To call it a party would be a mistake. It wasn’t a celebration so much as an excuse to blow off steam. But when Hamish found an old phonograph and a collection of ragtime records in the corner of the solarium, there was no doubt the music changed things.
Maybe it was the scratchy sound of trumpets reverberating off the glass—maybe they were all a little drunk on the possibility (or perhaps the illusion) that this thing might actually work. But, eventually, Simon asked Gabrielle to dance, and proved he was surprisingly good. Angus challenged Hamish to balance a cricket bat on his chin for two minutes (which he did).
And, through it all, Kat sat on an old chaise lounge, watching the party. Hale sat on the other side of the room, watching her.
“So does he hate everyone, or am I special?” Kat didn’t have to turn. She could see Nick standing over her shoulder, reflected in the glass. He threw one leg over the chaise lounge and sank onto the cushion beside her. She felt suddenly conspicuous, as if there were entirely too much them and too little chair.
Hale looked away.
“You never did answer my question, you know,” Nick said. He took a sip from his drink. “This afternoon?” He cocked his head in Hale’s direction. “How long have you two been . . . together?”
Kat pulled her legs under her, farther from him. “Oh, a while,” she said, and then for reasons Kat would never know, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the memory.
There are stories thieves don’t tell—trade secrets, mostly. Or incriminating tales. Or mistakes too embarrassing to repeat. The story of Kat and Hale was none of those things, and yet it was one she never said aloud; at that moment she wondered why. She studied him across the room. He smiled back in a way that said, despite the music and distance, somehow he’d heard—somehow he was thinking the exact same thing.
Hamish’s right arm was around Angus’s waist as the two of them tangoed past.
“I still vote for Uncle Felix,” Hamish was saying.
“Did the man on that tape look like he had a bum leg to you?” Angus asked, his cheek pressed against his brother’s.
“Uncle Felix hurt his leg?” Kat asked, and Hamish shuddered.
“Alligators,” he said, stopping midstride. “Buggers are faster than they look.”
The Bagshaws both seemed to be studying her.
“Smile, Kat,” Angus told her. “It’s a good plan. Uncle Eddie couldn’t have done better.”
Hamish raised an imaginary glass. “To Uncle Eddie.”
Everyone echoed the toast, except for the boy beside her. “Who’s Uncle Eddie?”
Perhaps it was her imagination, but Kat could have sworn that the needle on the phonograph skipped. For a moment, everyone stopped dancing.
While the whole crew stared at Nick, Hale smirked at Kat, challenging her to describe the indescribable.
“Uncle Eddie is . . . my uncle.” Kat started like every good con starts, with a little bit of the truth.
Gabrielle added, “Our uncle.”
“Yes, Gabrielle,” Kat conceded. “Uncle Eddie is our grandfather’s brother. He is our great-uncle.” She gestured to herself and Gabrielle. “The real kind.”
“Way to rub it in, Kat,” Angus said with only a semi-mocking tone as he and his brother danced by. (Kat wasn’t sure who was leading.)
“The Bagshaws are sort of like . . .” Kat struggled with the words.
“Our grandfather worked with Eddie before he even moved to New York,” Angus explained.
“You ever hear of the Dublin Doxy Heist?” Hamish asked, eyes wide. “What about the time someone ransomed that little dog Queen Elizabeth was gonna breed all her other dogs with?”
“And then she got the wrong dog back?” his brother finished. Nick shook his head.
The brothers shrugged as if Nick were utterly beyond saving, and resumed their tango. Nick turned to Simon, unfazed. “How about you? How do you know this Uncle Eddie?”
Simon rubbed his hands together. “My dad had a sort of cash-flow problem when he was at MIT, and that’s how he met—”
“My grandfather,” Gabrielle interjected as she reached for Simon’s hands and pulled him to his feet.