A softer sense of alarm—or perhaps it was guilt—padded across her shoulders like a stealthy barn cat. She made light of it, as she always did. “The persistent plague of too many ladies and not enough gentlemen? I do hope you’ve come prepared to dance.”
The first hint of a smile began at the far corner of his lips, as if he were not yet ready to commit to the strenuous exercise of a full-out grin. “No. I rarely dance.” He shook his head in rueful apology. “No, the problem I speak of is a rash of thefts from some of the better households in the district. I’ve been asked to restore some sense of law and order within Edinburgh’s society.”
“On guard” was too simple and sensible a phrase to describe her reaction—Quince’s skin went a little cold, and that sharp-clawed sense of alarm scratched its way down her spine. But she rose to the occasion—she knew better than most how to put up her weapons. To win any sort of fight, one had to attack, not just defend. And satire was the sharpest sword of them all.
“Restore law and order?” She made herself suitably wide-eyed and breathless. “I hadn’t realized we were lacking it. Ought we to be on watch for gangs of housebreakers?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” He looked sage and worldly with all his unruffled calm, but she could see a tinge of riddy heat creeping over his collar. “Though it’s too early to tell. But certainly too early for worry. Pray don’t be alarmed, lass.”
Quince’s skin went all over prickly—nothing put her back up like being condescended to.
She sharpened up her sarcasm so he would not be able to so easily evade her point. “Holy sticky toffee pudding, Strathcairn”—she decided if he could trespass upon her Christian name, then she would trespass upon his old title—“imagine that. A gang of cutthroat housebreakers carting off priceless Louis Quatorze commodes to furnish their tatty tenement houses. How have the newspapers and broadsheets not been full of that?”
His smile confined itself to the outer corners of those intelligent green eyes. “No priceless commodes have been carted off.”
“Auld occasional tables, then? Scaffy, mismatched chairs?”
“You needn’t mock, lass. It’s not ladylike.” He put a hand up to rub the back of his neck, as if she really were succeeding in making him uncomfortable. Marvelous. And he had to subdue his growing smile—it started to hitch up one side of his mouth, as if he wanted to be amused, but was sure he oughtn’t be. “If you must know, it’s been very small items—smelling salt bottles, buttons, and the like.”
And her with his two buttons down her bodice. She could feel them press into her skin as if they were biting her. Unsurprising since they were his.
Quince was too larky a lass to let a bit of her discomfort show. “Really? You’ve never abandoned Westminster, and come all the way north from London for some missing smelling salts?”
He had the good nature to look chagrined—that wary smile turned down sheepishly at the corners. “Not exactly. It’s more complicated than that.”
In fact, it was a great deal simpler than that. And she could not resist telling him so. “Well, it’s a very good thing you told me.” She lowered her voice in mock confidence. “Because I’m sure I know exactly what’s happened to them.”
He did not lean down to share her confidences. If anything, he became more upright, and even tilted away from her, as if he thought he could see her better from a distance. “You, lass?”
“Aye.” She seized him by the upper arms, and man-handled him around—and by jimble if he hadn’t the brawest, most firmly shaped musculature hidden under that soft, plush velvet—so he could follow the direction of her gaze. “There. Mr. Fergus McElmore has misplaced his snuffbox there, right under that vase of heather and broom. See? And there”—she pushed him in the other direction—“the Dowager Countess of Chester has abandoned her silver vinaigrette bottle in the cushion of her seat. Q.E.D. as you parliamentary types say.” She made a dramatic flourish as if she were a theatrical barrister in court. “There is the modus operandi of your thefts, Strathcairn—silly stupidity at worst, simple thoughtlessness at best. Though in Fergus’ case particularly, I think the thoughtlessness has come from an excess of Lady Inverness’s fine Scotch whisky befuddling his poor wee numptie brain.”
A fine coloring heat crept up Strathcairn’s neck to his jawline. It lessened that impression of Grampian granite nicely.
He shook his head, but smiled nonetheless. “You think me foolish.”
“I think whoever complained of their missing baubles is foolish, when they are likely only victims of their own excess—how can they be expected to keep track of so many possessions?”
He looked at her then—really looked, as if he finally saw more of her than the ghost of her pigtailed past. “You’ve a remarkably jaundiced view of society for a lass your age.”
She was more than jaundiced. She was nearly lock-jawed with disdain. “I have a realistic understanding of human nature, Strathcairn. I think people are forgetful, and don’t want to appear foolish, so they bluster and blame others for their own mistakes. And it is easy enough to blame the powerless”—she nodded toward the servants, who were most often the first to be accused when anything went amiss—“from the safe position of privilege.”
“I take your meaning, lass.” He acknowledged the right of her argument with a nod. “Nevertheless, it is my duty to look into the matter, to determine if it is indeed only a case—or cases—of forgetfulness.”
