To Kiss a Thief (24 page)

Perhaps, under the circumstances, the others had foresworn the dance and Eliza had determined to go on without them. No doubt the farmers and fishermen of Lynscombe had never seen anything quite like the pale green gown that complemented Eliza's fair skin and red hair like the patina on copper. Its daringly low neckline revealed an expanse of snowy bosom, but offered meager protection against the evening air.
She ought to have taken her own advice and sent for a shawl
, Sarah huffed to herself as she gathered up her own, still trailing on the floor, and pulled it more securely around her shoulders.

What at first seemed only jumbled notes began to form a chord in Sarah's mind. As she watched the woman turn onto the path that led to the Channel, she decided to follow her. “Emily,” she announced, “I have to go out.”

Emily's brow wrinkled. “But you said—”

“Yes, I know. I'll be back. It's just that I . . .” She shook her head. “I've no time to explain. Just . . .” She snatched a nearby scrap of thick watercolor paper from the low table where Clarissa took tea, and among the silly little sketches she had made to amuse Clarissa earlier in the day, she scratched out a few words with the stub of a pencil. “Just see that my father gets this, all right?”

Eyes wide, Emily took the folded note and nodded.

With a longing glance at her daughter, Sarah slipped from the nursery and down the back stairs. She did not yet know for certain what role Eliza Harrington had played in the reappearance—or disappearance—of the Sutliffe sapphires. But she meant to find out.

She did not intend to give up on the possibility of happiness. At least, not without a fight.

D
imly, he heard his father's grunt of surprise, his stepmother's gasp. It was like some badly done parody of that long-ago night in the library at Sutliffe House.

With the added sound of Sarah's footsteps racing away.

“I always knew she was guilty,” his stepmother insisted.

His father gave a reluctant nod. “It certainly looks that way now, Amelia.”

Eliza stepped forward and laid her hand on his arm. “I'm sorry, Fairfax. I can see your disappointment. But it is better to know the truth.”

Yes, he had found out the truth, as surely as he had found the necklace in Sarah's trunk.

Had it been just last night he had imagined himself falling in love with his wife?

Well, the truth was, he had already fallen.

He was in love with his wife. He tested the emotion in his mind, like a man tests a frozen pond to see if it will bear his weight, fearful of what lies beneath. He had done what he had sworn never to do, because love led inevitably to loss.

In his hand he held the proof of her guilt, the gems he had gone all the way to Haverhythe to find. But he had discovered something far more important in that obscure little village.

Sometimes, the reward of loving someone was worth the risk.

Curling his fingers around the necklace, he hurled it across the room. It struck the mantel with a sharp
crack
, and a sparkling shower of blue and gold tinkled onto the hearthstone. His stepmother flinched as the pieces skittered across the floor.

“Fairfax!”

His father's angry bark split the momentary silence that had fallen over the room. St. John half-expected his next words to be, “My study!” But no matter. This time, wherever the conversation took place, he intended to stand his ground.

“I do not know where that necklace has been hiding,” he said, slipping away from Eliza's touch. “But Sarah never stole it. She is, and always has been, innocent.”

“Innocent?” his stepmother echoed, incredulous.

Eliza looked stung, but she recovered quickly. “This is really a family matter. I will—why, there is still a bit of daylight left, I see. One forgets how early farmers and fishermen dance and dine. I will take a turn or two about the terrace. I daresay a breath of fresh air would do me good.”

She stepped quickly across the room to the French doors. When she opened one set, a brisk wind swept up the draperies, tangling them with her skirts. Without a backward glance, she stepped outside and closed the doors behind her.

“How could you do such a thing?” His father had gone to kneel on the hearth, his eyes locked on the pieces of the ruined necklace scattered across it.

“How could I—? Of course. That bloody necklace has always meant more to you than I do,” St. John snapped.

“No,” his father asserted with a shake of his head. But still he could not seem to tear his eyes away from the jewels.

“It's a mere
symbol
, Father,” St. John said, stepping closer.

