The Gentleman Jewel Thief (25 page)

T
he Earl of Harclay returned to a house turned inside out. During his absence, the entire residence had been ransacked. In his study, musty, crinkled paper was everywhere, an overturned inkpot leaked onto his chair and carpet, and drawers were tossed about, books and bills askew. Avery claimed the staff was drugged; he found them snoring in a heap in the basement. Doubtless that rogue Mr. Lake had something to do with this.

Harclay hardly noticed the mess. Stalking through the front door, Avery jogging closely behind at his heels, Harclay tossed his jacket and hat aside.

He ignored Avery’s gasp of terrified surprise at the condition of the house and headed for his study.

“Send up hot water for a bath,” Harclay growled over his shoulder. “Make sure it’s scalding.”

Battering aside the study door, Harclay made a beeline for the gleaming liquor cabinet. Praise God, whoever his visitors had been, they’d left his collection of brandy intact.

In a swift, brutal movement, he lopped off the round crystal topper from a decanter and poured himself a full glass. He downed its entire contents in a single, desperate gulp.

He threw his head back, eyes closed, and waited for the liquor to make its way into his blood. He felt sore and starved in every corner of his being. His clothes were dirty and wrinkled; his beard unshaven and untrimmed. He needed a good scrubbing, and a good, long, slobbery drunk, the kind that erased one’s memory, at least for a little while.

But no matter how much brandy he drank—in a matter of minutes, he finished the entire decanter—he couldn’t forget Violet. Her wound, her face, her heartless, scathing refusal.

Elbows on the top of the cabinet, Harclay sank against it. His knees felt rubbery, his head full of hate and regret and sadness. He was a mess, no two ways about it, and he hadn’t a clue how in hell to go about fixing the tangle in which he found himself.

What a fool he was, to believe she’d rethink her refusal after he put a bullet between her ribs. What an idiot he’d been, to ask her to marry him
again
after she responded that first time with an unequivocal
no, no, no
.

What sort of masochist was he besides? It seemed he could not get enough of Violet, no matter her unkind words, her work against him.

He’d turned into just the sort of idiot he loathed: sick with love, positively
sick
with it. His life was in shambles, and over a single woman, a single heartbeat, a single presence he could not seem to get enough of.

Not a month past, he would have thought such a thing impossible.

Harclay turned back to his study, and as if for the first time allowed the chaos of his surroundings to sink in. As if his day wasn’t terrible enough—now
this
.

At once he knew it was the work of Hope’s men, including Mr. Lake. Harclay saw the cripple’s pity for him in the sparing of the brandy and of the Harclay seal, which stood upright exactly where the earl had left it four—or was it five?—weeks ago.

Everything else was a disaster. Drawers turned out, furniture left open and askew; it appeared as if someone had enjoyed a deliciously athletic midnight rendezvous in the room.

Harclay stood before the gaping windows, allowing the evening breeze to wash over him and cool his skin. He understood the assault for what it was: a threat.

He had to find the diamond, and soon, or they would all drown in this quagmire together—the earl, Mr. Hope, Caroline and Lake, Lord Rutledge and Violet and all their dependents.

And no matter her feelings for him, Harclay couldn’t bear the thought of hurting Violet. He would find the diamond, if only to keep her safe. He would find the diamond for her sake, and hers alone.

Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair. The brandy had at last dulled the edges of his consciousness, leaving in its wake a pleasant, half-asleep murmur in his veins. His murderous mood was all but forgotten, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was able to think.

By now the diamond could be anywhere—Prussia, the prince regent’s jewel drawer, Putney. Doubtless those grasping acrobats had sold the French Blue off by now. But to whom? For how much?

Harclay recalled with a pang of annoyance that he was as good as broke until Hope allowed him access to his accounts. He had little cash available at the house; perhaps a guinea or two, nothing that would even come close to being enough to buy back the jewel.

