London Jewel Thieves

Chapter 10

Ruby? Pearl? Sapphire? Approaching Barwych from the secret gate in the hedge, Devorlane knew two things.

The real Lady Armstrong would have taken her cloak and muff with her. The real Lady Armstrong would have had no cause to disappear without saying a single goodbye to anyone present.

It was all the proof he needed. But it would be no proof at all if Lady Light-Fingers had flown. Unless of course she was now packing up her belongings as if her life depended on it? Sarsenet gowns, pearl necklaces, richly tooled books. Lord knows why he was imagining those. The only books that shrapnel-eyed piece had probably ever read in her life were thieving manuals.

Lord knows why he imagined anything. What mattered wasn't what she packed. Catching her red-handed and dragging her to the nearest magistrate was what mattered. How the hell could he have let her out his sight at the party? The piano had been swamped. No damned wonder with that hellish racket she'd made. Deliberately? So she could escape? Whatever it was he needed to put this right before she landed some other poor bastard in the mess she'd landed him in. The Wentworth emeralds? Why the hell would she, or her two cronies, want the Wentworth emeralds now?

Squaring his shoulders, he stepped forward and peered in the unlit window of what he remembered as the sitting room of the ivy-clad house. Then, that of the entry hall itself. Even before he pressed his nose to the tiny archaic panels, he sensed dark desertion. Damn it. The bird had flown.

The upstairs windows were as black as those he'd just looked in. But somewhere, somewhere in the distance, round the side of the house, a door closed.

He stepped back, taking care his heels didn't scrape on the stone path as he ventured along it. The monk's cell, standing around the side of Barwych, would be an unlikely place to stay, but then the odds of her placing the emeralds in his trouser pocket that night had been unlikely too. As for the odds of finding her in the library-why even try calculating them?

Why not the monk's cell? That old place built for the family's priest? It was secluded, invisible from the front of the house. Exactly the place to hide. What was more, cell was a misnomer. It was a nicely appointed dwelling. An upstairs, a down, with pleasant rooms and a square of garden. These religious sons of good families had known how to live. Of course, Devorlane had never been a religious son. He had been an outcast. A thief.

Seeing lit windows he stopped. So? His belief in the unlikely had been rewarded. She'd not run-yet. As for him? Now the end was in sight, his limp vanished as he crept through the clumps of sage and thyme, the withered parsley and overgrown lavender of what had once been a very pleasant herb garden. Imagine that? Even his craven need for opiates to dull the pain had vanished into the night sky.

Last night such a fever had drained him, he'd nearly cancelled this trip. His dreams had all been of death and dying. But the worst of it had been the paralyzing sweat. How many damned times since a musket ball had lodged in his thigh, had his body been so drained and weakened he'd barely been able to raise a glass of water to his lips? While the clock ticked down to some impossible hour? An hour he must somehow face the world in, washed and shaved and dressed?

Thank Christ, he'd faced the world though. Or he'd not be here, about to savor this sublime moment of victory. Supreme and everlasting. This was it. Finally. Ten years. How he didn't throw himself through the glass as he reached the golden shaft of light pouring through the mullioned panes was purely down to one fact. He'd be cut to ribbons. Then he couldn't savor his moment. Anyway he never threw himself at anything. What was there in life to throw himself at exactly?

He leaned forward, feeling the light bathing his face, peered through the mullioned panes, gasped. His heart leapt a foot up his ribcage while his breath stuck somewhere down the back of his throat.

The reason? The one he'd to force himself to breathe? In through his nose. Out through his mouth. Christ, a normal function-usually--one he had always taken for granted. But by God, not when the loveliest legs he'd ever seen-and he'd seen plenty spread, anyway, so many he'd lost count-stepped from a heap of silk.

Black embroidered silk. She wore black silk next to her ivory skin? As for her skin itself?

This? This wasn't her. No way was this her.

How the hell would he know who that was exactly? Condensation misted the panes. Condensation and his breath. A piece of cotton, a woolen blanket would give a better view. And yet he was fighting the urge to wipe the window with his cuff.

What the hell was he? A peeping Tom? A woman was a woman. He'd had his fill from the fleshpots of Western Europe, hadn't he? And this one, this one had damn well ruined his life.

It wasn't why it seemed wrong to look at her, why his palms sweated. She was so beautiful, his throat dried. The legs. The skin. The blur of raven hair framing her soft, white face.

Her gaze lifted. He quickly stepped back. As he did, his foot slipped on the damp grass and his forehead smacked the window pane. Christ, how the hell could he be so bloody stupid? Not just to stand here and to look. But to damn well slip on his bad leg, as he looked. So now?

Muttering a curse, he tried immersing himself in an overgrown gorse bush. The door latch rattled and he screwed his eyes tightly shut, holding his breath in the pit of his lungs. Ridiculous, wasn't it, to find himself praying, if he didn't see her, perhaps she wouldn't see him? Christ, he hoped not. He hardly needed to remind himself

how it would look if he was caught here. Damned fool didn't come into it.

"Who's that?"

He froze, perspiration bathing his forehead. A thief and a peeping Tom. Who exactly wanted a scourge like that in the family? Despite the welcoming committee Tilly had assembled, this was probably the excuse she was waiting for, to send him packing for another ten years.

"Pearl? Pearl, is that you?"

He held his breath. Colonel Caruthers hadn't offered him that position as a spy for nothing. Creeping into bedrooms was one of his finest accomplishments. If he couldn't stand here quietly, without moving, without breathing, without letting his heartbeat slow for that matter and ignoring the stab of agony in his thigh, it wouldn't bode well for his acceptance of the offer. Although as things stood he'd no damned intentions of accepting it, the monkey the military had made of him. Little Miss Light-Fingers too.

"Ruby? Are you there?"

Something soft, something sensuous, wound around his nostrils, holding him rigid.

He inhaled deeply. God, but his harlot-hardened senses had been so starved of the soft magnolia pleasantry weaving its way through them, he couldn't care less if she heard him or not. Earlier when he'd taken her arm, he'd detected winter cherries. What she'd perfumed her bath water with, though, was unquestionably more exotic, because a hint of ambergris floated up his left nostril and down his right.

It would take a heartless soul to condemn the possessor of those soft curves, of that sinfully sensuous scent to the gallows because of something that happened ten years ago. It would take a man with no soul. Of course he had no soul, but where was the proof that she'd stolen the emeralds? That this was even the same woman? Or was Sapphire for that matter? Ten years was a long time.

Even if she was and she had, the waste, the shocking waste of a woman, who looked like this, who smelt like this, who ... A twig snapped. Christ, why the hell had he edged his foot further back?

"Lord Hawley?"

He'd like to say no. When it was obviously him he couldn't very well say it was the plant pot though.

"Well, well, well."

Her voice had that edge he'd noticed earlier. The slightly earthy, slightly rough, slightly not the least bit frightened of him one. But then, why the hell should she be less than triumphant? She hadn't been caught red-handed peeking in her windows.

"What do you want?"

He flicked his eyes open. "Want? Me?"

Right now? Or in another minute, that delicious scent, winding through his senses? Devil confound her. Must she ask him such a stupid question? In that earthy voice, while looking like that too? Rich sable hair, eyes like jewels, that black silk peignoir open just where it should be closed. He stepped forward. She was so damned beautiful, the words were out his mouth before he could stop them.

"A kiss."