She startled. “You want us toliterallysteal that maybe-a-bear-probably-a-bloated-rabbit topiary?”
“No better way to learn than by doing.”
“We shouldn’t,” she started.
But as her little, white teeth came out to worry her bottom lip, with her distinctly using the word ‘shouldn’t’ instead of ‘couldn’t,’ Percy knew he had her.
Pointing to a field down the hill running alongside the treeline, where an overgrown but clearly marked path led around the park and out into the other side of the topiary gardens, Percy told her, “Use the path and keep low. Pick up stray sticks that will be the right height and freshly dropped leaves that are still green.” He pinched a half a dozen pins from her coif and handed them to her, resisting the urge to run his fingers through the curtain of chocolate-rich hair that fell.
“When you’ve found enough material, stick them together.”
He felt the excitement building in her through her shaking hands and increased breaths.
She licked her lips again, clearly one hundred percent in her role because she murmured low, “When will I know to exchange the pots?”
“I’ll give you this signal.” He made a high-pitched whistle, though quiet enough not to draw Mr. Stonebrook’s attention. After he’d repeated the sound twice more, he asked, “Think you’re ready for this, partner?”
It wasn’t as if they were caught, Scotland Yard would be hauling them off to the pen, but there was still a risk of gossip by the servants if Lady Daniella Deime and the new Duke of Grandfellow were found stealing topiaries and sneaking around in a most unbecoming fashion.
All this Danny had to be painfully aware of, being the daughter of an earl and previously familiar with the ugliness of theton’s chatter and ridicule. But Danny showed no nerves atall as those lovely lips curled upwards in a conspiratorial smile that had Percy reaching for that godforsaken mushed excuse for a sandwich and stuffing it in his mouth to keep from kissing her senseless.
“Let’s do it,” she said, the spark in her eyes contagious. “Let’s con Stoney.”
Percy’s smile stretched until he was sure he could pose for a dentifrice campaign. He swallowed the eggplant and waved her on. “After you.”
“No, no.” She shook her head. “I’m not here, remember? Go on as if I’m but a cricket in the grass and unworthy of note.”
Percy continued smiling at the beautiful creature in front of him, looking as harmless and innocent as the wisps of clouds in the sky. No one would suspect beneath that simple frock, a storm of a woman was brewing to blow the years of elitist rules far to the sea.
He couldn’t wait.
*
Arms full ofher bounty, Danny picked her way through the path and stopped in the shelter of the waist-high wall that separated park from garden to construct her patchwork counterfeit.
With shaky hands and a racing heart, she did her best to put together a passing likeness of the topiary, while listening for Percy’s signal.
Deep down, she knew the feeling of excitement was wrong. A person who enjoyed taking other’s things was halfway gone to criminal, weren’t they? Rationally, she knew what they were doing was technically not a crime. Seeing as how the topiary already belonged to Percy and it was with his explicit tutelage and encouragement that she ‘pinch’ it.
The way he’d sketched out the plan, his deep voice painting the movements and paths with such a dramatic buildup, Danny could see how the romance and the payoff would tempt an otherwise honest person into a life of crime.
Especially if one’s partner was a silver-tongued devil.
Mentally stepping back to criticize her substitute, Danny deemed the likeness passing. And not a moment off, since the next thing she heard was a pair of male voices discussing the other gardens on the estate.
“Is there room for a shipment of statues in one of the other gardens?” Percy asked.
“There’s already the Pleasure Garden, Your Grace. Decked out with more than forty pieces.” Mr. Stonebrook sounded surprised. “Are you interested in collecting more?”
“Er—yes,” Percy said, recovering well. “But those are all nudes, you see? What I’m planning is a celebration of theanimalkingdom.”
“Animals, Your Grace?”
“Of course!” Percy said. Danny heard a slightslap, imagining him clapping the gardener on the back and making the older man highly uncomfortable. “Naturally, I came to you for recommendations, Mr. Stoney. Just look at the exceptional work you’ve done on these topiaries. A man who could design such a magnificent bear out of nothing but wood and leaf, why, who else would I come to but you?”
“That is a cow, Your Grace.”
At the outrageous claim, Danny risked the entire operation to peer over the wall and examine the topiary. She frowned at the four-footed blob and the smaller mounds atop. If that was a cow, she feared for the heifer’s constitution.
