Suzanne Robinson (2 page)

The Honorable Agnes Cowper hobbled from behind the giant fern as the pianist began to play. With little mincing steps she left the salon and mounted the curved staircase. Several young ladies hurried past her on their way to the concert, and she nodded at them, her lips plastered with a benign smile. She went upstairs, into the room reserved for the ladies’ necessities, and found herself alone.

At once she straightened her bent back and crooked shoulders. Her chin lifted, and she swept the spectacles from her face. Shoving black lace half mittens up to her wrists, old Miss Cowper vanished, and in her place stood Emily Fox, known to her friends as Emmie, to many a scoundrel as Mrs. Apple, to Society variously as Miss Cowper, Lady Jane Effingham, and Françoise Marie de Fontages, Comtesse de Rohan.

“Emmie Fox, you’re a devil, tormenting that man,” she muttered to herself.

She hadn’t been able to resist taunting the marquess. He was vain, arrogant, and foul-tempered. With all his riches he was still dissatisfied with the world. He owned at least three houses she knew of, and yet he couldn’t summon the graciousness to forbear with silly but well-meaning young ladies. The man even had a hidden treasure. She’d heard about it from her mother, who had been fond of relating stories of the aristocracy and their grand houses. Agincourt Hall, the North family seat, stood among the grandest, and tales were told of the secret cache of gold concealed there by an Elizabethan nobleman. A man with all those houses and a treasure, too, had little of which to complain.

However, Emmie had to admit her opinion of most men was as low as the belly of a Thames water rat. And perhaps her opinion of the marquess was influenced by the way her blood seemed to go from simmer to boil in a heart’s beat at the sight of him.

Emmie had met lots of handsome men, but North seemed to provoke attacks of quivering knees and face flushes in her for no reason. Why should she develop vapors at the sight of his cavalry officer’s body and fierce gray eyes? His appealing mouth was always frowning, and he usually seemed about to explode into a tirade. So why did his presence send alternating chills and waves of heat whisking through her?

Emmie shook her head. “This is no time to start dithering about some pretty, blue-blooded toff. Be about your business, Emmie, my girl.”

Thrusting her spectacles in a skirt pocket, Emmie hurried through a series of connecting rooms to the gallery that extended the length of the house. The North gallery was famous for its expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows and for the collection of paintings that covered the opposite wall. Emmie peeked around a door, ascertained that the place was deserted, and hurried down the gallery. Its recently installed gas candle sconces cast a low gold light interspersed with shadows. She could barely make out the largest paintings—a Botticelli, a Titian, and a Rubens—but she swept by them
and stopped in front of a small portrait of Henry VIII’s sister Mary, by Holbein.

Glancing around to make sure she was still alone, Emmie grabbed her skirts and crinoline and pulled them up so that she could reach the tools concealed in a bag suspended from her waist. She removed tape, glue, a knife, and a rolled piece of canvas. Her fingers moving with swift assurance, she whipped the portrait off the wall, turned it over, and cut it out of its frame. It was the work of less than five minutes for her to replace the picture with the forgery she’d brought with her.

The original was carefully slipped into a large pocket sewn into her petticoat. After concealing her tools once more, Emmie replaced the forgery on the wall. She stood back and eyed it to make sure it was straight. Satisfied, she whirled around and sped down the gallery. Before reappearing in the ladies’ withdrawing room she replaced her spectacles and resumed her Miss Cowper posture. Next, she sent word through a maid to Lady Buxton and her hostess that fatigue required her to leave early.

Donning her cloak Emmie hobbled down the front stairs where Turnip was already waiting with her carriage. As the vehicle left the North grounds at a sedate pace, she drew the shades and fell back against the squabs. What a tiresome evening.

Emmie smiled to herself. Tiresome except for the amusement of sparring with that dreadful marquess. Unfortunately, his faults didn’t seem to prevent her from feeling a most disturbing attraction to the man. It was fortunate that she would never see him again.

It had been obvious from the moment she set eyes on the marquess that he thought his personal beauty, rank, and wealth relieved him of any obligation to be kind or courteous. She hated men who felt such an overblown sense of entitlement. She’d known too many like him, the most destructive and evil of which had been her stepfather, Edmund Cheap.

