through their outer garments. When they reached the pavement, she put a hand on his arm. “You couldn’t have done anything else. All other considerations aside, shooting her wouldn’t have got us anywhere.”
Edgar stopped and looked up at his brother. The lamplight glowed in his wide eyes. “You really might have shot her, mightn’t you?”
“Possibly.” Charles scowled into the dark street.
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that she might be telling the truth?”
“It could hardly fail to occur to me.” Charles started along the pavement toward Russell Square. “It was one of the most compelling performances I’ve ever witnessed.” He didn’t glance at Melanie, but she felt him add,
Edgar’s boots clicked on the pavement. “Perhaps Jennings never had it at all.”
“One of the soldiers did, or at least told the bandits he did when he employed them. Jennings is the only one who had anything removed from his body.”
Edgar frowned at the paving stones. “Suppose Sergeant Baxter’s lying and he had the ring himself?”
“If Baxter had the ring, why didn’t he try to sell it again after the debacle with the French?” Melanie said. “He had nothing to gain from hanging on to it.” She tried to sound as though she was analyzing chess moves, but the words came out with a tight strained sound, perhaps because her chest and throat felt as if they were being squeezed raw. “Helen Trevennen’s performance may have been grounded in truth, as all good performances are, but I think she has the ring. And what I want to know is why she’s so determined to keep it rather than sell it to us.”
“Perhaps she sold it already,” Edgar said.
“Then one would think she’d have admitted it when Charles held the pistol on her.”
“So what now?” Edgar asked.
Charles stopped walking and turned back to scan the street. “We burgle the house.”
His brother stared at him, digesting this statement.
Addison detached himself from the shadows by the square railing. His gaze flickered from Charles’s face to Melanie’s to Edgar’s. “You didn’t get it?”
“No,” Charles said.
Addison gave a curt nod. “The kitchen door is locked but not bolted. The ground-floor windows round the back are sash windows with a simple latch. They open onto the breakfast parlor and Mr. Constable’s study, respectively. I knocked on the area door—I said I was a groom who’d got lost delivering a message—and had a brief word with the kitchenmaid. Mr. and Mrs. Constable’s bedchamber is at the front of the house on the second floor. The cook and kitchenmaid sleep off the kitchen. The rest of the servants sleep in the attics and the nursery is there as well. The manservant locks up at midnight. Mr. Constable is expected to stay in his chambers in the Temple tonight rather than return home.”
“Thank you, Addison. Well done.”
Edgar was still staring at Charles. “You were planning to break in even before we spoke to Mrs. Constable?”
“No, but I knew it might come to that. Which it has. We should return to Berkeley Square to make our plans. Addison, stay here. If Mrs. Constable or anyone else in the household goes out, follow him or her and send word as soon as you can. We’ll be back just after midnight.”
“Right, sir.” Addison said nothing more, but the gaze he exchanged with Charles had the warmth of a hand clapped on the shoulder.
In silence they cut through a mews, rounded two street corners, flagged down a hackney, and directed it to Berkeley Square.
“How would you do it, Mel?” Charles said when they were settled in the carriage.
“The back windows. There’s more chance of being spotted at the kitchen door and more chance of waking someone at the front of the house.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“You sound as though you’ve done this before,” Edgar said.
“I have,” Charles replied.
“But—Oh, I see. In Spain.”
“And Portugal. And once or twice in Vienna. Ask Castlereagh to tell you the story sometime. He was grateful for my somewhat unorthodox talents on that occasion.”
“Charles picked the lock on a wine cave the night I met him,” Melanie said. “Of course, it wasn’t until later that I learned what an expert he was.”
“You mean you were there when he—Do you mean he dragged you along on these adventures?” Edgar asked.
“Oh, yes,” Melanie said. It was quite true. She neglected to add that she had also done more than her share of breaking and entering on her own.
“Good God.” Edgar shook his head and looked at his brother. “Your ‘fetching and carrying’ went even further than I realized.”
“A great deal further,” Charles said. He flicked a glance at Melanie. “Might as well call a spade a spade, brother. I was a spy.”
Melanie opened the door of her and Charles’s bedchamber, carrying a bowl of warm water and a roll of lint. She found her husband alone in the room, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt. “Edgar’s changing in the guest suite,” he said. “He ducks out of sight whenever he realizes I have to change your bandages.”
“Poor Edgar. He has a delicacy of mind neither of us can appreciate.” She set the water and lint on her dressing table. “I sent Blanca to make coffee. She’s itching to be doing something. I had a hard time convincing her it would only complicate matters if she came with us. Are you going to be able to climb through a window with your leg in that state?”
Charles pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his dressing gown. “I’m going to have to.”
In truth, both his bullet wound and her knife cut had begun to heal, as was revealed when they changed the dressings. They didn’t speak of what lay ahead until the fresh bandages were in place and they had begun to don clothing appropriate for a burglary.
“If she has the ring hidden in the house, it’s probably in her bedchamber,” Charles said, buttoning a black waistcoat over a fresh shirt. “Have you ever broken into a room while someone was sleeping in it?”
“Once or twice.” Melanie dropped a gown of jet-colored merino over her head. Most of the time she had managed to already be in a gentleman’s bedchamber before he fell asleep. She saw this realization dawn in Charles’s eyes as she thrust her arms into the long, tight sleeves. “Difficult and dangerous, but not impossible,” she continued, pulling the fabric over her shoulders with more force than was necessary. A stitch snapped in one of the shoulder seams. “But there’s a good chance she keeps the ring in a dressing room rather than the bedchamber itself. A lady’s boudoir is the one room she can keep inviolate.”
“She may have moved it after our visit.” Charles crossed to her side and began to do up her buttons. “She must guess we won’t give up.”
“Addison’s there if she tries to leave the house or send anyone away with the ring. Charles.” She forced herself to voice a suspicion that had been tugging painfully at the corners of her mind. “Suppose Victor Velasquez got to her before we did? If she sold him the ring, she might have promised not to reveal the truth to us.”
Charles did up the last button. “Not at the risk of her own life. She knew how close I came to pulling the trigger. I could see it in her eyes. Which means she was afraid of something—or someone—if she gave us the ring or told us what she’d done with it.”
“If she doesn’t have it—”
He squeezed her shoulders. “We’ll deal with that possibility after we’ve established it’s not in her house.” He went to his chest of drawers and rummaged beneath a stack of cravats. “When did you last see my picklocks?”
“A couple of months ago when Jessica locked Colin in the garden shed.” The memory tugged at her throat. She opened the doors of her wardrobe and forced herself to debate between a black velvet cloak and a slate- colored wool. “Try your handkerchief drawer, darling.”
She decided on the black velvet—camouflage was more important than warmth—and turned from the
