Grace offered a little shrug. “It helps me to think,” she said. “Something to do with my hands while I am otherwise occupied with my thoughts.”
“Could I give it a try, then? Been a long damned time since I’ve picked a lock myself. And I’ve a thought or two worth pondering.”
Grace closed up the padlock and handed it over. “It’s very clever,” she said. But then, Uncle Rafe had once been a spy for the Home Office, and she—she had just been a thief. Probably if anyone could work it out quicker than she had, it would be him. “What thoughts must you ponder, then?” she asked as he slid a housebreaker’s key into the lock in a first effort to manipulate the tumblers.
“When and whether to tell my muttonheaded son that he is being a damned fool,” he said, lifting his chin to indicate his son, Danny, there in the farthest corner of the room, plainly in the midst of some argument with Hannah, the daughter of Uncle Ben and Aunt Diana. “Damn,” he said, withdrawing the key once more. “Thisistricky.”
“It was made to be,” Grace said. “What’s Danny done now?”
“It’s more what he hasn’t done,” Uncle Rafe said absently as he went back in for another go. “And that is asked Hannah to dance. Not even once! Any fool could see that she desperately wants him to. Except for my fool of a son himself, it seems.” A wry smile curled at the corners of his lips. “You know as well as I that he’s been half in love with her since they were children. Only now she’s out on the marriage mart, and he can’t seem to work up the nerve to ask.”
A pity, that. Though they were both members of the Beaumont family, there was no blood shared between them, as Uncle Rafe and Aunt Emma had taken Danny in as their son when he’d been only a boy, and Hannah was Aunt Diana’s daughter by marriage. The two of them had been as thick as thieves ever since Grace had known them.
“Well, he’d better work up the nerve soon,” she said. “Her dance card is nearly always full.”
“I know,” Uncle Rafe said sourly. “After that last ball, Danny stomped around the house for a solid day in a fit of pique. He’s jealous as hell, but he’d die before he’d admit it.”
“Then he’s going to lose her,” Grace said. “Hannah’s a lovely girl, and she’s got a score of admirers besides.” But shewantedDanny. She had for years now.
“That’s my dilemma,” Uncle Rafe sighed as he extracted the key once more and squinted down at the lock in rank suspicion, as if it had resisted his efforts only to be contrary. “No man wants his father poking his nose into his business. But he’ll make the both of them miserable if he continues to be stubborn. Hannahisa lovely girl, but she won’t wait around for him forever.”
Nor should she. “Perhaps I ought to do it,” she said. “Talk to him, I mean to say.”
Uncle Rafe’s shoulders sank in patent relief. “Would you?” heasked. “That is—they’ve always looked up to you, the two of them.”
Probably because she was only a few years older, and had been the stickiest-fingered out of all the children, and thus the one responsible for filching treats from the kitchen to distribute amongst them. They had idolized her, after a fashion, and it had been lovely to have such obvious adoration and to be instantly accepted as one of them.
“Well, someone must save them from themselves,” she said. “I suppose it might as well be me.”
“There’s a ball tomorrow evening,” Uncle Rafe said, and he bared his teeth in a feral scowl as the tumblers once again refused to cooperate with his manipulations. “Supposing you’re going—”
“We are.”
“Then perhaps you might shake some sense into my witless son then? He’s particularly susceptible to a good pinch on the ear.” He slanted her a rueful glance as she muffled a chuckle in her palm. “I really don’t think he can take another evening of watching Hannah dance with everyone but him. But he’s damned well got toaskher. Ah, there.” He breathed a sigh of relief as the lock clicked open at last. “How was that?”
“Very well done. It took me hours to work it out the first time.”
Uncle Rafe handed the lock back to her. “How long does it take you now?”
“Seven seconds, or thereabouts.”
He let out a low whistle. “I’m impressed. Do you know, Gracie, you’d be a wonder as a spy—”
“Rafe, you arenotto recruit Grace for the Home Office,” Aunt Emma chided as she approached, two glasses of port in hand. “Take it,” she said to him as she offered him one. “You’re going to want it.”
Rafe stifled a wince as he accepted the glass, his gaze flitting to the farthest corner of the room, where Danny sat now alone, slumped in his chair as if he’d been knocked senseless. “What’s he done this time?”
“Told Hannah that dancing was a waste of time, and he didn’t see the point in the Season.” Aunt Emma gritted her teeth in a grimace. “He might also have implied that the color of her gown made her look sallow.”
Grace winced.
Uncle Rafe tossed back the port in one long swallow. “Shake some sense into him,” he said to Grace. “Please. I’m not above begging.”
“Hannah stormed off, naturally,” Aunt Emma said as she settled beside Uncle Rafe on the arm of the couch. “She also called him a gormless addlepate.”
“Jolly good for her,” Uncle Rafe muttered beneath his breath as he collected his wife’s hand in his. “It’s an awful thing,” he said, “having to watch your children make mistakes there’s no rescuing them from. Makes one long for the days when skinned knees were the worst that could befall them.”
Grace wouldn’t know, of course. But she hoped she would, one day, know what it was like to be the sort of parents they were—the sort of mother her own had never been. The kind that worried ceaselessly for her children, and fretted over their foibles. Who loved them even when they were at their worst. Perhaps her mother hadn’t been the best of example of what a parent ought to be.
