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“My belongings are in the adjoining mistress’s suite. You must permit me a few minutes.”
“You still plan to dress as a male, as you did earlier?” he accused.
A mocking smile curved her lips.
“Most assuredly, I shall dress as a female, but not as a lady. I hoped you noticed a box awaiting you in your study.”
“The only box is the one holding a newly-purchased Greek vase,” he argued.
“Good, Jones delivered the box as I instructed. My wool dress should be wrapped around the vase. Might you retrieve it for me while I change out of these clothes?”
Grand’s manhood twitched to life as his newfound interest easily brought forth an image of Miss Everley in a state of undress.
“You jest?” he half groaned.
The lady ignored his misery.
“You will discover, my Lord, that I rarely jest. Now hurry along. We have only a few hours remaining to conduct our inquiries.”
Chapter Three
Colleen released a tiny sigh as she tied off the wool gown his lordship had retrieved for her. The cad had offered to lace her up, and, despite knowing she should not wish for the impossible, a part of her wanted to know a man of Lord Harlow’s calibre — to claim a home and children — to know someone would protect her, as her father never had.
“That is not true,” she murmured as she tied off the strings on the overlap to wrap the long length about her waist to serve as a closure.
Her father had not set out to be England’s most famous thief. Thomas Everley had simply found sleight-of-hand an interesting skill when he had been no more than a young boy tarrying in the fields with the workers or, later, in the taverns in the nearby village. He ‘practiced’ pulling coins from the ears of his friends at school, but when his family, meaning his late father, had turned him out after the scandalous elopement to Gretna Green with Miss Genevieve Saunders, who was promised to marry another, Thomas often found it easier to ‘borrow’ a quid or two, rather than to discover a marketable trade. After all, as the second son, he was intended for either the British Army or the Royal Navy, neither of which would have suited him, for, although Thomas Everley would fight like a rabid dog if cornered, he was essentially a kind man.
A man who had doted on Colleen when she was a child. A man who had shown her much of the world through the eyes of an artist. Her father was a man who loved all the best things in life, despite being set adrift with only a pauper’s empty pocks to make his way through the world.
Colleen’s mother had been blind to her husband’s faults until he was too steeped in his ‘craft’ to consider quitting. It was not as if society, as a whole, would forgive his past transgressions if he promised never to rob another. The realisation of how far Thomas had sunk quite literally broke her mother’s heart.
One day, Genevieve Everley took to her bed and never came out again, leaving Colleen’s education to Thomas, who had taught Colleen more than her letters and figures. Thomas Everley had done his best by his daughter: The problem was, Thomas’s best did not leave Colleen with a future beyond the prospects of spinsterhood.
Colleen had begged him, on more than one occasion, to leave behind the ‘thrill’ of pulling off another theft, with the narrowest of margins for his escape.
Repeatedly, he had promised her that he would do so after one more tantalising escapade, but that ‘one more’ had proven to be Thomas Everley’s Achilles’s heel. Despite realising that the government had set a trap for him, her father had considered himself invincible. With government agents closing in on him, he had returned to Hampshire — to the family estate - for solace.
He had begged his older brother to swear that Thomas had been in residence for several days and could not have pulled off the latest theft, for which he was sought. Richard Everley, however, had refused to assist in Thomas’s escape, declaring loudly for all involved that he, like their father, had disowned Thomas years before. In many ways, Colleen understood her Uncle Richard’s position. He had a family of his own and a Viscountcy to protect. Richard Everley wanted to be done with his younger brother’s notoriety. In many ways, Colleen had wished for the same thing — had wished to be someone other than Thomas Everley’s daughter — had wished to be a good man’s wife — to have children and a sense of hope.
Unfortunately, for Thomas, the officers sent to capture him cornered her father in the New Forest outside the hamlet of Brook. Thus, the moniker presented to him in the newsprints: Brook’s Crook. That day had been the worst day of Colleen’s life — worse even more than the day her mother had wished for her last breath and been granted her desire. The last year and a half, she had lived on her own. The government had reclaimed all of the treasures her father had stored away. Colleen lived on a small allowance, presented to her as part of her mother’s settlements.
“No man of Lord Harlow’s pedigree,” she quietly warned herself, “would take on a woman with my lack of connections. Stop wishing for something beyond your reach.”
******
Grand had been in many low-born areas of London, but not this particular one. He gagged, despite holding a handkerchief over his nose. The stench made it hard to breathe; yet Miss Everley moved along the streets as if she was strolling through the Queen’s gardens. Garbage and human waste crawled along the curb of the road as a light drizzle attempted to rinse away the muck. In Grandison’s opinion, it would take a hurricane to wash away the filth piled upon the streets.
“We shall begin here,” Miss Everley announced.
Grandison looked up to view a building leaning against the one beside it. He wondered if someone pushed hard enough on the exterior wall of the first building, if all of the buildings along the street would fold in on themselves, one after another, like the ribs of a lady’s fan, until they were all flattened.
“Who are we seeking within?” he asked, his nose wrinkling again. “Surely no one inside would possess knowledge of a sapphire necklace.”
“You may be surprised,” she responded.
As he held the door for her, loud, coarse language could be heard within. Grand glanced to Miss Everley, but the lady showed no sign that she had even heard the string of curse words exchanged by two men, who stood opposite each other at a table strewn with cards. He wondered how often, during her upbringing, she had been exposed to the underbelly of society.
Oddly, he took offense, for, in Grand’s opinion, no lady of her quality should have previously tramped through these streets nor known her way around this community.