“Yes, of course it is.” His father turned to face him at last, his face pale with shock and barely restrained fury. “A symbol of this family. And as such, I would think you would handle it with more care. In 1601, when a young London merchant helped to finance the first voyage of the East India Company, he was rewarded with these gems and the rank of Baron Lyn.” St. John recognized the name as one of his father's lesser titles. “These gems represent the daring, the determination it took to raise this family above its origins, to raise us above—”

“People like the Pevenseys?” St. John finished snidely. For whatever the first Baron Lyn had accomplished in lifting himself above the masses, his descendants had managed to cast them down once again, and now the only thing that would save them was an infusion of cold, hard cash. Cash from a Bristol merchant's coffers. When his father had put those jewels around Sarah's neck, the family journey had come full circle.

His stepmother gave a self-satisfied little snort, but his father looked abashed.

“You saddled me with the burden of cleaning up your messes. Well, now I'm returning the favor,” St. John said, jerking his chin disdainfully in the direction of the hearth. “Lynscombe is the bit of our history that matters to me, and Sarah can help me save it.”

“Her father's money can help you, you mean.”

“No,” he insisted. “I mean my wife. And I won't allow an old piece of jewelry to dictate my future with her.”

“Your mother hated it, too.”

His father's voice had fallen to a mournful whisper—a sound so uncharacteristic St. John felt certain he must have misheard what the man had said. But the quiet words kept coming.

“I tried many times to persuade her to wear it. But she never would. She said it felt like death around her neck.” His father's gaze had fallen back to the floor, but he was no longer looking at the broken necklace. Instead, his focus was somewhere much further in the past. “I thought perhaps if I—if I had the gems reset, something in a modern style, she would relent. She was otherwise always so eager to please.”

Out of the corner of his eye, St. John saw his stepmother rise unsteadily from her chair. He was not surprised. She had always detested any mention of his mother.

“So, one day,” his father continued, speaking mostly to himself, “I took it from the safe here and set out for London. I did not tell her where I was going. I was almost to the jeweler's when the messenger found me, told me she had had—an accident . . .”

The silence that fell was broken only by the scuff of his stepmother's slippers against the floor.

Your father's grief must have been terrible
.

St. John tried to shake off the memory of Sarah's words. His father did not feel grief. Or guilt. His father was incapable of feeling. St. John had learned from the master.

Hadn't he?

“Father,” he whispered, taking a step toward him, seeing for the first time a brokenhearted man who had loved his wife, the mother of his child.

Without Sarah, St. John might never have understood how much.

“If I had been closer,” his father murmured, still studying the floor. “Been
here
, as I should have been, then perhaps . . .”

“It was no one's fault, Father,” St. John insisted, laying a hand on his shoulder. “And there was nothing anyone could have done to save her.”

When his words of consolation seemed to have no effect, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and crouched beside the fireplace, collecting the broken pieces of the necklace on the square of linen. “Forgive me, Father. I had no idea. I will, of course, see the necklace repaired.”

No sooner had the promise passed his lips when he saw a large chip in one of the stones. His stomach clenched. Then, as he examined the wreckage scattered on the floor around him, he spied another broken piece, and still another, and finally shards of gemstone that were little more than blue dust.

He studied the ruined stones on his palm, nudging one of the pieces with his fingertip. Priceless sapphires reduced to powder? Almost as if they were made of—

“What is it?” His father leaned forward to examine what St. John held in his hand. “Why, those aren't the Sutliffe sapphires! That is nothing but a worthless bit of pinchbeck and paste.” He whirled about. “Do you hear that, Amelia?”

His stepmother froze just a few steps from the door. “Paste?” she echoed, turning back to face them, her eyes wide. “How can that be? Why, that sneaking little thief must have had a copy made. She's probably been living well on the money from the sale of the original and now planned to worm her way into this family's good graces by passing that off as real.”

“It looks that way,” agreed his father reluctantly as he stood.

It might have sounded like a reasonable explanation, but it did not sit well with St. John. For one thing, he had seen Haverhythe.

“No.”

His stepmother jumped when he spoke, jerking her hand from the doorknob as if the metal were hot.

“Where are you going, Amelia?” his father asked her.

“Why, I—I am really not needed here, and the air in this room is just stifling. I thought I would join Eliza.”

“Eliza is on the terrace.” St. John darted a glance toward the doors through which she had passed moments ago, but the curtains obscured his view.

