Elliott dodged another drunken couple leaving the dance floor, and sent the apologetic gentleman on his way with a grin and a comradely slap on the back. Elliot didn't know him or the so-called lady with him, but he had long ago discovered that a tolerant geniality made him simultaneously well liked and forgettable.

He continued casually strolling the outskirts of the ballroom, a slightly inebriated fellow at loose ends. It's only me wandering about, just another useless offshoot of a noble family, beneath any special notice. He was as much background color as one of the potted palms.

Precisely the way he wanted it.

He had timed his arrival well, appearing somewhat late and well after the dreary receiving line where he would be forced to greet his host, yet early enough that the guests were still in and out quite actively and no one had actually asked for his invitation. Good thing, for he had no such thing on his person.

He doubted anyone at Lord Beardsley’s bawdy event would stick so closely to the niceties anyway. What a strange way to celebrate Christmas! It was almost as though the very notion of a reverential holiday spurred certain members of Society to renewed debauchery.

Tonight, rum punch ran freely and Elliot was certain he caught the scent of opium smoke now and again. It was a decadent display, full of brightly colored ladybirds with high hems and low necklines who attended to the needs of their high-ranking protectors with bawdy energy. All gathering about a great, festooned evergreen tree that reached easily to the next story.

Just like my schoolboy Christmas holidays...except, of course, not at all.

Elliott prided himself that he fit right in, youngest son of the youngest son of the Earl of Breckenridge, with a mountain of lordly uncles and cousins, all quite healthy, mind you, between him and any sort of future. As Lord Elliott Hughes, too highborn for real work, too late-born for any chance at advancement, he disappeared into the crowd of young men with more rank than sense, more time than brains and nothing to do with themselves but to overindulge.

“Marry well,” his father had advised before he passed away with as little fanfare as he'd lived. “Find an heiress who wants to be a lady.”

Elliott's mother hadn't had anything useful to add, as she died when he was born.

It wasn't very good advice. He wasn't inclined to marry some status-hungry steel-monger's daughter. A feminine shriek of gleeful shock and horror rose up from behind a potted palm in Elliot's path. He veered well around it.

Certainly none of the women here this evening were bride material.

So he carried on. He was living the life everyone expected of him, drinking and dancing and spending the allowance doled out by his dutiful but indifferent uncle, the current earl. A ball here, a horse-race there, a card game or two in between.

It would be enough to drive an intelligent fellow mad with his own uselessness—if that fellow hadn't come up with much better way to pass the time.

As he strolled, he glanced into one of the side rooms set apart for gentlemanly cards.

“Oh, look!” he murmured to himself. “Lord Beardsley is at the gaming tables. What a lovely time to take in that gracious view from the upper floor.” And find his lordship's study… and his lordship's strongbox!

Elliot slipped out of the ballroom as easily as he'd entered it.

No reason to remember him at all.

* * *

Lord Beardsley likely believed that his eight-foot stone wall would keep the riffraff out of his garden. Miss Amie Jackham begged to differ.

From her small rucksack she removed a simple grappling hook with a lightweight line woven of leather strips. After a glance up and down the dark and icy cobbled alleyway, she easily tossed the hook up to catch on the top of the wall. Large cylindrical stone spikes marched across the top, surely intended to be intimidating, or perhaps hinting at Lord Beardsley's self-deluded personal endowment. The spikes only aided her attempt.

Taking the line in her black-gloved grip, she ran nimbly up the vertical, hand over hand on the rope. Once on top she kicked the covering snow away and poised lightly, gripping the squat pedestal of one of the spikes between her feet as she pulled her line up after her. She tossed the line down the other side, and quickly followed it to the ground below.

Around her, the artistically placed boxwoods slumbered peacefully beneath a blanket of snow. It was the coldest winter in decades, people said. Amie had to agree. The snow was lovely, but the chill crept into her home and her bed and her bones. Also, the snow made her leave footprints.

No matter. She knew this part of the garden was invisible to the house beyond because she'd been in that house just this morning, checking the view from every window.

She smiled slightly at the memory. No one ever looked at chambermaids, particularly in a house filling up with guests.

The other maids had given her a few curious glances, but there were so many new arrivals in the house already that they hesitated to question her for fear she served someone important.

Now, confident that no one could see this dark corner of the garden from any of the tall windows of the house, Amie didn't hesitate to strip off her clothing. Off came her trousers and boyish shirt and vest, along with her grubby cap. Clad in nothing but a short chemise that came halfway down her thighs, she shivered as she pulled the last item from her rucksack and shook it out. The pale green silk gown had been cleverly folded so as not to wrinkle but Amie had to take care not to allow the hem to drag in the snow as she dressed.

The precautions paid off. Moments later she looked entirely different. The neatly folded boy's garb, arranged in order for speedy dressing later, went back into the rucksack. She concealed the waterproofed leather bag behind a tree.

The line still dangled from the grappling hook but in the shadowed corner she doubted anyone would notice it. Best to leave it there. She might not be able to leave through the front door!

