Chapter Eleven
Grace tucked the large stack of pilfered letters into the drawer of her nightstand as she readied herself for bed.
It hadn’t been her finest heist, perhaps, nor her most subtle.
She’d had only a few minutes to peruse Mr. Marsden’s study before she had been interrupted, after all.
Not nearly enough time to make a thorough accounting of everything within, but sufficient enough to have made a search of every place which might have concealed a safe—and when she had come up empty there, that had left only the sole locked drawer in the office, on the right side of Mr. Marsden’s desk.
Had she had only a little more time—had she known what, exactly, she had been meant to be looking for—she might’ve been able to conceal her thievery better.
But once she had heard the creak of the stairs, time had become a determining factor.
She had had only a few moments to scrape up the contents of the drawer and make for the window.
It was a bloody miracle that Mr. Marsden hadn’t checked the window first once he’d found his study door unlocked, and that he’d lost another few precious seconds in checking his desk before he’d shouted the house down.
Those small actions had given Grace the scant time she’d needed to scramble down the convenient tree and out of sight of the window.
In the chaos which had ensued thereafter, there had been no chance to speak with Lord Lockhart, but she rather thought the sly little wink she’d managed had done the speaking for her. Probably he would be round to pay a call tomorrow to see what she’d managed to retrieve.
She ought to have been abed already, but the jitter of nerves still sparked beneath her skin—the elation of a job well done combined with the rush of the danger of it all, she supposed.
Cinching her velvet wrapper tighter about her waist, she wandered toward her window, which faced the street, delicately peeling up a corner of the curtain to peer through the night toward Lord Lockhart’s house.
Had the stress of the evening left him sleepless, as well?
Apparently not. At such an hour as this, his household had generally gone dark for the evening. Most of the servants would have found their beds hours ago. There wasn’t a single light in a window which suggested anyone at all was still awake.
There was, however, a large grey cat lounging on her side in a second-floor window, framed dramatically by lacy white curtains.
She gave a flick of her ear as if to wave a mocking hello to Grace, and casually stretched out one paw to drag her claws through the delicate fabric of the curtain at her side.
“Tansy,” Grace muttered reproachfully. “For heaven’s sake, not again.” Not that Tansy could hear her—or would consider herself duly chastened, even if she could.
Two heists in one night, then, it would have to be. Grace searched the pockets of the gown she had discarded for the evening for the tools she’d left within, tucking them away within the pockets of her wrapper.
Tansy had been in a second-floor window, she thought as she raced down the stairs. But there was no guarantee that there she would remain. And she was more or less an expert at finding nooks and crannies in which to hide.
Grace slipped out the front door and lingered on the shadowed steps long enough to peer about for observers. It had hardly been the first time she’d sneaked out of the house, and she doubted it would be the last—but it was always wisest to remain unseen in occasions such as these.
Not a soul breathed, other than herself.
Most of the windows in the surrounding houses had gone dark, and the few behind which burned some sort of lamp or candlelight were shaded by curtains.
While the street remained deserted, Grace scampered across it, sliding fluidly into the shadows wreathing his lordship’s house, and creeping toward the gate of the rear garden.
The latch was easy, but the iron hinges were not; they wanted to shrill an alarm every time they were opened more than halfway, which was scarcely enough room for Grace to squeeze through.
She winced as the velvet of her wrapper snared upon the rough stone of the wall into which the gate had been set and resisted the urge to check if it had torn.
It didn’t matter if it had. No one was going to see her, and she had other wrappers, besides. She only had to retrieve Tansy and make short work of bringing her home again.
The exterior doors all had proper locks, and while she could have picked them easily enough, it was always safest to pursue the path of least resistance—which meant the dining room window.
It had been fashioned to be easily pushed open from the side should the room grow too stuffy, and the latches consisted of a set of simple hook-and-eye closure set into the wall.
The thin gap between the window and the frame was just large enough to suit her needs.
