Loving Lady Lazuli (London Jewel Thieves Book 1) Read online

She’d tried to do that. Wasn’t she the queen of jewel thieves after all? But the business of Matthew and that evening had shredded her control. There had even been a time—short, very short, short enough to be minuscule, after Starkadder had beaten her senseless—when she’d actually thought of Devorlane Hawley. Dreamed about him. Not just coming for her, actually turning the whole of London upside down to find her.

  Of course, she had been delirious, with a raging fever. Now the dream was coming true, it was a nightmare. If ever he had turned London upside down to find her, it was probably to wring her neck.

  At all costs she must get off the road. She grasped her skirts, stepped across the ditch at the road side, cursing as her foot slid down the opposite edge. Treacley water squelched halfway up her leg, soaking her stocking.

  Clip-clop. Clip-clip-clop. She mustn’t be seen. Clasping a clump of grass, she dragged herself into the open field, or would have had her foot not caught a trailing bramble. My God, how the blazes could she let him see her like this, with her dress coated in mud and her topknot lying about somewhere, having pinged straight off her head as she went flying half way across the field and landed on her nose?

  The clattering hooves slowed for the bend.

  A bush. A tree. There must be somewhere to hide. The mist at her feet even. She tore a breath, pushed herself to her feet.

  Maybe she was surrendering unnecessarily to terror? Maybe it wasn’t Devorlane Hawley at all? She raised her chin, peering through the soft curls of mist.

  Something large and heavy, something with dust flying and blazing lamps, drawn by horses, rattled by on the ice-slicked road. A voice which probably belonged to the driver cursed both the sharp bend and the dark.

  Seeing who was inside, she fought a gasp. Then a shudder.

  Not Devorlane Hawley but worse.

  The tombstone with her name on it wasn’t worth a damn, after all. Nor what was in it.

  The knowledge held her immobile.

  Gil Gressingham. Starkadder’s right hand man.

  And she thought hell lay back down the road at Chessington?

  ***

  “Code red.”

  As she leaned against the door, trying to capture a breath into her screaming lungs, Cass couldn’t believe she was saying that word, red. Not blue. Not yellow. What the hell else could she do? She could come back, of course, she could come back. But what consolation was that right now when years had been spent planning every single aspect of this, squirreling money, visiting undertakers, even stealing the lovely jet mourning brooch that was pinned against her presently fluttering windpipe?

  “Oh my God.” Pearl gave such a start the crystal decanter hit the floor—mosaicked, so there was no chance of saving it. “Sorry, Cass. I never meaned—”

  “God’s sake.” Cass bent forward, trying to snatch a breath. “When I say ‘red’ I mean ‘red.’ Don’t stand there gawping. Bloody well move, will you? The bags. Now.”

  There was no time to pity the fact her life was as fragmented as that decanter, that she must leave here, the room she remembered being in with her mother.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. The bags?”

  Cass clutched her side where a stitch bit. Had she blurted code red to Amber, Topaz, or any of the other members of the Starkadder Sisterhood, she’d not have seen them for dust. But Pearl, thick as dust on a forgotten tomb? And Ruby? Ruby’s feet didn’t just stay exactly where they were, on the frayed footstool before the fire, she sloshed another glassful of brandy from the bottle on the hearth.

  “Whot the bleedin’ hell for? Have yer lost it, Saff?”

  It was so perfect here—the battered chaise, the old Mughal hangings, the things she had chosen with such care to put here in this monk’s cell, the place she preferred, with good reason, to Barwych itself—she only wished the answer was yes, she had, and they could stay forever. How the hell could they do that with bloody Gil Gressingham on the prowl? “Chance would be a fine thing.”

  “Whot d’yer mean?”

  Cass stole another breath. “I’ve been recognized. That’s what.”

  “How … no, hold them bags, Pearl, ain’t no cause to go rakin’ them out just yet.” She drained the glass. “Recognized? My soddin’ arse. How the soddin’ hell could yer be recognized? I ain’t ever heard such ... well …”

  Cass’s mouth tightened. Of course it was hard to believe. “Well you’re hearing it now.”

  “Bully fer yer. Recognized? Yer always did have ter be one up on us. Who was they? Some bleedin’ nab?”

  “Nob actually.”

  “Nob. Nab. Not much soddin’ difference far as I can tell?” Ruby sloshed another glassful of brandy. “Oh, get a grip, Saff. How the tearin’ hell would some bleedin’ nob know yer?”

  “Of course you’d want to reassure yourself.”

  “Oh, I does that all right.”

  “Because … Because I kissed him if you must know.”

  Ruby laughed so hard she nearly broke her apron bib. “Yer whot? Yer? Oh, the sacred saints spare me. Pull the other one, it rings louder, don’t it, Pearl?”

  “A nob?” Pearl dropped her jaw open. “You kissed a nob?”

  “Fast worker, ain’t she?”

  Cass squeezed her lips together. Their thoughts were crystal clear. Not only was she not as mysterious as the moon, and cold as distant constellations, Ruby had told her so. About the mixing with the toffs. Size-wise, a mistake as big as planet Earth. So now--too funny for words--she was delusional. Imagine thinking that her moral slackness in throwing herself at one of them, some toff with jam on, had wrecked it for them here? Well, she’d news for them.

