Page 97 of Too Scot to Handle
Windows elsewhere in the mansion went dark, the alley grew quiet, and footmen extinguished the garden torches. The space between Colin’s shoulder blades itched, and he sent up a prayer that Anwen was dreaming peacefully in her bed.
Joe touched Colin’s sleeve again, and praise be, the lamp in Montague’s bedroom had gone out. Colin rose, and Joe yanked hard on his coattail, pulling Colin back into the shadows.
Joe shook his head and pointed to John coming up the alley.
“You’re in luck,” John whispered. “Montague was too soused to go out to the clubs with the other gents. He’s gone to bed, and that means his valet won’t be waiting up for him in the dressing room. Give it another ten minutes, though, and recall that some drunks sleep awfully light.”
The considered wisdom of the boys was that Montague wouldn’t keep the money anywhere but in his own rooms, which sat across a corridor from Lady Rosalyn’s apartment. If Colin had to make a quick escape, he was to go through her sitting room—unoccupied in the middle of night—and over her balcony to the balcony below, and thence to the garden.
Any hue and cry from Montague’s room would likely start a search on the opposite side of the house from Colin’s escape route.
More lights dimmed in more windows, and the grooms wished each other good night.
Joe kept a hand on Colin’s sleeve, until Colin was ready to burst from the bushes and stand beneath Montague’s window demanding the money.
Silence spread, not simply quiet. Not a carriage passed, not a breeze stirred.
Joe let go of Colin’s sleeve and punched his arm.
“Take your time,” John warned. “Haste has put many a man in Newgate. If you get in trouble, you know what to do, and we’ll make a ruckus, just like we planned.”
Colin cuffed John gently on the back of the head. “If there’s trouble, you take off like the hounds of hell are after you. You promised.”
“Go on with ye,” Dickie said. “Damned sun will be up in no time.”
Colin wanted to leap over the Montague garden wall and sprint over to the house, but he’d been taught better. Saunter, stroll, blend in, be a footman who couldn’t sleep, a groom missing his sweetheart.
Getting into the house was appallingly easy, and the boys had drilled Colin on how to search the room, checking a few obvious locations first—Win’s jewelry box, his wardrobe, the table beside his bed, beneath the bed and in the clothespress.
Through it all, Montague lay snoring on the mattress, one pale foot extended from beneath the sheets. He stank of cigar smoke and an excess of spirits, and snuffled occasionally in his sleep.
Some drunks sleep awfully light.
On that remembered admonition, Colin began searching the dressing room, a frustratingly complicated space. Spare boots, hatboxes, slipper boxes, glove boxes—the money could have been anywhere.
The trick, Tom had explained, was to consider the dressing room like a map, and to explore every corner of the map according to a systematic grid, level by level. The money was there somewhere, and finding it was simply a matter of thoroughness and dedication.
An hour later, Colin heard a wagon jingle up the alley—the milkman, possibly.
He was running out of time, and hadn’t found the money. Doubts plagued him, for maybe Montague hadn’t stashed the money in his room, maybe Montague hadn’t taken the money, maybe Montague had enlisted the aid of his friends, and they had the money, or possibly—
Beyond the dressing room, a door clicked open and faint light chased the shadows. Colin dodged behind a rack of tailcoats and silently moved two pairs of tall boots before him—the boys had rehearsed even this scenario with him. Soft footsteps sounded on the bedroom carpet and then the dressing room door opened.
* * *
“He should be out of there by now,” Tom said, for the fourth time. “I’m going in.”
The urge to storm the house, to see for himself that Lord Colin hadn’t been taken up by the watch, was nearly overwhelming. The money didn’t matter, the repairs to the orphanage didn’t matter, but that his lordship remained safe mattered very much.
“You sit still,” John said, keeping his voice down. “We promised Lord Colin we’d keep a lookout, and not go into the house.”
A cat yowled on the garden wall, the sound ugly and loud in the darkness.
“He’ll manage well enough,” Dickie said. “Taught ’im everything we know, didn’t we?”
Dickie sounded worried rather than jocular. A hasty plan and a few warnings wasn’t enough education to keep a proper gent safe on his first venture into housebreaking.
“I’m going in,” Tom said, rising from among the bushes at the side of the mews. “He’s been gone too long. Morning will be here before we—”
