Surprisingly, everything did go perfectly to plan. Emma and Amie had slipped unnoticed into the Earl of Chadwick’s house early in the afternoon. They'd realized that the best place to prepare in the home of the childless earl was in the nursery.

The room hadn't taken long to find. The two of them spent their time carefully pinning and powdering Amie's hair until it was as white as Marie Antoinette's wig, with not a betraying red strand to be seen. Emma even powdered Amie's eyebrows using a bit of sugar water to make it stick.

Once they'd dressed Amie completely, her stays tied, her shoes buckled and her thievery tools cleverly concealed, Amie sent Emma on her way. Well before the party began, her sister blew her a kiss before she strode purposely out the door carrying an empty dress box as if she had every right in the world to be where she was.

Now, hours later, Amie stepped into the ballroom. The earl's house was much grander than Lord Beardsley's. The ballroom truly glittered and instead of just a few musicians, there was a full orchestra playing in the mezzanine. Truly, she could have fit the Jackham house and entire garden into the room!

The ball itself was far more elaborate and respectable than the one where she'd first seen the Liar. The dance floor was quite full already and there were quite a few women in bustled gowns and powdered hair, so Amie's costume wasn't even unusual.

She had to wonder if they'd gotten theirs out of the attic, too. Somehow she doubted it.

Steady on. Through the ballroom, up the opposing stairs and into the house. She decided she must be looking for a particular lady. She plucked a name from a conversation as she moved past. Lady Mantleworth. Should she be stopped, she would lower her intelligence, flutter inconsequentially, and claim she had become lost looking for Lady M.

On her way, she saw quite a few gentlemen give her a glance, and then another, without ever managing to raise their gaze to take an actual look at her face. Perhaps the bosom would come in handy after all.

She had marked the location of the study earlier in the day, as they looked for the nursery. She strode confidently toward it—no, wait. She was supposed to be quite silly, wasn't she? So she drifted toward it, moving vaguely as if she'd already begun celebrating her Christmas Eve.

The study door was locked. She leaned against it, fanning herself, as another couple walked down the hall from the guest wing toward the ballroom. When they had passed, she pulled two pearl-tipped lock picks from her piled and stiffened hair, careful not to dislodge any of the actual pins, and had the study door open in the blink of an eye.

Once inside the study, the strong box was not immediately obvious. Then she saw a large cabinet the size of a wardrobe between two bookshelves. Could it be inside there? It would have to be a sturdy piece of furniture to hold an iron strong box, but surely the earl could afford any sort of furniture he liked.

The cabinet also had a small lock which gave her picks no trouble whatsoever. Amie's swung the doors open wide and blinked.

This was no common strongbox. The grand Armada chest before her was as tall as she and thrice as wide. Clearly the earl intended to intimidate any would-be thieves.

There was just one thing. The large iron case, strapped with more iron, covered in iron-upon-iron ornamentation, was just like a sketch in one of Papa's journals.

The standard style iron Armada chest is a three-lock combination to be done in a specific order. The first lock exposes the second and the second lock exposes the third. Each lock operates its own set of tumblers. A three lock system will in fact operate six iron bolts that hold the door closed.

To Amie and her sisters, that paragraph was like a nursery rhyme they had learned before they were out of braids. She almost felt a fondness for the great monstrous chest, as if it were an old friend she had not expected to see again.

Three key holes. The first one would be small and hidden. From a wide leather garter strapped around her thigh, Amie took out Papa's ring of keys.

The ring itself was as large as an orange and held eighteen keys. It weighed a great deal. Ruby had wrapped it round many times with ribbon to spare Amie's soft skin from the teeth of the keys and to keep them from jingling as she moved. Amie unwrapped the festive red ribbon and tucked it into her bodice to use again when she was done.

The first of the delicate keys, of which there were six, did not work. Amie took a breath, calmed her nerves, and reminded herself to breathe.

“Light on your feet, quick on the pull, nothing on your mind.”

Finally, the first lock slid to the turn of her wrist. Even as the bolt drew back, another small decoration flipped aside and revealed the second keyhole. Amie selected another size of key. Breathe.

