“Well. To start with, I have a couple of pieces of jewelry.” He nodded encouragingly, so Miriam continued. “But then, I have in mind something more substantial. You see, where I come from I am of not inconsiderable means, and I have not entirely cut myself off from the old country.”

“And what country would that be?” asked Burgeson. “I only ask because of the requirements of the Aliens and Sedition Act,” he added hastily.

“That would be—” Miriam licked her lips. “Scotland?”

“Scotland.” He stared at her. “With an accent like that,” he said with heavy irony. “Well, well, well. Scotland it is. Show me the jewelry.”

“One moment.” Miriam walked forward, peered down at the countertop. “Hmm. These are a bit disappointing. Is this all you deal in?”

“Ma’am.” He hopped down from the stool. “What do you take me for? This is the common stock on public display, where any mountebank might smash and grab. The better class I keep elsewhere.”

“Oh.” She reached into her pouch and fumbled for a moment, then pulled out what she’d been looking for. It was a small wooden box—purchased from a head shop in Cambridge, there being a pronounced shortage of cheap wooden jewelry boxes on the market—containing two pearl earrings. Real pearls. Big ones. “For starters, I’d like you to put a value on these.”

“Hmm.” Burgeson picked the box up, chewing his lower lip. “Excuse me.” He whipped out a magnifying lens and examined them minutely. “I’ll need to test them.” he murmured, “but if these are real pearls, they’re worth a pretty penny. Where did you get them?”

“That is for me to know and you to guess.” She tensed.

“Hah.” He grinned at her cadaverously. “You’d better have a good story next time you try to sell them. I’m not sticking my neck in a noose for your mistress if she decides to send the thief-takers after you.”

“Hmm. What makes you think I’m a light-fingered servant?” she asked.

“Well.” He looked down his nose at her. “Your clothes are not what a woman of fashion, or even of her own means, would wear—”

“Fresh off the boat,” Miriam observed.

“And earrings are among the most magnetic of baubles to those of a jackdaw disposition,” he added.

“And wanting a suit of clothes that does not mark me out as a stranger,” Miriam commented.

“Besides which,” he added with some severity, “Scotland has not existed for a hundred and seventy years. It’s all part of Grande Bretaigne.”

“Oh.” Miriam covered her mouth. Shit! “Well then?” She mustered up a sickly smile. “How about this?”

The quarter-kilogram bar of solid gold was about an inch wide, two inches long, and half an inch thick. It sat on the display case like an intrusion from another world, shimmering with the promise of wealth and power and riches.