Three Days Before the Auction

Greymore Castle, England

The Earl of Greymore’s Christmas house party was nearly as old as the earldom itself. For hundreds of years, it had been the site of scandal and drama and more than one heiress compromised beneath the mistletoe by an impoverished nobleman who was more than willing to take the girl—and her dowry—off of her father’s hands.

But this year’s party had a flavor and a feel like no one could remember. There were, for instance, the two new footmen who somehow managed to set the drawing room of the family wing on fire and forced the evacuation of the earl’s private chambers for more than eight hours. There was the new maid who, while presumably cleaning the earl’s office, was drawn into a screaming match with the future countess over the location of an antique armoire and whether or not it should be moved to reveal whatever was behind it.

And, of course, there were the guests. Aside from the normal collection of lords and ladies from all over England, this year the guest list included the usual rush of dowager duchesses and aging viscounts, a few members of the landed gentry and a variety of young misses, each of whom hoped to catch the eye of the earl’s heir and eventually become a countess in her own right.

But the most troubling thing, it seemed, was the weather.

Gray clouds moved over the winter sun and the wind turned crisp, and eventually even the fires in the big rooms were not enough to fight the chill.

Perhaps that was why Kat’s hands were cold and her head was hurting. Every time she smelled pine needles she wanted to sneeze. And every time she felt the anger that was brewing inside of Hale she wanted to scream.

But she could do neither. So Kat simply settled for looking harder.

There were a dozen eggs in the kitchen—all fake. A very good replica was displayed on the landing at the top of the west stairwell, and at least twenty eggs—in all shapes and sizes—adorned the Christmas tree that the staff spent the better part of the day erecting in the grand hall.

Hamish and Angus each found a stash of eggs beneath the mattresses of the family bedrooms and an almost comically large egg lived in the center of a dormant fountain in the formal gardens.

The sky darkened and the guests drank tea and Kat and her friends looked.

And looked.

Until Kat pushed her way into one of the storerooms off the kitchen and feared that she could look no more.

When a pair of strong arms snaked around Kat’s stomach and pulled her back, she might have fought—once upon a time. But Kat the Burglar had changed, it seemed. Because all she did was sink into the embrace and feel warm for the first time that day.

“Any luck?” Hale’s breath was warm against Kat’s ear. His lips brushed against her in a whisper of a kiss.

“No.” Kat forced herself to pull away and turn, look up at him. She didn’t like what she saw. “What’s wrong?”

Hale ran a hand through his thick hair, then studied the dim room, the shelves lined with flour and potatoes. For a moment, it was like she wasn’t even there.

“Does the earl seem sane enough to plan this?” Hale asked, his voice low.

Kat shook her head. “No. I seriously doubt Irina would be messing with him if he were. She’s always gone after the low-hanging fruit.”

Hale nodded, then ran a finger along the stacks of table linens that covered one shelf. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

Even in the dim room, Kat was aware of Hale’s light fading. When he’d first heard that one of Hazel’s charities had been conned, he’d been afire. Now rage was being replaced by something colder. Something darker. The weather wasn’t the only thing that was changing.

“Angus and Hamish found five more eggs,” Kat told him.

“I was wondering what that crash was,” Hale said.

Kat shrugged. “The portico off the library wasn’t as stable as it looked.”

“I see.” Hale nodded.

“They’re all fake, Hale. We’ve found almost a hundred. Every single one of them fake.”

“Do you think the earl’s lost it?”

“The egg or his mind?” Kat asked.

“Either,” Hale said. “Both?”

“It could have been an honest mistake. There are so many fakes lying around here, maybe he got confused and sent the wrong egg to London?” Kat tried, but Hale only cocked an eyebrow.

“When was the last time you and I met someone honest?”

He was right, of course, but something in the back of Kat’s mind kept bothering her, and Kat couldn’t quite pinpoint what. “Elizabeth Evans is honest.”

Hale’s smile, when it came, was almost sad. “And someone sent Bobby to her door.”

“Yeah,” Kat said, and she knew that was it—the one fact that really mattered: if the earl had made an honest mistake no one would have ever dangled an Egg of the Magi beneath the nose of one of the world’s premiere art thieves.

So Hale nodded slowly. “Not a mistake,” he said.

Kat nodded. “Not a mistake.”

Someone had sent a fake to London and then set Kat’s father on its scent. Someone wanted—no needed—that egg to be stolen, and even though Kat knew why she didn’t know who, and Kat had long ago learned to dislike unanswered questions.

“Hale, what if—”

“Oh, excuse me!”

Kat turned at the sound of the voice, not entirely surprised to see Lady Georgette in the door of the pantry, looking as if ladies frequently examined the cramped closets of their ancestral homes.

“Was there something you were looking for, Mr. Hale?” She blushed prettily as she asked and pushed a piece of blond hair behind her ear.

“No. I was just…admiring the view.” He turned to the long narrow window that looked out on the woods that circled the house and dominated the grounds.

“The view?” Lady Georgette said. She wasn’t shy about sliding her gaze onto Kat, as if she knew exactly what teenage billionaires liked to admire in small closets. “Then might I suggest the music room? The gardens were designed to be viewed from the windows there.”

“What an excellent suggestion,” Hale said. “Whatever would we do without you, Lady Georgette? Your father is lucky to have such a gracious hostess.”

“You are too kind, sir.”

Hale bowed over her hand, then slipped out the door. But before Kat could follow, she found her way blocked.

“Scooter Hale is a very wealthy man,” Lady Georgette said as if that were some kind of secret.

“He’s seventeen,” Kat corrected even though she knew it wasn’t the smart call, the savvy play. But even Kat felt the need to be stupid sometimes. It was little consolation to know that Hale had that effect on most females.

