“In Cheapside, of course. I have no intention of riding in your carriage with you. What would people say?”
“You want to become a thief, but you’re worried about what people will say? Perhaps you are not cut out for this, Miss Bennet.”
She set her jaw and flicked her skirts back from her feet, her eyes still glittering up at me. “I will find my courage. I hope to heaven you have some of your own.” She lowered her face then and climbed the rest of the way down.
I went to the window and waited until she had gone. She paused in the yard for a moment, gathering her younger sisters and shepherding them into the house. That was probably for my benefit, so I watched until the door closed and made my escape. The next time I would see her would be in London.
This was a stupid idea.
“Darcy,Igotyournote. What’s so urgent that I had to leave off drinks at the club? Egad, is that straw in your hair?”
I brushed Richard’s hand away from my face. “Never mind that. We have a rather serious problem, and I’ve not the least idea how to go about solving it.”
Richard staked out a chair and made himself comfortable, then took in my appearance with a cynical grin. “What happened to you? Tumble in the hayloft with a handsome young—”
“That will be quite enough. I’ve just come from Hertfordshire.”
“But you only left this morning. You could have only been there long enough to change horses before you galloped back.”
“I was there somewhat longer than that. Long enough to discover the true nature of the situation. Richard, the statue isnotone from Elgin’s collection. I do not know precisely what it is, but it is not what Mr. Bennet claimed or what the Prince of Wales thinks he purchased.”
He swallowed and put a hand to his mouth. “I was afraid of that. What do you mean to do?”
I walked to the decanter to pour some ablution over my crazed and addled brain, and then I poured a second glass for my cousin. “We have to get it back. The trouble is, it had already left Longbourn by the time I arrived, and I do not know where it has been taken. I do not even know what it looks like.”
“I can help you with the first. Father said it is going to the Royal Academy—Somerset House—before he moves it to his royal residence.”
“Where it will no doubt be investigated and inspected by every sculptor in the Academy.” I swallowed some of my drink. “But at least it is not going to Carlton House straightaway. What else do you know?”
“Very little. It will be a day or two at least before anyone gets round to looking it over. Prinny is in Scotland at the moment, entertaining himself with a new mistress, they say.”
“There is another mercy. I do not need to contend with him or the royal guard. What else do you know?”
Richard’s brow creased, and he put a finger to his lips and shook his head. “Not much. Oh, but you will never guess who I encountered outside the club, trying to buy his way in.”
I waved carelessly as I paced by him. “I don’t know. George Wickham.”
“Spot on!”
I stopped. “That was a wild guess.”
“But correct, nonetheless.”
I sipped again from my glass. Wickham was the son of my father’s steward—and the one who had taught me to pick locks and climb through windows when I was a boy. I had not seen him and scarcely heard his name since the reading of my father’s will five years previously, when he received the living set aside for him and vanished. “Wickham is in London?”
“He is, and he spent all his money. Again.”
“Tell me something that would surprise me.”
“Well, he looked to be intoxicated.”
“Try again.”
“And he was wearing an enormous coat, too large for him, with about a dozen silver spoons filling some pockets he had sewn into the lining. He took me aside and showed them to me, trying to get me to buy them off him.”
I halted, my neck prickling. “Spoons? And a coat too large for him?”
Richard laughed and shook his head. “Two guesses about what the old boy has been up to.”
