Touch of a Thief

by Mia Marlowe

  “Like hell we don’t.” He leaned both hands on the arms of the chair, forcing her into the tufted back. “Civil, you say? You steal from me bold as brass. You consort with the lowest sort of riffraff, making God knows what kind of Faustian deal, and yet, you expect me to be civil?”

  She lifted her chin. “Did it occur to you that my actions were solely for your protection?”

  “Oh, yes. I heard the bugger’s threats, but I can’t believe you’d take them seriously. Do you think I can’t take care of myself? And you?”

  “No one can be eternally vigilant.”

  “Watch me,” he said through clenched teeth. “It still doesn’t give you the right to steal from me.”

  “I didn’t steal from you. By rights, half those jewels in that stocking belong to me. Or at least they will once we find the diamond. I merely took a small portion of what is mine in advance.”

  “Without so much as a by-your-leave.” He shook his head and began to pace the small area like a caged leopard. “A bit presumptuous of you, your ladyship, since we’ve yet to locate the stone. We don’t even know we’ll find Baaghh kaa kkhuun in Hanover once we get there.”

  She knew with certainty they would, but she refused to tell him how. If he was this upset over the mundane aspects of her thieving abilities, how would he react to the news that she could hear the voices of gemstones and receive visions from them?

  “Who was that fellow?” Quinn demanded.

  “My fence,” she admitted, slumping a bit under his dark scowl. “Well, a thief can’t very well convert stolen goods into cash without one, can she?”

  “You mean the man followed you from London?” His mouth tightened in a hard line. “Why did you tell him where you were going?”

  “I didn’t tell him. I had to visit his shop to sell that pearl the day we sailed. My mother needed the money before I left, but I never breathed a word about Paris or the red diamond. I swear it,” she said miserably. “Willie has ways of finding things out.”

  “So you gave him the emerald to . . . what? Appease him?” Quinn raked a hand through his hair so hard, Viola expected to see clumps of his dark curls come out, stuck between his fingers. “Even if you gave him everything we have, it wouldn’t be enough. Fellows of his ilk are never satisfied.”

  Viola templed fingers in her lap and fixed her gaze on them. Quinn was right. Willie would always threaten, always try to blackmail her.

  “How did you know he was here?”

  “He sent a note.” Quinn didn’t need to know she’d run into Willie in Paris once before, when she was attempting to leave him.

  “How does he know I possess any gemstones in the first place?”

  “I discussed it with Willie before I broke into your town house. He has a friend who knows where all the secret vaults are built into the homes on your street. How else do you think I was able locate the wall safe so quickly?” she said wearily. “Besides, if you didn’t want anyone to know about it, you shouldn’t have made it known at your dinner party that you had a fistful of jewels.”

  “I was trying to draw out the Mayfair Jewel Thief at the time.”

  “Which you did quite successfully. You were just expecting the thief to be a man.”

  He sank into the wing chair opposite her. “It would have made matters a damn sight easier.”

  In her mind, Viola heard her father’s voice, lamenting that she had not been the son he’d hoped for. It was his complaint all through her childhood and she hated it. God had made her female. It wasn’t her fault, then or now.

  “How unfortunate. I’m sorry my gender is such an inconvenience to you.” Acid crept into her tone.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “The fact that I’m female worked very well for you when we were caught in the ambassador’s office. But I suppose you could’ve dropped a gentleman thief’s trousers and buggered him just as easily. Come to think of it, that might have been an even better distraction for the guard.”

  “Viola!”

  He was shocked at her vulgarity. So be it. She was feeling rather vulgar at the moment.

  “Swiving one’s wife—excuse me, one’s pretend wife—isn’t nearly as distracting as being caught with a male lover. So once again, my femininity is a detriment.”

  Choler crept up his neck like a red rash. His eyes glittered dangerously. She was making him angrier, but she didn’t care. She could be angry too.

  “I didn’t say I wished you were a man,” he said, clipping his words.

  “It was implied.”

  “Well, imply this.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “From now on, you’re not going anywhere without me.”

  “I will not be hedged about as if I were a child.”

  “If you were a child, I’d take you over my knee and warm your bum good and proper,” Quinn said, his gray eyes blazing. “I still haven’t abandoned the idea completely, so don’t tempt me further.”

  The only reason she’d taken the emerald to Willie was to protect Quinn. Why couldn’t he give her the least bit of credit for good intentions? “You don’t trust me.”

  “Trust has nothing to do with it. I’m trying to protect you, you little ninny.” His voice was rough and throaty. “Besides, trust is earned. And you’ve not done anything to warrant it this day.”

  He was a fine one to talk about trust. Hadn’t she given him the benefit of the doubt after seeing a vision that all but proved him guilty as Cain?

  She almost threw her knowledge in his face. But then she’d have to explain about her gift and how she’d seen that horrific vision at the lake. She wasn’t prepared to share that part of herself with him.

  Not when he wouldn’t accept the part she already had shared.

  Quinn rose to his feet. “Come. We haven’t any more time to waste on this.”

  Oh, yes, let us not squander time on anything so unimportant as what we are to each other. Viola bit her tongue to keep the bitter words from flying out.

