The Thief-Taker : Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner by T.F. Banks Page A

committed myself to two engagements on the same evening. It was a mistake honestly and innocently made. A lapse of memory—not everyone's is so perfect as yours.”
    “Lord Arthur?”
    She nodded sheepishly.
    “Is he not married?”
    “In name only—his wife lives in the country. Their children are grown. Now, Henry, you know we have always agreed…”
    Morton held up both his hands, rising to his full height. “Do not waste this soliloquy on me, who knows it by heart.”
    But the room was small and she put herself between Morton and the door, her absurdly made-up face close to his, green eyes gazing out from a field of cool, white Lille powder.
    “Tomorrow night I promise to you—no, Henry, I promise. And there will be no mistakes.” She watchedhis face to gauge the effect of her pledge. “Now don't go running off—I have something for you.” She searched around her table and finally produced a leather-bound volume.
    “There; by your pugilistic friend, Byron.”
    “Hardly a friend,” Morton protested weakly, too aware that she patronised him. It was the new book, Hebrew Melodies .
    She pressed it into his hands, and he felt his fingers close around the smooth calfskin. New volumes of poetry were rare, and expensive, pleasures.
    “Will you stay for the performance?” she asked softly.
    Morton wondered if anyone ever refused the wilful Arabella.
    “Through the first act, at least.”
    “Well, come see me then and we can visit until curtain call.”
    There was a knock on her door just then—alerting Arabella to her entrance. She leaned forward to kiss Henry, remembered her face paint, and smiled as only Arabella could. Then she was out the door and hurrying off to her assignation with a full house of admirers.
    Morton looked down at the book in his hands, opened it to the title page, and there, in a fine, legible hand, found:
    To Mrs. Malibrant:
    Whom I have long admired from afar.
    Byron
    Morton laughed. He could do nothing else.

Chapter 8
    M orton sat reading Byron's newest work, though his concentration flagged. Not enough sleep the previous night, what with Arabella sending him off to find that worthless jarvey. And then her “forgetting” all about their engagement. She hadn't forgotten at all, she'd just had a more interesting offer. Why did he even…?
    But there were reasons.
    He sighed and tossed down the poems, picking up the morning Times again and running his eye down the close columns of advertisements. Had he simply missed the inevitable little notice that indicated the thieves of Lord Elgin's antiquities were prepared to sell them back to their owner? At least he'd have that to lay at Sir Nathaniel's feet.
    Not that the swag was very much: a few scraps of carved marble pilfered from the casually guarded heaps of the stuff in and about a shed in the inner courtyard of Burlington House. Elgin's supposedly magnificent collection, shipped back from Greece, was gathering dustthere as the government tried to decide whether to purchase it and thus whether—and this was much worse from the point of view of those parsimonious gentry—to spend the money to build a proper museum to house it. A British Museum. What an extravagance.
    Sir Nathaniel Conant was, by and large, a man Morton esteemed. He was perhaps a bit naive in the ways of the criminal classes, but he would learn—if he stayed at Bow Street long enough. It bothered Morton to have offended him, and he rather badly wanted to make it right.
    Despite combing the columns twice, Morton found no reference to the missing marbles. In disgust, he opened the paper to news of the more common variety. That fraud Mesmer had died, apparently. “ The discoverer of animal magnetism ,” the editor named him. Morton snorted. He'd thought the man dead for years, so obscure had the once-celebrated doctor become.
    Inevitably he found his way to the accounts of Wellington's army and the looming conflict on the continent. The reports were several days out of