She tittered. “Of course—how silly of me!” But she made no move in that direction.

He paused to consider. “When Father announced that Sarah would wear the Sutliffe sapphires at our nuptial ball, did you not have to fetch them for him?”

“I, er—I do not recall. So long ago . . .”

But his father's memory suffered no such impairment. “She did. I had always stored them in my private safe in years past, but eventually I allowed Amelia to keep them with the rest of her jewels. She had such a fondness for wearing them.”

“I did,” his stepmother agreed, straightening her spine in a show of dignity. “Unlike some, I was proud to do so. I understood their true value, all that they represent.”

“Yes. I remember often seeing the gems around your neck,” St. John acknowledged. “Still, is it not possible that something might have happened to the necklace before that night? Was it never out of your possession? Taken for repair, perhaps? If so, the switch might have been made long ago. Did you notice anything unusual about the necklace when she brought it to you that night, Father?”

He shook his head. “I did not. But I confess I did not study it carefully.”

“You might not, even if you had,” St. John insisted, weighing the wreckage on his palm. “This appears to have been a quality copy. I think it would have been quite difficult to tell.” He paused to study his stepmother's rather nervous expression. “Would it not, ma'am?”

His father looked from one to the other. “Would someone be so kind as to explain just what is going on here?”

“Ask your wife,” he said coldly, “if you trust her to be honest.”

“Fairfax,” gasped his stepmother, sounding hurt.

“Well, Amelia?” His father turned pale eyes toward his wife.

“I refuse to take all the blame for what happened,” piped his stepmother, leaving her post by the door and coming toward them.

“Amelia, what are you talking about?”

“Really, Marcus, it was mostly your fault.”

His father stiffened. “How so?”

“I understood the need for a quiet courtship, so I did not protest. You were still in mourning, after all, and with a young child to think of. How I longed for the whirl of parties and balls again, though. I imagined the figure I would cut as the Marchioness of Estley. The gowns, the gems.” She sighed. For the first time it struck St. John that the childish vacancy in her eyes was not entirely put on. “I never dreamed that even after your mourning ended you would refuse me those simple pleasures, even permission to decorate my own home in my own taste,” she continued with a shake of her head. “You were forever reminding me to be careful with money. And the parties to which we did go were so deadly dull. Until one night, someone—I don't remember who—suggested I might amuse myself in the card room.”

“Did you—
gamble
?” his father rasped out.

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “I had to do something to drive away the boredom. And to supplement that rather pitiful allowance you gave me. And, it turns out, I was quite good at it,” she explained with a nostalgic sort of sigh. “Too good for the sorts of games one comes across in the card room at a ball. Then one night, I was invited to a private party and the stakes were rather higher. I
played deep
, as the dandies say. Too deep, as it turned out. I did not think a gentleman would call in a lady's vowels. But there it was.” She shrugged. “I needed money—and when I asked you, Marcus, you insisted there was no more to be had.”

“Let me understand,” his father said after a moment had passed. A dull, mottled flush had spread across his face. “You pawned the Sutliffe sapphires to pay a gaming debt?”

“But first I had that exquisite copy made,” she noted, as if that excused what she had done. “Worthless it may be, but it cost a pretty penny I do assure you. And you were none the wiser.”

“That explains why, when Sarah stole it, you were only too happy to help her disappear,” her husband said. “It covered up what you had done.”

“Sarah didn't steal it,” St. John reminded him sharply. “So, what really happened that night?” he asked as he turned to his stepmother.

She rounded on him. “Between your wife and the officer? I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps the clasp broke while they were . . . well, you know—and the thing got lost in the cushions of the chair.”

Her words roused an old specter: the image of Sarah in David Brice's arms. But he found it was an image that no longer had the power to haunt him.

“Surely someone looked—”

“Oh yes.” She nodded, cutting across him. “Someone looked.”

“And someone found it, didn't they? Who?”

“Miss Harrington.”

“Eliza?!”

“Yes, indeed. That very night. You had already gone after Brice,” she explained. “Your father had shut himself away. She came and showed it to me. But when I tried to take it from her hand, she said that perhaps she should give it to my husband instead. That's when I realized she had discovered it was paste.”