“Who are you?” demanded the shopkeeper. “Who let you back here?”
Winnie ignored him, picked up her skirts, and hurdled the rack. The monkey had paused in its flight, and its fingers deftly loosened the drawstring top of the reticule.
Oh God, oh God—she had to get the bag back before the monkey turned this unfortunate situation into an outright catastrophe.
She picked up a tooled leather glove and tossed it into the air, a high arc in the opposite direction of the monkey. The animal’s curious gaze caught and tracked the glove, and while it was distracted, Winnie reached out and snagged the silk drawstring of the reticule.
She pulled hard. The string slid right through the drawstring top of the bag and came free in her hand. She watched with a detached sense of imminent doom as the top of the reticule spilled open. Three necklaces, dripping with diamonds, slithered out onto the floor.
The monkey, sensing disaster, dropped the reticule, turned tail, and ran.
Winnie, also sensing disaster, turned very slowly back toward the shopkeeper. The glove she’d thrown had landed on his shoulder, and while she watched, it slid slowly off and fell to the ground, like a bizarre dismembered hand.
“What is this?” he demanded. His gaze took her in, from the toes of her battered, excrement-covered boots to her grimy knees and dingy, drab-colored dress.
Then they both looked at the fortune in jewels on the floor.
This was bad. This was very bad.
“M-my mistress,” Winnie said desperately, “sent me to get her necklace clasps repaired—”
“Sure she did,” said the shopkeeper, “and I’m the ghost of Napoleon.”
“No,” Winnie said, “I—hold a moment, I can—”
What could she do? Bribe him? Grab the necklaces and run?
Perhaps she could weep. Perhaps she could claim to be a duchess in disguise. Perhaps she could pretend she only spoke modern Greek.
The shopkeeper forestalled any of these ideas by grabbing her about the wrist. “You can go straight to the magistrates’ office, my duck, and see how they like your story there.”
The magistrates’ office. The stolen necklaces. Back in a cell—close and dark and—
Winnie let out all her breath in a rush, looked heavenward, and feigned a swoon.
It was surprisingly effective. She let herself go completely limp and thanked Providence that the shopkeeper retained his grip on her wrist long enough to lower her the rest of the way to the ground.
She heard a woman’s shriek—somehow they must have captured the attention of the passersby. Her ear caught the sound of fabric tearing—ohblast,that would be her other stocking—followed by at least half a dozen obscene words from the shopkeeper.
And then, to her extreme horror, she heard someone she recognized.
“For the love of God, give the woman some air.”
It was Spencer. His voice was precisely as deep and mellifluous as ever.
Oh no. Oh hell.
She resisted the urge to fling her hand over her face and kept her eyes closed.If I can’t see you, you can’t see me,she thought wildly.
“What’s going on here?” Spencer’s disembodied voice asked.
“Found this woman sneaking about my stall with a bag full of stolen jewels,” said the shopkeeper plaintively. “Going to take her and the gems to the magistrate—there might be a reward, by the look of what she had in her bag.”
Winnie thought of imprisonment. She thought about rubies and diamonds and pink topaz stones the size of quail’s eggs. She thought about her sheep. She wondered how long it would be before she climbed a tree or saw the sky again.
And then Spencer’s voice—his very rich, very deep, very confident voice—said dryly, “A reward. Of course. Unhand the Countess of Warren, if you don’t mind, and I’ll see to it that you are well-compensated for your troubles.”
His voice was suddenly warmer, closer to her ear, as though he had knelt beside her. “Wake up, Win. I’m going to need my wife conscious and vertical for this next bit.”
