Page 42 of Too Scot to Handle
The boys goggled at her, as did Colin.
“Madam, we caught them red-handed. To ignore the matter only tempts them to steal yet again. Do you know what word of this mischief would do to the reputation of the institution? Bad enough we have a cutpurse putting his feet under the dining table three times a day. Now we have embezzlers multiplying in our midst.”
“All the more reason you cannot summon the magistrate. The details of this situation—of whatever has transpired here—cannot leave this room.”
Well, damn. She had him on that one. “Miss Anwen, I cannot in good conscience champion the cause of an organization that ignores criminal behavior twice in the same week.” He aimed a glower at John. “This is not a matter of first impression.”
Her chin came up at the same angle as young Tom’s. “Then don’t. Resign from the board before you’ve been officially appointed. Go back to making stupid wagers by the hour, waking up every day with a sore head, and playing whist until dawn. The boys and I will manage.”
Charm wouldn’t put this moment right, and Colin hadn’t any to command in any case. “These children have disgraced themselves. You ignore that not only at the peril of the rest of the organization, but at the peril of the boys themselves. They’ve done wrong, and they know it. To allow their behavior to go unpunished is not in their best interests.”
His point wasn’t moral, it was purely practical. The boys had no respect for authority, and if ever a situation called for an exercise of authority, this was it. To let them go merrily stealing and lockpicking on their way was unthinkable.
“Lord Colin, I admire your sense of justice,” Anwen said with terrible dignity, “but I cannot ignore what I know about these young men. They’ve had thousands of opportunities to steal, hundreds of chances to take what doesn’t belong to them. Why would they choose to break into a strongbox in broad daylight, and by the time-consuming method of dismantling the hinges rather than picking the lock? Why take something Hitchings is absolutely certain to note has gone missing? Accuse the boys of many things, but they are intelligent young men. Stealing from this strongbox wouldn’t be smart.”
Tom’s nose twitched. John’s gaze had gone thoughtful. Dickie was frowning mightily while Joe regarded Anwen as if she’d sprouted a halo and wings.
“Bloody hell.” Logic, ruthless and unassailable, cut through Colin’s temper. To snatch a purse from an exhausted, half-drunken reveler as he staggered home was simple. Breaking into a strongbox with Hitchings one floor down, taking money that would be missed by sundown…
“Language, Lord Colin.”
“Somebody had better tell me exactly what’s going on here,” Colin said, “or my language will grow much more colorful.”
More silence, more shuffling. Anwen put an arm around Joe, and his bony shoulders slumped.
“Count the t-t-take,” the boy said.
“Bollocks,” John muttered.
“Now you done it,” Dickie added.
“Now I’ve done what?” Colin asked.
“If you get Joey bletherin’ on, we’ll be here all night,” Tom said, “but he’s right. You never finish a job without counting the take.”
“What job?” Anwen asked, and Colin let her question hang in the air, because the boys might talk to her when they’d die rather than peach on one another to him.
“When you toss a house,” John said. “You never split up the haul before it’s counted. Everybody reports back, and you count up the take all fair and square before you decide what to do with it.”
“So nobody drops anything on the way home,” Dickie added. “Can get a man killed, dropping a bauble or two on the way home.”
“We were counting the take,” Tom said. “We do it regular, to make sure old Hitchings isn’t dipping his fat fingers in the till.”
“How would you know?” Colin asked, propping a hip on the table.
“’Cause he runs this place on a budget,” John said. “That’s when you don’t spend more than the same amount each month. Winter is more dear because of the coal, but we allow for that.”
Anwen retrieved a pencil and paper from the desk across the room. “Show us.”
What followed was…Prince Charlie bursting forth into a horsy rendition of a Mozart aria would have been less dumbfounding.
“You have the finances more or less to the penny,” Colin said, running a finger down a long list of figures. The boys had guessed high in some places, low in others, but by virtue of watching what went on in the kitchen, the mews, the classroom, and elsewhere, and by monitoring expenditures month by month, they’d come very close to auditing the orphanage’s finances.
Auditing, not embezzling.
“So why not simply pick the lock?” Colin asked, setting the figures aside. The boys were ranged around the table, and Anwen sat directly across from Colin. The unopened strongbox at the end of the table.
“You can bust a lock if you pick it too often,” Dickie said, shrugging. “You can also make it harder to pick next time. We figured there might come a day when we were in a hurry, and we’d need to pick the lock. Until then, unscrewing the hinges worked well enough, and old Hitchings would never notice a stray nick on the metal.”
