Lord Montford turned away to attend Lady Hancock, and so missed the moment of complete and utter silence that followed his remark.
Barnaby glanced at Penelope. She glanced at him, but their gazes didn’t, as they usually did, lock.
He didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of anything; his brain had seized. She seemed similarly afflicted.
That they’d both been reduced to speechlessness—helplessness—by the single word “wedding”…that had to mean something.
Just what, he got no time to investigate. A loud rapping on the front door sent Montford’s butler striding for it.
He returned a moment later, po-faced, to offer his salver and the folded note upon it to Barnaby. “An urgent message from Scotland Yard, sir.”
Barnaby took the note, opened it, and read, in Stokes’s bold hand:The game is on.
Shoving the note into his pocket, he nodded briefly to the others, then turned to Montford. “My apologies, my lord, but I must go.”
“Of course, my boy.” Montford clapped him on the shoulder, turning with him toward the hall. “The evening is at an end, anyway—Godspeed.”
In the front hall, Montford shook his hand and released him without further questions.
Predictably Penelope wasn’t so inclined. She’d followed at his heels and now caught his sleeve. “What’s happened?”
Halting, Barnaby looked down at her, wondered if she realized how revealing her attitude, her question—and his inevitable response—would be to Montford and the others, who’d followed them from the drawing room and were now watching, too.
Not that it mattered. Seeing the worry and concern that had flared to life and now swam so clearly in the depths of her dark eyes, he couldn’t not answer. He closed his hand over hers on his sleeve. “I don’t know. Stokes wrote that the game was on—nothing more.” He tipped his head toward the door. “The messenger will know where he is. I’ll go and find out what’s happened.” He hesitated, then added, “If there’s anything pertinent, I’ll come and tell you tomorrow morning.”
She seemed to realize that was all he could do. Pressing her lips together—he suspected to hold back unwise words—she nodded. “Thank you.”
Drawing her hand from beneath his, she stepped back.
He bowed to her, and to the others behind her, then he turned and walked out of the door.
“Be careful with that thing!” Smythe hissed. He followed on Jemmie’s and Dick’s heels as they manuevered the heavy, ornate clock they’d just lifted from the fourth and last house on Alert’s list for that night up the area steps.
Much taller than the boys, the instant his head cleared the street, he hissed again. “Hold up!”
The boys staggered to a halt; he could hear their panicked, increasingly labored breathing. Ignoring it, he scanned the street. Rozzers or passersby; with the heavy clock as booty he didn’t want to run into anyone. The dark street seemed empty, the street flares burning low, their light diffused by the thick fog that had helpfully returned.
He strained his ears, but heard nothing. Not even the distant clop of a horse’s hooves, but the street was a long one, the corner some distance away. He glanced at the boys. He hoped Alert was waiting. “Right then—move.”
The boys staggered up the last steps, then angled the clock—all gilt, fancy dials, and ornate hands—through the gate at the top of the area steps. Smythe held it back until they got through, then joined them, resetting the latch.
He nodded down the street. “That way.” His words were a thin whisper, but the boys heard and set off, eager to set the heavy clock down.
As at each of the previous three houses they’d hit, the unmarked black carriage was waiting around the corner.
Jemmie looked up, peering through the murky dark. The same man was on the box. He looked down, not at them but at the clock they were struggling with, and smiled. He nodded to Smythe. “Good work.” Reaching down, he handed Smythe a pouch.
Without being told, the boys lugged the clock to the back of the carriage. Smythe followed. He opened the boot. There was a blanket waiting to wrap the clock in. Jemmie and Dick juggled the clock while Smythe swathed it in the blanket, then Smythe loaded the bundle into the boot, between the bundle that was the vase they’d nicked from the first house, and the tightly wrapped statue they’d taken from the third. The painting they’d lifted from the wall of the second house’s library sat at the back of the boot.
Relieved of their burden, for an instant free of restraint, Jemmie looked at Dick, but before he could catch his friend’s eye and give the signal to run, Smythe shut the boot and dropped a heavy hand on each of their shoulders.
Jemmie bit back a curse and hung his head. As under Smythe’s guiding hand he trudged alongside Dick to the side of the carriage, he told himself—as he had for days, a week even—that a time would come.
When it did, he and Dick would run.
Unfortunately, the devil would be snapping at their heels; he held no illusions about Smythe. He would kill them if he caught them; they had to make sure that when they made their bid for freedom, they got clean away.
Smythe halted them beside the front of the carriage. “So we’re done for tonight. You got the list for tomorrow?”
