The Theft Before Christmas Read online

  "Once. Before I met you."

  Two more uniformed sentries stood on either side of the double white doors to the second-floor saloon. When those doors swung open, the first thing Jack observed was the Regent sitting in a wide chair that resembled a modest throne. On this day, he was not wearing his regimentals—for which Jack was thankful. Jack had always been proud of his uniform, but seeing the gargantuan monarch stuffed into one so similar to his own—with considerably more dangling metal—diminished the effect.

  Today the Prince Regent wore an impeccably tailored black frockcoat over a fine ivory linen shirt and freshly starched cravat. His silk waistcoat was purple. The Regent's lower body was somewhat hidden by a table which was placed a few feet in front of him.

  As Jack peered at his bloated monarch, he found himself wondering if the man wore a wig. Why had his coppery hair not turned gray at all when he was more than fifty years of age?

  A row of tall windows provided this white room with as much light as Jack had ever seen at Carlton House. Even on a gray winter day like this, this room was relatively bright and cheerful.

  It was also elegantly furnished in the French style.

  He and Daphne approached their monarch, Jack offering a bow while his wife curtsied.

  "Good of you to come," the Regent mumbled.

  As if we had a choice. Jack continued standing at attention.

  "Please, Lady Daphne, Captain Dryden, I beg that you sit down."

  Daphne moved to a sofa that was upholstered in green and pale gold satiny looking stripes and sat down, and Jack sat beside her.

  From the troubled look upon the Regent's face, Jack knew this was to be one of those visits when he would be charged with solving a problem that confronted their monarch. "How can we be of assistance to Your Royal Highness?" Jack asked.

  "This is as bloody bad as anything I've ever asked of you." The Regent's gaze swept from Jack to Daphne. "I shall need both of you and all the cleverness you possess."

  "You shall have it," Daphne said stridently.

  Jack kept silent. To answer in the affirmative would mean he thought himself clever, and even if he did, it wasn't the thing to toot one's own horn.

  How could this problem of the Regent's be worse? The first time they had assisted the Regent after his life had been threatened. The next time, the very kingdom was threatened if Jack and Daphne had not found traitors in very high office.

  "I didn't sleep all night," the Regent confessed.

  He looked as if he hadn't slept.

  The Regent sighed. "I don't see how anyone can extricate me from this horrible situation, but if anyone can, I know it would be the two of you. The pity of it is, it's not just me who will be in hot water. I may have jeopardized the entire country."

  "I know Your Majesty would never jeopardize our nation." Jack needed to be a calming, rational influence. "Perhaps you should start at the beginning, Your Royal Highness."

  His intense gaze connecting with Jack's, the Regent nodded. "As you know, it's vital that we keep Spain as our ally."

  Jack nodded. "Indeed it is."

  "Four years ago, the Spanish king gifted me with a priceless statue. It was said to have been a model of a larger sculpture Michelangelo planned to do of the Madonna and Child. Because the larger one was never done, it apparently made the small one something of incredible value."

  "How small is it?" Daphne asked.

  The Regent's pudgy, bejeweled hands separated about a foot, both horizontally and vertically. "Slightly more than a foot in width and in height."

  A sympathetic look on her face, Daphne nodded."What's it constructed of?"

  "Alabaster."

  Jack wasn't sure he actually knew what alabaster was. He'd never been interested in art, but his multi-talented wife would be able explain what alabaster was later. His thoughts racing on ahead, Jack feared the Regent was going to tell them he or a member of his staff had broken the damned statue. Did the hopeful man really think Jack and Daphne could put a crushed statue to rights?

  "Go on," Daphne said.

  "It was a most generous gift, and it was given in the same way as a contract between our two nations."

  A serious look swept across Daphne's face. "It does indeed sound most generous."

  "The long and short of this whole tale is that the Michelangelo was stolen last night, and this morning I received a confidential letter from my German cousin, who is close to a particular Spanish official who told my cousin rumors are circulating among the Spanish royals that I sold the Michelangelo."

