Chapter 13: A Skillful Hand
The click of the lock yielding was softer than a heartbeat. Selina let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, the thin metal pick cool and familiar in her fingers. For a surreal second, she was both in the dark, fragrant hallway of Sir Geoffrey’s home and at her escritoire, describing the exact same sensation for the protagonist of The Thief of Mayfair.
Burke’s silence behind her was palpable, a thick cloud of stunned reassessment.
She pushed the door inward, the hinges whispering a protest swallowed by the profound stillness of the house. The study was not pitch black. Embers glowed in the hearth, painting the room in a hellish, low relief. The familiar shapes of the armchairs, the desk, the bookcases were transformed into hulking, judgmental silhouettes. The scent was different at night—colder, more pronounced. Aged paper, dry lavender, the ghost of his cigar.
She moved first, a shadow in green wool. Her pulse was a frantic drum in her ears, but her steps were deliberate, avoiding the worn spot on the Azeri carpet she’d cataloged days before. She went straight to the bookcase flanking the fireplace, not the one with the false panel Burke suspected, but its twin. Her fingers trailed over the spines of dull parliamentary histories and botanical surveys. She found the gap beside Defoe’s Tour.
“Here,” she murmured, her voice dust-dry.
Burke was at her shoulder instantly, his presence a solid wall of heat and tension. “How did you—”
“The bindings,” she interrupted, pressing on a specific, ornate filigree in the wooden frame. “The one on the Gainsborough side is slightly newer. A decoy. This is the original case. The joinery here is… stressed.”
A soft, internal thunk echoed in the quiet. A section of the bookcase, about two feet wide, swung inward an inch. Burke’s hand shot out, bracing against the panel to prevent it from creaking. His forearm brushed her side.
She could feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Not from exertion. From shock.
He reached past her into the darkness of the compartment, his fingers searching. She stood frozen, acutely aware of the wool of his coat against her sleeve, the faint scent of starch and winter air clinging to him. His breath stirred the hairs at her temple. The study, once a sanctuary, was now a vault of terrifying intimacy.
When his hand emerged, it held a folio of thick papers. He laid it on the nearby reading table, the ember-light glinting off a large, wax seal. The Burke crest.
He didn’t open it. He just stared at it, then at her. In the dim, dancing light, his expression was unreadable, carved from shadows and sharp angles. “Where did you learn that?” he whispered again, the question rougher this time, stripped bare.
She met his gaze, the defiance she felt was a thin shield over a chasm of fear. “I write about thieves,” she said, the words barely audible. “I made it my business to understand them. Their methods, their psychology. How they see a room. Not as a collection of objects, but as a series of weaknesses.”
A slow, incredulous shake of his head. “You dissected his life from a paragraph in a novel.”
“I observed my godfather in his habitat for twenty-four years. The novel just… organized the data.”
He let out a sound that was almost a laugh, but devoid of humor. “You are full of catastrophically dangerous surprises, Lady Selina.”
He finally broke the seal on the folio. Inside were diagrams. Architectural plans of the Greymont Hotel, annotated in a precise, familiar hand. Guard rotations, delivery schedules for the strongroom, notes on the alarm system—a crude, modern electric contrivance he’d sketched and labeled ‘vulnerable: magnetics’. Nestled beneath was a sheaf of Bank of England bearer bonds, the amounts making her head swim.
The evidence was incontrovertible. It was also profoundly sad. Here, in his own fastidious script, was the detailed undoing of a man she loved.
Burke was photographing the pages with a small, black camera, the click of the shutter obscenely loud in the quiet. He worked with a cold efficiency now, the moment of vulnerability gone.
A floorboard groaned overhead.
They both froze. Selina’s blood turned to ice. The house was supposed to be empty. The staff—the butler, Mrs. Hemlock—they took their leisure, Burke had said.
Another sound. A muffled cough. Then the distinct, heavy tread of footsteps descending the main staircase.
Burke’s head snapped up. His eyes locked with hers, wide and lethal. In a fluid motion, he stuffed the documents back into the folio and shoved it into the compartment. He didn’t bother closing it. He grabbed her wrist, his grip iron-strong, and pulled her toward the French doors that led to the garden.
The footsteps reached the hall outside the study. A man’s voice, grumbling and thick with sleep. “Blooming draft. Need a tot to settle it.”
Mr. Gibbons, the butler. He was supposed to be at his sister’s in Clapham.
Burke’s fingers fumbled at the garden door’s latch. It was a simple bolt, but his hands, so steady with a camera, were now infuriatingly slow. Selina heard the faint jingle of keys from the hall. The study door.
She reached around him, her own hands trembling violently, and slid the bolt back. It clicked.
The key turned in the study door lock behind them.
Burke wrenched the French door open. The freezing night air rushed in, a slap of reality. He pushed her through first, then slipped out after, pulling the door shut just as the study door swung inward and a wedge of yellow lamplight cut across the carpet where they had stood.
Outside, they pressed themselves against the cold brick wall, hidden in deep shadow. Through the glass, they saw the bulky silhouette of Gibbons, holding a lamp aloft. He shuffled to the desk, muttering about the cold. He poured himself a generous measure of brandy from Sir Geoffrey’s decanter, took a long swallow, and then, with a tired sigh, turned and left, closing the door behind him.
The key turned again. Locking it.
They were trapped outside.
The frost-laden grass crunched under Selina’s boots as Burke pulled her across the darkened garden toward the mews. Her teeth began to chatter, a combination of searing cold and adrenal collapse. He didn’t stop until they were shrouded in the pitch-black arch of the carriageway, the smell of horse and manure enveloping them.
She bent double, hands on her knees, trying to breathe, trying not to be sick.
Burke leaned against the damp brick wall, his head thrown back. After a moment, he started to laugh. It was a quiet, desperate, ragged sound.
“He locked us out,” Burke wheezed, the absurdity of it dawning. “The butler… the bloody butler… locked us in the garden.”
Selina stared at him. A hysterical bubble of laughter fought its way up her throat, tangled with a sob. They had the evidence. They had almost been caught. And they had been foiled, not by a master criminal, but by a drowsy butler seeking a nightcap.
The laugh died in Burke’s throat as quickly as it came. He pushed off the wall and stood before her. In the deep gloom, she could only see the intense gleam of his eyes.
“You were brilliant in there,” he said, his voice low and utterly serious now. “And we are not done. He has the plans. He will act at the Greymont reception.”
“What do we do?” Her words were ghostly puffs in the cold.
“We use what we have. We beat him at his own game.” He reached out, and for a second, she thought he might touch her face. His hand stopped midway, clenched, and dropped to his side. “Go home. Act normal. I’ll contact you with the next step.”
“Burke,” she said, as he turned to melt into the deeper shadows of the mews. “Your debt. The one you’re paying. Who did he hurt?”
He paused, a darker cut-out against the dark. “My brother,” he said, the words flat and final. “He didn’t kill him. He just left him with nothing. Not a penny, not a shred of reputation. A living death. He prefers it that way. Cleaner.”
Then he was gone.
Selina stood alone in the freezing dark, the taste of brandy and lavender and betrayal sharp in her memory. She had come to prevent a theft. Now, she was entangled in a vendetta. The plot, as they said, had well and truly thickened. And she was no longer just the author. She was deep, deep inside it.