Disclaimer: I own nothing, except maybe the single OC I invented.

They made it to the appointed meeting place and Richard pulled Hunch aside for a moment to bounce some ideas and speculations off of his servant. Kim openly tried to listen in, but Richard was in agreement with Hunch that, until they both knew she could be trusted with everything, they would have to keep her in the dark on some things. So after a moment or two, Kim gave up and vanished around the wagon.

"You sure we can trust 'er?" Hunch asked Richard.

Richard inclined his head in acknowledgement of his friend's concern. "I am quite sure that, for the time being, Kim has no reason or means to betray us in any significant way."

Hunch seemed dissatisfied with that answer, and Richard smiled internally. Hunch had learned the hard way to know when Richard was avoiding making specific promises. He'd always hated breaking his word, and had thus made a habit of deliberately leaving himself openings to do the things he wished without actually violating the promises he'd made.

Not much later, Edward arrived. Exactly on time, as usual. Richard stood and led him into the wagon to show him the bowl. Edward of course leapt immediately into a thinly veiled criticism of Richard's choice to pick up "another stray". It was at that moment that Richard saw the curtain hanging oddly. He recalled that Kim had gone around the wagon. Towards the door.

Kim was hiding right behind the stage curtain at the back, mere feet away from Edward.

Richard quelled the impulsive urge to drag her out and find out what she had been doing back there. He'd talk to her when Edward was gone. The earl had a temper and Richard wanted to know what it was she had been doing. There could be an innocent explanation for all this, although he was hard pressed to come up with one at the moment.

In any event, Edward's news was quite interesting, and having the location of the Platter was excellent news indeed. Less so was the news that it was so close to being within St. Clair's grasp, but one couldn't have everything.

The moment he was sure the earl had gone, Richard was back in the wagon, saying, "I think you had better come out now, Kim, and explain why you've been eavesdropping on my conversation."

She swallowed, visibly, and steeled herself, but said nothing. Richard kept himself in check and prompted her. "You do have some explanation, I trust?"

With that she gave him a remarkably obvious explanation. She had wanted to look at the stage. She hadn't known when Shoreham would arrive. Richard had to admit she had no way of knowing that. And after the surprise had worn off, they'd just finished talking about her, and revealing herself then would have looked very suspicious. Just as suspicious as her hiding there through the whole conversation had been.

"How'd you know I was there?" She looked nervous, understandably so, and Richard felt the unreasonable urge to reassure her.

"The end of the curtain was hanging oddly; I noticed it when I was showing Shoreham the bowl. Then I remembered seeing you come around this way and that you hadn't come back. Simple, really," he told her.

He felt a headache coming on. Her reasons were utterly reasonable and he had no way of determining the truth or accuracy of anything she said. Added to that was her also utterly reasonable suspicion of his own motives. "I wish I knew whether you—of course!" Richard said as the solution presented itself. The Saltash Bowl. "Hunch! Do you have any rosemary in that cache of herbs you cart around all the time?"

He got a brief moment of amusement out of the situation when Hunch appeared with the herbs he required and seemed bound and determined to believe Richard was doing acts of unspeakable carnality with Kim. Richard spared a moment to glance at her as he prepared. When one looked at her, as a girl rather than as an apprentice or thief, she was fairly pretty. But it was a slightly gritty prettiness that she hid as well as she could to continue her masquerade. All in all, Richard could not imagine being interested in performing acts of unspeakable carnality with her. That said, she did have some of the same spirit and intelligence that had attracted him to Renée to begin with.

When she asked what he was talking about Richard began to explain. He was a little miffed when she interrupted his explanation about the way the bowl worked, but he shrugged it off. He had learnt the hard way that not everyone was as interested as he in the minutiae of magical sciences.

He asked her if she had any questions, and was surprised at the one she asked. "So if I don't say nothin', you can't tell what's true?"

He felt his heart sink. She was going to try to hide something from him. It must have shown on his face, because she hastily explained. "I'm just tryin' to understand. You ain't got no business knowin' everything about me." It made sense. Every time she had an excuse it made sense. He left implicit that he'd know some things simply by what it was she left out.

Then he started casting. As he settled the net of words around her, Richard noticed her flinch away from it. Almost as though she could see them. It was ridiculous, so he gave it no more thought and continued. When he was done casting, the bowl was glowing and Kim seemed quite awed. Probably because this was the first true magic casting she'd ever seen. He asked his first question. "What is your name?"

She paused, then said, "Jenny Stower."

The bowl dimmed and turned red, indicating a lie. By the look on her face, Richard judged that she had been curious to see what happened if she did lie. It was an impulse he could understand. On the other hand, they didn't have all day to let her experiment with his spell. "Your name? And the truth this time," he prompted.

