The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Pulley Natasha

Author:Pulley, Natasha [Pulley, Natasha]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781620408353
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-04-20T18:45:41+00:00

SIXTEEN

A crash came from downstairs. Both of her brothers were at home. Since it was six o’clock, the servants’ dinner hour, neither the butler nor Alice was about the house to scold them. Grace sighed and checked the deck of playing cards again.

That morning, she had gone into town with Alice and bought two identical packs of cards. After removing the ace of spades from one and inserting it into the other, she had replaced the tampered version in its package and resealed it. It was a simple test, but having thought about it all Sunday afternoon, it seemed like the best way. Anything more complicated and Thaniel’s friend would know that something was going on. The results would be clear. If he took out the extra ace before they played, it would go a long way to proving Thaniel’s hypothesis. If he did not, it was safe to assume he was a fraud. He was a watchmaker, and Grace had never met a mechanically minded person who could leave a mistake in place. He would take the extra card out if he knew it was there. He had no reason not to.

Beside the mirror, the barometer clicked around to ‘rain’ as the mercury column shrank. She watched it for a few seconds, then looked back through the open door. The corridor was empty; Alice had only just gone down to the kitchen. They had agreed to leave in twenty minutes. Grace slid the tampered cards into the pocket of her summer coat and draped it over her arm. It would be interesting to see how the watchmaker reacted to an early and unchaperoned arrival.

She was at the bottom of the stairs when her brothers charged past. They were not much younger than she was, nineteen and twenty-one, but whenever they were on leave, they regressed to childhood.

‘Out of the way, out of the way!’ shouted James. He was carrying a rugby ball.

Grace flattened herself against the wall. ‘You are not playing rugby in the house.’

‘No, we haven’t got enough men. Do you want to play?’ William asked, beaming. He was the youngest, and Grace suspected that it was he who had acquired the rugby ball. The game had been unheard of when Grace was small, but William had played it at Eton when it first became popular, and now he spoke of it in a reverent tone he normally saved only for women and rifles. Since she had once been with him to see the Harlequins play at Hampstead, she had tried to convince them both to take up cricket instead. Cricket had rules: one was not allowed to stamp on the head of another player and pass it off as enthusiasm.

‘No,’ she said. She peered past them into the drawing room. ‘Did you break that vase?’

‘Oh, probably. James! Here!’

It was, she decided, nothing to do with her. She was busy.

Outside, the heat was as viscous and sticky as honey. It rippled along the marble fronts of the townhouses. As she walked, summer coat still over her arm, the deck of cards was a sharp shape in one pocket.

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