caroled, “Charlotte, what on earth—lord, gel, I told you to wait for me. I suppose you knew it would break my poor old heart parting with my b-baubles, and thought you’d spare me?”
I stared. Eve Gardiner came sweeping through the shop, beaming like I was the apple of her eye. She had on the same print housedress she’d worn this morning, wrinkled and threadbare, but she had stockings and a pair of respectable pumps; her gnarled hands were hidden by darned kid gloves, and she’d tucked her straggling hair up under a vast, once-stylish hat with half an osprey pinned to the crown. She looked, to my utter astonishment, like a lady. An eccentric lady, maybe, but a lady.
Leaning discreetly in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest, Finn gave an almost invisible smile.
“Oh, I shall be sorry to part with these,” Eve sighed, patting my pearls like a dog and turning an aloof smile on the pawnbroker. “South Sea pearls, you know, from my d-dearly departed husband.” A handkerchief dabbed to her eye, and it was all I could do to keep my chin from hitting the floor. “And the emerald, that’s from India! Came from Cawnpore, far back in my family, my dear grandfather under Q-Q—under Queen Victoria. Blowing up sepoys, and good riddance to the little brown devils.” Her voice dripped Mayfair elegance. “Now, examine that luster under your glass again, and let’s hear your real price, my good man.”
His eyes were flicking over her meticulously mended gloves, the wobbling osprey. The picture of threadbare gentility; an English lady on hard times, come to pawn her jewels. “Some provenance, madam? Some proof of—”
“Yes, yes, I’ve got it here somewhere.” Eve thumped an enormous handbag onto the counter, sending the jeweler’s glass scattering. “There—no, that’s not it. My eyeglasses, Charlotte—”
“In your bag, Grandmother,” I weighed in, finally managing to squeeze some words past my astonishment.
“I thought you had them. Do check that bag. No, hold this. Is this it? No, that’s the bill for that Chinese shawl, let me see . . . Provenance, it must be here . . .”
Pieces of paper cascaded over the pawnbroker’s counter. Eve plucked through each one like a magpie, chattering in that immaculate drawl like she’d just tripped out from tea with the queen, fumbling for nonexistent eyeglasses, holding each scrap of paper painstakingly against the light. “Charlotte, do check your bag again, I am positive you have my eyeglasses—”
“Ma’am,” the pawnbroker said, clearing his throat as another set of customers came in. Eve took no notice, braying away like a dowager in an Austen novel. “Lud, sir, don’t fuss at me. This is it, yes—no, well, it’s in here somewhere—” Her osprey wobbled dangerously, shedding a little shower of feathers that smelled like mothballs. The pawnbroker tried to move to the next set of customers, but she rapped him on the knuckles with his own glass. “Don’t wander off on me, my good man, we’re not finished with our business! Charlotte, dear, read this for me, my old eyes . . .” The customers who’d walked in stood there for a while, then finally wandered back out.
I stood there like a bit player in a movie as the pawnbroker finally gave a little moue of impatience. “Never mind, madam. Provenance is not required—I am not so little a gentleman that I cannot take the word of so obvious a lady.”
“Good,” Eve said. “Let’s hear your price.”
They wrangled for a while, but I knew who was going to win. A moment later the defeated pawnbroker was counting a great many crisp banknotes into my hand, and my pearls disappeared behind his counter; we turned to see Finn holding the door with a grin that only showed around his eyes. “My lady?” he said, straight-faced, and Eve swept through like an old duchess, osprey bobbing.
“Ah,” she said as the shop doors closed behind us, and the Mayfair drawl was utterly gone from her voice. “I enjoyed that.”
She looked entirely different from the drunk old bat of last night, with her teacup of whiskey and her Luger. For that matter, she looked entirely different from the hungover crone of this morning. She looked sober, crisp, savagely entertained, her gray eyes sparkling and her bony shoulders shedding the age and the aura of threadbare gentlewoman as though it was an inconvenient shawl.
“How did you do that?” I demanded, still clutching my handful of notes.
Eve Gardiner tugged off a glove, revealing that monstrosity