"Kim," she said. The bowl immediately brightened, indicating she was speaking the truth. He wondered, offhand, who the real Jenny Stower was.

He began to ask why she had broken into his wagon that day, who had hired her to do it and all the questions he'd asked that first day. Her answers were the same as before. When he asked her why she'd agreed to come along, the bowl dimmed a little, showing that she wasn't telling him the whole truth. He prompted her and she replied, "All right! I was curious." When she'd finished explaining he had to admit that she was right. It looked odd enough that she had every right to be concerned and intrigued.

The bowl dimmed again when he asked her about her willingness to leave London. This time she responded to his question with, "He ain't waitin' for you."

It turned out she had some contact with one of the upper-level criminals in the London slums. He was seemingly well-educated, well-connected and frightened Kim a great deal. She had come with Richard and Hunch as much for self-preservation lest this Dan Laverham discover her true sex and force her into a life Kim was clearly quite terrified of.

At that moment, Richard promised himself he would redouble his efforts to teach her stagecraft, reading and whatever else he could think of that would be useful. Hopefully he could at least help this one girl off the streets.

Then she demanded to know what was going on. It was only fair. He'd forced the truth out of her, even though she'd been giving him the truth the whole time, and it was true that she should know what was going on if she was to come with them. So he told her. And was impressed at how well she'd put the pieces together. Yes, Richard Merrill was his name, yes he was wanted by the Runners, no he hadn't committed the crime he was accused of.

Andrew had the dubious honour of being dubbed a "noodle", whatever that meant precisely, for believing Richard would steal the Saltash set. Whatever that meant, he suspected it was fully accurate.

Hunch poked his head in then and asked where they were going. And thus they headed off to Ranton Hill, Richard feeling much reassured. Kim was exactly what she'd claimed to be and she was much better company than Hunch alone.

It started to rain as they travelled, making it nearly impossible to teach Kim legerdemain and reading, but he continued to teach her how to speak correctly. She learned it, but the weather made her clearly irritable. She learned, often slipping back into cant in her irritation, but she learned.

In the moments when she had an outburst of aggravation which took the form of blunt street language, Richard found himself getting an education on the various new and exciting things slum-dwellers could call each other. He decided to ignore her irritation and simply corrected her grammar, surmising that she was relieving her feelings that way and to respond would probably only start a fight none of them had the energy for. His lack of response seemed to irritate her as well, but it was the lesser of two evils.

On the third day he heard her grousing once more and told her the rain would be clearing by the afternoon. "If you're so knowin', how come you ain't put a stop to it afore now?" she demanded. He corrected her grammar, earning himself a scowl, and explained that weather magic was simply not worth the effort and attention it would attract in this instance.

When he was proven right, he smiled at her irritation over his being right and they kept on going. Eventually they reached their campground for the evening where Hunch, with his usual set of priorities, focussed on drying everything out. Kim expressed her disgust with the delay it put on supper, but the conversation was interrupted by a carriage rattling by.

Both he and Kim hurried off after it to find out what it was doing out in the middle of nowhere. When they reached the vehicle's destination, they discovered it was Shoreham's druid cult. The one that seemingly had the Saltash Platter.

The young men were hanging around a bonfire, dicing and chatting. All but one who seemed to have an amusing penchant for the melodramatic. When the last of them showed up, they organised themselves into a circle and started their . . . whatever they called their chant. Genuinely ridiculous spectacle with no magic whatsoever involved.

It wasn't until he glanced at Kim, her face white and rather frightened-looking, that he realised how impressive it must be to a girl from the London streets. She'd never seen true magic at work until he'd cast the truth spell on her just days before. How could she know how silly it all was? He deliberately made light of what they were doing, although he could admit it was quite as dramatic as a Greek play.

Still, despite her fear, she followed him up the hill, settling flat against it as though she'd spent her whole life training as a spy. Perhaps she had. He'd learnt by sheer luck not to move when doing things like this by seeing what happened to someone else who had. That demonstration was enough to ensure he never moved unless he was certain no one would see him. She had most likely learnt from waiting to break into houses.

And then all the drama fell to pieces. It began with "Jon" organising his little band for the ceremony. From there it went from mildly silly to plain ridiculous as "Freddy" had lost the Saltash Platter to Henry Bramingam at whist. Richard felt himself tense at the name, knowing that St. Clair was no doubt on his way to Ranton Hill as they spoke.

Eventually the young men all had enough of Freddy's foolishness and Jon's posturing and went into the lodge to warm up and start with the wenching that was clearly the primary motivation of most of the participants.

