Page 72 of The Art of Theft
Even though they’d been away, this was a calm household, with a noticeable undercurrent of cheerfulness. Bernadine responded well to a lack of acrimony in the air.
Livia said her good-byes to Lord Ingram. Charlotte accompanied him to the front door. “The fog seems horrid. I’m sure Mrs. Watson wouldn’t mind if you stayed in a guest room—or at 18 Upper Baker Street.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said. Then, after a moment, “Miss Olivia tends to be anxious. At least now Miss Holmes will be a lesser source of anxiety for her.”
They were talking around the matter—talking about everything but themselves. She was used to not talking about what was and wasn’t between the two of them, but she couldn’t help but feel that there was something he wanted to say to her.
And she wanted to hear what it was.
“When Mr. Marbleton was waxing poetic about the south of Spain, what did you think, Ash?”
Her question seemed to startle him. “I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking of Spain then,” he said quickly. “Mr. Marbleton was on the verge of hypothermia, and my only concern was getting both of us back to the inn.”
She sighed inwardly. “I see. Good night then, my lord. Be careful out there.”
?Stephen Marbleton was thinking ardently of Andalusia, as he often did when he was cold. It had been home to him in the spring and early summer of the year he turned twelve—or at least in the yearhis family celebrated his twelfth birthday—one of the few times in his life his family remained in one place for longer than a few weeks.
They’d stayed in a slightly run-down farmhouse, near a vineyard on the outskirts of Jerez de la Frontera. He used to walk between rows of vines under a cloudless sky, hoping, knowing that it was futile, that he would still be there for the grape harvest.
He’d never gone back, afraid that the place had changed or that his memories would prove inaccurate. But with Miss Olivia he wouldn’t have such fears, and he would be happy to squire her to the most lavish Moorish palaces, or the least remarkable remote village.
God, it was cold. He took a gulp of the hot ginger tea in his canteen. Château Vaudrieu had become much more tightly secured since the first night he and Lord Ingram ventured onto the grounds. The chapel was now guarded. The château and all the outbuildings were brightly lit on the outside. And at least four sets of guard dogs circled just inside the fence, making an unauthorized entry a much more harrowing proposition.
Fortunately, Miss Charlotte Holmes had specifically asked him to refrain from unlawful entries. So he had staked out a good elevated spot nearby and put his most powerful pair of binoculars to use. And since he wasn’t trespassing, the illumination around the château made his work easier.
In fact, he had already made a thorough study of the chimneys, as Miss Charlotte had asked him to, and could theoretically slip off to the country house several miles away that was now their secondary base and sit in front of a large stove to warm up. But since it wasn’t raining and his misery wasn’t intolerable, he’d remained in place, in case he came across anything else useful.
The night wore on, growing chillier by the quarter hour, and nothing beyond dogs and their handlers stirred. Even the guards in front of the chapel seemed to be sleeping on their feet. He thought again of the potbellied stove and decided that he’d been away from it long enough.
The lights around the château went out.
He blinked in the sudden darkness.
It wasn’t absolute. The lights outside the chapel, the distant dairy, and some other outbuildings were still lit. Once he became accustomed to the relative dimness, he saw that a horse-drawn cart approached the château.
From inside the château came men carrying large, long bundles. He sucked in a breath. The size of those bundles, around six feet in length, and their apparent weight—two bundles each took two men to carry, a third needed three...
They were bodies, wrapped in cloth, now being tossed onto the cart. The cart pulled away at a sedate pace, escorted by a phalanx of men. Cart and men did not head in the direction of the gate but turned after they crossed the bridge and were soon lost behind the bulk of the château.
He gave up any further thought of the potbellied stove.
?Three days before the ball, the ladies and Lord Ingram returned to Paris. The moment they stepped on French soil, Livia’s pulse became irregular. Sometimes her heart raced, sometimes it thudded, sometimes she could barely feel it beat beneath the intense pressure on her chest.
The first time she visited Château Vaudrieu, as a matter of general reconnaissance, it had felt like a holiday, or at least a rather lighthearted excursion. The second time she’d been nervous, but too overworked to fall victim to such things as dry mouth or sweaty palms. But now, knowing she could very well be stepping into Moriarty’s lair—or one of his lairs—she could not stop her body from reacting as if she were already in certain danger.
She didn’t say anything to anyone, but Mrs. Watson patted her on the back from time to time. And Charlotte brought her a glass ofvin chaudas everyone gathered to confer again in the library at Hôtel Papillon.
“Should I imbibe when no one else is?” asked Livia. “And isn’t it a bit too early to have wine?”
It was only three o’clock in the afternoon.
“You are among friends—and this is France. Not to mention”—Charlotte tilted her head in the direction of Mr. Marbleton, who raised his own glass ofvin chaudto them—“you won’t be drinking alone.”
Livia smiled at Mr. Marbleton and took a grateful sip, already feeling less jittery.
“Our original objective was to obtain Van Dyck’sDeposition.” Charlotte, standing behind a Louis XIV chair, began. “Obviously, as we were dealing with blackmailers, the situation was never simple. Now, however, it has become considerably more complicated.
“The most important thing to understand is that in the overall scheme, we are but a distraction—not even the stage magician’s skimpily attired assistant, only the rhinestones on her bodice. I don’t think the mastermind behind our forced incursion into Château Vaudrieu cares in the least whether we succeed or fail. There are a number of other paintings that are smaller, easier to steal, and just as valuable. The only reason to assign a seven-foot-by-five-foot work to be pinched in the midst of a crowded function is to ensure that we would resort to the most desperate measures and thereby cause maximum disruption.
