Suzanne Robinson (3 page)

They sat in silence for a while before Emmie began drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. Dolly raised a brow.

“What’re you planning now?”

“I need more money, quick.” Emmie stopped drumming and tapped her front teeth with a fingernail. “Hmmm. Tonight’s lay was so easy, I think I’ll go back and have another try. I saw a good bit of silver lying around collecting dust.”

Dolly shook her head until her curls came loose. “Don’t! It’s too dangerous.”

“It isn’t.”

“What’s got into you? You got a precious strange look in your eye, my girl.”

“Nonsense. There’s no danger, and besides, North deserves to be taught a lesson in humility. I’m just the one to do it.”

“If you don’t look sharp and control yourself, you’re going to end up lagged.” Dolly was watching Emmie closely. “This North, he’s weighing on your mind. That’s not like you.”

“Valin North is spoiled, rude, arrogant, and selfish.”

“And pretty, from what I hear.”

“He may be,” Emmie said, “but he knows it. It was disgusting to watch him play the grand lord and turn his back on a girl simply because he wouldn’t trouble himself to be patient with her. He thinks he’s entitled to the cream of life and has the right to trod upon everyone’s feelings.”

“That’s the same things you say about old Mr. Cheap. You’re letting your feelings run your head. Leave North alone, my dear, or you’ll end up in Newgate, or worse.”

“Not me,” Emmie said as she poured herself more tea. “I’m going to get the money I need and humble that odious Valin North at the same time. He can spare the blunt, and he can certainly spare a bit of his arrogance. I intend to see that he learns consideration and humility, and I won’t do him a morsel of harm.”

Dolly was looking at her with suspicion. “Why are you so bloody anxious to see this toff again if he’s such an arse?”

“I’m not,” Emmie exclaimed.

“Plenty of other blokes with valuables worth stealing.”

“I already know the lay for this one.”

“Never go back to the same place for your pickings,” Dolly said. “It’s a rule.”

“But not a law.”

Dolly rose, shaking her head again. “It’s a rotten idea.”

“Don’t worry,” Emmie said with a grin. “It will be a lark.”

The next morning Emmie woke feeling sluggish from a night of disturbing dreams. That damned marquess had invaded her sleep. In the dream she, not the voluble Lady Millicent, had been introduced to him.

In the dream, he had scowled at her in that off-with-her-head manner of his, just as he had poor Lady Millicent. But in the dream she had widened her eyes in response, and his scowl vanished like mist blown by a gale.

Suddenly Valin North’s face lost the hardness of a Cossack warrior. Without harshness, it was a face of near perfection with its high forehead, emphasized by dark hair swept back in long soft waves. In a man without that straight nose and gently curved mouth the severity of such a haircut would have
exposed and emphasized any imperfections. But what attracted Emmie’s attention, what caused her blood to pound in her temples, were his eyes. Light gray, deep-set, and provocative, they seemed to bore through her, searching, invading, and thrusting aside all resistance.

In her dream Emmie met that compelling gaze for an eternity before the marquess stretched out a hand. Just as he touched her she woke.

“Gracious mercy,” she muttered to herself. “I’ve lost my wits.”

She was sitting in her shabby-genteel sitting room at a small desk going over her accounts for the fifth time. Laying down her pen, Emmie sighed and pressed her palms to her closed eyes. She was irritated at herself for losing her concentration.

All morning her thoughts had strayed from business to the dream, to Valin North. She was growing more and more uneasy. In all her exploits, all her deceits, she’d never encountered a man who hadn’t vanished from her memory the instant he was out of her sight. Perhaps she should heed Dolly’s warning.

With resolution she harnessed her thoughts again. Her conclusion of last night had been correct. She desperately needed more money for Flash, Sprout, and Phoebe.

A knock at the door interrupted her fretting, and Wombie the forger entered. Wombie was dressed as a clerk, in a black suit. When he wasn’t speaking of business, he had a number of chronic ailments that made up the bulk of his conversation. Wombie had taken up forgery so that he needn’t pursue more physically demanding work that would aggravate his complaints. He wore spectacles with bottle-glass lenses, and boasted a luxurious mop of gray hair.

Wombie pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with one hand while he clutched a flat wooden box with the other. “Missus Apple, might I trouble you to keep your parcel in your rooms while I go out?”

“What’s wrong?” Emmie rose and took the box from him.

“I am Suffering From My Head, this morning. It’s giving me terrible trouble, and I got to go to the apothecary for headache powders afore I’m forced to take to me bed.”

Wombie also Suffered From His Feet and From His Back in a never-ending cycle of affliction. “I’d leave it with my ’prentice, but he’s copying a will what just come to us sudden-like.”

“You should stop here and send your ’prentice for the powders.”

“Thank you, missus, but the will’s got to be done by tonight, and since I’m Suffering From My Head, the boy’s got to do this piece of work.”

When Wombie was gone, Emmie returned to her desk and set the box down. They were waiting for Borgle to ship the painting tonight, but the box hadn’t been nailed shut yet so she took the opportunity to remove the painting. Since Wombie hadn’t yet reframed it, she was able to lay the picture flat on the desk to admire it.

Hans Holbein the Younger had been a favorite artist of Henry VIII and one of the finest painters of his time. After the theft, Emmie hadn’t had time to study the naturalism of this portrait of the king’s sister Mary Tudor, whose dark-haired and pink-cheeked beauty seemed as fresh as the day it was painted over three hundred years ago.

“Three hundred years,” Emmie murmured, suddenly aware of how fragile the portrait might be.

