*
“Move the dogs today, he says,” Jasper mumbled, crumpling up a note from his High and Mighty Lordship. “I’m not paying you to sit on your arses, he says. Horace, I sometimes feel exactly like these poor brutes, damned if I don’t.”
The dogs were consuming what was probably their last meal in Jasper’s care, because his lordship had snapped his fingers and all creation must jump to obey.
“You ain’t as mean as this big brute,” Horace allowed, using a bucket to dump fresh water into the dog’s bowl. The big brute was at his supper, so the bowl in the corner of his stall could be safely filled, and then the top half of the door re-closed.
“I’m not as mean,” Jasper said as the sound of voracious dogs consuming inadequate rations filled the stable. “But his lordship must think I’m as stupid. He says we’re not to collect the money—he’ll do that—but we’re to deliver the dogs before sunset.”
“Today? When all the Quality is sashayin’ about and waving t’each other?”
Jasper could go around the Kensington Palace side of Hyde Park, but that would take an age, and traveling that distance with a lot of crated-up, unhappy dogs would attract notice.
“I told him we ought to drug the poor beasts, deliver them at night, same as usual, but himself is in a taking.”
“Oh, the Quality,” Horace muttered as an empty food dish went thumping against a stall wall. The big dog, the one they’d stolen from the duchess, was in truth a bright animal.
Also furious and perpetually hungry.
“I like most dogs, but I do not like that dog,” Jasper said. “He’s plotting revenge, and all we ever done is feed him and keep him outta the wet.”
And take him from his home, and knock him about a bit. Only a bit.
“I do like the little pug,” Horace said. “Poor little mite won’t last a day with the badgers. Hasn’t a mean bone in his body.”
The poor little mite sat in his wooden crate, head bowed, staring at the ground as if he could hear a gibbet being built for him in the alley.
“The big dogs cost a pretty penny, and the baiters try not to let ’em get hurt too bad,” Jasper observed. “Little ones has it hard.”
“We ’ave it ’ard,” Horace said. “I say we tell old man Dickerson to give us the money same as usual, and I’ll take the pug home to me missus. Little fellow will keep her company and he won’t eat much.”
Jasper took out his flask, which would soon need a refill from the King’s Comestibles, and passed it over to Horace.
“You are a good man, Horace,” he said, “and every once in a while, you come up with a brilliant idea.”
Fortunately, Horace had muttered his brilliant idea before the sound of iron-shod hooves clopping up the alley came to a halt outside the stable.
“Drink up,” Jasper said. “His Royal Highness is here, and it’s time we show him how well we can sit up and beg.”
*
Susannah’s side throbbed, sweat made her straw hat stick to her forehead, and she’d stepped in something disagreeable while crossing Oxford Street, but the distinctive odor of kenneled hounds told her Effington had finally reached his destination.
His lordship clambered off his gelding not one sonnet too soon. Fifty yards downwind from Effington, Susannah tore out number ninety-two—“But do thy worst to steal thyself away”—and tucked it between two bricks at about waist height.
In this part of London, shabbier and smellier than Mayfair, a lone page of poetry did not command attention. Old newspapers, handbills, and worse littered the ground, and clearly, the alley hadn’t been swept since Charles II had reopened the theatres.
Something more noticeable was called for, but not too noticeable.
Two large, unkempt fellows came out of the stable, and one of them took Effington’s horse. The other stood in the middle of the alley, pushing at the cobbles with the toe of a dusty boot, while Effington gesticulated to the stable and peppered the afternoon with foul language.
Susannah tore off a length of purple lace from the parasol, rolled up the page of poetry, and tied the lace around it. She stuck the sonnet back between the bricks closer to eye level, and let the purple lace trail down the crumbling wall.
Then she crept closer.
*
“Don’t move. Don’t make a sound or you’ll wish I’d killed you when you were eight years old and you spent my coin collection at the market day sweets booth.”
Cam nodded, and Will took his hand from his brother’s mouth.
“Sycamore, you must be more alert. If I could sneak up on you, Georgette panting at my heels, then Effington’s men could do the same.” All they’d have to do is grow curious about the two men lounging around the back entrance to the King’s Comestibles, loitering in the shade of the shed set between the inn and the alley.
Georgette was out of sight, behind an overturned barrel at Will’s side.