  Jack's eyes widened. "Good lord, that would be disastrous."

  "As it happens," the Regent continued, "the Spanish king is coming here for Christmas. On a whim, I invited him some time ago, telling him I make the Michelangelo the center of all my Yule time festivities—for obvious reasons. And it really is quite the most stupendous way to decorate a chamber during this time of year."

  "And of course, with its history, it really is frightfully irreplaceable," Daphne said, brows lowered, her spectacles slipping down her nose, her voice full of remorse.

  "Are you saying someone broke into this mansion last night while you were sleeping?" Jack did not know how that could have happened, Carlton House being as well guarded as it was.

  The Regent shook his head solemnly. "Not at all. It was stolen right under our noses in this very chamber—which happened to be filled with more than twenty people. And not one of us saw it occur."

  Chapter 2

  When Miss Charlotte Huntington and the colonel arrived at the Dryden's slender three-story house tucked between two others on a quiet Chelsea street, she was surprised to find that Lady Daphne and her husband had vanished. After knocking for a considerable period of time, Charlotte opened the door.

  "The Drydens' servants have already gone on to Addersley Priority," she explained to the colonel. "I suppose it's all right for us to just come on in."

  They both stood in the skinny entry hall, listening for sounds that might indicate someone else was there.

  Colonel Bond called out. "Captain Dryden?"

  There was not a response.

  The colonel eyed her, and she shrugged. "I daresay they've had to leave. I'm sure they'll be right back."

  "Was their carriage here—in front—when you left? I thought you said they were all ready to go to Addersley."

  "Yes, actually. It was in front. I can't imagine why they're not here. Both of them were ready to leave, and the carriage was piled with baggage."

  The colonel cleared his throat. "I suppose we might as well find a place to await their return."

  "Let's just move on into the morning room." She crossed the wooden hall into the small home's only street-facing, ground-floor chamber. Daphne's duchess sister had decorated this room as a wedding gift to her sister when the Drydens married a few months earlier.

  The chamber looked far too elegant for so small a house on a Chelsea street that lacked prestige. Each of the chamber's tall casements was draped with silken draperies in royal blue, and a patterned carpet in the same royal blue featured gold stars.

  A multi-tiered gilt table stood between the windows with two gilt chairs covered in blue and gold silk on either side of it. Miss Huntington and the colonel sat in those chairs.

  Mama had always impressed upon Charlotte that under no circumstances was she ever to be alone indoors with a man. She had also impressed upon her daughter that men (excepting for Mr. Huntington) were vile, lustful creatures not to ever be trusted. Charlotte cast a furtive glance at the military man who sat just feet from her.

  So far, he was behaving in a most gentlemanly fashion. Even if he were one of those vile, lustful creatures Mama had warned her about, he wouldn't be trying to have his way with her when his friend and colleague, Captain Dryden, was due to walk through the door at any moment.

  "So, Miss Huntington, do you correspond regularly with your parents?"

  "Yes."

  They both sat silently. She realiz
ed the man beside her was trying to make polite conversation, and her monosyllabic reply was not in the least helpful. "This is their first winter there, and Mama has expressed a strong desire to flee back to England."

  He chuckled.

  "Have you ever been to St. Petersburg, Colonel?"

  "No. Have you?"

  "Not yet." She knew how disappointed her parents were that two seasons now she had failed to draw a single suitor. It was only a matter of time before Mama and Papa summoned their spinster daughter to live with them in frigid St. Petersburg. "It was their desire that I stay in London for the Season. Their many friends have been most hospitable about hosting me."

  By now the colonel would have realized that her Season had not been successful, and he would be pitying her. Which was totally embarrassing. If they were going to be spending the holiday together, though, he could not avoid learning about her misfortune.

  "The captain and Lady Daphne are the most delightful people I know," she continued.

  "We are blessed, Miss Huntington, to have them as friends, are we not?"