  “We have some business to attend to,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  “We still need passage on a coach bound for the German territories.” He offered her his hand. She ignored it and rose without his assistance. “And I believe you still want that jet and silver set, or was that just a ruse to get out of the hotel?”

  “No, I fully intended to visit the jewelers after I concluded my business with Willie,” she said stonily. “You have credit I can exploit, you see.”

  If he was determined to think the worst of her, by God, she’d show him the worst.

  He looked at her sharply. “Yes, I do see. Maybe for the first time.”

  “Well, let’s be off then.” She rose, smoothing a strand of hair behind her ear. “At least we won’t need to stop by the apothecary.”

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t need any French letters,” she said with a poisonous smile. “You won’t have cause to use them.”

  CHAPTER 19

  When they halted at one of the first coaching inns on the road to Hanover, they were overtaken by Lord Cowley’s grand equipage and entourage. Through the servant’s grapevine, Sanjay learned the British ambassador to France was on his way to visit the House of Hanover to meet with emissaries from Prince Albert.

  “It’s a strong indication that we’re right about the diamond traveling through Hanover,” Quinn said.

  It was one of the few things he said at all as he and Viola bounced along in the enclosed carriage day after day. By night, he left Viola alone in the chamber he let for them at each coaching inn and slept in the common room with the travelers who were too poor to afford private accommodations. The one exception was when they caught up to the ambassador in Cologne and happened to overnight in the same inn.

  Then Quinn stayed in the room with Viola, but spent the night sleeping on a pallet across the threshold instead of beside her in the bed. Viola had a restless night, fisting her sheets in frustration while Quinn’s soft breathing kept her from finding s
leep. Her only consolation was that he looked as weary the next morning as she felt.

  While they waited for Sanjay to arrive with their breakfast, she watched him in the vanity mirror as she brushed out her hair. Quinn glanced at her several times, but jerked his gaze away each time she caught him at it.

  She’d told Quinn she wouldn’t have a marriage of deadly silence. She couldn’t abide it in a pretend marriage either.

  “Is it because of Neville?” she finally asked.

  “What?”

  “Did you spend the night in this room with me because you know Neville Beauchamp is here at this inn?”

  He frowned and studied the plank floor between his boot tips. “I didn’t want him bothering you.”

  “He doesn’t bother me. I wouldn’t allow him to bother me. There’s no love lost between us.” She turned around and leaned an arm over the straight back of her chair. “Has it occurred to you that he might be useful?”

  “How so?”

  “Once we reach Hanover, lifting the diamond will be much easier if we stay in the same place the ambassador is staying. That will undoubtedly also be where the diamond’s courier will stop to meet Prince Albert’s people. If we’re in residence, we can scout out the situation before we commit to the theft.”

  She turned back to the mirror, gathered her hair and twirled it into a quick French twist. Jabbing in a handful of hairpins to hold it place, she plucked a few strands loose to curl at her temples and in front of her ears. It wasn’t the most artful coiffure, but it would do.

  “Your rank and title may get us an invitation to dinner,” she said. “But Neville could arrange for us to stay under the same roof as the diamond.”

  “At what cost?” he asked sullenly.

  She glared at his reflection. “I don’t intend to bed him in exchange for an invitation to a house party, if that’s what you mean.”

  What a light-skirt he must think her!

  “I didn’t—”

  “What did you mean then?” she snapped.

  “He hurt you once. I don’t want you beholden to him. It puts him in a position to hurt you again.”

  Her heart warmed to him, but she tamped the sensation down. If she let herself lean on him too much, she’d come to need him and she couldn’t afford that. No one had tried to protect her since her father died. Not her cousin Jerome, the new earl. Certainly not Neville. But Quinn obviously didn’t realize he hurt her by mistrusting her.

  “I’m a grown woman, Quinn.” She turned back to the mirror to fasten the clasps on her new silver and jet earbobs. Now that she’d discovered there was a stone she could wear without fear, she found she enjoyed jewelry. “I can look after myself.”

  He bent and placed a soft kiss on the side of her neck. She couldn’t bring herself to pull away. His warm breath feathered over her skin and curled behind her ear. “But what if I want to look after you?”

  If he could be made to need her, would it be so bad to need him?

  When she didn’t answer, he kissed her neck again, reaching around to fold his arms across her chest in a snug embrace.

  Oh, how she’d missed the warmth of him, the solid hardness of his body. She turned her head and he took her lips, slanting his mouth over hers in a soft, wet kiss.

  His kiss said he wanted to make things right between them. His tongue begged forgiveness, teasing along the seam of her lips. She granted him absolution, parting her lips and suckling his tongue softly. She reached up to palm his cheeks.

  He unfastened her high collar, one seed pearl button at a time, until the tops of her breasts were bared. Then he plunged a hand beneath her lacy chemise and corset to claim her. Her nipple hardened and ached. She moaned into his mouth as he began unhooking the front clasps of her corset with his other hand.

  Viola’s body was making her choices once again. It had ended disastrously last time, but she didn’t have the heart to resist. Besides, Quinn was not Neville.

