A Thief Before Christmas by Jennifer McGowan Page B

wives. Had the magistrates caught us? Were they headed up the stairs even now?
    â€œAgnes, take Tommy and the rest of this down the back stairs. Squall at him the whole way if you must. Make as much noise as you need. Dump the useless stuff in the river and keep going. We’ll meet you at the Cock’s Crow.”
    Tommy’s eyes were wide. “But what if we get caught?”
    His grandmother just humphed, gathering the gold bits and remaining jewels and coin into long, thin pouches that she then hung on leather belts beneath her voluminous skirts and even down the center of her generously cut bodice. James tousled Tommy’s hair again. “You won’t get caught, lad,” he said easily. “We’ll hold their attention.” Then James turned and offered his arm to me. I joined him, painfully aware that I now carried enough stolen gemstones on my body to be hanged a dozen times over, if I was caught.
    So I’d just have to not get caught. . . . Never mind that we were about to negotiate a sale of stolen goods in a room full of magistrates. What could be easier?
    Master James winked at me. “Let’s see if we can put your acting skills to the test, Meg Fellowes.”

CHAPTER TWO
    We strolled slowly down the staircase as a dozen and one ideas for our newly minted roles came to me and were discarded just as quickly.
    â€œHusband and pregnant wife?” I suggested.
    Master James shook his head. “You’re too skinny.”
    â€œNewlyweds?”
    â€œToo plainly dressed.” James’s gaze had snared on a bolt of cloth sitting half open against the wall, its oilskin wrapping revealing just enough to mark it as the white-washed woolen goods of Leeds. After decades of being known merely for its raw wool, the city was making a name for itself as a cloth-maker as well, and the fabric was emerging as the area’s biggest seller.
    Still, we could hardly wrap ourselves in the stuff. We were almost upon the inn’s main hall, and I needed at least some preparation. “Lovers?” I tried again, rather hoping this would be the act he’d choose for us to play out. I didn’t want to examine too closely why I was hoping this, of course. I just need the practice, I assured myself.
    But it was not to be. “Hardly.” James wasn’t looking at me, though; he was still caught up by the abandoned bolt of cloth against the wall. “No one would believe it.”
    Irritation slashed through me. “Father and daughter, then?” I gibed.
    That drew a slanted glance from him. I did my best to look innocent, though inside I fumed. Master James was not so much older than I as that, though he treated me sometimes as if I were still a toddler at my grandfather’s knee. But I was seventeen years of age! That made me a woman in body, even if not in experience.
    And how was I to get experience in this kind of interaction between a man and a woman, if no one in the whole entire troupe would deign to kiss me?
    But now we’d reached the last step, and James patted me on the hand, his smile eager and self-satisfied. I grinned back up to him and quirked a brow. He’d clearly decided what roles we would play, but I couldn’t read the man’s mind. “What?” I asked through clenched teeth.
    â€œCraftsman and assistant, having just made a killing at the market, completing orders enough to keep us afloat for months. Ah. There’s my associate: third table on the left from the wall. I’ll fetch us ale while you approach him.” He glanced down at me. “Look crafty.”
    I rolled my eyes but stepped under the spruce-decorated doorway of the main room of the inn and headed toward the third table on the left, my smile broad, my eyes alight with avarice. I thought I had an idea of what Master James had planned, and when I reached the table where his associate sat, I gave the man a saucy tip of my head. “I hope you