Page 58 of Crying Wolfe
Stepping out of her heavy skirt, she tied her petticoats between her legs, making a rather poufy pair of pantaloons out of them. Scooting up on the windowsill was easier than expected and from there she simply swung her legs around and slid down to the ledge.
It would take some doing to lift back up, but that was a problem for her future self to solve.
The night was just about moonless, and the illumination of such an incredible gathering was kept to the first and second floors, leaving the top of the house secured in shadow, for the most part.
Heights were not counted among Rosaline’s many anxieties, so she flew on featherlight feet along the ledge, until she reached a stone monster perched on the corner pulling a dreadful face.
“Pardon me,” she whispered, taking hold of his goblin-like ears in order to throw one leg around his perch and wriggle around to find stable purchase before scooting her back leg along. “I’ll only have to do this once more,” she informed him apologetically. “Please don’t tell my husband I straddled you. He’s not a forgiving sort.”
Now was an odd time for levity, but sometimes a burst of humor would appear at the most stressful of moments.
Finding herself safely on the other side, she peered into a darkened window, surmising that each room on this side would have at least two, if this bedroom was any indication. The guarded door had been four counts down the hallway, so she hurried past eight windows, ducking beneath the lone glowing one—number five.
Taking a breath, she carefully peeked over the window ledge to find a darkened room stacked with open cases.
She was making a distressing habit of this, breaking into the treasure troves of her wealthy peers. Finding the scant moments when their plunder wasn’t hidden away in a vault, but behind a window too high to be opened from the outside over a ledge too thin for most everyone but herself.
This time, she wasn’t taking for herself. That had to mean something, hadn’t it?
The latch didn’t spring as easily as the ones at Hespera House, but she managed after a bit of a struggle with the letter opener to lift it from the hitch and swing the window outward. Boosting herself into the window was the most difficult thing, but she managed to do so quietly…if inelegantly.
Standing up, she dusted herself off, hoping her simple gold bodice hadn’t been too damaged in the struggle with the ledge. It was impossible to tell in the dark.
Inching carefully around the room only lit by the ambient London night, she found a lamp and placed it as far as she could from the door, so as not to illustrate illumination from underneath.
Lighting it, she turned the wick as low as possible before starting her search of the room.
It was a lesson in opulence. A plunder only deserving of the greatest pirate, or king, or even a dragon.
Stunning paintings were carefully placed next to priceless art and sculpture. Some of them considered fabled, were they not tangible in this very room. Necklaces belonging to beheaded queens. Canvases painted by masters long thought lost to war. Bejeweled weapons. Ancient pottery, tools, and trinkets. Weapons encrusted with jewels. The crown jewels of forgotten empires winking like fallen stars.
Rosaline touched none of it, though she quite literally ached to do so. This room was akin to a museum, and her greatest wish would be to study every last artifact.
Alas, time was of the essence.
Leaving anything in a display case after a cursory perusal, she began to open traveling trunks and boxes full of soft batting or shreds of wood and paper. Most she found empty. Until…
A leather satchel with an odd padlock on it had been abandoned by itself in a cupboard. Slicing through the straps with a whispered apology to the owner, she opened it and pulled out the kind of purse used for coins some hundred years past. More a pouch than anything.
Pulling at the strings, she reached inside and extracted something covered in a velvet cloth.
Rosaline held her breath as she unwrapped an uncut sapphire half the size of her palm. Wait, no, upon closer inspection she realized it had been shaped somewhat. Not into the precise, reflective gems they made these days, but in a way one might expect a jeweler with only rudimentary tools to have cut it.
This had to be it. The Anatolian Sapphire. It matched the gems in the other cups she’d spied in Eli’s collection, and she’d stake her life that if she placed it against the prongs on the chalice, it’d be a perfect fit.
Heavy bootsteps vibrated the ground beneath her, so she lifted her petticoats and shoved the sapphire into a pocket sewn into her drawers before re-knotting the hem between her legs.
Diving through the window, she slid onto the ledge and closed the panes just as the latch to the door depressed and a seam of light from the hallway sliced at the carpet.
Rosaline ducked, flattening herself against the ledge and the wall in a ghastly uncomfortable crouch.
“No one’s in ‘ere,” rasped a man who was either quite timeworn or an avid smoker. “Wot did you say she looked like?”
“Young. Pretty. Little. Brown hair and big blue eyes. Wore a yellow dress. Said she was a model for tonight.”
“Well, she inn’t,” the older voice interjected. “Like I said, there’s no models tonight.”
“Strange,” Peckering muttered. “Anything missing in ‘ere?”