She slid a long, thin piece of metal—a jemmy—from the depths of her pocket and slipped it through the gap, easing it up against the side of the window and tripping the latches one by one.
Probably some servant would notice the window was unlocked in the morning, but as she didn’t intend to steal anything from the home other than Tansy–who rightfully belonged to her, besides—it would likely be assumed that someone had overlooked the latching of them this evening.
Grace climbed carefully onto the sill, slid her legs through the window, and pushed herself into the room.
The darkness was nigh overwhelming; the silence pulsed in her ears.
She allowed herself a minute, perhaps two, to accustom herself to the inky blackness, then moved slowly through the room, neatly avoiding a collision with the furniture.
Thank God the house was perhaps half the size of Charity’s.
If she had had to search so many rooms as that, probably she would not be home before dawn.
Still, she would have liked to see it in the daylight hours for once, see what furniture Lord Lockhart’s family favored, what wall paper-hangings they preferred.
Whether there might be portraits of his ancestors tucked away in a gallery somewhere.
As she curled her hand around the banister and began to ascend the stairs on the very tips of her toes, the glow of the moon drifted through some upper window and poured a pool of silvery light across the ornate pattern of a carpet runner.
And there, padding out of an open door with a massive yawn and a sinuous stretch—as if she had just woken from a particularly lovely nap—was Tansy.
“Oh, you naughty girl,” Grace whispered as she started for the cat. “I’ve half a mind to let his lordship shave you after all.”
Tansy, however, had other plans. The moment she realized she had been spotted, she twitched her tail in a contemptuous little flick and darted off down the hall, a streak of grey disappearing into the darkness.
With a muttered oath, Grace hiked up the skirt of her wrapper and trailed after her.
Tansy had headed deeper into the house, but each closed door which Grace passed narrowed the scope of her search and reduced the chances that Tansy had found some deserted room, some nook to tuck herself away within and wait out Grace’s pursuit.
There. They had reached the end of the hall, and Tansy was fresh out of options. A dead end; the lone window at the end of the hall the sole source of dim light. Tansy wheeled around, cast about for an escape which did not involve darting past Grace.
Grace fisted her hands upon her hips, standing arms akimbo in an effort to block as much of the corridor as possible just in the event that Tansy might perform an ill-advised leap for freedom. She pitched her voice to a low hiss. “I’ve got you now, you little terror—”
A slice of light cut across the floor from somewhere behind her. There was the faint creak of floorboards, the muted thump of feet on carpet.
At once, Grace realized that she had made a critical, careless error. She had scanned the windows at the front of the house for evidence of light within the house, the suggestion that someone might still be awake even at this hour. But she had not given a similar attention to those at the back.
She froze, utterly and entirely. And Tansy—
Tansy did what Tansy did best. She pitched herself forward in a sudden scrabble of claws on carpet, producing a magnificent tearing sound as she vaulted past Grace and back toward the stairs.
“Christ!” The masculine oath split the air, and despite herself, Grace let her head swivel toward the sound.
Lord Lockhart stood there in the doorway, leaning back against the frame with one hand pressed to his bare chest as if the furry missile that had streaked past had frightened ten years off of his life.
“Tansy?” he muttered, his voice faintly slurry-sounding. “What the devil?”
The fine hairs at the nape of Grace’s neck prickled as she watched the realization settle over his face—where Tansy was, she was sure to follow. Slowly, as if he hardly dared to confirm his suspicions, he turned his head toward her.
A dozen thoughts raced across Grace’s mind at breakneck speed.
She had been unceremoniously ejected from his garden too many times to count, but she had never—never—been caught entirely within his house before.
She might have bargained for Tansy’s freedom to trespass as she pleased, but even then she had known that arguing for her own would have been too much to ask.
And even if she had, extending such a request to his house would have been beyond the pale.
“Grace?” The incredulous, baffled question wavered in the air, rife with uncertainty. As if he simply could not believe his eyes.