The thief gave a satisfied nod. Justice done. She glanced at the mirror. In the candlelight her eyes were black. Her face was soot-smudged and unrecognizable. For a moment she stared at herself, unsettled, then she lifted a finger to touch the faint cleft in her chin. That, at least, was recognizable, whether she wore silk dresses or boys’ clothing in rough, dark fabric.
The thief turned away from her image in the mirror. She trod quietly towards the open window.
ADAM ST. JUST found his half-sister in the morning room, reading a letter. Her hair gleamed like spun gold in the sunlight. “Grace?”
His sister gave a convulsive start and clutched the letter to her breast. A bundle of items on her lap slid to the floor. Something landed with a light thud. Adam saw the glimmer of pearls.
“Is that your bracelet? I thought you’d lost—” He focused on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Grace hastily wiped her cheeks. “Just something in my eye.” She bent and hurriedly gathered several pieces of paper and the bracelet.
A pearl earring lay stranded on the carpet. Adam nudged it with the toe of his boot. “And this?” He picked up the earring and held it out.
Grace flushed. She took the earring
Adam frowned at her. “Grace, what is it?”
“Nothing.” Her smile was bright, but her eyes slid away from his.
Adam sat down on the sofa alongside her. “Grace . . .” he said, and then stopped, at a loss to know how to proceed. The physical distance between them—a few inches of rose-pink damask—may as well have been a chasm. The twelve years that separated them, the difference in their genders, seemed insurmountable barriers. He felt a familiar sense of helplessness, a familiar knowledge that he was failing in his guardianship of her.
He looked at his sister’s downcast eyes, the curve of her cheek, the slender fingers clutching the pearl earring. I love you, Grace. He cleared his throat and tried to say the words aloud. “Grace, I hope you know that I . . . care about you and that I want you to be happy.”
It was apparently the wrong thing to say. Grace began to cry.
Adam hesitated for a moment, dismayed, and then put his arm around her. To his relief, Grace didn’t pull away. She turned towards him, burying her face in his shoulder.
It hurt to hear her cry. Adam swallowed and tightened his grip on her. She’d grown thinner since their arrival in London, paler, quieter. I should take her home. To hell with the Season.
The storm of tears lessened. Adam stroked his sister’s hair. “What is it, Grace?”
“I didn’t want to disappoint you again,” she sobbed.
“You’ve never disappointed me.”
Grace shook her head against his shoulder. “Last year . . .” She didn’t need to say more; they both knew what she was referring to.
“I was angry—but not with you.” He’d been more than angry: he’d been furious. Furious at Reginald Plunkett, furious at the school for hiring the man, but mostly furious at himself for not visiting Grace more often, for not realizing how lonely she was, how vulnerable to the smiles and compliments of her music teacher.
The anger stirred again, tightening in his chest as if a fist was clenched there. I should have horsewhipped him. I should have broken every bone in his body.
Adam dug in his pocket for a handkerchief. Grace had come perilously close to ruin. Even now, six months later, he woke in a cold sweat from dreams—nightmares—where he’d delayed his journey by one day, where he’d arrived in Bath to find her gone. “Here,” he said, handing her the handkerchief.
Grace dried her cheeks.
Adam smiled at her. “Now, tell me what’s wrong.”
Grace looked down at her lap, at the papers and the pearls. She extracted a sheet of paper and handed it to him.
My dear Miss St. Just, I have a letter of yours you wrote to a Mr. Reginald Plunkett of Birmingham has come into my possession. If you want it back. In exchange for its return. I should like to return this letter to you. In exchange I want ask nothing more than your pearl bracelet.
“What!” He stared at his sister. “Someone’s blackmailing you?”
Grace bit her lip.
Adam’s fingers tightened on the sheet of paper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her gaze fell.
Because you were afraid I’d be angry at you, disappointed in you. Adam swallowed. He looked back at the blackmail letter without seeing it. He rubbed his face with one hand. “Grace . . .”
“Here.” She handed him another piece of paper. The writing was the same as the first, the intent as ugly.
“You did what this person asked? You gave them your pearls?” His rage made the sunlight seem as sharp-edged as a sword. The room swung around him for a moment, vivid with anger. He focused on a chair. The rose-pink damask had become the deep crimson of blood, the gilded wood was as bright as flames. How dared anyone do this to her? The sheet of paper crumpled in his fist. I’ll kill them—
“Yes.” Grace gathered the bracelet and the earrings within the curve of her palm.
Adam blinked. His anger fell away, replaced by confusion. “Then why—?”
“Tom returned them to me.”
“Tom?”
He blinked again at the elegant piece of paper she handed him, at the brief message, the signature, the cat drawn in black ink at the bottom of the page. His interest sharpened. That Tom.
I believe these belong to you, Tom had written. I found them in Lady Bicknell’s possession.
“And the letter to Reginald Plunkett?”
Grace touched a folded piece of paper in her lap.
Adam read the note again. Tom. “The devil,” he said, under his breath. He fastened his gaze on his sister. “Was there anything else? Anything that might identify him?”
Grace shook her head.
Adam touched the ink-drawn cat with a fingertip. It stared back at him, sitting with its tail curled across its paws, unblinking, calm.
He lifted his eyes to the signature, and
