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“The children aren’t supposed to be robbing the house. We will know what’s happened, and they will know. The Pershings will not. This is an extreme action, I know. But our reputations are at stake, as well.”
“As you say, then,” Mrs. Brubbins muttered. “I don’t like it, but it does seem the path that ruffles the fewest feathers.”
“Yes, it does.” He wished he’d been the one to think of it, but even with his annoying habit of being clever, Billet had done well this time. “And with the children headed out for a riding lesson this afternoon, we will have our opportunity to act. I will empty the chests of any stolen items myself, and will hand them off to whichever member of the staff sees to that area of the household. We must move quickly and precisely. Are we all in agreement?”
The unanimous, if unenthusiastic, ayes were reassuring—it truly would take all of them to see this done successfully and without the Pershings hearing a whisper of any of it. Lord knew the master and mistress of the house already had enough on their plate without him adding to it. His job had always been precisely the opposite of making more trouble, anyway. This was simply a more literal interpretation than usual.
“Did you see me?” Rose asked, flopping down on her very soft bed. “I was trotting!”
“You weren’t trotting,” Georgie argued, slipping a white beeswax candlestick out of his trousers. “General Jenny was trotting.”
“We were trotting together. You should get the other one out of your trousers before it melts.”
“I know that. Open your chest; mine’s nearly full. We need to give over yesterday’s haul to James.”
Her trunk was nearly full, too, but she’d found a nice, dark corner of their shared dressing room to use for additional things. “Do you think they’ll have riding at the duke’s party? I would show very well, I think. And I have a lovely riding habit.”
“I don’t think so. There’s too many people coming.” With some frowning and wiggling, he freed the other candlestick. “These are real beeswax, you know. We could get a penny for them. Each, maybe. I think I’ll keep hold of these. James won’t want ’em, because they ain’t worth enough.”
“I’ve been keeping the birds I find. He only throws them away, anyway.” Groaning at the memory, Rose sat up and slid off her bed to unlatch her trunk and lift the lid. “Why would Mama and Papa go to all the trouble of teaching us to ride if we won’t even be using it? You have to make more sense, Georgie.”
“Don’t call them that,” he snapped, his voice hard.
“I’m just practicing. You should practice, too.”
He walked over to her trunk. “Rose, where did you put your things? You can’t hide them all in the hatboxes in the dressing room. These chests are our only safe place. And we need to be able to get the things to James without having to rummage through the house again.”
“I only put the lace and handkerchiefs and that white box in the dressing room,” she said, and looked down.
Her chest was empty. Not quite empty, because her old clothes from the orphanage were in there, and a few buttons, and the leaf she’d found that was her very favorite color of orange. But all of the findings—as she liked to call them—she’d acquired and kept for herself since leaving St. Stephen’s were missing.
“Georgie,” she whispered, “I’ve been snabbled.”
“Damnation,” he muttered, leaving the candles in the almost empty box and charging into his own bedchamber. A second later he cursed some more. “So have I,” he called. “Snabbled rotten. They left the damned coins James didn’t take, but everything else is gone.”
Oh, this was bad. Very bad. Georgie always said the only thing they could count on was what they had in their own two hands. Now their hands were empty. Gasping, she ran into the dressing room and pulled out the third hatbox from the top. Oh, thank goodness. “Georgie, my lace and buttons and the box are still here. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care about your stupid buttons, Rosie.”
“That’s mean,” she retorted, stomping into his bedchamber. “You’re as mean as James.”
“Don’t you see?” he countered, his face very pale. “The Pershings know we stole from them.”
“Maybe it was James.”
He thought about that for a second. “No, the chests are the best hiding place in the house. He knows that. And he couldn’t carry everything at once to go sell it. It had to be the Pershings.”
“We only took what we needed.”
“That doesn’t matter. We stole from rich folk. And they’re feeding us and clothing us. We’ll be stuffed in a coach going back to the stone jug by nightfall, and with nothing we can sell to run again. I’ll wager they’ll take the blunt they left behind right in front of us, just to try to make us cry.”
She stared at him for a minute, a hundred ugly things going through her head like nightmares in the daytime. “We shouldn’t have taken anything.” A tear ran down her face, and she didn’t care.
“We had to, or we’d just have been stuck again. And James made us take the other things. I’d wager that’s when the Pershings noticed. Stupid James.”
“I’d rather live on a pig farm than at the stone jug.”
Even worse than that, the look on her brother’s face told her that the daydreams she’d been having, the ones where Mr. and Mrs. P changed their minds and decided to be their real mama and papa, would never, ever happen. More tears began plopping on her pretty riding habit. Would it still be hers? Or would they have to give back their clothes, too?