“He is a powerful man,” Lady Georgette went on as if she hadn’t heard. And perhaps she hadn’t. She just eased closer, backing Kat into the corner. “And a handsome man,” she concluded as if that weren’t the worst kept secret in the world.

“If you’re expecting me to argue with you, you’re going to be disappointed,” Kat told her, but Lady Georgette talked on.

“The Hales are a very old family. A very powerful family. Scooter’s great-grandmother was a lady-in-waiting to the queen with my great-grandmother. Did you know?”

“No,” Kat said, truthfully, though she wasn’t surprised.

“He’s in line for a title. Did you know that?” Lady Georgette said, then laughed. “Of course you didn’t. Why should the sixth in line to the Duke of Clayton answer to you?”

“How nice for him,” Kat said. “Maybe five people will die. Wouldn’t that be swell?” Kat said, but Lady Georgette never wavered. She certainly never cared what the too-short, too-young, too-American girl might say on the subject of dukedoms.

“Dukes’ heirs might dabble with the help, Katarina,” Lady Georgette said. “They do not marry it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Lady Georgette,” Kat said with a smile. “But I’m a little young for marriage. So is he, as a matter of fact.”

“Great families make great alliances,” the girl talked on. “The Hales and the Fitzsimmonses are great families. Do you think it’s a coincidence that my father donated the egg to a Hale charity? Do you think it’s happenstance that he’s here?”

It wasn’t rational; it wasn’t logical, but Kat felt the words like a slap.

“Scooter Hale is going to marry me,” Lady Georgette told Kat. “This is how these things work. My father isn’t going to live forever, and he aims to see me settled.” She looked Kat up and down. “I’m willing to settle for Scooter Hale.”

“You should totally start by calling him Scooter, then. Trust me. He loves it.”

Kat wanted to laugh, but Lady Georgette didn’t think anything was funny.

“That egg is going to buy me the Hale heir, and I’m not going to let someone like…”—she looked Kat up and down again—“…you…stop me.”

Kat was no lady. She was no cultured heiress or rare beauty. No. She was just the girl who had crawled through W. W. Hale V’s window and into his life at a time when he had no friends and no family other than Hazel—no world at all beyond his gilded cage. She had given him all three, but then Hazel died and gave him the literal and figurative keys to that cage—to the entire kingdom—and a part of Kat had always wondered if someday he might use them to finally walk away from her.

But she didn’t dare say so.

“So your dad got you a billionaire for Christmas. That’s nice. I’d offer my congratulations, but, as you said, I’m just the help.”

Hale would scold her if he heard her say it—even here, even now, in the middle of a con. But there was a part of Kat, deep down, that might have even thought it was true if she ever allowed herself to think about such things—if she could stop running, working, grifting long enough to wonder if she was really going to get away with stealing W. W. Hale V.

But Georgette didn’t seem appeased. She didn’t seem angry anymore though, either, so she just huffed and turned and left. Kat stayed among the groceries and the linens for a long time, watching ice collect on the narrow window, not knowing whether she should laugh or scream.

“There you are.” Gabrielle’s voice sliced through the silence of the cold stairwell in one of the older parts of the castle.

So far, Kat had searched the armory, the wine cellar and a large, stone room she was fairly certain had once been a dungeon. She’d found spiders and dust along with a great many chains and some very questionable stains on the floor, but no eggs. Not even fake ones.

And Kat could feel the sun setting and time running out.

“Maybe we need a metal detector. A big one. Maybe—”

“Kat, stop. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Kat snapped. She didn’t mean to and she felt awful as soon as she let the words fly free, but it was too late to take them back. “What’s wrong is this house is really about six houses crammed together over the past six centuries. What’s wrong is that our esteemed host wasn’t content to own just one Egg of the Magi. No. He had to own it and pretty much every replica ever made. What’s wrong is that the auction is in three days, and we don’t have an egg to auction!”

“So we sell a fake,” Gabrielle said with a shrug. “It’s not like we don’t have plenty to choose from, and it’d be easy enough to swap it out for the real one once we find it.”

“And what if we never find it?” Kat said the words that had been haunting her for days. “What if the buyer has the egg authenticated before he takes possession and it gets out that the charity knowingly auctioned off a forgery.”

“Kat?”

“What if Interpol finally realizes that my dad stole from a London charity? I don’t think the ‘I had to do it to save my daughter’s boyfriend’ defense is gonna fly.”

“Kat!” Gabrielle’s voice echoed off of the cold stones and Kat finally felt her heart slow down. “Feel better? Okay. Now are you going to tell me what’s really wrong?”

In her young life, Kat had misled cops and bankers and jewelers and even the occasional nun. But Kat had never, ever been able to lie to Gabrielle.

So she blurted, “I’m pretty sure Lady Georgette is going to marry Hale.”

“Does Hale know this?”

“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter. She’s going to marry him and then kill the Duke of Clayton and five of his heirs just so she can be a duchess.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Gabrielle said. “We don’t want to give my mother any ideas.”

Kat might have laughed—she might have smiled—if this had been any other job, but the seconds on the clock were passing much too quickly. Their window was closing, and once it was gone she couldn’t help but worry that a part of Hale might be lost forever.

“Tell me what you need,” Gabrielle said.

“We need time. We need to find the egg. We need…” Kat let her voice trail off as she ran a finger along the mortar between the ancient stones. “A miracle.”

Gabrielle looked out one of the long, skinny windows over the pristine grounds. She could have been a medieval lady of the manor, taking up a bow to defend her home from marauders, so intent was her focus.

“Miracles can be arranged.”

After all, it was the season.