LITMIR.BIZ

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Earl. The frame of the portrait swung open on its hinge to reveal the safe. Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. Jeremy had shown it to her when they were first married, though in those days it had been concealed behind a portrait of his father.

      ‘Empty coffers,’ Jeremy had said to her. ‘Though not for much longer—thanks to you, my darling wife.’

      The revelation that the terms of her inheritance would force him to wait several years for her to attain her majority and gain the larger part of her fortune had not been the beginning of his change in attitude towards her, but after that he’d ceased to pretend.

      She should never have married him. But there was no time for her to become entangled in that morass yet again. Lady Kinsail, even more palely loitering than ever, was seated on a gilt chair almost as frail as herself. Deborah went to her side.

      ‘Cousin Margaret,’ she said, squeezing Her Ladyship’s cold hand between her own. Though she persistently refused to grant Lord Kinsail the appellation of cousin, she had conceded it to his wife. They were not related, but it rescued them from the hideous social quagmire of having two Countesses of Kinsail in the one household. ‘What, pray, has occurred?’

      ‘Oh, Cousin Deborah, such a dreadful thing.’ Lady Kinsail’s voice was, like her appearance, wraith-like. ‘A common housebreaker—’

      ‘No common housebreaker,’ her lord interrupted. Under normal circumstances Lord Kinsail’s complexion and his temper had a tendency towards the choleric. This morning he resembled an over-ripe tomato. ‘I don’t know what time you call this, Cousin,’ he fumed.

      ‘A quarter after nine, if the clock is to be trusted,’ Deborah replied, making a point of arranging her own chair by his wife and shaking out her skirts as she sat down.

      ‘Of course it’s to be trusted. It’s Louis Quatorze! Say what you like about the French, but they know how to turn out a timepiece,’ Lord Kinsail said testily. ‘I have it upon good authority that that clock was originally made for the Duc d’Orleans himself.’

      ‘A pity, then,’ Deborah said tightly, ‘that such an heirloom is no longer in his family. I abhor things being taken from their rightful owners.’

      Lord Kinsail was pompous, parsimonious, and so puffed-up with his own conceit that it was a constant surprise to Deborah that he did not explode with a loud pop. But he was no fool.

      He narrowed his eyes. ‘If you had served my cousin better as a wife, then the estates which you allowed him to bring to ruin upon that ill-fated marriage of yours would not now be my responsibility, but your son’s. If you had served my cousin better as a wife, Cousin Deborah, I have no doubt that he would not have felt the need to seek consolation in the gaming houses of St James’s, thus ensuring that his successor had hardly a pair of brass farthings to rub together.’

      Deborah flinched, annoyed at having exposed herself for, cruel as the remarks were, there was a deep-rooted part of her, quite resistant to all her attempts to eradicate it, which believed them to be true. She had made Jeremy about as bad a wife as it was possible to make. Which did not, however, mean that she had to accept Jacob’s condemnation—she was more than capable of condemning herself. And she was damned if she was going to apologise for her remark about the clock!

      ‘Don’t let me hold you back any further, Jacob,’ she said with a prim smile.

      Lord Kinsail glowered, making a point of turning his back on her and clearing his throat noisily before addressing the staff. ‘As you know by now, we have suffered a break-in at Kinsail Manor,’ he said. ‘A most valuable item has been taken from this safe. A safe which, I might add, has one of the most complex of new locks. This was no ordinary robbery. The brazen rogue, a menace to polite society and a plague upon those better off than himself, was no ordinary thief.’

      With a flourish, His Lordship produced an object and waved it theatrically in front of his audience. There was a gasp of surprise. Several of the male servants muttered under their breath with relief, for now there could be no question of blame attaching itself to them.

      At first Deborah failed to understand the import of the item. A feather. But it was a most distinctive feather—long with a blue-and-green eye. A peacock feather. The man who had dropped from the sky on top of her last night must have been the notorious Peacock!

      Good grief! She had encountered the Peacock—or, more accurately, the Peacock had encountered her! Deborah listened with half an ear to Jacob’s diatribe against the man’s crimes, barely able to assimilate the fact. She watched without surprise as in turn every one of the servants denied hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary, just as the servants in every one of the Peacock’s other scenes of crime had done. No one had ever disturbed him in the act. No one had ever caught so much as a fleeting glance of him leaving. Private investigators, Bow Street Runners—all were completely flummoxed by him. He came and went like a cat in the night. For nigh on two years now, the Peacock had eluded all attempts to capture him. No lock was too complex for the man, no house too secure.

      With the room finally empty of staff, Lord Kinsail turned his attentions back to Deborah. ‘And you?’ he demanded. ‘Did you see anything of the rogue?’

      She felt herself flushing. Though God knew she’d had opportunity aplenty, she had never grown accustomed to prevarication. ‘Why would I have seen anything?’

      ‘I know all about your midnight rambles,’ Lord Kinsail said, making her start. ‘Aye, and well might you look guilty. I am not the fool you take me for, Cousin Deborah.’ He permitted himself a small smile before continuing. ‘My head groom has seen you wandering about the park like a ghost.’

      ‘I have never taken you for a fool, Jacob,’ Deborah replied, ‘merely as unfeeling. I take the air at night because I have difficulty sleeping in this house.’

      ‘Conscience keeps you awake, no doubt.’

      ‘Memories.’

      ‘Spectres, more like,’ Lord Kinsail replied darkly. ‘You have not answered my question.’

      Deborah bit her lip. She ought to tell him, but she simply could not bring herself to. All her pent-up resentment at his quite unjustified and utterly biased opinion of her, combined with her anger at herself for lacking the willpower to enlighten his ignorance, served to engender a gust of rebelliousness. ‘I saw nothing at all.’

      ‘You are positive?’

      ‘Quite. You have not said what was stolen, Jacob.’

      ‘An item of considerable value.’

      Alerted by his decidedly cagey look, Deborah raised an enquiring brow. ‘Why so close-mouthed? Was it government papers? Goodness, Jacob,’ she said in mock horror, ‘don’t tell me you have you lost some important state secret?’

      ‘The item stolen was of a personal nature. A recent acquisition. I do not care to elaborate,’ Lord Kinsail blustered.

      ‘You will have to disclose it to the Bow Street Runners.’

      ‘I intend to have the matter investigated privately. I have no desire at all to have the Kinsail name splashed across the scandal sheets.’

      Deborah was intrigued. Jacob was looking acutely uncomfortable. A glance at Margaret told her that Her Ladyship was as much in the dark as she was. She was tempted—extremely tempted—to probe, but her instinct for caution kept her silent. That and the fact that she doubted she would be able to sustain her lie if interrogated further.

      The sensible thing to do would be to make good her escape while Jacob was distracted, and Deborah had learned that doing the sensible thing was most often the best.

      Getting to her feet, she addressed herself to Lady Kinsail. ‘Such a shocking thing to have happened, Cousin Margaret, you must be quite overset and wishing to take to your bed. In the circumstances, I could not bear to be a further burden to you. I think it best that I curtail my visit. I will leave this morning, as soon as it can be arranged.’

      ‘Oh,

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