It wasn't until Kim nudged him, reminding him that it was dark and Hunch would be worried that he realised how much time had passed. And he was further grateful to her presence when they got back. Hunch's scolding wasn't nearly as bad as they'd been in the past when he'd gone off on his own.

That incident made up his mind for him. They had to get more information. By the end of the evening, it had been decided that Hunch was to be a groom, Richard was to be one of the idiot members of the ton who gave them all a bad name, and Kim would be his tiger.

When they arrived at the inn, Richard took advantage of his role to breeze right past everyone and settled into his room at once. And was startled to discover that the toff who had originally hired Kim was staying in the room next to him. Within an hour, they had discovered a Lady Granleigh was the brother of the toff in question, whose name was Jasper Marston. Further, it appeared that Lady Bramingham was having one of her interminable house parties, and Richard was going to have to hurry to collect the platter before anyone else did.

Another startling development in the continuing list of startling developments was that one of this Dan Laverham's henchmen was also present, and apparently associated with Freddy Meredith, the one who had lost the platter to Henry Bramingham. Kim was sufficiently unsettled by this addition to the various players already present, that she offered to return to London. He wondered about the length of Laverham's influence but set aside that concern.

He took Hunch and Kim back to the wagon, sent Hunch off to get information on all the players in this game, new and old, and then bullied Kim into helping him burgle Bramingham Place.

She followed him with clear misgivings, but once they reached the front door, she took command with alacrity. Richard had broken into the occasional home or office while in France, but never while there was any significant chance to be caught. He told Kim that there was no need to worry about the rest of the household, which was most likely true, but mostly he wanted the Saltash Platter away from St. Clair.

He was surprised as he watched her move through the house. Not a single wasted movement, not even the slightest hint of a brush against any of the nick-knacks on the tables in the hall, and he was amazed at how silently she moved. Richard had to admit that, while he was no slouch at sneaking about, Kim might as well have been one of the shadows for all the disturbance she made as she passed through the house.

The first sign that they ought to be concerned came when they reached the library. When he complimented Kim on the speed of her lockpicking on that door, she told him it had been unlocked. Richard began to worry, but it was too late now to start fussing, so he just hurried into the library and quickly located the display case with the Saltash Platter in it. Kim reached down to pick that lock and pulled away, clearly as concerned as he was, when she told him that this lock too, was unlocked.

"Magic?" she asked him. It was a possibility, but this whole thing was looking more and more off to Richard. He was about to check anyhow, when small noises by the door alerted them to the fact that someone was coming in after them.

A flash of memory hit Richard and he hurried to the shelves where Lord Bramingham had once shown him a priest's hole hidden behind the shelves. Where was it . . . "Boccaccio, Boccaccio," he murmured as he ran a finger along the shelves. He found it not a moment too soon, tilting the book out to trigger the latch and practically threw Kim in. He climbed in after her and, after a moment of fumbling, got the peephole open.

What followed was a parade worthy of Shakespeare's most convoluted comedies. First, a man came through that Richard had never seen before. However, judging by Kim's soft gasp, she did. He made a note that he'd have to ask her later who it was. Moments later, Jasper Marston and his man, Stuggs, arrived. There was a momentary fight between them, at the end of which, the first man escaped by the expedient of breaking a window and hurling himself through.

Moments later, as Marston and Stuggs attempted to figure out what to do with the Saltash Platter, Jonathon Aberford's stentorian tones echoed through the library. The young idiot was attempting to burgle Bramingham place. And not by stealth either. He stood there, framed by the window, wearing a domino and demanding that Marston hand over the 'Sacred Dish'.

All sense of amusement at Aberford's idiocy faded when the youth produced a pistol. That fear faded once more when the idiot fell down, setting off his gun. Stuggs went to the window and reported back, "Silly young chub was standin' on a bucket, an' it tipped over. The pistol must 'ave gone off when 'e fell."

Moments later, the rest of the household came pouring in. In all the confusion, Richard watched as Lady Granleigh feigned a fit of the vapours in order to conceal the platter. By sitting on it. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bramingham was having a true fit of her own while the rest attempted to determine what exactly had been happening. It was then that someone arrived that caused Richard's heart to nearly stop.

"Renée?" he breathed. He barely even noticed Kim elbowing him. There she was, as flawlessly turned out as ever. All imperious, cold and demanding as she could be when she wished. And at a house party, which she hated, with Mrs. Bramingham of all people, who Richard was quite certain had never been introduced to the Frenchwoman. Why was she there?