But she needn’t think of him. He was dead. And he’d left her to cope with the consequences of his bad character—two stepbrothers and one stepsister left destitute and abandoned. She remembered her astonishment at discovering the children five years ago. Had it been that long already? Emmie smiled as she remembered. Yes, it had been that long because Sprout, the youngest, had been a babe. Flash, the oldest boy, had been five, and little Phoebe had been two.

Her stepfather had been keeping another woman in St. Giles, a woman more suited to his tastes than Emmie’s gently born mother. Yet he’d done no better by this woman or her children. The mother had died shortly after Emmie’s stepfather,
leaving the children to Emmie, who hadn’t known of the existence of this second family.

As the carriage rattled along the Strand, heading east, it slowed and turned into a side street. When it came to a halt Emmie pulled up the shade and leaned out the window. A scrawny shadow detached itself from a group of loiterers and stepped into the road.

“Good evening, Wombie.”

“Evenin’, Missus Apple.”

Handing Wombie the painting, she waited only to see the forger walk quickly away from the carriage. Two of her men joined him as escorts, and they vanished beyond the light of a gas lamp. Emmie lowered the shade, and Turnip set the carriage in motion again.

While she removed the white wig and makeup that aged her fifty years, Emmie mentally counted the funds she’d saved at her bank and added the profits from this latest theft.

“Still not enough.”

Anxiety returned like a small, filthy vulture to sit on her shoulder and weigh upon her soul. Her dear Flash, the oldest of her stepbrothers, would soon reach the age at which he must be sent to school. Emmie had promised herself that her siblings would not suffer the same fate she had. Emmie’s mother, Miss Jane Margaret Fox, had been an improverished gentleman’s daughter, naive and
foolish. So foolish that she’d fallen prey to her employer’s wiles immediately upon being hired as a governess. Her mother’s gullibility still appalled Emmie.

To trust a man in such a way was not within Emmie’s nature to comprehend. Shaking her head at the folly of it, Emmie wiped her face with a damp cloth from her makeup case. Of course Mother had been thrown into the streets once she’d conceived Emmie. If she hadn’t met and married Edmund Cheap, who knows what would have happened to her?

But Cheap had been as bad as the so-called gentleman. He had been a swell mobsman, one of the thieves who preyed upon the wealthy. Of course, Jane Margaret hadn’t realized Cheap’s occupation at first. Eventually her husband’s character revealed itself. Faced with the enormity of her mistake, Jane Margaret chose to ignore it, remaining a lady in every way possible and raising her daughter as one.

Unfortunately, after Emmie’s mother died, Cheap’s thieving skills deteriorated under the influence of drink. Emmie had been forced to live in more and more disreputable circumstances as her stepfather’s fortunes plummeted. By the time she was thirteen, Emmie had to take care of herself. The skills of a lady, which her mother had so lovingly taught, wouldn’t put food on the table in St. Giles.
Learning the art of thieving from Cheap’s associates, Emmie had become one of the swell mob.

One of the few good turns Edmund Cheap ever did her was helping her invent Mrs. Apple. To protect her from the dangers of the East End she acquired a fictional husband, who was conveniently dead. Learning rapidly, she had gathered around her protectors and allies, so that now she commanded the loyalty of over a dozen skilled subordinates. Yes, she owed Mrs. Apple to Edmund Cheap. She also owed him her mother’s death from grief and ill health brought on from living in the disease-ridden slum courts of London.

Never mind. Cheap and his two wives were gone, and Emmie was left to fend for herself and her little family. She might have to spend her life among thieves, pickpockets, and harlots, but neither Flash nor Phoebe nor Sprout would ever set foot in the rookeries again. Emmie would steal from the queen herself before she’d let that happen.

Now the children lived in Kensington in a lovely house surrounded by trees and gardens. Each would receive a proper upbringing and an education at the best schools, which would afford introductions to the right people. Respectable
people, not the swell mobsmen who filched ladies’ purses and ended in Newgate. Not climbing boys who burgled houses, not mouchers who scrounged for what they could get.

Not for her brothers and sister the thieves’ kitchens of east London, or the servants’ lurks where those who drank too much or stole from their employers took refuge. Emmie was sick of the dark labyrinths of the rookeries where traps were laid for the police or the unwary. But until she could get enough money together, places like that would serve as her office, drawing room, and bedchamber.

