I’m not going to tell anyone, he had said, but Grace had lived amongst the nobility for long enough to understand that for most of them—her brothers-in-law and family friends excluded—the truth seemed to be a malleable thing, and any claims to honor considered to be unimpeachable, regardless of how dishonorably they had behaved.
He’d threatened to shave Tansy, for God’s sake. As much as she wanted to make her excuses and run off, it would be wisest to stay long enough at least to ensure he trulywouldn’ttell. Because even if he hadn’t directly witnessed the theft of that watch, even if she hadn’t stolen a damned thing, still he would be believed above her.
Her hands flexed impotently at her sides. She whisked the tip of her tongue across her dry lips. “I suppose,” she said carefully, “that it depends upon what the gossips say.”
A cold fish he was, this earl who stared her down with the severe slash of his dark brows. As if ice wouldn’t have melted in his mouth. “They say that your mother was a criminal. That she’s been transported for her crimes.”
“Such things tend to happen to extortionists,” she said. “And bigamists, besides. I’ll not pretend a sympathy with her that I don’t feel.”
Not so much of a twitch of that carefully-even expression. “They say that you’re a bastard. That you don’t know who your father is.”
“Also true. Although I don’t see why I ought to be held responsible for things that happened before my birth.”
He raked one hand through his thick, dark hair, which was somewhat less kempt than usual. As if this hadn’t been the first time this morning he’d drawn his fingers fretfully through those chestnut locks which tended to be immaculately combed and styled. “It’s also said that you spent a year in prison,” he offered.
Grace stiffened. “What rubbish,” she snapped, her chin lifting in outrage at the accusation, and his shoulders slumped in relief. “It was only a week.”
A startled laugh stripped off of his tongue, and he gave a rueful shake of his head. “For theft, I assume? What was it?”
“A penny bun.”
“Why?”
“Why does anyone steal food? I was hungry, and I wanted very badly not to be.” She lifted her shoulders in a tiny, awkward shrug. “As it happened, it didn’t work out particularly well. I got pinched immediately, and lost the bun altogether before I’d had even a bite.” It had fallen straight out of her hands onto the filthy street, where a passing carriage had crushed it beneath its massive rear wheel. “Incidentally, I can’t recommend the conditions which must be endured in jail. And there’s rats.” Had he shuddered, just slightly?
“Do you steal often, then?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say often.” But not exactly infrequently, either. “I have plenty of pin money. There is no great need for thievery, not like—” When she had been younger. When therehadbeen a need. “Suffice it to say that I haven’t, in recent years, picked the pocket of anyone who wasn’t thoroughly deserving.”
“But youaregood at it. Skilled, I mean to say. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life; I wouldn’t have believed it, except that I had seen it for myself. That wretched arse never suspected a thing, nor did anyone else.”
Probably she shouldn’t have been pleased by the praise. Probably he hadn’t even really meant it as such. But compliments of any kind were rare from his sort, and so she accepted it with a little inclination of her head. Near her feet, Tansy let out a morose meow, and a tail thwacked her ankle. Probably she’d chewed up the last of the catmint. A tiny nudge of her heel, and Tansy unwound herself, crawling out from beneath Grace’s skirts with an elegant feline stretch. A moment later she sauntered away, toward the nearest bed of lovely purple flowers.
“You said you had need of a thief,” Grace said. “What, exactly, did you mean by that?”
That bland expression turned guarded. A muscle jumped in the smooth plane of his cheek, just beneath the icy blue of eyes that considered her with no small amount of suspicion. Which was rather audacious of him, given the circumstances. But by the tension in his jaw, she guessed that he knew he would have to reveal something of his circumstances to her—whether he wished to or not.
“I’ll make you a bargain,” he said at last, in a low, flat voice; one which Grace suspected had been contrived to convey a calm he did not feel. “I’ll keep your secret—so long as you keep mine.”
“Itisa secret, then?” Intrigued, Grace sidled a step or two closer.
A small, tight nod. “One I would like to remain that way.”
“Secrets have got a way of coming out.”
“That’s why I need you. To ensure that this one does not.”
“And for that, you require me to steal something?” Interesting. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, exactly. That is—I know it exists. I have a general idea of where it might be found. I don’t know what, precisely, it is.” An odd expression flitted across his face for a moment. “I’m not making very much sense, am I?”
“I’m afraid not, no.” Grace had the feeling, from the way hiseyes slid away from hers, that his present circumstances, whatever they happened to be, had instilled in him no small amount of shame within him. And shame was an emotion with which she had had entirely too much familiarity, at least in her younger years. It had been some years since she had experienced it—since anyone close to her had heaped it upon her shoulders—but she knew that mask well enough.
She knew the slumped shoulders. The burn of humiliation in her cheeks. The feeling of smothering beneath the weight of her own thoughts. The repetition of scathing recriminations inside her head, until finally that scornful voice had become entirely her own. It was not a feeling she wished ever to experience again. It wasn’t even one she would have wished uponhim.
She pursed her lips together and risked speaking. “Lots of people”—hissort of people—“like to believe the whole of the world is painted in black and white. That good is always good, and bad is always bad. But those of us who have lived with the harsher realities of the world have always known better. It is possible, sometimes, to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Is this one of those times?”
An awkward lift of his shoulders. “I’d like to believe so,” he said. “And if I were the only one so affected, perhaps I would not now be asking of you what I am. But it isn’t only me. My mother will be injured. And my sister, Eliza, as well. She’s just fifteen.”
