Jane-one pressed her finger to the keyhole so he couldn’t peer in. She used her other hand to point to the window. Mouthed to Jane-two.
Perch act.
Jane-two frowned. You’re not serious.
Got another idea?
Jane-two considered this, quite seriously. Then sighed. Marched to the window, hauled it open. Reached out, feeling for the drainpipe.
Glanced back over her shoulder. Mouthed, Two minutes.
Jane-one motioned one of the men to cover the keyhole. Tiptoed to the center of the room. Twirled a finger in the air.
At first the men didn’t understand. Then she kicked off her shoes, pulled her apron over her head, unbuttoned her black twill dress. Their mouths dropped open.
She stood there in her chemise and her bloomers.
The men turned around in a hurry.
Jane-one felt a tingling in her muscles, and began her stretches.
35
1:00 a.m.
Hephzibah had a new problem. There was a man heading upstairs.
She recognized the ashen gleam to his hair from the old days. The family lawyer. Mr. Lockwood.
As soon as the princess had gone in for supper, he’d slipped away from the royal party. Hephzibah had watched him beetling toward the stairs. She’d planted several of her best people by the banister to head off any real guests who tried to leave the saloon floor, but the crush was too great—they couldn’t waylay him.
No, no.
She hastened after him.
He took the stairs two at a time, as if he were in a hurry. Hephzibah had to cling on to the banister to stop herself from tumbling over. “Sir!” she exclaimed, voice going up a notch.
He didn’t hear her. He rounded the stairs and disappeared.
Her first thought was, He’s fetching something for Miss de Vries. But her bedroom was at the front of the house, facing the park. And Lockwood had turned the other way, toward the enormous suite above the ballroom.
He had entered Mr. de Vries’s bedroom.
Her heart plunged when she saw Mrs. Bone’s men marching over from the other end of the house, ready to start clearing Mr. de Vries’s suite of its possessions. She hoisted her skirts and legged it along the passage.
The double doors were open. The lights were burning dimly in the gigantic suite beyond. Lockwood was already in there.
The men frowned at her, halting.
“Do as I do,” she said, breathless.
She pressed herself behind the half-open door, skirts to the wall. The lawyer didn’t seem to notice that half the objects in the room were sitting under dust sheets, or atop packing crates. He was crouching by the bureau, opening drawers, rifling inside, closing them again.
Searching for something.
One of the men leaned over her shoulder. His breath smelled very faintly of beer. He had a terrifyingly muscular forearm. “We need him out of there,” he said.
Hephzibah scanned the insurance contract in her mind. No gags, no blindfolds. But there was nothing about scaring people…
“Death!” she cried, throwing open the sliding doors. “Destruction! Doom!”
Lockwood started nearly out of his skin, lurching backward. Hephzibah strode across the bare floorboards, sequins scattering as she went.
“Good Lord,” Lockwood said, face reddening in annoyance. He had a nasty bruise on his top lip.
“We will deliver you to your doom!” she cried.
The men got it: they were sharp lads. They formed a tight circle, leering at Lockwood, their thighs greased and hairy underneath their tunics. “Doom!” they grunted.
“Really, Your Grace,” Lockwood said, “the entertainments should stay downstairs.”
“Come with us!” boomed Hephzibah. “To my den of—” she considered this “—of terror!”
“Terror!” echoed the men.
They were still in a ring around him, and began dragging him lockstep toward the door.
“Good gracious,” exclaimed Lockwood. “Your Grace, I…” He found himself being pulled bodily from the room. “Would you…would you get out…of…my way.”
“He goes of his own volition,” said Hephzibah loudly, as if the insurers were crawling around in the rafters. Lockwood was borne out of the room, leaving the bureau drawers wide open.
It seemed he hadn’t discovered what he was looking for.
Sliding down the drainpipe, Jane-two found a pair of gentlemen locked in intimate conversation in the shrubbery. They were real guests, costumed, and they were both wearing perfectly enormous ruffs, which seemed to have become unusually tangled.
“Excuse me,” said Jane-two, rummaging in the undergrowth, searching for her extendable pole.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” said one of the men, straightening his doublet and hose.
“Sneaky is as sneaky does,” said Jane-two severely. “And your codpiece is showing.”
She grabbed hold of the fire-eater on the way back inside. He was on their team, naturally. She’d drilled him herself. “Keep the crowd on that side of the garden,” she told him. “Anyone comes near me, you blow your torch at them.”
The fire-eater had wonderful eyes, crystalline blue, and a honeyed way with words. He inspected her bloomers. “Sweet Moira, my treasure, my angel! A word from you, and I die!”
“Don’t die,” said Jane-two. “Just blow.”
Jane-one heard the screams from the garden below, and peeped out of the window. There was a roar, a great lick of fire, and she saw the crowd scattering across the garden. Come on, she thought, hearing another loud knock at the door.
And there, looming out of the dark, was the extendable pole.
“You lot, down the drainpipe,” she said.
“Down the what?”
“And you two—” she picked the quickest, most dexterous pair “—start passing me books.”
She was up on the windowsill in a heartbeat. She sensed Jane-two far beneath her, steady as a rock, holding the pole upright. She swung onto it, clenching her thighs.
“Down you go,” she said to the men. “We don’t have all night.”
You had to give Mrs. Bone’s men credit. They had nerve. They were shimmying down the drainpipe, catching books in the circus nets, in no time.
Three minutes later, she climbed back in and opened the library door.
The footmen stood outside, looking scandalized. They tried to peer past her, but she blocked the view.
“I wouldn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Guests. In flagrante delicto.”
“What was you doing in there, then?”
Jane-one fixed them with a dead stare. “Protecting my virtue.”
She left them to stew and speculate and press their ears to the door.
Time was running out.
The princess was tired. This seemed to have been ordained by the viscountess or her equerries, and she rose from her seat, attendants collecting cloaks and gloves and furs. To have held the royal presence in this house for nigh on two hours was an extraordinary achievement. The whole enormous party began drifting toward the grand escalier, like day-trippers trudging across a beach, and Miss de Vries accompanied the princess. Conversation was impossible. Her Royal Highness kept a wall around her. I do that, too, thought Miss de Vries.
The orchestra fell quiet, the crowd drew back, and there was a burst of riotous applause. The band began playing the national anthem, half a measure too fast, and the princess looked around, temporarily nonplussed.