From Jacob, Kat learned ways to revenge herself on those above her in the pecking order. Ways for which she could not be blamed, if she was careful. And Kat was always careful.
By the time Jacob had left to seek his fortune, servants who didn’t like Kat, which was most of them, knew that bullying her was certain to end up costing them heavily. They didn’t like her any better, but they left her alone.
It was for Miss Ellen that Kat stayed, even after the indenture ended on the twenty-first anniversary of the day the orphanage had chosen as her birthday. And it was with Miss Ellen she would go, once the will was read and they knew what they would get—or not get—from Miss Ellen’s family.
The housekeeper and butler both expected to be remembered in the will. Not the current cook. She and Lady Miller had spent the two years of her tenure in an armed truce after a screaming match in which Lady Miller threatened to fire the cook for insubordination and the cook threatened to quit.
Kat assumed that Lady Miller withdrew her threat because the cook made the best meals that anyone in the house hadever tasted, and from the stingiest of budgets. Why the cook stayed, no one knew.
As for the rest of the servants, none of them had any expectations.
Nonetheless, they were all filing into the parlor, as ordered. Kat hastily checked in the hall mirror. Her cap was straight and so was her apron. A curl of her dark hair had escaped the cap. She tucked it back and joined the back of the queue.
The lawyer was almost as dreary as the parlor, with clothing that just managed to miss being black, a sad face, a solemn expression, and a voice that droned in a monotone, on and on. Eventually, though, he made his way through the will, and everyone knew what Lady Miller had thought of them.
Kat had been right about some things. Yes, Miss Francine received the stables and the string of thoroughbreds. Yes, the butler and the housekeeper were both rewarded with a pension of twenty pounds a year, if they chose to retire immediately, and the handsome sum of one hundred guineas if they chose to stay for six or more years, or if Miss Miller dismissed them in the meantime. And yes, Miss Miller was to be sole beneficiary of everything left after the other bequests were distributed.
She had been wrong about others. All servants who had worked for Lady Miller for more than three years were to be given a guinea apiece. Kat was explicitly excluded, Lady Miller decreeing that “the female Katherine Fivepence being an indentured orphan who was raised and educated in this house, the three years shall be counted from the end of her indenture.”
Which meant Kat did not qualify, but Lady Miller must have lost track of time, for she left the remainder of Kat’s indenture to Miss Ellen. She also left to Miss Ellen a purse of coins, though the actual sum was not disclosed.
And that was why Kat crept down to the study in the middle of the night. The cash for those last few bequests was trapped inside the safe, for no one could find Lady Miller’s key, and so the solicitor wasreturning tomorrow with his copy.
How much was in Miss Ellen’s purse? And would there be enough cash in the safe to amend the amount if Kat decided it was unfair?
Kat intended to find out. Her friend Jacob’s colorful past as a junior member of one of London’s many gangs had given him an array of unusual skills. She was hoping she still remembered how to use the lock picks he had given her.
Chapter Two
Outside the door of rented rooms in London
“Shutter the lightso it shines only on the lock, sir,” Jacob Flynn told Captain Philemon Harraway, his employer, “then stand so your body blocks the light and what I am doing.”
It had been years since he’d used lock picks, and this was a new set of tools he’d managed to acquire this morning. He spared a thought for the lovely girl who had his old set. He had loved her, back in those days when he had been first a boot boy and later a junior footman. He had always intended to look her up, once he returned to England.
Darling Kat. Where was she now, he wondered. Knowing Kat, he figured she would have made a break for freedom as soon as she finished her indenture, which had been about fifteen months ago. Jake had had his own private celebration of Kat’s birthday at a local inn, drinking so many toasts to the girl he’d left behind that the captain had to come and collect him in a hand cart.
He and Captain Harraway had still been stationed in northern France when he’d over imbibed on Kat’s birthday. Though Waterloo was over and done, British and other allied forces remained to ensure peace. Nine months after Jake’s private celebration, a runaway dray sent the captain home to recuperate from multiple broken bones.
As his servant, Jake had been released from the army to accompany him home, and to care for him, since the captain had no living family. And Jake had been caring for the captain ever since, for even after the man finally recovered physically, he still needed someone to watch out for him.
“Live well, Kat,” he muttered under his breath. “When I get the captain settled, I’ll come to find you.” Or he would try. She might be anywhere in the country. She might have chosen to emigrate. She might be married. But he would try anyway, for he owed her that. And besides, nowhere in all the places he’d visited in the past eight years had he found a woman who came close to matching her.
Meanwhile, the captain had decided to play Good Samaritan, and that had brought him and Jake here. It took Jake a few more minutes to open the door than it would have, long ago, in his days as a promising burglar, but soon enough the remembered skills came back, the tumblers dropped to his command, and he rose from his crouch, turned the handle, and pushed the door open.
“Captain,” he said, with a bow and a sweep of his free hand. Captain Harraway nodded and passed him. He had the sense to keep the thin stream of light from the partially shuttered lantern directed into the hall they were entering. The captain would have been a good accomplice, back in the day.
Jake followed the captain to the second room on the left. The study. When they had planned this mission that afternoon, Jake had explained that the man’s study and his bedroom were the most likely place for Lieutenant Waterford to keep the incriminating letters he had somehow acquired.
Waterford was an old antagonist of Jake’s. Of Captain Harraway’s too, thanks to his intervention on Jake’s behalf.
Back when Jake had joined the army, they said he had no sense of his place—and Jake supposed it was true. He’d nearly been flogged to death because of his conviction that he had more senseand just as much right to his opinion as some toffee-nosed prat who was only in charge because his ancestors had stolen for the king.
The toffee-nosed prat who had nearly killed him that day was Lieutenant Waterford, and the point of contention had been a plan to send the entire patrol to fetch water for the horses from a river within rifle shot of the enemy. Jake had told him he’d get the lot of them killed. The lieutenant had not been amused, and he had spent five minutes dressing Jake down in a rant that pointed out all of the defects of Jake’s ancestry, social status, and education.
Jake hadn’t minded that. Nothing the lieutenant had said was untrue. But then the man had finished by insulting Jake’s intelligence, asking Jake, “Given your total lack of class, Flynn, why should any of us listen to you?”
Jake—who had been suffering with his patrol under the man’s incompetent leadership for three months—had responded with honesty. “Sir,” he had said, “I have the wits God gave me. You have excrement for brains.” Although the term he used was considerably less refined.