She had no mirror so she could only hope that the cap had protected her intricately braided hairstyle from her vertical gymnastics. It felt fine but she was perhaps not the best judge of fashionable hairstyles.

At any rate, this is not the sort of ball where a woman's hair stayed tightly up. She paused, wondering if she ought to be a little more mussed to fit in. Never mind. Stop thinking, she told herself.

Light on your feet, quick on the pull, nothing on your mind. Just as Papa had always told her.

She was a Jackham, born of a long line of night-burglars and jewel thieves. Nerves had no place in her life.

She stepped forward confidently, trotting toward the house with her skirts daintily lifted, nothing but a guest rushing back to the fun of the party.

Up the stone steps, across the terrace, through the glass doors, just stroll inside the house as if I belong.

There were already many guests visible through the ballroom terrace doors, so no one took notice of her. By the time she arrived inside she was slightly flushed and panting. Nothing odd there, just another woman fresh off the rowdy dance floor. She reached a drink off a servant's tray and stepped into the crowd.

Lord Beardsley's ballroom was very grand, and lavishly decorated for the event. Evergreen garlands and draperies of golden silk festooned every surface. More silk was hung to create little alcoves where one might find a fainting couch, a decanter of whiskey, or tiny cakes of opium on a hookah tray.

Amie saw that she timed her arrival well. Any earlier, the other guests might've been more observant, social hounds that they were. Any later, the party might be growing out of control. Already she spotted a few women wearing richly decadent gowns that seemed rather the worse for wear. One creature had her bodice ripped wide open at that moment. The woman only guffawed and tossed back her glass, breasts exposed.

Amie kept her revulsion to herself. Not her sort of party at all. She might be a thief, but she was still a lady!

She continued around the ballroom, slipping unnoticed through the press of guests who laughed a little too loudly, stood a little too close, or swayed a little too loosely in the dance.

She wasn't the prettiest woman in the room, nor the plainest, nor the best dressed, nor the worst. Utterly forgettable, precisely as planned.

On the other side of the great ballroom a staircase arched up to the doorways on the next floor. That was where she needed to be.

A tricky moment. That curving stair was intentionally in full view of the party, intended for grand entrances and exits.

Amie looked around her. She wondered if she could—

“Oh, there you are!” She widened her eyes fervently, gave a loopy grin, and clasped the muscled arm of an overdressed dandy staggering past. He was a pimply, sweaty-looking fellow, but he was good and drunk, which was all she required.

He stopped to look blankly at her, slowly focusing his gaze on her face. Then her breasts. But to his credit, his eyes did eventually return to her face. He smiled back, although he looked a bit confused. “Yes!” he said gamely. “Here I am!”

Amie leaned her bosom into his arm and squeezed his bicep. His jacket was padded. He likely had an arm like a chicken leg beneath his stuffed sleeve. That was all right with her. She didn't need a muscled oaf. She only needed someone who was still more or less upright.

“I thought you'd forgotten,” she scolded playfully, giving him a little pout. “You promised you'd show me the conservatory.” She batted her eyelashes.

He just stared at her. “But...it's winter.”

Good heavens, what a clod.

She wasn't much of a performer, to be sure. She exaggerated her pout slightly, then more. Perhaps she wasn't convincing enough. She toyed with his cravat as she went on tiptoe, sliding her body up his side. “You told me that you would take me to the conservatory because you wanted to see me naked in the moonlight!” she shouted over the den.

The notion that he might actually have sexual satisfaction sometime in the near future seem to pierce the idiot's drunken fog. He began to nod emphatically. “Yes! Yes, I remember! I would never forget that! The conservatory, yes, let's go to the conservatory!”

Amie giggled sickeningly and then tugged his arm toward the arching stair. “It's this way, silly!”

“Ah, ah, yes! This way!” He stumbled along with her and even managed to pick up the pace on the steps.

At the top of the stairs, the hallway led off in two directions. One way would take them to the front stair and front door, where still more guests were arriving. The other led deeper into the house.

Amie gave a little yelp and pushed the dandy away, uttering the magic words. “There's my lover! I think he saw us!”

Wizardly words, indeed. In a flash, her companion had vanished, likely gone back down the stairs to lose himself in the crowd below. She ought to write a pamphlet—How to Make a Man Disappear.

She was well shut of him, for her only goal had been to appear as just another tipsy demi-rep looking for a dark corner.

No reason to remember at her all.

* * *

Elliot silently closed the door behind him and lifted the candle-stub he'd lighted from a hallway wall sconce. The host's study was as ostentatious as his ballroom. Lord Beardsley was known as a libertine who denied himself nothing. Hence the plush carpet, the gleaming rosewood desk and the priceless art.

The house had thick walls. Elliot could barely detect the rousing country-dance tune now being played in the ballroom. He could likely fire a brace of pistols in here and no one in the house would know.