Finally most of the crowd exited the room, leaving Marston, Lady Granleigh and the looming presence of Stuggs. Lady Granleigh immediately leapt to her feet and got into an argument with her brother. In the end they chose to hide the Saltash Platter under the cushions of one of the couches. Richard was so lost in thought that, when they left, Kim had to nudge him in order to get them out of their hiding spot.

Richard felt furious. Renée was here. He was almost certain it had to do with the Saltash Platter, and once he felt the complete lack of magic in the dish he was completely certain. Somewhere along the line, the real platter had been replaced with a fake. There was no one else with the possible means or motive, as far as he knew, to have such a replacement made.

As they left, Richard controlled his temper. Perhaps Renée had reason to be there that had nothing to do with the Saltash Set. By the time he and Kim had made it back to the wagon, Richard had determined he would get to the bottom of her mysterious appearance in Ranton Hill.

To this end, he asked Kim to play messenger boy for him. He wrote a letter to Renée.

Dear Renée,

As you are no doubt aware, the Saltash Platter at Bramingham place is a fake. However, there appear to be far too many interested parties involved for my comfort. Kim and myself were startled in the library by a man Kim informs me is named Jack Stower, who works for a most unpleasant criminal character in London. Following his entrance was Jasper Marston, who originally hired Kim to determine whether or not I had the Saltash bowl. They frightened Mr. Stower off, but I have little doubt the man will continue to be in the area.

Marston was interrupted by a Jonathon Aberford, a young man playing at druidry, who seems to have a most unusual determination to procure the platter. Henry Bramingham has called his uncle, Lord St. Clair, in order to give him the platter as St. Clair has an interest in such items.

And lastly, there is you. Why are you here Renée? I must speak with you as you are, thus far, the only person I can see who might have had both the opportunity and motive to create a fake platter. Please send your return message with Kim. She is quite reliable and has been most helpful to me thus far.

Sincerely,

Richard

Richard handed Kim the letter, telling her the words she'd need to have down perfectly when she got to Bramingham Place. He needed to know about Renée. He told her to meet him at the Ranton Hill inn.

While Kim was off taking his letter to Renée, he was going to see what he could drum up in the way of information at the inn. Anything was better than twiddling his thumbs as he waited for Kim to return.

Several hours later and Richard was still seated across from Freddy Meredith who was truly impressive in his obtuseness. They had been playing cards for hours and Richard had been trying very hard not to clean out the young man. He had discovered that the odds of Meredith having any sort of conscious connection to the Saltash Platter beyond his having lost it to Henry Bramingham were virtually nil.

He was therefore greatly relieved to see Kim, looking rather the worse for wear, there to retrieve him. She looked very uncomfortable when he asked for Renée's reply, and he took the hint and they took their leave.

Her story of what happened on her way to Bramingham Place took most of the walk back to the wagon. "I was walkin' along and these two lunkheads came down the road, racing some fancy buggies. When they turned a corner, they ran into a coach and ran it off the road and one of them drivers had his buggy pretty bunged up."

"Those drivers, Kim," Mairelon corrected gently.

She shot him a look of exasperation, but made the correction. "Those drivers then. Anyways," she shot him another look, "I was just about to walk around them when I heard the man in the carriage start talkin'." Mairelon glanced at her when the pause went on for longer than he had expected. Kim was looking a little white around the lips.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She shook her head, took a deep breath and said, "Nothin' really. I'm just still a little nattered about it." She seemed to shake it off and continued. "I heard him talking and I could of sworn it was Dan. Dan Laverham," she qualified the name for him.

He felt his eyebrows shoot up. "Laverham? Here?"

"But it wasn't," Kim hastened to add. "He just sounded like Dan. It was that St. Clair toff," she said. "The other drivers were two of the- those druids," she added. "One of 'em asked if there was anythin' he could do, and St Clair told him to go to Bramingham Place to get someone to pick him up since his carriage was broken.

"I hid behind a wall at the side of the road. I didn't want any of those toffs seeing me, especially that St. Clair," she continued. "So I kept behind the wall and hid until I was sure they wouldn't be able to see me again. That St. Clair sounds like a nasty piece of work."

Mairelon chuckled a little at that, sobering immediately after. "He is. I'm quite glad you avoided him. The less he knows the better."

She nodded and continued. "When I got to the manor, that butler was all snooty." She fixed him with a look. "If I gotta do this again, I want to know about what to expect from the servants and the like," she told him. "I think he might have been bein' rude, but I don't know, see?"

"I do. I apologise," Mairelon told her. "I sometimes forget how many behaviours are inculcated in us from childhood to the point we no longer think them worth concentration."

"Mairelon," she said his stage name in exasperation, "What does that mean when it ain't in fancy jargon?"