  "Indeed we are fortunate."

  Another silence fell between them like prickly blanket. She could tell he felt as awkward as she. "I suppose I shall have to go live with Mama and Papa, but I don’t look forward to it," she finally said.

  "I sympathize, Miss Huntington. It is easier for your father because he has a purpose, and being an ambassador is a worthy profession."

  She nodded. "He believes if he performs his duties in St. Petersburg admirably he may one day get one of the juicier plums."

  "Which, sadly, used to be Paris and Naples. Before that mad Corsican came along."

  "Surely this beastly war can't last forever."

  "We are fortunate to have Spain and Portugal as our allies."

  "Indeed."

  "Hopefully, the three nations—and Russia and Prussia—can conquer the Conqueror."

  "We must." She wondered if being posted in England bothered her companion. Most soldiers wanted to be where the danger was greatest. Lady Daphne said if it wasn't the Regent's specific desire that her husband stay in London, Captain Dryden would have happily returned to the Peninsula. Charlotte had often wondered if the Regent's command was to spare Lady Daphne from being widowed. The Regent was excessively fond of her.

  "I have great confidence in Wellington," the colonel said.

  "That is most reassuring—coming from a seasoned officer such as you." Uh oh. Would he be insulted, thinking she thought him old? Perhaps he wished to appear younger than his chronological years. Which made her try to determine his age. Her first impression was that he was the age of her father. . . which was? Well, she was nineteen, and Papa had been thirty when she was born, which would make her father nine and forty. No, this man was not as old as Papa.

  She flicked a hopefully covert gaze in his direction. Colonel Bond was perhaps a decade younger than her father. Which was still quite old.

  Perhaps the reason she had mentally linked him to her father was that his height—which was a bit under six feet—was the same as Papa's. Though he was considerably shorter than Captain Dryden, the colonel's body style was similar to the captain's. Both officers gave the appearance of being lean yet powerful. Like a panther. Both men were also possessed of dark hair.

  Prickly silence continued.

  Surely she wasn't so witless that she could not think of a single topic upon which they could converse. He had mentioned the Continent's formerly glittering capitals. "Have you ever been—before the current war, of course—to Paris or Naples?" she asked.

  He nodded. "I had the pleasure of being in both of those cities." His lengthy, dark lashes lowered. "I was fortunate enough to have been in Naples when Lord Nelson was there."

  She had never known anyone who'd ever actually met the great naval hero. "Did you get to meet him?"

  "No, but I did see him as he departed his ship. A lot of us were rather gawking at him. That was just after the Battle of Nile."

  She nodded somberly. "Papa let me come with them to the top floor of Childe's Bank with Lady Jersey to watch his funeral procession down the Thames. I was twelve, and I used up a lifetime supply of tears."

  He chuckled. "Why, you're just a babe, if you were only twelve in 1806!"

  Her eyes widened. "You thought I was older?"

  He shrugged.

  She suddenly realized why he would offer no further comment on the subject. They both knew how improper it was for them to be here together. Unchaperoned. How could Lady Daphne have even sent her off to his house—and asked her to wait for a response—knowing he was a bachelor?

  Miss Charlotte Huntington prayed that her mother never learned of her indiscretion.

  "So, is this your first Christmas away from your parents?"

  She nodded.

  "I should be gallant now and say I owe it your father—who was exceedingly kind to me—to stand in for him this Christmas, but I'm awfully afraid I haven't the least knowledge of fatherly duties."

  She hoped that didn't mean his talents ran in the same direction Mama said most men's did. According to Mama, men had a prodigious urge to . . . scatter their seed. At the very thought of it, color hiked up her cheeks.

  For some years now, Mama had warned her against the vile, lustful gender who would do or say anything to get beneath a lady's skirts.

