The Duke Heist (The Wild Wynchesters #1) - Erica Ridley Page 0,88
was all the time she needed. Chloe flung herself back onto her cushion and picked up her book. “I thought you said you had a shilling.”
“It is a shilling. It’s—” A sound of baffled consternation choked in his throat. “I felt nothing! The shilling was there, and now it’s gone.”
“That’s how it used to feel every time I had money: Poof! Gone again.”
His eyes were still wide. “But how did you do it?”
She sat back up, unable to hide her grin. “It would be irresponsible of me to teach you that trick. I’ll show you a different one. Have you another shilling?”
He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “Not for you.”
“Good,” she said with a laugh. “You’re learning.”
She touched his face and kissed him. When she pulled her hand away, his shilling was once again in her palm.
“Watch this.” She adjusted the muscles of her hand so that the shilling caught right in the center of her palm. “It’s delicate,” she warned him. “If your fingers are loose enough to appear natural, the slightest bump could dislodge your coin.”
She turned her hand over so the palm faced downward.
“It doesn’t look like you’re hiding anything,” he said in awe. “Just a woman holding out her hand to be kissed.”
She arched a brow. “Then kiss it.”
He did.
When he leaned back, she turned over her palm. It now contained his shilling and the handkerchief she’d just nicked from his lapel.
He burst out laughing. “All right, braggart. Let me try.”
She tucked his handkerchief into her bodice and handed him back his shilling.
He spent the next ten minutes repeatedly picking it up from the floor, then finally chucked it over his shoulder with an aggrieved sigh. “There. It disappeared.”
Chloe wiped away tears of silent laughter. “Don’t lose hope. All skills worth mastering require practice.”
He looked aggrieved. “How long did it take you?”
“Days to hide a coin reliably,” she admitted. “I started with buttons scavenged along the Thames. I had smaller hands then, but buttons come in all sorts of weights and sizes, just as coins do, so it was good practice. Later, Tommy would hide buttons in her bed or on her person and I would have to nick them without her noticing to win the game.”
“Tommy was with you back then?”
“Tommy has been with me for as long as I can remember.” Thank heavens for it. “Her cot was next to mine at the orphanage. There weren’t many places to hide things, since we had no true possessions, but Tommy was resourceful and made me work for every button.”
“Did you flip them the way you did with the coin?”
“No.” Chloe made the sovereign fly through her fingers, then vanish again. “That came later, once I had coins to practice with.”
His brow creased. “I didn’t know orphanages trusted their charges with actual money.”
“They don’t,” she said flatly. “I stole them from the pockets of rich passersby too busy being important to notice a hungry urchin by their side.”
She expected him to judge her harshly for her crimes. He would have been one of the wealthy nobs. If an entire rookery was an eyesore to the ton, a skinny eight-year-old girl would have been just another blemish on their great city. Refuse spoiling the view until the street sweepers came to brush it out of sight.
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “There’s no force more powerful than desperation.”
A moment of silence stretched between them.
She let out a slow breath.
“It was farthings at first.” Chloe gave a lopsided smile she doubted reached her eyes. “I didn’t want to take much—not enough to be missed, but enough to make a difference to me. Limiting my bounty also made it more of a game. If I accidentally nicked a coin of greater value, I had to find some way to put it back. Soon I could tell the denomination with the barest brush of my finger. I no longer made mistakes. It wasn’t a game anymore.”
“What was it?”
“Survival.” Ironic, since thievery was punishable by execution.
Those farthings and halfpennies kept the pangs of hunger at bay not just for her and Tommy but for several other children in the orphanage with protruding ribs and empty bellies. How she’d dreamed of one day becoming a lady of quality with a reticule full of gold! The first thing she’d buy with her riches was a meat pie for every hungry mouth.
“It was so little,” she said. “But I did it anyway. It was the best I could do.”