The carriage stopped on the outskirts of St. Giles. Emmie got out on a corner where a woman was selling meat pies to two men in threadbare coats.

“Getcher ’ot pies! Hot’n’fresh.”

Emmie looked up at her coachman. “Well done, Turnip. Back to the stables with you.”

“Yes, missus. Pleasant evening, missus.”

Emmie turned to find the two men gulping down the last of their meat pies. “Hello, Snoozer, Sweep.”

Her two bodyguards doffed their caps.

“We was getting worried, Missus Apple,” said Snoozer. He had the build of a navvy, one of the thousands of railroad workers who plagued England with their rowdiness.

Sweep wasn’t as burly as Snoozer, but he was much taller and got his name from his former profession as a chimney sweep. “We thought pr’aps that toff what you stole the picture from caught you.”

“Now, Sweep, have I ever been caught?”

“No, Missus, but you never know when some cove’ll peach on you.”

“And risk your wrath?” Emmie replied with a grin.

Sweep rarely smiled, but his lips did curl a bit as they set out down the lane. It took them half an hour to reach Madame Rachel’s Boarding House in Needle Street off Blackfriars, but Emmie was careful never to attract attention to herself by taking the carriage back to her rooms. In any case, it was necessary to go by a circuitous route to make sure they weren’t followed.

Eventually Emmie was ensconced in her sitting room in the boardinghouse. It was filled with threadbare furniture bought secondhand, but it was clean. Above her were the rooms of Wombie the forger, and in the cellar Borgle, the most successful fence in London, plied his trade. By now he would be poring over the Holbein portrait. Once they settled on a price, Borgle would send it to a buyer in Holland.

Downing the last of her cup of tea, Emmie listened to the swish of tarlatan skirts that announced the arrival of her friend Dolly Quill. Dolly sailed into the room without knocking, her wide skirts swaying. Miss Quill was one of the swell mob who operated among the gentry, dressed well, and lived in a good house in west London.

“Well, there you are.” Dolly tossed her bright yellow hair and sat down beside Emmie. “All safe and successful once again, I see. I declare, Emmie, you’re the only woman I know who can keep company with smashers, coiners, and half-drunk hags and make a profit of it.”

Emmie set her teacup in its saucer and sighed. “You know how I manage things, and it isn’t by wasting my time with petty thieves.”

Dolly patted her hand, and Emmie smiled. Dolly liked to tease; it was her way of showing an affection that began when Emmie had saved her from Newgate prison. One day a few years ago she’d opened her carriage door to Dolly and hidden her from the policemen chasing her for stealing a lady’s shopping money.

Pouring herself a cup of tea, Dolly settled back in her chair and took a sip. “Fancy someone paying all that blunt for a moldy old picture.”

Emmie didn’t bother to explain the importance of the Tudor portrait or its painter. Educated by her mother, she had found her gentle upbringing
both an advantage and a hindrance among the denizens of underworld London.

“You sure that marquess won’t discover the switch tonight and come looking for you?”

“Why do you think I chose the Norths for this lay?” Emmie replied. “The marquess is known for his dislike of London and the Season. He won’t be here for the whole of it, and he spends most of his time at his country house or abroad. While he is here, he’ll be too busy with engagements to inspect the gallery.” Emmie frowned as she recalled both the handsome marquess and her lack of funds.

“What’s wrong, my dear?”

“It’s not enough, Dolly. Flash must be sent to school—Eton or Harrow—next year. A governess is all very well for the younger ones, but Flash will be eleven next year. I can’t wait any longer than that.”

“Don’t see why he’s got to go at all.”

Emmie pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. The worry was making her head ache.

“It’s quite simple,” she said. “Acquaintances and friendships formed at schools like that introduce a child to Society. Without them, Flash won’t be able to pursue a respectable profession or make a suitable marriage.”

Dolly leaned toward her and spoke gently. “And that’s why you live two lives—one here and
one with the children. So’s they can be respectable.”

“Without respectability and education they’ll descend to slum courts and streets with open sewers running down the middle of them.”

“Like you,” Dolly said.

Emmie swallowed hard. “Like me.”