“Positively exquisite.” The fifteen-year-old’s blue eyes danced as she removed her hat and scarf. “We’ve decided we’re going to have one every year.”
“And how did your hair turn out?”
Violet spun to show off the elaborate chignon. “What do you think of it?”
Isabelle winked. “Gorgeous, darling.”
“I’m almost glad Ma and Pa said I can only wear it up for special occasions. All these pins digging into my brain...” She gave a little shudder before shrugging out of a familiar navy coat.
Isabelle frowned. “I thought you were going to wear your new coat? It’s so much nicer than this old one. It was Amy’s first, you know—”
“Oh!” Eyes wide, Violet turned to stare at the floor by the front desk. “Oh!”
“What?”
Violet dropped to her knees by the coatrack. Her hands swept back and forth across the floor as she crawled toward the front desk. Isabelle watched mutely then glanced around to make sure that no one else was around to see her little sister’s strange behavior. “Violet?”
“Isabelle!”
Holding back a laugh, Isabelle knelt beside the desk. “What are you doing?”
“Did you find it?” Violet crawled from beneath the desk to search her eyes. “Did you find Ma’s bracelet—the one she lent you to wear to the masquerade?”
“Ma’s bracelet?” Isabelle glanced down at her bare wrist, remembering seeing Rhett push back the extra length of his coat sleeve to reveal the bracelet. She recalled the soft imprint of it upon her skin as he smoothed closed the clasp that had eased open without her realizing it. She couldn’t remember anything about it after that. She slowly shook her head. “I haven’t seen it since last night.”
Violet groaned. “Isabelle, I’ve done something terrible. Truly, I have. I was going to wear my new coat this morning, but Pa said it was too thin since it’s really only supposed to be a raincoat. He said I’d catch cold and made me come back inside to change. I didn’t want to go all the way to my room for my other coat, so I took yours.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The bracelet was caught inside your sleeve. It fell out when I put your coat on. It slid across the floor and lodged halfway under the desk. I was in such a rush that I didn’t stop to pick it up. I just...left it there thinking no one would see it. I planned to get it as soon as I came back. Now it’s gone.”
A cold, sinking feeling settled in Isabelle’s stomach. “No, it has to be here somewhere.”
They searched every inch of space in the foyer but found no trace of the bracelet. Isabelle caught her sister’s hands to still their wringing. “Calm down, Vi. We need to think this through.”
“There’s nothing to think through. Bracelets don’t disappear. Someone must have taken it. It had to be one of the boarders.”
Isabelle shook her head. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Well, I don’t have it. Neither do you. Pa left the house before I did. He hasn’t returned yet, so he couldn’t have taken it. Rhett can hardly walk. What about Ma? Have you been with her the whole time?”
“No. She brought Rhett his breakfast and retrieved the tray. Perhaps she found it.”
“Then wouldn’t she have mentioned it?”
Isabelle frowned. “Probably, but we should check her jewelry box to be certain.”
“And if it isn’t there?”
“Maybe whoever took it will return it. Meanwhile, we can’t let our parents find out about this. Or anyone else for that matter.”
Rhett’s voice filled the hallway. “Why is that exactly?”
Gasping, Isabelle whirled to find him balancing against the doorpost of the study with curiosity wrinkling his brow. She glanced back to exchange a panicked look with her sister. Violet recovered first. With a quick glance toward the kitchen, she caught Isabelle’s arm and towed her across the hall toward Rhett so they could speak more quietly. “Because if our parents find out there’s a thief in the boardinghouse, we might as well kiss Peppin goodbye.”
Concern filled Rhett’s eyes as he turned to Isabelle for confirmation. “You’d have to leave town?”
She nodded. “After Amy’s elopement, they said if anything else goes wrong, they’re going to sell the boardinghouse and move us back to Virginia, where they’re originally from.”
“Well, we can’t have that.” He frowned. “We need to figure out who took the bracelet and find a way to get it back.”
Violet wrinkled her nose. “How are we going to do that?”
“First off, y’all had better check your ma’s jewelry box like you said. The other thing we need to do is to keep a close watch for anyone behaving oddly or guiltily. Y’all would be better judges than me on that since I don’t know the other boarders well. Let’s see how all of that works out, and we’ll go from there.”
Isabelle nodded, then blinked, unsure of how “we” suddenly included him. She wouldn’t complain, though. Having him on their side was far better than letting him tell their parents about the missing bracelet the first chance he got. She could only hope that the three of them would be able to curtail this problem before it became a situation requiring her parents’ attention. The last thing she wanted to do was, as Violet had put it, kiss the boardinghouse and Peppin goodbye.
Of its own accord, her gaze drifted to Rhett’s smile. She shook her head to keep her thoughts from straying where they didn’t need to go. He caught her gaze and his eyes seemed to darken. She swallowed hard. She’d get the bracelet back, find Rhett someone else to court and her life would go back to normal. End of story.
Rhett hadn’t intended to eavesdrop on Isabelle and Violet’s conversation. It had simply been nigh on impossible not to since it had taken place only yards from the study door. Of course, once he’d realized what he was listening to, he hadn’t exactly tried not to hear it. He didn’t like the idea of the Bradley girls dealing with a possible thief by themselves, which was why he’d inserted himself into the situation. That and the fact that, prior to overhearing them, he’d been staring at the ceiling for thirty minutes after giving up on his attempts to read one of the few books he’d been able to reach. Being an invalid was duller than he’d ever imagined. He needed a project to keep his mind occupied.
Isabelle had checked her mother’s jewelry box, but the bracelet was still nowhere to be found. Knowing there was nothing else they could do to search for it at the moment, she and Violet stayed around to play a few card games with him. Eventually Mrs. Bradley brought his lunch and took her daughters with her when she left. Only a few minutes later, Isabelle returned to announce that he had a visitor. “It’s the sheriff. He’s waiting in the parlor. I thought you might be lying down and figured you’d want to sit in the chair with your leg propped up while you talked with him, like you did for our card games.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
After helping him get situated, she straightened the bed then sent him a pointed look on the way out. “I’ll go get him so y’all can talk about your business.”
He grinned, easily catching her subtle warning not to mention the thief. “My business, meaning not yours?”
“Exactly.” She smiled.
She was out the door before he had a chance to respond. Sean entered only a moment later, with a pair of freshly hewn crutches in his