At the turn of the key, several inches to the right another bit of decoration drew back and exposed the largest keyhole yet.

She took another breath and began to try the largest keys. On the ninth and last key, she was yet unsuccessful. Her hand began to tremble. It wasn't going to work. It was all for nothing. She was risking her life for a final score to save her family and she was going to fail. Again.

The key would not move. She dropped her forehead to the cold iron of the door and squeezed her eyes shut tight. Try again.

She started at the beginning with the large keys, this time moving each one in and out slightly hoping something would catch. Nothing happened. She tried the ninth key again. It had to be this one. But nothing moved.

Locks are very simple mechanisms, pet. There simply aren't that many arrangements for the teeth to take. I could make a million pounds tomorrow if I could invent a lock that fit only one key in the entire world.

Amie quelled her rising panic and stepped back to eye the door with a narrowed gaze.

And then she remembered. A lock in the center of the door most likely manages vertical locks into the top and bottom of the strongbox.

Of course! The vertical bolts were heavy and turning the lock would require lifting a shaft of iron by at least three inches. Amie took the key in both hands and turned hard. The iron bruised her fingers but the key began to move. Encouraged, she went up on tiptoe and put all her weight into the twist of the key.

She felt the bolts slide on their tracks and then, at last, clunk into place.

She'd done it. She reached out a hand to the heavy handle and hauled the great iron door open.

Surprisingly, the strong box looked nearly empty. There was a large jewel casket on a shelf above a tooled leather sack nearly the size of her fist on the floor.

She untied the top of the sack to peer inside and caught her breath at the sheen of the gold guineas that filled it near to bursting. Liquid assets!

A shiver went through her, a thrill of relief. Gold spent everywhere. No need to negotiate with pawnbrokers. In a few hours their bags could be packed and the ladies Jackham would never more be hiding in the London shadows, in constant fear of discovery.

Quickly, she rifled through the jewels, choosing diamonds and pearls. No significant emeralds, thank you very much!

She hiked up her gown and tugged her padded bustle sideways in order to reach into it. Ruby had sewn a clever purse into the padding. The leather bag and the jewels went inside. Amie dropped her skirts with a nod of fierce satisfaction. No one would find it there.

Before she closed the strongbox, she spotted something on a high shelf. Reaching it down, she found a single leather-bound folio. She opened it to glance through the pages. It was nonsense, gibberish.

It was code.

Furthermore, she found tucked into the back of the folio a stack of French land grants. She had enough French language to make her widen her eyes at the amounts. The paper franc had devalued in recent years, but land grants were forever.

The Earl of Chadwick was taking bribes from the French? Such a collection could be innocent, but then why hide it? And code? Code was always suspicious.

She gazed at the small stack of paper, perhaps twenty sheets of it, covered front and back with nonsense and then locked away in what was probably the most secure strongbox in London belonging to a very important earl.

Highly suspicious indeed, my lord.

Clearly, the earl was a very mistrustful person—and now that he'd been robbed, he would only increase his already formidable security. No one would ever lay eyes on these particular documents again, she would wager.

She bit her lip. She might hate the Liars for what they had done to Papa, but she knew they served a purpose. That was one of the things that made them so frightening—their indelible loyalty to the good of the Crown, no matter the cost.

If she managed to get her sisters safely out of the city tonight, might she be able to see this information then fell into the right hands? Not that she would ever lift a finger to help those animals, but she was an Englishwoman and a patriot even so. She would be helping her country, not the Liars.

On impulse, she rolled the documents tightly enough to fit into the compartment in her bustle. That left little room for anything else.

She picked up the small leather bag and pushed it into her bodice under one breast. She took up the jewels. These she stuffed beneath the other breast to rest cold and lumpy beneath it. Her bosom then levitated higher than ever. Blast it.

Within moments the study was just as she had found it. She patted a strand of hair into place, smoothed the silk of her gown, adjusted her bodice as well as possible, lifted her chin, and stepped out of study into the hallway beyond.

First she would save her family, then she would worry about the Crown.

“Good evening, Miss Jackham.”