"Isn't in fancy language, and it means that I am so used to the way things are done in an upper class home I have difficulty telling what things are obvious to anyone, and which are only obvious to people raised in and around those homes."

She nodded, and Mairelon was momentarily distracted by the question of when he had begun to consider Mairelon his name as much as Richard. But Kim was continuing and introspection would have to wait.

"The butler took me in to see Mlle D'Auber, and she seemed awful nattered about that letter you wrote her." He was tempted to correct her grammar again, but decided it was better to let her finish her story before returning to the constant corrections. "Anyways, she said that it wasn't good the way things were going and said I had to take your letter back. And she wrote one to you," Kim told him. "She magicked the letter when she was done writin'."

"Don't be ridiculous, she wouldn't have . . ." He trailed off as he examined the envelope. She had. He wondered how Kim had known. Certainly Renée was accomplished enough for a simple spell sealing the letter to be done quickly and silently.

When he tripped the spell, he had his answer to that question. The spell was more complex than a simple seal. Perhaps Renée had simply been more obvious when casting than she usually was. Certainly what Kim had said indicated Renée may have been a little overset.

He pushed it from his mind and listened to Renée telling him she had to meet him in private. When the message finished, Richard stared into the middle distance, considering all the pieces of the puzzle which had just been dropped into his lap, further complicating the picture. He was startled out of his musing by Kim asking him what he was doing next. Mairelon covered his discomfiture at being caught so lost in thought, by scolding Kim for interrupting his workings.

She gave him a pointed look and said that it was pretty clear to her that he had been woolgathering. Mairelon paused for a moment at that. There weren't many people willing to interrupt a wizard when he had just been casting, unless they had been fully assured the spell was completed. But Kim hadn't been in the slightest nervous about it. Which meant she was either quite foolhardy, or she was very good at understanding magic. The latter was fairly unlikely, so Mairelon put it aside to make certain later that she understood the risks she took by interrupting spellcasting.

Richard began to hunt for his regular clothes while Kim tried to convince him she should come. He managed to make her agree to stay and then he was hurrying off to meet Renée.

She wasn't there when he arrived, but mere moments later, Amelia Granleigh and her unspeakable brother were pulling up to his place on the hill in a landau. Richard played with them a little, refusing to answer their questions in order to garner a little more information.

And then they handed over the copy of the Saltash Platter they had appropriated from Bramingham Place. He shook his head inwardly. These two were playing a very odd game, and now he was stuck with this copy. Lady Granleigh and Marston then tripped off, still arguing the whole way, leaving Richard alone on the hill with a copy of the platter intended for Aberford and his friends.

A moment later the bushes rustled. Richard felt a moment of relief, Renée was here at last, "Renée?"

It was Kim.

Mairelon was surprised by how little he was disappointed at her appearance instead of Renée's. And she was able to fill in some of the blanks of the arguments Lady Granleigh had had with her brother. Then he found out that she had done to him what he had done to Hunch numerous times, that is say something which implied agreement without precisely agreeing, and had felt no compunction at coming after him.

She seemed to feel guilty she had been unable to beat the landau to the top of the hill to warn him, so Mairelon tried to reassure her it was fine. They talked and conjectured all the way back to the wagon. She was certainly easier to talk these things out with than Hunch, who may have been ornery, but never forced Mairelon to push his ideas. Everything was coming together in his mind, faster than it did normally. Of course, he still lacked a great many of the pieces of the puzzle, but it might be easier to slot them into place now that he knew where the holes were.

When they returned to the campsite, Hunch was waiting for them with Shoreham's information on Stower, Lavarham, Fenton and Marston. Stower was uninteresting, Marston seemed to be no more than he appeared, although how he and his sister came to be involved was an interesting question; Fenton and Laverham were very interesting. Mairelon wished briefly Kim was not there when he saw her pale at the notion of Laverham being trained in wizardry.

After Hunch's information had been disseminated, the oddest thing happened. That Jack Stower appeared, wanting the imitation Platter. He threatened Richard and Hunch, and then he recognised Kim. At that point he began to rant about how he would get the guineas Laverham was offering the person who retrieved the Platter. As he began to threaten again, Richard managed a makeshift spell to drive him off.

It was when they had settled once more that Hunch began to accuse Kim of working for Laverham. Kim protested, looking quite overset, and Mairelon intervened, sharply reminding Hunch that he had performed a truth spell on Kim days into their acquaintance. But it was when Mairelon demanded Hunch apologise that he had a surprise. Kim insisted there was no need for apology because she herself had forgotten about the spell.

Mairelon did not miss that she had been convinced they were about to throw her out on her ear.