The room was dimly lit by only a single shuttered lamp, for although the grate was open, the cloudy night sky offered little light. The table and high-backed chairs were washed dark gold in the low light, and Captain Smythe—who sat sadly alone, with his head bowed—hopped up as if he’d been stuck with a pin.
“What was that?” He looked at Caroline as ifshehad uttered that angry shriek.
“It wasn’t us,” Richard said, taking Caroline’s hand. “Was it Lady Marston?”
Anne and Wentworth were not far behind, and the two maids as well. Mr. Belvedere had tucked his nightshirt hastily into his breeches. He looked every bit the gleeful schoolboy who had escaped his dormitory for a fine fuss. “What the hullabaloo?” he asked. “Someone murder the dragon?”
The captain shot him a darkling look.
Sophia was the next on the scene. “Everyone let me through, please. Iknowthat was Lady Marston; I must attend her.”
She had redonned her dress, though only the top few buttons were done up, the rest imperfectly hidden under a shawl. Captain Wentworth un-shuttered the lamp just then, casting them all into harsher shadows. Clothed by chance, hair in various states of disarray, and all with raised brows, they must’ve been quite a sight. Everyone shuffled to and fro so that Sophia could skirt around the table and the harpsichord to the door on the opposite side.
The door belonging to Sir and Lady Marston was now the only one which wasnotgaping open, and indeed they had been ominously silent after that one sound.
They all watched quietly, as if it was a pantomime. Sophia knocked. “Lady Marston? Do you need me?”
The door was flung open, and Lady Marston’s flashing dark eyes amidst her gray-black hair shone like obsidian. “I have been robbed.”
“What—is that all?” Mr. Belvedere said.
“All? All, sir?” Sir Mark was just behind his wife. Caroline started, for he had already taken off his wig and had forgotten to put it back on, revealing a shiny pate. “It’s a crime and travesty! The amethysts—some of the finest of the Marston jewels—are quite gone. This bobbery, this blatant thievery, cannot pass.”
Lady Marston did not seem to hear him. “Captain, I call on you to observe my jewel box—come! My amethysts have been taken.”
He pushed his way in, though what he expected to see, other than a jewelry box he had never seen before that was now lacking a piece of jewelry he had also never seen before, Caroline didn’t know.
“I was given to understand,” said Lady Marston terribly, “that the British Mail was of the utmost reliability. I have been criminally misled.”
“No, ma’am! The packet system is the pride of our far-flung empire,” the captain protested. “I haveneverhad such a thing happen to a passenger in twenty-three years! It isunthinkable?—”
“Well,think it,my good man,” said Sir Mark.
Minnie, their maid, thought it appropriate to burst into tears. “I swear I didn’t do anything, ma’am. I rubbed it and wrapped it in the cloth same as always when you wore it on—on—well, I can’t remember no days on this ship, but it was at least three days ago. It weren’tme…”
“No one said it was your fault.” Susan shushed her firmly but kindly. “Dry your eyes, and don’t make a scene.”
“It must be—with the stolen mail, perhaps—” The captain turned his fulminating gaze on Mr. Belvedere.
Mr. Belvedere raised his hands. “I have no more knowledge of this than I have of the mail bags! Or the parrot! Am I now to be counted a thief in addition to a Frenchie?” He pulled out a chair from the table and sat. “Search my room, please! I won’t stir from here.”
“What if he has it on him?” Sir Mark said. “The amethysts are valuable, but the links are so fine—I daresay you could crumple the whole thing into a thimbleful.”
“Hardly that,” Lady Marston corrected impatiently, “but you are correct that Mr. Belvedere may be hiding it on his person.”
Mr. Belvedere stood again. “Shall I strip down?”
“Yes!” the captain declared. “Er—in private, of course, for the ladies’ sake?—”
Lady Marston spoke over them. “He must be searched, and after him, the others. There is an entirecrewof men who couldprofit from the sale of those gems. Mr. Belvedere is suspect, I agree, but I am nothing if not fair-minded.”
This was left uncontested with far more tact than truthfulness, in Caroline’s opinion.
“By all means search everyone,” Mr. Belvedere said with exasperation, “but one of you ladies—or you maids!—must’ve noticed if one of us went poking his nose where it don’t belong. You certainly would have noticed one of the seamen hanging about, for they don’t linger here.” Then he smacked his own head. “But I don’t know why I am arguing the point. I am only tightening my own noose.”
“I don’t know that we would’ve noticed anyone, sir,” Susan said in her plain-spoken way. “Minnie and I have taken to napping of the afternoon, when we are not needed, for neither of us are sleeping too well o’nights. We also take our turns on the deck, when we can. I don’t know if we would’ve heard or seen anything unless we happened to be right there.”
Minnie nodded her agreement to this, wiping her streaming eyes.