  “Those are talented fingers you have there, sir,” she said when their mouths parted for an instant. “Perhaps I should teach you the mysteries of a tumbler lock.”

  “I can think of better uses for them at the moment.” He demonstrated by drawing out both her breasts and thumbing her nipples in slow circles.

  Viola felt herself being sucked into that hot dark place again, where none of the rules of sanity applied, but before she let him lead her there, she had to settle something between them. She covered his hands with hers to still them.

  “Will you trust me to see Neville alone long enough to wangle an invitation for us?”

  “That depends.” He bent to drop a kiss on her breast, whirling his tongue on a small patch of exposed flesh between their splayed fingers. “Will you let me pull out your pins and take down your hair?”

  She didn’t mistake his real question. “We haven’t any French letter.”

  “There are ways for us to please each other that don’t require one,” he said huskily. “Let me show you, Viola. Trust me for this.”

  She’d trust him with anything. She pulled out the first pin and a long lock tumbled down over her left breast. “I didn’t really do a good job on this style in any case.”

  He smiled and pulled out the rest of the hairpins. He smoothed her hair over her shoulders. “It looked fine, but I love it down best.”

  “Hardly appropriate for public display.”

  He shook it out, feasting his eyes on the long auburn locks.

  “I wouldn’t want your hair on public display. Call me greedy, but I like being the only one to see you like this.” He raised her to her feet and went to work on her buttons and laces again. “This way when you’re all done up in public, I can look at you and imagine you as you really are.”

  “So you think you know how I really am?”

  “Probably not. Not yet,” he amended. “How much can anyone really know of another person? Only what they let us see.”

  Or what I see when I touch your signet ring, she thought guiltily. She’d never deliberately used her gift to spy on another person that way before. When she handled a gem, a vision came unbidden, not sought out. Perhaps that was why the images at the lake were so terrifyingly immediate, why she’d seen it all through Reggie’s dying eyes. Now that she thought about it, what she’d done had been a terrible violation of Quinn.

  And it had only brought her doubt and mistrust.

  “It takes a great deal of time to know another person,” she said. With or without aid from a gemstone’s stored memory.

  “But I’m willing to take the time to know you, Viola.”

  When Sanjay rapped on the door a few moments later, he was greeted with Quinn’s surly growl and told not to bother with a breakfast tray.

  “The lady and I will break our fast later.” Quinn’s voice was ragged and Sanjay heard the telltale creak of a bed frame.

  “As you will, sahib.” The prince smiled. It had saddened him to see the rift between the pair, especially since he’d revised his opinion of the lady upward. His friend had deprived himself of Lady Viola’s company long enough and he suspected Quinn was breaking that fast now.

  About time, my friend, he thought as he headed back down to the kitchen with the tray. About bloody good time.

  Quinn had imagined Viola’s mouth on his cock several times. She’d delivered a few licks and teasing kisses to that part of him during their previous loveplay, but she’d never taken him in.

  Until now.

  His imaginings couldn’t begin to compare with reality.

  Quinn’s world dissolved in the warm wetness of her mouth. The soft grate of her teeth against the head of his cock, the swirl of her tongue over the rough patch of skin that was so ultrasensitive. The suction. The saliva. He was drowning in her and not caring a whit.

  Of course, he’d given as good as he was getting.

  He’d insisted on pleasuring her first. Well, that was a little dishonest because it was his pleasure to do it. Seeing her brought to incoherent nee
d made him feel achingly alive.

  And giving her bliss gave him a reason to keep breathing.

  When she turned her mouth on him, without him asking her to, he thought his heart would leap out of his chest.

  He closed his eyes, the better to revel in the delicious sensations, all the while scrolling images of Viola across his mind’s eye—her whole body glistening with a light sheen of perspiration, as her mouth went passion-slack; the way her breasts thrust upward when she arched her back; the incredible secret view of her delicate parts when she spread her legs, knees lolling to the sides, giving herself over to him completely.

  How like a flower she was, all soft petaled and quivering. How sweet when he licked at her wet little puss. He’d rolled his tongue and delved deep.

  When he’d pressed his teeth against her “pearl” she’d come, her inner walls clenching around his tongue in fierce pulses.

  His scrotum tightened at the memory.

  He opened his eyes and watched her lavish him with her tongue. She worked with diligence, like a beautiful cat running her tongue over his length. She made an appreciative noise, as if he tasted better than a baguette.

  “I can’t . . . hold back . . . much longer,” he warned her.

  She swirled her tongue over the head. She sucked his aching spot, still turning her wide eyes toward him to see how what she did affected him. “Don’t hold back.”

  She grasped his rod and slipped her mouth over him, taking him as deeply as she could. Then she cupped his bag with one hand, fondling his balls. His muscles tensed. Her fingers eased down to massage the spot just behind his scrotum.

  His eyes rolled back and the top of his head nearly flew off.

  He came in her mouth, throbbing against her soft palate. When the last pulse faded, she sat up, an incongruously angelic smile on her face. What she’d done to him was wickedness itself, but he wallowed in it. To be accepted so completely, to be wanted in total—his heart galloped in his chest at the unwarranted grace of her mode of loving.