  Miss Huntington had wondered what it was beneath those skirts to so attract vile, lustful creatures. That question was most inelegantly answered when she was sent to Miss Huffdon-Bingley's School for Young Ladies. It was remarkable how many of life's mysteries could be demystified by a chamber full of gaggling girls late at night. Miss Huffdon-Bingley would have been mortified if she ever listened to her students' nocturnal discourse.

  She heard the clopping of hooves on the street outside—which was a rare occurrence on this particular street. Keeping a coachman and stabling horses at a livery were very expensive endeavors, far from the reach of most of Daphne's shabby-genteel neighbors. Charlotte leapt to her feet and peered from the window. "It's not them," she announced, disappointment weighing on her words.

  "I wonder where they can be?"

  "It is most perplexing."

  "'Tis a pity that I sent my coach away."

  "Yes, it is."

  The afternoon grew darker and darker, and by four o'clock, night had come. And still there was no sign of Lady Daphne and Captain Dryden.

  The colonel got to his feet and faced her. "I fear they've forgotten us, Miss Huntington."

  "I cannot believe it, but you must be right. . . unless something dreadful has happened to them."

  "There is that. It is unlike Dryden to be forgetful."

  Now she stood. "We must go look for them!"

  "My dear lady, I cannot allow you to walk about the streets of Chelsea at night. It's far too dangerous. Surely you've heard of the footpads who will slit your neck for a shilling."

  "It can't be that far to your mews, and with a strong—armed—man such as you to protect me, I know I'll be as safe as in my father's drawing room."

  He eyed her somberly for a moment. "There is also the . . . ah, matter that it's most improper for you to be in a carriage with me without a chaperone."

  He didn't sound as if he could ever be vile or lustful. "If Captain Dryden vouches for you, I know you're a worthy man."

  "I vow to protect your person—as well as your virtue—with my life."

  That was the most gallant thing any male had ever said to her. She could swoon. If she were the swooning type.

  * * *

  Daphne's brows lowered. "What do you mean, it was stolen while the room was filled with people?"

  "Darling," Jack said, "why do we not have the Regent start at the beginning of last night's festivities?"

  The Regent nodded. "Yes, yes. That's what I shall do. Now let me see. . . I had more than two dozen people come here last night to wish them a happy Christmas before most of them leave for their country houses to celebr
ate the Lord's birthday."

  "We shall need all their names," Daphne said.

  "Yes, of course." The Regent nodded. "Though I completely trust every single person who was here. I spent the night recalling each person who sat in this chamber last night and asking myself if any of them were capable of harming either me or our country, and I truly believe each of them completely trustworthy."

  "What of your servants?" Jack asked. "Are any of them new?"

  "They have all been in my employ for many years and are all loyal. You will find that I compensate my servants far better than others."

  "It would help, Your Royal Highness, if you could give us some idea how the chamber was last night."

  "I've done even better. I have drawn you a diagram of the room." He bent to pick up some papers on the tea table a few feet in front of him, but he seemed to be having difficulty.

  Jack pounced to his feet. "Allow me." He handed the papers to the Regent.

  Meanwhile Daphne came to stand behind the Regent's chair and peer over his shoulder. The diagram showed every chair, sofa, or piece of furniture in the chamber, with a person's name affixed to each in tiny printing. Of course, Lady Hertford was seated next to the Regent. As always. And Lord Hertford was on the opposite side of the chamber, standing by the harpsichord.

  The Regent had even shown where the Madonna and Child statue was on a table that was centered in front of the fireplace. The Regent himself sat in the same place where he sat now, which was somewhat in the center of the chamber and squarely facing the Michelangelo—but from a distance of twenty feet or more.

  Jack too came to stand beside his wife and peer at the diagram.

  Daphne studied the names attached to each box on the diagram. She too had known most of them for much of her life. There was only one name with which she was not familiar. "Pray, Your Royal Highness, who is James Strickland?"

  "I must own, he's the only one who was here with whom I have not enjoyed a longstanding friendship. He came with Lord Harvane. Apparently he is a close friend. They both belong to White's, and you know how difficult it is to be accepted for membership there."