So we'd ventured out onto streets patrolled by watchful bobbies and sharp-eyed air-raid wardens. Uncle Mick had allowed me in on this riskier job, one he would normally have done with my cousins, Colm and Toby. That's the way it was now, with the men away fighting. Women stepping up to do the jobs we'd been telling them we were capable of all along.

Not that Uncle Mick doubted my capabilities. He had never done that. It was just that his urge to protect me was strong. With the boys gone, however, the time for that was past.

I took another look at the house. It was a sturdy Georgian brick residence with tidy hedges and an iron fence surrounding the property, gates at the front and back. It was just the kind of place I'd hoped to live in one day when I was young and romantic minded. Now it didn't appeal to me. I thought it seemed too formal, too stuffy somehow, with its rooms full of antiques and bric-a-brac.

It wasn't a mansion. We didn't go in for the biggest houses, the kind with live-in household staff. Instead, we slipped in and out with no one the wiser until they opened their safe again and discovered things were missing.

We were very good at what we did, and we had always been successful. That was what made the uneasy feeling I had tonight all the more distracting.

I glanced at my watch, the luminous dial showing me that it was nearly midnight. Uncle Mick would be in place. There was no more time for hesitation.

With one last glance up and down the street, I walked casually along the pavement until I reached the edge of the gate. The iron door was slightly ajar, which meant Uncle Mick was ahead of me. I slipped through it and followed the pathway that ran along the side of the house, shielded by the hedges, to the side entrance.

Ahead of me, barely discernible in the darkness, I saw a shadow at the doorway and heard the faint sounds of a lock beneath metal instruments. Uncle Mick, when in a law-abiding frame of mind, was a locksmith, and he'd never met a lock that didn't bend to his will.

"Ah, there you are, my girl," he said as I approached. "Right on time."

There was a click as the lock yielded to the hand of a master, and the door opened inward.

Uncle Mick stood silently in the doorway for a moment, listening for any sounds within the house. Then he beckoned me forward and we went inside.

"You didn't see anyone?" he asked, as he switched on his torch. That was another benefit of the blackout shades. Normally, we would have to stand inside a house waiting for our eyes to adjust to a darker shade of dark.

"No," I replied. "Though something feels … a bit off."

"It's the unnatural dark," he said. "The whole city feels like a tomb."

"Yes," I agreed, though I didn't think that was what was bothering me.

He grinned. "All the better for us, though, eh, Ellie?"

"I suppose so."

I switched on my own torch and followed him as he led the way from the entry through the tidy kitchen and into the dining room. There we paused for a moment, and I shined my torch across the heavy ornamental furniture, the velvet curtains, the paintings that hung on the walls, and the quality rug upon the gleaming wooden floor.

My torchlight lingered on the rug, and then I stopped. There was a footprint against the pattern, a man's shoe by the size of it. Who had tracked mud into the house? It seemed odd that it hadn't been cleaned. Then again, a lot of things weren't the same during the war as they had been before.

I put the thought away. I had more important matters to consider at the moment. My concentration was something I prided myself on. I had always been able to focus on a thing and give it my sole attention. What was it about tonight that had set me so on edge? Perhaps I was just missing Colm and Toby. Nothing had seemed the same since they went off to war.

My light flickered across a sideboard that sat loaded with crystal and china. The resident had taken no precautions against bombing, and I had the sudden image of shards of glass exploding across the room like a rain shower.

Excerpted from A Peculiar Combination by Ashley Weaver. Copyright © 2021 by Ashley Weaver. Excerpted by permission of Minotaur Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.