Chapter 4

"Just how old would you say she was?"

That damned conniving vixen had been roughly sixteen. Or so he'd reckoned. And he'd stuck to the belief through thick and thin. She had been far too young to be Sapphire, the notorious jewel thief whose name had been on everyone's lips that season. And the entire two seasons before that. Entirely justified as the heists piled up: The Lambeth heist that saw a reward of a thousand guineas being offered for the return of Madam De Courcy's diamond tiara, gold locket, and topaz bracelet from a chest in her chamber-although how Madame De Courcy came to have a diamond tiara in a chest in her chamber, when she had apparently fled the Terror in France in her stocking soles, had never been fully explained. Or how she could afford the thousand guinea reward either. Then there was the Weaverfield Mansion heist, a mystery involving a locked room and its even more mysteriously missing contents. Then, within two weeks, as if Sapphire needed to prove her worth, because rewards were being offered, because people were desperate to see her hang, the Buckleys, the Fieldings, the Mornays-all families of note-found their jewel boxes lighter, that no safe was safe enough.

How many times had he been told only Sapphire would have possessed the guile and daring to have snatched the Wentworth emeralds from beneath the Wentworths' noses? The crime had her hallmark stamped all over it: A glittering house-party. A bauble worth a king's ransom. A sudden, daring raid. How on earth could Sapphire have only been sixteen? It wasn't possible. It meant she must have started stealing when she was nine or ten. Maybe even earlier?

It was the single reason no one had been prepared to believe him. Not even his own family. Although, now he considered it, not one single description of Sapphire existed in any newspaper. Or any wanted sheet. Like Lady Armstrong, she was a mystery. An enigma. A mythical creature no one had ever actually seen.

But, if that damned hell-cat had been roughly sixteen then, it meant she would be approximately twenty-six now. The sweet set of her ladyship's face said if she was a day over it he was his own grandfather.

"Old? Why, Devorlane! Stop it!" Tilly giggled with unease, largely for the benefit of those sitting nearest. "You know as well as I do, the subject of a lady's age is not deemed fit for discussion. Hic."

Fighting not to spit the words, he muttered, "Just answer me one question. Did you do this deliberately?"

"Deliberately? I admit I asked some of these girls here. Yes. I thought it-well, you see, I thought it would be s'nice. But not her. No. No. You would have to ask Belle about her. Although I must say, while I may not know anything about Lady Armstrong, what I have been able to determine-"

"Not a hell of a lot, by your own admission."

"-is mannered and cultured and-"

"Manners and culture, be hanged. They've never been worth a damn."

Gritting her teeth, Tilly continued. "What ish the matter with you? Hmm? Don't you know the past ish the past?"

"Isn't that easy for you to say?"

"I do say. I don't see why not. And even though she never discusses hers, it is perfectly obvious her grief is genuine, so she must be respectable. I mean just look at her, the poor, poor woman. How terrible to sit there, seeing everyone else so happy, when she herself has lost so much. It makes me want to cry. In a minute I will."

He'd honestly believed that light-fingered trollop was respectable too. It was one of the worst things about the nightmare that had followed. When he'd seen her and ordered the coach to stop, she was so damned respectable she'd gathered her skirts and hurried across the road, like some demure maiden, terrified he was going to rape her.

Even at that distance he'd seen the frozen tears glistening all along the dark curve of her eyelashes, brilliant diamonds in the frosted light. A lady in distress. A beautiful, tear-stricken creature. That was what had made him open the coach door. Ten years. Gone in a flash.

"How exactly does ding-dong, excruciating Belle know her?" Of course Belle would be the one to bring her here. Belle, who had never done a useful thing in her entire life, except fall in with his mother.

"Why shouldn't Belle know her? We all do. Oh, Devorlane, I forgot, there is just so much, so much you don't know. So much we do need to catch up on-later. But you remember Barwych Hall? The house s'about a half mile from here?"

"That old dump?"

He remembered it well. Hall was perhaps an overly generous term. It did not boast above six rooms and had been uninhabited for almost, if not quite, as long as he remembered.

She shrugged. "Lady Armstrong lives there. She's our neighbor."

"Neighbor?"

"Yes. She lives s'lere with some serving girls, Pearl and Ruby, she brought from London. Very, very refined girls. So I'm afraid we get no gossip. Not even a snifter. Anyway, why are you so s'interested in Lady Armstrong? Do you know her?"

Know her?

Ten years ago on Christmas Eve, the most stunning, most ethereally beautiful girl he had ever seen had accepted a lift in his coach. She had kissed him. Then disappeared into thin air.

He had never forgotten it. The ice-fire of her lips. Or her. Or the gift she'd somehow slipped into his pocket, while he sprawled there, dazedly thinking if that was heaven, he'd forfeit the rest of his life now.

The Wentworth emeralds.

His father needn't have looked that far after all.

Now, unless he was completely mistaken, that damned bitch was sitting by the library fire in respectable widow's weeds, the coral lips parted in pretended conversation with his mother's fawning ward, Belle.