The Gentleman Jewel Thief Page 18

  She shook that last thought from her head. They were on opposing sides, she and the earl, but surely he would never so much as wish her harm, much less perpetrate it himself. She had become acquainted with him well enough—very well indeed—to know he enjoyed her company and her caresses besides.

  “Tell me, Fitzhugh,” Violet said carefully, “have you noticed anything strange recently? Any visitors? Gossip among the staff?”

  “Nothing I can think of, my lady. Nothing except the Earl of Harclay’s frequent calls, of course. Had one of the kitchen maids in a full swoon this morning, he did. I’m afraid the entire female staff is liable to fight you for him.”

  Violet bit back a smile. “He’s not that handsome.”

  Fitzhugh pushed one last pin into place. “Oh, yes, he is, mistress, no use playing that game. Now off with you,” she said with a wink. “If the apocalypse is nigh, you haven’t much time together, have you?”

  • • •

  The four fingers of brandy Harclay drank with Lady Violet’s father had done nothing to assuage his nerves. His every sense was alive as he disembarked from his coach, sweeping his gaze over the dreary facade of Almack’s. The sight of his men, scattered incognito about the street, only made his limbs hum with tension.

  He knew—in the pit of his stomach he knew—the acrobats would make their attempt tonight. And the earl would do everything in his power to stop them. No one but Harclay would have the pleasure of handling Lady Violet’s person this evening.

  She took his outstretched hand and descended from the carriage, followed by the Lady Sophia and Aunt Georgiana. Violet looked so lovely in her pale lavender gown it made his chest hurt.

  Other members of the ton, swathed in pearlescent silks and sharply cut coats and peacock feathers as tall as a horse, lined up along King Street, filing slowly through Almack’s door.

  Harclay ignored their stares, tucking Violet’s arm through his as they bypassed the line. He slid the doorkeeper, Mr. Willis, a guinea—discreetly, of course—and together with his small party made his way into the assembly rooms.

  As they mounted the narrow, creaking stair—really, Harclay hadn’t a clue why his friends practically fell over themselves about this place—Violet turned to him. Her voice was low and urgent.

  “Your men were guarding my house today,” she said. “I want to know why.”

  “I’d say my men are the least of your problems,” he replied as they mounted the last step. He nodded in the direction of a gaggle of patronesses who were shamelessly ogling Harclay and Violet. “It appears we’ve made quite the scene, and it’s not yet nine o’clock.”

  Violet tugged him to a halt and faced him. “Please,” she pleaded. “Let me help you. Tell me, Harclay, what’s wrong—”

  “Oh, what luck, the dancing’s begun!” He pulled her closer. “Shall we?”

  The ballroom was crowded with the cream of London society, and with narrowed eyes Harclay scanned the sea of faces before him. His gaze darted to each of the four corners, to the large, double-height windows on one wall, and to the orchestra balcony that lined the other. Nothing suspicious, as far as he could see.

  But the noise—it was nothing short of deafening, what with the shouted conversations of nearly one thousand people—concerned him. It was the perfect cover; those diminutive beasts could slip in and out of the crowd, and commit a heinous crime, with no one the wiser. Even if Violet had time to scream, the sound would be lost in the tide of music and voices and the pounding feet of dancers.

  The lighting, too, was dim at best. Even with the blazing light of three enormous chandeliers above, the ballroom was a maze of shadows.

  Harclay tightened his grip on Lady Violet. In the middle of the room, dancers were arranging themselves into lines for a cotillion. He very nearly groaned; it was going to be difficult indeed to keep an eye on Violet in the midst of its intricate, spirited steps.

  He turned to her and bowed over her hand, hoping she did not see the look of chagrin on his face. “May I have this dance, Lady Violet?”

  She smiled. His heart skipped a beat.

  “You may indeed, my lord,” she replied. “It is a long dance, this one, and I intend to badger you for answers throughout its entirety.”

