The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas

Author:Sherry Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Eleven

Livia had suggested that Mr. Marbleton dress up as a woman for his interview with the staffing company—that way, if they were both hired, they’d be able to work side by side. But he declined.

“Alas, my disguise is good but too casual. For a stroll on a busy street, where everyone’s attention is elsewhere, or for an encounter that would only last a few seconds, it might serve. But it wouldn’t survive close scrutiny, and I don’t know that we won’t face such before we are let into the château.”

His words proved prescient.

Livia, Mrs. Watson, and Mr. Marbleton all passed the initial round of selection. Livia was surprised, although they looked convincing enough. Mrs. Watson was an expert at staging characters and a quick trip to a less affluent arrondissement’s secondhand shops had supplied her with enough clothes and other accoutrements to attire and style them at the correct level of impoverishment: needy enough to stoop to menial labor, but not so destitute as to lack all respectability.

And they sounded convincing enough, Livia with her Alsatian accent, Mr. Marbleton with his slightly throaty inflections of Provence, and Mrs. Watson, the chameleon, now speaking French with a Spanish accent, pretending to be an unhappy widow stranded in Paris.

Still, Livia hadn’t believed that they would all make it through to the next round. It would be too much luck, and she, not being accustomed to too much luck, found it unsettling.

But bits of conversation between those who worked at the staffing agency, with the opening and closing of doors, drifted to her ears. And even though they were speaking too fast for her to make out every word, she grasped enough of what they were saying—and of the urgency and franticness of their tone—to realize that the agency was far more short-staffed than they’d let on.

Apparently they had been losing people from their roster either to other agencies or to permanent employment. With the foreign dignitary taking up most of what remained of their personnel, they were scrambling to find suitable servants for the Château Vaudrieu ball. And now, at the very last minute, Château Vaudrieu decided to ask for temporary staff for the reception the next evening, when the agency already had two other functions to man.

But this state of chaos calmed Livia’s jitters: It wasn’t that they were too lucky, but that the agency was too desperate.

At about eleven in the morning, two hours after they first arrived, those who had been selected for the first round were herded into a room to be looked over by representatives from Château Vaudrieu.

Three men entered and walked among ranks of candidates.

Livia had always thought herself not particularly well respected. And she still believed she was correct in that assessment. But the slights and veiled disdain a not especially popular, not especially agreeable, and not especially solvent woman received on the marriage mart was nothing compared to the open rudeness she’d experienced this morning.

The sense of absolutely replaceability she’d felt, when she’d been

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