN Hyde Park the following morning. Her spirits were high, despite the grayness of the sky. Merrylegs caught her mood. The mare’s canter stretched into a gallop. For a moment Arabella let her have her head, then she reined Merrylegs back. Much as she loved to gallop, Hyde Park wasn’t the place for it.

  It was always like this, after a night as Tom: the exultation, the silent laughter bubbling inside her. The exultation would drain away, but until it did she’d hug it to herself—and hold Merrylegs back from a high-spirited gallop.

  On her third circuit Arabella saw a familiar horse and rider. Her good mood faltered slightly. She slowed Merrylegs to a trot.

  The dappled gray gelding was a magnificent beast, powerful and well-muscled, with an easy gait and a proud way of looking down its nose. Rather like its owner.

  Arabella grimaced. “Well,” she said to Merrylegs. “I may as well get this over with.”<
br />
  She urged the mare into a canter again and came up alongside the rider on the gray gelding. “Mr. St. Just.”

  Adam St. Just glanced at her. His face seemed to tighten. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then inclined his head politely.

  “May I have a word?”

  The gray gelding slowed to a trot, and a walk. “Yes, Miss Knightley?” Neither St. Just’s expression nor his voice was encouraging.

  “I wish to apologize for sharpening my claws on you at the Mallorys’ ball. It was extremely rude of me.”

  St. Just blinked. Something approaching surprise showed on his face. “Consider it forgotten, Miss Knightley. I more than deserve any . . . er, sharpening of claws.”

  Arabella lifted her eyebrows, not understanding.

  “For my words seven years ago.”

  Words for which he’d apologized.

  “I hope I’m not that ungracious!” she said, insulted.

  St. Just opened his mouth, and then closed it again. She saw a glimmer of curiosity in his gray eyes. He wanted to know why she’d behaved as she had—but was too polite to ask.

  Arabella focused her attention on Merrylegs’ ears. She couldn’t tell St. Just the truth: that the intimacy of waltzing with him made her deeply uncomfortable, that the sensations it engendered were frightening. “The waltz brings out the worst in me,” she said.

  “Oh.” St. Just’s voice told her nothing, but his expression—when she glanced at him—was faintly perplexed.

  Arabella smiled brightly to forestall any questions. “Good day, Mr. St. Just.”

  He hesitated slightly, then inclined his head. “Good day, Miss Knightley.”

  * * *

  THAT AFTERNOON ADAM walked around to Bond Street, but instead of entering Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, he turned into the neighboring establishment: Angelo’s Fencing Academy.