  “Splendid,” he said. “And it goes without saying, my dear, we shall be partners for the remainder of the evening.”

  He was surprised when she threw her head back and laughed. “That is hardly wise, considering your rather epic aversion to marriage. You know what everyone will think if we spend all night dancing together.”

  “I don’t care what they think.” He kept his voice even, measured, though his insides were anything but. “I won’t share you with anyone, least of all these fools. You’ll dance with me, or not at all.”

  Joining the line of female dancers, Violet whirled to face him. “Very well,” she said, eyes flashing. “Just remember when we’re forced to marry, it’s all your fault.”

  “Oh, come now,” he said. “You’d at the very least be pleased with yourself for shackling a shameless rake like me, a man no other woman could bring to account.”

  She rolled her eyes. “A dubious honor, surely.”

  The music began and so did the dance. Though he could hardly enjoy himself, knowing that a band of acrobats intended to kidnap the woman before him, he couldn’t help but notice Violet’s exquisite grace and poise as she moved through the steps. She danced as an angel, floating through the sequence as if on air.

  Above the din, she met his eyes and grinned. All the breath left his body, as if he’d been socked square in the belly; her eyes appeared very blue and happy.

  And if it weren’t for the worry he bore, he had no doubt he would feel very much the same.

  He could see her color rising; from his ardent attention, or the exertion of the dance, he could not tell.

  The music came to a rousing, spirited conclusion. Harclay returned Lady Violet’s grin and dipped his head to bow.

  He heard the ballroom erupt into polite applause as he straightened, his gaze returning directly to Violet.

  Only she wasn’t there before him, where she’d been standing just half a heartbeat before.

  Pulse surging with terror, he frantically looked this way and that, pushing aside bodies as he searched for Violet’s dark curls, her blue-gray eyes.

  Nothing.

  She was gone.

  Twenty-one

  It all happened so quickly, Violet could hardly piece together the events that led her to this moment: disheveled and shouting obscenities in the back of a foul-smelling hack.

  She’d felt a tap at her shoulder just as she was making to curtsy before Lord Harclay. She turned and met eyes with a smallish man, bad teeth and all that, whom she recognized straightaway as one of the acrobats hired to help the earl steal Mr. Hope’s diamond. Her eyes went wide with surprise—she remembered wondering how he’d snuck into Almack’s, what with the formidable Mr. Willis guarding the door—and then four pairs of small, callused hands closed around her limbs.

  Violet could hardly think, much less protest, as they pulled her through the crowd, raucous from dance, to a hidden side door. No one so much as glanced her way; she was just another body, jostling for air in a crowded ballroom.

  The acrobats pushed her roughly down a dark, narrow set of steps. By now she realized she was in trouble and started to yell, to scream. One of the men pressed his palm to her mouth and twisted her hands behind her back.

  White-hot panic seared through her as they tossed her into the hired hackney.

  And now here she was, being bound and gagged with lengths of greasy flax linen. She tried kicking the men, biting them, flailing her arms about; but they merely held her against the seat until both her legs and arms were tied.

  “Right, then, missy,” one of them said, his smile rotten. “What shall we do with ye?�
��

  The hack began to move. Violet screamed with all her strength, tears springing to her eyes, but the sound was muffled by the gag they’d tied around her head.

  Shouts sounded outside the carriage. Violet thought she recognized one voice and turned her head to look out the back window.

  Her heart went to her throat as she watched Lord Harclay gunning after the carriage, arms thrusting at his sides as he ran toward her. His face was a mask of intensity, his eyes black with rage.

  Despite his enormous stride, the hack managed to pull away from him. It veered dangerously into the street before breaking into an all-out jostle.

  Violet caught one last glimpse of Lord Harclay before he was lost to the night. He’d been gritting his teeth against the pain of his exertion when he threw up his hands and shouted her name. She could hardly hear it over the pounding of the horses’ hooves, and of her own heart, but she could see his lips form the word, a strangled cry that promised vengeance.

