Page 10 of The Trick of the Treasure
“Well, he was,” Sydney replied wryly. “Though he’s likely to end up as no one’s if my father takes him in dislike.”
“Why should he do that?”
Sydney regarded her. “When we left England in the spring, Jemimah was fifteen years old, still in short skirts with pigtails and puppy fat. Now look at her. And poor old Ben in attendance. Not easy for a father to watch his daughter growing up.”
“But he didn’t, did he?” Constance said. “It was you he was watching grow up when he took you on his treasure hunt. Did you enjoy it?”
“I did,” Sydney replied, his eyes gleaming rather like his father’s. “I can see why my father is so addicted to his adventuring.”
“Then you intend to follow in his footsteps?”
“Oh, it’s too early to say,” Sydney murmured.
Constance took a dainty little cake from the plate offered by a distracted Jemimah and smiled her thanks at the girl. Sydney snatched a couple of sandwiches.
“Tell me about the treasure,” Constance urged before taking a bite of cake and placing the rest back on her plate.
“You mean how it was pinched? Dashed if I know.” A smile came into his eyes. He would break hearts in a year or too, Constance thought, if he wasn’t doing so already. “Are you really going to find it for him? One would think he might find it humiliating—the great treasure seeker used to braving hostile lands needing a young woman to track his property down in his own country.”
“Well, the criminal world of London requires a different kind of knowledge.”
“Andyouhave such knowledge?” he asked. “How does that come about?”
“Secret of the trade, Mr. Lloyd,” she said vaguely. “Were you upset by the loss?”
“Shocked,” he answered. “It makes one think.”
“What does it make you think?”
“Well, either some stranger has access to our house and wanders about at will in the middle of the night, knowing everything of my father’s habits, or someone already in the house has betrayed us by stealing.”
“And which do you believe?” She sipped her tea.
“Neither seems credible, to be honest. And yet it’s gone.”
Constance picked the last piece of cake on her plate. “You fetched the strong room keys from your father’s bedchamber, the evening you came home.”
“I did.”
“Did anyone see you do so? Was anyone else in the passage when your father unlocked the strong room?”
“No, the servants were all downstairs getting ready to serve dinner.”
“What about the footman who helped you carry the chest upstairs?”
“Harry? He went back down as soon as we dropped the chest outside the strong room. Papa and I lifted it inside.”
“And then what?”
“We left it there and joined the others in the dining room, where Mama was worrying about the soup going cold.”
“Did your father not lock the strong room door?”
Sydney blinked at her. “Of course he did.”
“You mean you saw him do it? Or you merely assume he did?”
Sydney smiled with something very like delight. “You think he just forgot to lock the door? And someone just happened to try it and nabbed the treasure?”
