Stolen Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

direction. "I've no idea how long it took to tie your cravat, but evidently it was not nearly long enough."
    "I am quite satisfied with my appearance, Mr. Rutherford."
    "Yes, quite. I might have guessed."
    "I submit to you, ladies," said Mr. Latchley, looking directly at Amelia, "that we have before us an example of the greatest evil in the world. A gentleman whose first concern is the state of his clothes."
    "Well, now, Mr. Latchley, do you mean to say one ought not be concerned with one's appearance?" asked Sir Jaspar, who spent upward of eight hundred pounds a year on his wardrobe.
    "No, Sir Jaspar," answered Mr. Latchley. "Only that one should not be concerned with it above all else."
    Lady Charles interrupted just as her husband was taking a breath to answer Mr. Latchley. "I understand that while we were gone there was another robbery. The Mayfair Thief, I believe they are calling whoever is responsible?"
    "Yes, Lady Charles," said Frederick Smithwayne, eager to show off his knowledge. "It happened at Lady Stinforth's ball."
    "The Mayfair Thief?" repeated Amelia.
    "Yes, Miss Willard." Beaufort Latchley turned to look at her. "The name is of fairly recent coinage."
    "The police have only now come to the conclusion that the same man must be responsible for several daring thefts," Ripton added. "There were three or four robberies last year. And, it is suspected, quite a number before then."
    "Do you know," said Lady Charles, "a very peculiar thing happened when we were in Paris. Madame de Nouillier lost a very valuable sapphire brooch at a masquerade ball." Mr. Willard and Mr. Villines interrupted their discussion of agriculture in the shires in order to listen. "She claimed it was stolen by a mysterious gentleman whom she was unable to identify, his features having been covered with a black mask. She gave us to understand he lured her onto a secluded balcony and there relieved her of her brooch."
    "Lured her my eye!" said Sir Jaspar. "What's a respectable married woman doing following someone out onto a balcony, I should like to know."
    "You forget, she is French, Jaspar, and she had argued with the count not ten minutes before."
    "And what difference does that make?"
    "Well, no matter." She waved a hand. "Madame de Nouillier was overheard to say she would have cried the alarm much sooner had he not kissed her quite so skillfully just before disappearing with twenty thousand francs' worth of her jewelry."
    "Is that what the Mayfair Thief steals? Jewels, I mean?" Elizabeth asked.
    "Yes, but only the most expensive ones," said Ripton. For some reason Elizabeth immediately conjured up images of caskets filled with precious stones hidden away someplace, most likely in the secret room of a moldering castle tower. "He is a thief of the most discriminating taste. Ladies are said to be mortified if their jewels are not stolen by the Mayfair Thief."
    "Whom did he so honor this time?" asked Lady Charles.
    "Lady Stinforth herself," Mr. Latchley replied.
    "She had her hair arranged in a most dramatic fashion," Ripton broke in. "Unfortunately it also prevented her from feeling her tiara being removed until it was too late."
    "Fifty thousand pounds, gone in a flash," said Frederick Smithwayne.
    "How simply horrible!" Amelia looked appropriately frightened.
    "Did she not see who took her tiara?" Elizabeth asked.
    "She claims she saw only a glimpse of him as he melted into the shadows."
    Mr. Smithwayne bristled. "You romanticize a common criminal, Mr. Rutherford."
    "Surely he is no common criminal, Mr. Smithwayne. He is a gentleman criminal. Perhaps even a noble one."
    "A gentleman does not go about snatching other people's property, I can assure you of that," said Sir Jaspar. "And as for a nobleman…" He sniffed. "Why, the very idea is preposterous!"
    "The Metropolitan Police believe the man must be a gentleman. He seems to move about society easily enough."
    "You know quite a lot about him, Mr. Rutherford," said Beaufort Latchley.
    "I