  Now she understood—Harclay’s strange behavior, his men at her house. She understood why he would not answer her questions, though that did not make her want to strangle him any less.

  Someone had betrayed him to the acrobats, told them it had been the Earl of Harclay who’d hired them to create a scene at Hope’s ball. The acrobats, being greedy, scavenging scalawags, went after him for the money he owed them. Believing Violet to be his paramour—which, she thought indignantly, she most certainly was not—they must have threatened to kidnap her if he did not pay.

  Here she paused. But why didn’t Harclay pay them? Seventy-five pounds was a great deal of money to her, but to the earl it was akin to spare change. She knew he would never intentionally put her in harm’s way. All he had to do was go to the bank—

  The bank.

  Of course!

  Mr. Hope must have frozen Lord Harclay’s accounts. The earl wouldn’t be able to touch a penny until Mr. Hope allowed him to do so.

  She imagined Harclay’s rage when Hope delivered the blow. He must’ve felt helpless and embarrassed and terrifyingly, thrillingly, angry.

  Violet wasn’t sure if it was satisfaction that now bloomed in her chest—satisfaction that Hope had at last espoused her theory of Harclay’s guilt—or fear. Fear for Harclay, fear for herself.

  Turning back to the carriage, she surveyed her assailants. It was obvious they were anxious, though they appeared to relax the farther they drove from Almack’s. She did not allow herself to ponder what, exactly, they had in store for her; rather, she kept her thoughts trained on Harclay and the valiant rescue he was sure to orchestrate if these bastards didn’t slit her throat first.

  The ride seemed to last an eternity. She watched through the hack windows as the elegant, well-kept streets of St. James’s became the poorly lit alleys of Cheapside. She could hear the entreaties of lightskirts, calling out from doorways and taverns to passing men; the stench was beyond words.

  At last one of the acrobats pounded the roof of the hackney, signaling a stop. Violet swallowed, hard, and steeled herself against whatever was to come next.

  “We’ll take this off ya,” one of the acrobats said, unwinding the lengths of cloth that bound her mouth and limbs, “but if ye so much as squeak, it’s goin’ back on, ye hear me?”

  Violet sniffed her reply; she worried if she spoke, her voice would wobble pitifully with fear, with rage.

  The coach door opened and the four little men leapt out into the street. They glanced over their shoulders and, content that no one was about, pulled Violet down to join them.

  A raucous roar sounded from across the lane. The hack pulled away, revealing a low, squat tavern, its rough wooden door virtually surrounded by prostitutes of every shape and size. Above their heads swung a barely legible sign: THE CAT AND MOUSE.

  Violet bit her lip against the revulsion that rose in her throat.

  The roar grew more raucous as the acrobats tugged Violet toward the tavern’s entrance. Even from here she could smell the gin, hear the fistfights, see the leers of unwashed men.

  She hesitated at the threshold, and the women there pounced on her at once.

  “Ah, fancy lady ye got here, lads! She’ll fetch a nice price inside!”

  “It’s a lady!” one of them drawled. “Yer high and mighty ways won’t do ye much good here.”

  Another approached and took hold of Violet’s earbob. “I say, is them real pearls?”

  With a rather savage tug, the woman plucked both bobs from Violet’s ears and cackled with glee.

  “Leave her be, eh?” one of the acrobats snapped as he pushed Violet over the threshold into the tavern.

  “I would appreciate it, sir,” she growled, “if you didn’t handle me so roughly. I know how to walk.”

  She followed their leader to the back of the tavern. A scarred oak table emerged from the dark of the corner. There, burying his face in a woman’s rather enormous breasts, sat a dull-faced drunkard.

  The acrobats shooed them away and motioned for Violet to sit in the drunkard’s vacated chair, her back to the wall.

  Again panic spread its wings in her chest. She was all but invisible in that chair, even from the tavern’s entrance. These men could do anything they wanted to her and no one the wiser.