There was the family silver, of course, Harclay’s horseflesh, and all the priceless antiques his grandfather had brought back from the Continent two generations before.

But what would a wily pawnbroker, or a slick master jeweler, possibly want with a Medici portrait?

It was hopeless.

Curses he didn’t even know existed bubbled from his lips as he pounded up the stairs. To his very great relief, Avery had managed not only to find the copper tub in the midst of all this ruin but also to fill it to the brim with steaming water. The bath was in its usual place, drawn up before the fire; beside it stood a fresh decanter of brandy and a heavy crystal snifter.

Harclay grinned. At least he still had Avery.

The earl spent an hour, then another, sunk up to his chin in the bath. What had once been his favorite place to think had become a nightmare. Every time he thought he was getting somewhere with this plan or that, he would recall Violet bathing in this very same tub. How lovely she’d looked, like a mermaid, with her dark hair fanned out in the water around her. How he’d tasted her, right there on the bed, her slickness on his lips. Pressing that slickness onto her mouth.

Brandy, and more brandy, and more brandy still.

It did nothing to erase the image of her naked curves, her swollen lips, and the smile he’d left on them when he was done.

There was only one thing he could do.

“Avery!” he called. “Avery, bring the razor. I shall need a shave. I’m going to White’s.”

 • • • 

I
n all the world, there was no better cure for the memory of a lady lost than wild, unadulterated debauchery.

And Harclay was sure to find that at White’s.

He rarely visited the establishment anymore, having fleeced half its members at the tables while stealing the other half’s wives, daughters, and favored courtesans. It was a point of pride, actually, that he scared these fashionable men speechless.

Only now he didn’t care about wagers or courtesans. He came for White’s astonishing array of cognacs, and for those cognacs alone. It soothed him to be in the company of other men, besides, the cigar smoke swirling about him in a comfortable haze of familiarity.

Harclay took a seat toward the back of the club, as far away as he could get from the infamous bay window at the front of the house. He wished to remain anonymous tonight; his hope was that he’d drink himself into a stupor and wake three days later in the comfort of his own bed, or perhaps in hell.

Poor as a pauper, rejected by the woman he loved, and entirely clueless as to how to find that blasted diamond, Harclay was starting to think hell the more attractive prospect.

The waiters came and went, setting before him an array of etched decanters. And slowly, with great patience, he began to make his way through each of them.

Still he was haunted by the memory of Violet’s face, her laugh. Still he could not gather his wits long enough to form a plan or even decide on a first step. Raid all the pawnshops between here and Cheapside? Sidle up to the regent, ask if he’d heard anything about a fifty-carat diamond?

Hopeless, hopeless, nothing short of
hopeless
.

Life was beginning to appear bleak indeed.

Harclay sank farther into the butter-soft leather of his wingback chair, his despair deepening, his mood black. By now he’d drunk enough cognac to fell the Russian army, but Harclay felt no different from how he’d felt two hours before. Either he was on the verge of death or his pain was still besting the liquor.

It was at that moment, when Harclay thought he might indeed be dead, that an enormously fat man collapsed into the chair behind him, nearly catapulting the earl from his. A second, equally fat man sat beside the first.

The back of Harclay’s chair faced the back of the first fat man’s, so that the backs of their heads nearly touched. The man wore a white powdered wig, the intricately curled, heavily perfumed kind that had been fashionable when crazy King George hadn’t been so crazy—in other words, sometime last century.

Harclay was about to turn around, face snarled into a rebuke, when the fat man began to speak.

He spoke in low, languid French, his voice nasal and high, as if he were used to speaking down to company.

“You little rat,” he said to the fat man beside him. “How dare you make me wait! A king waits for no man, not even his brother. I passed an hour at cards, which you know I’m not very good at, and everyone looked at me as if I had crossed eyes.”

Harclay’s ears perked up at the mention of “king.”