He went directly to the desk and sat in the chair. Then he reached beneath the inlaid lip of the desktop and slid his fingers to the right. There should be a—

His index finger touched a tiny brass button. A spring-loaded segment of the wooden trim popped into his hand. Within lay a heavy iron key.

Elliot hefted it in his hand and turned to a large box resting in a corner of the study. It had been brightly painted with pastoral scenes with some intention of making it look like a decorative piece, but when Elliot touched it, he could feel the cold iron beneath the thin skin of paint.

The strongbox was a good one. Solid iron, strapped with bands of more iron. Beardsley was so sure of its solidity that he'd not even bothered to carefully conceal it.

The lock was good as well. Elliot smiled. There was a large, obvious keyhole on the front. It was meaningless, a distraction. Elliot pulled a small lock-pick set from his cuff and turned his attention to a tiny hole concealed in the painted design of a wheel of a hay wagon. It required a tiny key that Elliot happened to know never left his lordship's watch fob.

Someone would have to know just where to look for that inconspicuous keyhole.

That someone would be Elliot.

He quickly sprang the miniature lock, which caused a two-inch square painted door to open. Behind that door was the large keyhole meant for the heavy key Elliot had found concealed in the desk. Elliot turned the key, listened to the thick bolts slide open and swung the weighty lid of the chest upward.

He grinned. “That will teach you to fire your faithful butler without reference because he skimmed a bit off the top of the household budget, you miserly wanker.”

Not only had the furious butler spoken freely about the strongbox, he'd given Elliot some very interesting notions about might be found within.

The interior was filled almost entirely with stacked folios, each at least an inch thick with documents. Beneath those was a small wooden casket.

Elliot knelt on the floor, his candle planted in a dollop of wax on a small side table holding brandy and glasses. He gave a quick sort to the folios, making piles, scanning each page in the way he'd been taught—not so much reading as drifting his eyes over it for an instant, allowing a few key phrases to leap out.

Deeds and provenance for estate property and art treasures? Useless. A set of accounts, including income from Beardsley's estate...and then another, nearly identical set of accounts, that added up quite differently.

His lordship was keeping double books. Not of interest to Elliot, but he would be sure to alert the King's Remembrancer about Beardsley's rather monumental income tax evasion.

Finally, one slender folio revealed all that any Crown spy could wish. Several coded pages, which appeared to be two sides of a secret correspondence, presumably letters to his lordship and his lordship's own copies of his replies. The code was nonsense to Elliot's eyes, but no matter. He wasn't the one charged with finding the cipher. His job was to make a quick, neat copy and put the originals back where they belonged.

He used his lordship's own paper and ink. He was fast at his work, as were all the operatives of the Liar's Club. He was just one of a well-trained ring of thieves, infiltrators, code-breakers and yes, even the odd assassin or two.

A quarter of an hour later his careful copies were drying to one side while he bound up the folios, winding their cords precisely as he'd found them. Lord Beardsley wound clockwise, with a half-twist on the third round.

Elliot placed half the folios back in the iron box, the original left-hand stack in the very order in which he'd found them.

The wooden jewel casket he saved for last. Without really looking inside, he dumped the contents into his large, plain handkerchief.

Then he pulled a lacy lady's hanky from his pocket and laid it in the jewel casket.

The Liars were taking advantage of the fresh notoriety of the mysterious Vixen, concealing their activities in the wave of jewel thefts. Besides, as James, Elliot's immediate superior, said, “The coffers can always use a bit extra—all in the cause of national defense and whatnot.”

There had been some recent activity in a once-defunct ring of highborn traitors. Every Liar who with a hand at lock-picking was being stuffed into a flash coat and weskit and sent out to infiltrate Society's ballrooms—and a few other rooms as well.

The timing was excellent.

Too excellent?

Elliot paused in his rifling to look down at the stones twinkling in the pile. A glamorous, mysterious thief hits grand house after grand house. A spy ring, led by some incredibly powerful people, needs to peruse a few secret files in a few grand houses. No one had ever seen the Vixen. Other than the trademark handkerchief, Elliot wasn't even sure how Society could be so sure the thief was female...

Unless someone with a stable of primarily male spies had needed the distraction of a female suspect?

“Knots within knots,” Elliot muttered. He was a loyal sort and a patriot, but even he could only trust the brilliant, devious minds of his superiors so far! He could only hope that all his assignments worked in aid of the Crown and leave the deep thinking to others.

He replaced the jewel casket beneath the right-hand stack of folios, folded the bauble-stuffed handkerchief tightly and tucked the flattened parcel into the right breast pocket of his coat.

His copies, he folded down to half page and was preparing to fold them down to a size he could conceal in his cravat. No guard ever thought to search a man's cravat.

A floorboard creaked beyond the door of the study. Elliot didn't bother to turn or even hesitate. With a few swift motions, he had the strongbox shut tight again and the key back in the hidden slot of the desk.

With his copies stuffed roughly into his coat, he turned to the door with a loose drunken grin and bit of a stagger.