  “Well, then,” the acrobat said, nodding at the chair, “I’ll make ye sit if ye won’t do it on yer own.”

  With a huff of indignation, Violet did as she was bid. The chair was hard and uncomfortably warm from its previous occupants.

  The four acrobats sat, forming a protective barrier between Violet and the tavern. At once a barmaid appeared with mugs of steaming cider, which she placed before each man with a wink.

  Violet cleared her throat. What could better quell her panic than a draft of strong cider? Besides, she reasoned, it would buy her time to think, and perhaps devise a plan of escape.

  “I would like a drink,” she said in the most officious tone she could manage. “A strong one.”

  The barmaid cocked a brow and looked to the men at the table, who in turn looked at one another in bewilderment, as if she’d requested not a drink but a go with one of the ladies outside.

  “Ye got the money to pay fer that?” one of them said at last.

  Violet sniffed. “Add it to Lord Harclay’s tab. I hardly think one mug of cider much matters, given the sum he owes you.”

  “That’s just the thing,” he replied, leaning over the table. “The lord ain’t paid us yet.”

  “Well,” Violet said, trying another tack, “you have my life as security. Surely I am worth at least one little mug of cider.”

  Despite himself, the acrobat returned her suggestive smile. Only when one of his fellow thieves nudged him in the ribs did the smile fade.

  “Right, then,” he said, “a mug of cider for the lady. But only one! And make it quick, would ye?”

  Violet batted her eyes at the man in gratitude, and though it was dark she could see him blush.

  Excellent. These men, like most, were dimwits and lechers, and drunks besides; after a few mugs they would be well in their cups and more interested in the company of loose females than Violet.

  That would be her opportunity for escape. She only had to wait an hour, maybe two, and then she could slowly edge away from the table and dart out of the tavern when they weren’t looking. And then—

  And then what? She didn’t know her way around Cheapside; hell, she didn’t know where she was to begin with. God knew what dangers awaited her in the street outside.

  That was if she even made it outside. What if someone—an acrobat or one of his cronies—detained her before she could make her escape? Would they hurt her, touch her, kill her even?

  Her cider arrived, and the acrobats watched as Violet took a long, desperate pull.

  “Easy there, lass,” one of them murmured. “Didn’t know the l
adies drank cider, and like that.”

  Violet shook the anxious thoughts from her head. Tonight of all nights she could not, would not, break. She’d made it through twenty-two years without so much as a crack; and she would make it through another twenty-two, no matter the intentions of these bastards.

  She let out a rather long, theatrical sigh of satisfaction as she brought the mug down on the table with a clap.

  “I daresay, sir,” she replied, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “there’s quite a bit about me that might surprise you. By chance, do any of you carry a deck of cards? I’m in the mood to play.”

  Twenty-two

  “Unhitch the horses,” Harclay barked, tugging at the reins that held his pair of perfectly matched Andalusians.

  “But my lord!” Avery said, mouth agape. “We haven’t a saddle! How are you to ride?”

  “To hell with the saddle,” Harclay replied, turning to his groomsmen. “Come on now, lads, put your back into it! We haven’t the time!”

  “Shall I retrieve your pistol, my lord?” Avery asked, nodding toward the Harclay town coach.

  The earl flashed open his jacket in response, revealing two pistols tucked into the waistband of his breeches.

  They were drawn up before Almack’s, surrounded by Harclay’s squad of gunmen and armed footmen. Avery was overseeing the entire production; through the haze of his fury, Harclay recognized the butler showed great grace, all things considered. Who else would remember to stock the family town coach with an extra bottle of brandy and a handful of pistols?

  At last the horses were let free. Harclay waved away the assistance of the grooms and swung up onto the horse’s bare back. It was more uncomfortable than he could have ever imagined; but the image of Lady Violet, eyes wide with shock and terror as she watched him run after her, was powerful enough to make him forget himself entirely.