Barbara Smith - Scandalous Weddings

He extracted a hearing trumpet from an interior pocket, slipped a ball of wax in his other ear, and got to work. Within sixty seconds he had opened the safe, feeling a surge of satisfaction as he did so. And then he stared.

It was empty.

Which explained why the bedroom had not been locked.

Pierce thought of Lucinda Boothe's good friend Dariella, an extremely loquacious woman in bed, and he cursed. She claimed that Lucinda kept all of her jewels in the safe in her bedroom, and by damn, she had been wrong. For one moment, he felt like throttling the beautiful redhead for her misinformation-as guileless as it was.

But he had no time to lose. He checked his pocket watch. Eleven minutes had elapsed since he had left Louie outside. He slammed the safe closed, replaced the painting, and tucked his hearing trumpet in one of the many secret pockets that lined the interior of his dinner jacket. He stepped to the door, cracked it, and was reassured that no one was about. He hurried downstairs.

There was another possibility. In the foyer, he paused briefly to compose himself, glancing at the guests in the ballroom, all of whom were now attentively and restlessly awaiting the start of the wedding ceremony. A male servant suddenly entered the rotunda. But the man paid no attention to Pierce, disappearing down another hall with very brisk strides. Pierce turned and strode in the opposite direction. As he did so, he heard the organ in the ballroom begin to play. He was relieved, and he smiled.

Four hundred guests and the Boothe family would be very preoccupied fox the next half an hour or so.

The very solid teakwood door to the library was closed. Only four nights ago he had been drinking a very fine and very old port wine within its confines, with George Boothe himself. The notes of the bridal march washing over him, Pierce tried the knob and found it locked. Instead of being dismayed, a thrill washed over him. He extracted a ring of skeleton keys from one of his pockets, trying several. The third let him in.

Pierce quickly closed the door behind him, his gaze slamming on the verdant John Constable landscape hanging over the fireplace. He smiled. And when he removed it from the wall, the dark metal vault stared back at him. Again, Boothe's placement of his safes was hardly original.

In less than sixty seconds he had the vault open. His pulse surged when he saw the velvet boxes and pouches inside the dark interior. Quickly, he began dumping all of the contents out. There were rings and necklaces and earrings, a lifetime's worth of jewelry. He sorted through quickly, looking for one piece in particular. And at last he found it. The pearl necklace. Pierce quickly inserted it into the specially sewn pocket that lined his dinner jacket.

He closed the safe, lifted the painting, which he did not pause to admire, and set it back upon its hooks. As he turned, he heard a noise, and realized that he had company .

He froze .

And stared at the rotating brass knob on the library door, Someone was about to enter the room. Less than.i second passed and Pierce moved, diving to the floor and scrambling over to the claw-footed green sofa, just.is the door creaked open.

"Damn it," a woman muttered very unhappily.

He relaxed very slightly-a woman would be easier to deal with than a man. His mind raced. His hiding place was a sham. He could not get under the sofa, the bottom was far too low, and while right now it served its purpose, because the couch was between him and the woman, it would become useless if the intruder did not stay on the other side of the room.

"Damn, damn, damn," the woman moaned.

He stiffened again, because he could hear her soft footsteps as she entered the room, along with the rustling of her skirts. Worse, he had not heard her close the door and the dim light in the library had become brighter. The wedding march sounded far too loudly for comfort now. Why was this woman not with the guests? He glanced awkwardly toward the hearth. And he cursed silently. The Constable hung at an obviously unstable angle, a dead giveaway of the burglary that had just taken place. '

Pierce gritted his teeth. He would have to straighten it before he made his hasty exit.

"Oh, God," she moaned again, as if suffering very greatly. Pierce shifted so he could gaze beneath the sofa in her direction and he froze. Her skirts were stunningly white, beaded, and covered with lace. If he did not miss his guess, the woman was the bride.

He almost cursed aloud.

"Oh, God, what am I going to do?" she cried.

He stared at her skirts, not many paces from the sofa. The bride-was in the library, but she was supposed to be walking down the aisle. From her tone, it did not take a genius to assume that she had little intention of doing what was expected of her-at least not in the near future. Worse, she was walking toward the couch. A dozen excuses for lying on the floor raced through his mind. He dismissed them all instantly as absurd.

And then her white slippered feet veered away. Pierce froze again, shifting, turning his neck at an impossibly awkward angle-she was walking around the couch. He held his breath, prepared to be discovered at any moment.

But she did not walk around it to sit down. Instead, she ambled past the sofa and the table and chairs surrounding it, her long pristine white skirts and equally long sheer veil trailing behind her. His gaze was unwavering. But now he was surprised. For an open bottle of champagne was clasped by its neck in her right hand.

She halted at the window, her back to him, gazing out at the sunny afternoon, or so he assumed. "How has this happened?" she whispered, and she raised the bottle and swilled directly from it.

The bottle was, he saw, two-thirds empty. Goddamn it. The bride was unhappy, she. was drunk, and she was never going to leave the library so he could make his escape.

He quickly considered the possibility of slipping out of the room without being detected while she drank at the window. It was too risky. He considered standing up, before she turned, and introducing himself. Again, too risky-he'd be accused of the heist later. These two options he analyzed with lightning speed, within the span of several seconds. As a third option came to him, she turned, once again drinking from the bottle like a common saloon girl.

He froze.

She swigged. And for another moment, as she clutched the bottle, he saw that she was drinking la grande dame of champagnes, a vintage year of Veuve Cliquot, and he gaveher half a dozen points for her good taste and her ability to hold her liquor. She did not see him yet, but that would change in a moment. But where were her warts and birthmarks? Poor, unfortunate, just-barely-a-spinster Annabel Boothe was not what he might have expected-had he been expecting anything. She was blond, blue-eyed, angelically beautiful. Then he saw that she was staring at the painting that was hanging so lopsidedly over the fireplace. "Oh, dear," she said to herself.

He grimaced, about to rise from his very awkward position on the floor.

And then her gaze moved directly to, and upon, him- where it riveted.

He smiled up at her, feeling rather foolish.

She gaped.

"Hello," he said, aware of using his most devastating grin upon her.

"Oh, dear! Are you hurt?" she cried, rushing forward.

"Actually," he said, seizing upon the excuse, "it is my knee. A bad injury, you see." He began to rise.

To his surprise, she put the champagne down and in the blink of an eye was actually assisting him to his feet, supporting his weight with her shoulder. "Did you fall down?" she asked when he was finally standing upright, her arms still around him.

He stared into her brilliantly blue eyes, a blue that even two thirds of a bottle of superior champagne could not dim. In other circumstances, he would enjoy her concern and take advantage of it. "Yes, thank you, I did."