The second man sniffed. “‘Not very good’ is an understatement, dear brother. What is it the English say? Oh, yes. ‘Piss-poor.’ Ha-ha!”

If Harclay weren’t so intrigued, he would’ve rolled his eyes. Frenchmen were a peculiar breed. These two gentlemen were very peculiar indeed, for Harclay knew them to be the exiled Louis XVIII and his degenerate younger brother the Comte d’Artois, scions of the house of Bourbon.

Those French aristocrats lucky enough to escape
madame guillotine
lived in exile across Europe—in the Low Countries, Russia, Naples, Edinburgh. But because of the political threat the king and his brother posed, and the great debts they seemed to rack up wherever they went, these two corpulent princes had been denied asylum time and time again.

Until, of course, King George III had offered them a cushy welcome in England some four years past. The prince regent continued to support the exiled Bourbons, and the English had watched King Louis XVIII grow from fat to positively corpulent off the generous grants bestowed upon him by Prinny.

For a time Harclay had pitied the exiled king. Poor man had no country to call his own and had lost countless loved ones to a bloody revolution. Surely he deserved to live with all the dignity and respect accorded to him by virtue of his exalted position.

But then White’s had extended membership to the French king and the profligate Artois, and Harclay’s opinion of them took a sharp turn for the worse. For one thing, the brothers drained all the best liquors from the cellar; for another, they never paid their debts and owed Harclay a rather mountainous sum. Never mind the fact that the Bourbon brothers were rude, overly perfumed, and utter, complete imbeciles.

And now they were seated behind Harclay, crying out at each other in very loud whispers. Harclay slithered back into his seat and snapped open a paper, holding it to his nose while he eavesdropped.

“Let’s get on with it,” Artois said, snapping at a waiter—probably for more food. “You are wasting my night, and I’ve somewhere to be. What are you doing in London, anyway? You never leave that little farm of yours up in Buckinghamshire. Has someone died?”

Harclay sensed the king eyeing the room before he burrowed closer to his brother.

“No, you idiot, no one has died,” the king replied. “I’ve come to solicit your aid.”

Artois scoffed, taking a long, noisy swig from his snifter. “
My
aid? Last time we spoke, you told me I wasn’t worthy to clean your chamber pot. And now you ask for my aid?”

“Trust me,” the king growled, “I wouldn’t involve you if I didn’t have to.”

“Well?”

The king’s voice dropped lower. “It’s a miracle, surely, but I believe I’ve managed to locate
le bleu de France
. Just as we suspected, it’s been in London all along.”

Harclay’s heart erupted to a stop.
The French Blue
. The king was speaking of Hope’s diamond!

The earl wasn’t the only one excited by the news. Artois choked on his brandy, and Harclay heard the waiter pounding his back until the coughing fit passed.

“A miracle indeed, that Napoléon hasn’t gotten to it first,” Artois replied. “But how are you going to pay for it? Despite your proclamations—the missing jewels
do
belong to the family, yes—these English, they have no decorum. Whoever has the diamond is ransoming it for a hefty sum, surely.”

“That’s where you come in,” the king said. “Your agent. Have him secure a loan. Thirty thousand, no less.”

“Thirty thousand! But I don’t have access to so large a sum!”

“Listen,” the king hissed. “I would do it myself, but no one will lend me any more money. Besides, the war is going against Napoléon. It will only be a year, maybe two, before the English defeat him. And then we shall be restored. What sort of king shall I be without jewels? If you ever inherit the throne you will be glad to have them, too. What is thirty thousand when our royal dignity is at stake?”

Smacking his lips, Artois was silent some moments.

Harclay thought he might jump out of his skin. What luck to have stumbled upon these two miscreants! It made perfect sense the self-proclaimed King of France would be searching for the stolen crown jewels. Napoléon would be furious if he discovered Louis XVIII had gotten to the French Blue before he did. Not only was it a point of pride; it was yet another blow to the diminutive emperor’s floundering campaign to claim the world as his own.