Page 24 of An Artful Dodge
Amelia’s mouth twitched wryly. “Oh, she has her own. And Silas Pike was her lover before he became my fence.”
“Oh,” I said, again taken by surprise.
She settled the empty glass between her palms. “I’ve had a good run, and it’s not a bad time for me to step aside. She offered me a fair sum.”
I fell silent. It seemed to me Amelia should be resentful, but that wasn’t her way. She was practical, the least excitable person I knew, and as she often said, she didn’t cry over what was already broken.
“What if we don’t want to thieve for her?” I asked.
Amelia frowned in disapproval. “I’m counting on you to help the others get used to the idea. If you do it, they’ll follow.”
“What about Nell?”
“She stays on as bookkeeper. Nothing else will change.” Amelia reached inside the desk drawer for a cloth to wipe out the glass. “I appreciate your loyalty, Kit, but I’ve made my choice.” The tightness about her lips told me she wasn’t happy with my pressing, so I stopped.
“When will you tell everyone?”
“Soon. Likely early next week.” She replaced the cloth, sliding the drawer silently closed. “Keep it in your pocket till then, yeah?”
Her announcement would release a swarm of rumors like summer gnats. I’d seen it happen before, suspicions and outright lies clabbering the air, murky as a miasma.
But as unshakable as Amelia was, this wasn’t the sort of change she would adjust to within an hour.
“Today wasn’t the first she came to see you,” I said slowly.
“No.”
“When was it?”
“Three weeks ago. Soon after her ship landed in Liverpool.”
Three weeks? Amelia had hidden all signs of it. Or I had been too preoccupied to notice.
Amelia replaced the glass in the cupboard. “You know, Kit, she didn’t even know that her mother died. I had to tell her how and when. It was a shock, to be sure, and her brother gone, too. Not to mention how London’s changed. It can’t be easy coming back.”
“Then why did she?” I asked. “Surely she had some sort of life in Australia, after twenty years. Her name changed, so she had a husband.”
“But we’ve no idea what sort of man he was. In her mind, she was twenty years a prisoner,” Amelia reminded me.
“Twenty years,” I echoed. “Thieving’s usually only seven.”
“’Twas doubled to fourteen,” Amelia said. “I don’t know why.”
We all knew the usual reasons—carrying a knife or other weapon, teaching another woman to thieve during the dodge, fighting back against the constable at the arrest, showing no remorse, being suspected of a previous theft. Or a judge was simply in a foul humor.
“I don’t know why Maggie stayed the extra six,” Amelia added. “She might’ve been caught thieving again.” Dusk had fallen, and she lit the lamp on the desk. With the burst of yellow flame came the oily smell of kerosene. She turned the key to raise the wick. “The day she was caught, your mother was her jenny at the shop—”
“My mother?”
“Yes. Why?” Her expression was curious.
I swallowed down the sudden thickness in my throat. “Ma never told me one of her jennies had been caught.”
“Well, I imagine she hated thinking on it, yeah?”
A chill ran down my nerves as I recalled the way Maggie’s gaze had fixed on me. Had she known who I was? I resembled my mother, to be sure. Did Maggie blame Ma for her arrest? I could easily imagine my mother turning on her jenny if it served her.
“My mother got away,” I said, my voice wary.