She picked it up gently, intending to replace it in the box, but she noticed that the top edge of the canvas was uneven. She touched a bit of material sticking out there, thinking she would have to call it to Wombie’s attention. As her finger slid over the flaw Emmie frowned. The protrusion was sharp, like paper rather than canvas. She peered more closely, then turned the painting over and examined its edges.

There was an extra layer of backing that had been glued onto the back of the original. When she’d cut the painting out of its frame, she’d loosened it.
What she was looking at was the corner of something stuck between the portrait and the backing.

Drumming her fingers on the desk, Emmie stared at the Holbein. One of her advantages over the ordinary villains of east London was her education. Mother had taught her more than simple reading and writing.

Emmie had learned history, literature, languages, and art. She’d tried to continue with some of her education on her own. Her education had enabled her to recognize the value of the Holbein and choose North as her victim. Mother had also taught her etiquette and the nuances of titles—and the stories of England’s great families.

It was Mother who had told Emmie about the Norths and their great country house, Agincourt Hall, where a great treasure was said to have been hidden shortly before King Phillip of Spain sent the Armada against England’s Queen Elizabeth. Agincourt Hall had been owned by the Beauforts then, a Catholic family who had secretly plotted with the Spanish against the Protestant Elizabeth. Fearing the discovery of their plans and the Spanish gold sent to finance them, Henry Beaufort was said to have hidden the treasure somewhere in the house. He was arrested for treason and died in the Tower before he could reveal what he’d done with the treasure.

That was the story. Everyone thought it false because Elizabeth’s master spy, Throckmorton, had scoured Agincourt Hall looking for the gold and discovered nothing. As a child Emmie had loved the story, though, because it was so much like a fairy tale. After the evil Beauforts had been disgraced, good Queen Bess had given the title and lands to a loyal man—Valin North’s ancestor.

This portrait might have been among the original Beaufort possessions left at Agincourt. Emmie’s drumming fingers stilled. They drifted toward the paper sticking out of the canvas, grasped, and tugged. More paper came out, then stuck. It appeared that there was more than one piece of paper folded together. Emmie grabbed a letter opener and carefully separated the backing from the portrait until there was room to slide out a sealed packet.

There was nothing written on the outside of the packet, but there was an impression on the wax that held it shut. She could make out a swan with its wings held back-to-back; perhaps the heraldic emblem of the Beaufort family? With precision she slid the blade of the letter opener under the seal. She was able to open the packet without damaging the wax.

Slowly she unfolded the papers and anchored them to the desktop with her inkstand and a paperweight. Then she sat there staring in disappointment
at the top sheet of paper. It was yellow with age and written in an archaic script, but she could make out most of the words. At the top of the paper was a poem, and below this had been written a household register, a list of the members of the household of Henry Beaufort, Marquess of Westfield.

“Humph.” Odd how she kept picturing Beaufort. He looked exactly like Valin North.

Shaking her head, Emmie went on to the next piece of paper, but as she turned the top sheet over, she noticed more writing on the back. Evidently the poem and register had been written on the reverse of an old letter. The second sheet was just as uninteresting. Emmie’s gaze traveled down a list of rooms assigned to each household member who resided in Agincourt Hall itself. Next came a paper consisting of a series of foreign phrases, such as a student might copy for a lesson. Some were in Latin, and some in French and English.

Emmie studied a Latin phrase with little interest.
Sic itur ad astra
. The papers were worthless.

“Drat.” She pounded her fist on the desktop. “Serves you right for letting your imagination rule your reason, my girl.”

With a sigh Emmie pressed her palms against her eyelids again, then began to gather the papers. The sheet with the poem on it caught her attention as she placed it on top of the other two.

“What odd phrasing,” she muttered as she read it again.

“Henry, old cove, you were no poet.” Emmie read down the list of household members that had been added below the poem. “You had a giant household, I’ll admit.” She read the old names with growing interest.

HOUSEHOLD REGISTER
At my Lord’s Table

The list went on to those privileged to dine “in the Parlour,” immediately below my lord’s table.
Next came “The Clerk’s Table” at which sat the upper servants such as the clerks of the kitchen and the yeomen of the buttery and pantry. Lower servants sat at the “Long Table in the Hall”—grooms, farriers, falconers, and bird-catchers. There were other tables where lowly persons like “Diggory Dyer and Marfidy Snipt” dined.

Emmie’s lips curled. “Diggory Dyer, Monsieur d’Or. Ha!”

She glanced at the letter on the reverse of the household register, put it down, and immediately picked it up again. The date was March 23, 1588, and it was addressed to Henry Beaufort from Ferdinand Guzman de Silva, secretary to the Spanish ambassador to England.

“Eighty-eight,” Emmie whispered to herself. “Eighty-eight. That’s the year of the Armada.”

Swiftly she read the phrases. “
Arm yourself
,” “
The fleet sails from Lisbon in May
.”

“Hmm. It’s no wonder he hid this.”

She read the second letter, which was from Beaufort to de Silva detailing his preparations to rise against Queen Elizabeth. Emmie was about to lose interest in the contents when she read Henry Beaufort’s last words: “
I have received the gold and will employ it well
.”

“The gold.” The words were a long sigh.

Letting the paper fall from her hands, Emmie stared at the two missives. The letters had been
written first. That was obvious, for one didn’t write to the Spanish ambassador’s secretary on the back of a list of household room assignments, and certainly the secretary wouldn’t have written his letter on something of Beaufort’s. Which meant that someone had reused the letters. But Henry Beaufort would have concealed such treasonous correspondence, not given it to his servants to use as scrap paper.