“Then I should advise you to start with our hostess, and ask her what she does with all the flotsam and jetsam her guests leave behind after her balls.” Because not even Quince, terrible magpie that she was, could take everything that was available—her bodice could only hold so much. “Perhaps she has the footmen cart it all up, and take it to the poor box at Canongate Kirk where they’ll get better use of it.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth she wished them back. She’d let her tongue run away from her mind, and run far too close to the truth for comfort.
And her suggestion brought Strathcairn’s perilously attentive green gaze back to her. “What an agile mind you have, Lady Quince.” And then for no reason she could fathom, he smiled at her—that gorgeous, gleaming grin she remembered of old. That mischievous, sideways curve of lip that made her feel as if she were being blessedly bludgeoned over the head with a five-penny slab of butter.
Quince nearly had to pinch herself to call her wits back under starter’s orders. “Oh, pish tosh. Practical is what my mind is.”
His smile settled back down to the corner of those sharp eyes. “Perhaps, but you’ve given me an idea—perhaps what I’m looking for is not a hardened criminal, but someone with the dowagers’s vice.”
Nay, nay, nay.
Clever, too clear-eyed man.
She had to divert him with something equally clever. “Carrying a vinaigrette is a vice? What do you imagine the ladies keep in there? Undiluted opium?”
Strathcairn shook his head, but he was amused enough to still smile. “The dowager’s vice is the irresistible tendency toward theft. That is, the compulsive stealing of objects which are not rightfully theirs. It is commonly practiced by maiden aunties and elderly companions. And dowagers, of course. Hence the name.”
Oh, by jimble. That sounded far too apt.
And the skeptical Scot in him had taken over—he was frowning at the row of seats at the far side of the ballroom where the older ladies, including some rather impecunious relations and companions, sat with their heads together in a comfortable coze. “They look perfectly harmless, but one never knows what might be hidden in their reticules, or tucked into their bodices.”
Heat blossomed in that very place where Strathcairn’s purloined buttons dug into her skin. Oh, he was clever.
But so was she. “Down their bodices?” She quite purposefully, and quite inexpertly, straightened her trim bodice, drawing his attention out the side of his eye to her small, but nevertheless eminently serviceable breasts. Mama always said
a man couldn’t think and look at breasts, no matter their size. No fool, Mama. And the clever padding Mama had insisted her maid sew into her stays made up for any natural deficit. “How do they find any room? Must be dreadful uncomfortable.”
His brow rose as slowly as a guillotine over that acute eye. But his self-control was not equal to the task at hand, and his gaze strayed exactly where she had meant it to.
“Lady Quince.” Strathcairn’s lowered voice was absolutely irresistible when he forgot himself enough to let the Scots burr rumble. “Let me make right sure I understand you—are you flirting with me?”
“Am I?” Quince ignored the blaze of heat his voice and gaze kindled under her skin, and gave him her bright, knowing smile—all pleased lips and mischievous eyes. “What I am doing is trying to make you remember your duty, and accede to my wish to dance with me.”
He regarded her with those too canny, too bright green eyes for another long moment before he answered. “Perhaps I will.” He reached for her hand, and held her at arm’s length for a lengthy perusal, as if he had not yet decided to grant her wish. “Yes, I definitely will. But before I do so, perhaps I ought to warn you, wee Quince, to be good. And be very, very careful what you wish for.”
The heat that had blossomed under her bodice spread like wildflowers across her skin along the whole length of his gaze. And she liked it.
She raised her chin and gave him her slyest smile yet. “Oh, I am always careful, Strathcairn. But I had much rather be bad, and be right.”
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Also by Elizabeth Essex
Dartmouth Brides
The Pursuit of Pleasure
A Sense of Sin
The Danger of Desire
Highland Brides
Mad for Love
Mad About the Marquess
A Fine Madness
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Marry
Mad Dogs and Englishwomen
The Kent Brothers Chronicles
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Reckless Brides
Almost a Scandal
A Breath of Scandal
Scandal in the Night
The Scandal Before Christmas
After the Scandal
A Scandal to Remember
Anthologies
Vexed (featuring Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea)
Tempted at Christmas (featuring A Merry Devil)
Dashing All the Way (featuring Up on the Rooftops)
Christmas Brides (featuring The Scandal Before Christmas)
About the Author
Elizabeth Essex is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed historical romance, including Reckless Brides, and her new Highland Brides series. Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award and Seal of Excellence Award, and RWA’s prestigious RITA Award. The Reckless Brides Series has also made Top-Ten lists from Romantic Times, The Romance Reviews and Affaire de Coeur Magazine, and Desert Isle Keeper status at All About Romance. Her fifth book, A BREATH OF SCANDAL, was awarded Best Historical in the Reader’s Crown 2013.
When not rereading Jane Austen, mucking about in her garden, or simply messing about with boats, Elizabeth can be found making up stories about heroes and heroines who live far more exciting lives than she. It wasn’t always so. Long before she ever set pen to paper, Elizabeth graduated from Hollins College with a BA in Classics and Art History, and earned her MA in Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M University. While she loved the life of an underwater archaeologist, she has found her true calling writing lush, lyrical historical romance full of passion, daring and adventure.
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