  It didn’t matter whether she’d gone to Chessington this afternoon or not. In fact it was probably just as well that Belle Bassford had sat on their doorstep like a slab from the moment the trio had swept into Barwych. Just as well she’d found it impossible to believe Cass couldn’t sew a fine seam or play a note of music. Or she’d never have been at Chessington today at all. In some ways Devorlane Hawley had done them an enormous favor. Imagine if she hadn’t spotted Gil. Imagine him scouring the area and she didn’t know about it.

  “So?” Ruby settled herself back on the chair. “Kissed him and now we got ter run? Well, I ain’t. How’s that fer arguin’? Told yer we shouldn’t let her out on her own—”

  “You think I can’t deal with Lord Hawley?”

  She could. Although after what she’d seen of him so far, dealing with a pack of starving lions might possibly be a whole lot easier.

  “Lord Hawley?” If Pearl’s jaw dropped further it would join the decanter on the floor. “Isn’t he Miss Belle’s? Ooh, bet she was proper fizzing. Bet she—”

  “Lord Hawley is but a small part of the problem.” Cass picked herself off the door. “Would you like to guess who else I just saw on the Reading coach? Well?”

  Ruby smothered a chuckle. “Not old Starkie, that’s fer sure. The daisies that old bastard is kickin’ up.” She reached for another glass.

  True. But it hardly mattered that every London newspaper had dutifully applauded Diamond’s actions. That only last week The Times had reported it was safe for ladies to wear their jewels to parties again, as nothing had been stolen from their necks in weeks. Starkadder had been nothing without Gil. And Gil was here. At least he was on a coach, somewhere between here and Reading. It couldn’t be coincidence. Either he wanted to turn them in, or he wanted them to steal.

  Cass bent down to remove what was left of her slipper. It was hardly wise to take her shoes off with glass splinters everywhere but she needed to get her boots. The price was on her head. All those heists she’d pulled, largely to survive that fact and ensure she was worth more to Starkadder alive as a thief, meant not a court would spare her now. If anyone knew it, it was Gil. She tossed what remained of the slipper aside. “Gil Gressingham.”

  “Whot?”

  “Yes. That’s who. So neither of you need telling it’s not safe for us here. We take our chances somewhere
else now. The North Country. Ireland. Or abroad.”

  Pearl’s gaze followed her across to the cupboard by the fireplace. “But, Cass—”

  “No, Pearl.”

  “But don’t you see if he was on that coach that means he’s going to Reading? When we came here you said that’s over twenty miles away.”

  “With plenty stops in between. He could get off at any one of them. Right now he could be outside having got off at ours.”

  “But, what if he’s got relatives in Reading? And we go running away? What if there just isn’t nothing left for him in London now Starkie’s gone and been done in?”

  Cass’s laugh was humorless as she reached inside the cupboard. Pearl was young. Fifteen. Everything to learn. And so thick skulled it would take her twice that time too. “Gil didn’t have relatives. Even his own mother disowned him at birth.”

  “But if you can deal with Lord Hawley, you can deal with Gil. I mean you and Gil … Well, Gil anyhows …”

  Cass swallowed. When she’d opened her mouth and said she could deal with Devorlane Hawley—why not tackle a tarantula as well?

  Yes, it was shockingly mouse-like to run. She’d been told at five to steal or starve, and Gil—Pearl was right about Gil--Gil had always looked out for her, the big brother she’d never had. She could handle him, provided he was alone, provided Starkadder hadn’t somehow survived Diamond’s murderous attack, provided Gil even came here. But the risk? The risk posed by the two men? She’d sooner run.

  “Of course, if you can’t do it … ” Pearl said.

  “Me?” Cass passed her tongue around her lips. So, he came here and he expected them all to go back to stealing, if he was alone. Anger burned in her veins at the thought of each and every day of her life she’d been owned, pinioned, made to do things she detested and knew were wrong. Was Gil who she was running from though? After all, she’d escaped once and could do it again. For that matter he might never come here at all.

  If she could deal with Gil, surely she could deal with Devorlane Hawley? Very well, he thought he knew her. All right, he more than thought, he as good as said. Was she seriously going to run from here, from her dreams because he made her fingers burn? Was she mad? He couldn’t prove who she was. Not in a million years. All she had to do was keep denying it.

  Run and underline her guilt? Run and relinquish her quest? What she’d sworn the night Matthew died, what she’d worked for? To find out beyond the shadow of a doubt if he was a son and she was a daughter of this place. While she could never be innocent, it cleaned slates of her being Sapphire.

  Run and demonstrate to those it had always been vital she dominate, that she wasn’t even half so formidable as she made out?

  Run? Well, as she had thought a few moments ago, it was so very nice here. Why the hell should she?

  She edged up her chin, the cupboard shelf swimming into her vision. Of course she could always come back, but she wasn’t going to because she wasn’t damn well going.

  “Fine.” She set her boots back on the shelf. “Just don’t say I never gave you the chance to leave.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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 l
ifted. 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.