Page 59 of Crying Wolfe
“Nah. Not that I can tell. And the boys said they’ve seen and ‘eard nothing.”
“You leave this lantern on?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
“You search the rooms?”
“’Ere on the fourth floor, yeah.”
“Well, get to searching the other floors, then. Take a few men with you.”
Rosaline breathed a sigh of relief when they slammed out of the room, and quickly made her way back toward the valet room.
Apologizing for, yet again, molesting the gargoyle, she shimmied back into the window, her limbs much less strong and steady than before.
That was close. Too close.
And Peckering knew what she looked like…
Rosaline stepped back into her skirts, securing them beneath her bodice and smoothing her hands down her thighs. In the mirror on the wash basin, she fixed a few tendrils of hair that’d escaped her coiffure, while she planned what to do next.
If they’d all gone to the third floor, she could slip toward the servant’s stairs and let herself out through the staff entrance on the lower floor.
It was her greatest hope of escape without being recognized, by Peckering, Eli, or the few peers with whom she was acquainted.
She’d present Eli with the sapphire just as soon as he returned home to her…
Ifhe ever did.
Carefully letting herself into the hall, she kept an eye out for guards and guests alike as she made her way toward the south servant’s stairs. Finding the door, she wrenched it open and dove inside, closing it against the long hall in which she’d felt so vulnerable.
Thank God, her luck had not given out. She was alone in the stairwell, at least for a couple of floors.
When she’d reached the second landing, the doors to the lower story burst open, and a battalion of black-garbed servants spilled through. “I don’t have to remind you to handle everything as if it was more important than your own children…they’re certainly more valuable,” barked whoever was in charge. “We’ll arrange in order of presentation behind the curtain to the left of the podium.”
The veritable army marched up the stairs to the boss’s cadence, some of them murmuring in excitement to themselves.
Blast, they were on their way to the fourth floor to collect the valuables for auction. By the time the Anatolian Sapphire was found to be missing, she’d best be missing as well, if she hoped to escape.
Left with little choice, Rosaline dove through the doors that let her onto the second-floor hall.
And straight into the arms of a leering Mr. Peckering and his smokey-voiced compatriot.
“Gotcha,” he growled in triumph as he seized her with arms as large and marbled as a slab of fatted beef. He’d imprisoned his arms to her sides, lifting her off her feet against the curve of his paunch.
“Wait!” she gasped, struggling for breath against his crushing hold. “Put me down!”
“Not until me and Hector, here, ask you a few questions,” he snarled. “The first of which is why you lied to get past the rope.”
Hector was a mixture of what she’d expected. A wiry man who was younger than he sounded, but plagued with the leathery skin and rheumy eyes of a man doomed to die with a pipe in his teeth.
Rosaline struggled like an ensnared bunny against the burly brute as he dragged her into a doorway held open by his friend. “You’re going to suffer for this,” she warned. “I’m the sister of the Baron of—”
“As if I’m going to believe anyone you claim to be,” he snorted, turning on the lights to a cozy sitting room before setting her down hard on a soft chair.
“You don’t understand!” she cried. “My husband is—”
