by Louise Allen
‘I was worried about you. I am worried still. You are not happy.’
‘Of course I am not happy! Do you not listen to a word I say to you? I told you how it would be and I was right. My grandfather wants me to marry Dryton, I am certain of it.’
‘That rake?’
‘Are there any other by that name? Yes, that rake. He is, apparently, eminently suitable. But if it is not him, it will be another, chosen, just as you have decided to choose a bride, for bloodlines, fortune and influence.’
‘Cleo, damn it—’ She levelled a look at him. ‘And don’t prim up at me like that, you are enough to make a saint swear. Cleo, darling... Oh, hell.’ He kissed her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kissing Cleo was like coming home...and it was like exploring some exotic new land. He had kissed her before, knew her taste, knew the softness of her lips and the sharp nip of her teeth and the languorous, adventurous sweep of her tongue, but something had changed. There was a heat and a wildness in her and a rightness in what they were doing. Her fingers speared through his hair, sending his hat flying, his found the fastenings of her pelisse and then the bodice beneath, found soft, warm flesh rising to meet his caress.
‘Cleo.’ He dragged his mouth free and stared down at her, into the stormy green depths of her eyes before she pulled his head back down and he was lost again.
A frantic flapping of wings, so close they brushed his cheek, made him straighten. ‘Only panicking pigeons,’ he said after a moment. ‘Must have seen a sparrowhawk.’
Cleo curled in tight against his chest, for once, it seemed, at a loss for words, then she sat up and began to put her clothing to rights.
‘Cleo, I am sorry.’
‘Why do you always apologise when we make love?’ she demanded, jamming her bonnet back on and pushing wisps of hair back with angry stabs of her fingers. ‘I want you, you want me, yet you are such a hypocrite about it.’
Quin opened his mouth to reply and she snapped, ‘And don’t you dare say honour or I will never speak to you again.’
‘Which would be an excellent thing!’ She turned away, but not before he saw her teeth close hard on her lower lip. ‘Cleo, I’m sorry, darling.’
‘Don’t call me that.’ He could see her fight for composure, then she turned back. ‘Can’t you tell Grandfather what a rake Dryton is?’
‘It won’t make any difference. The duke is of a generation where gentlemen were expected to behave like that and ladies were expected to ignore it. He’d only find someone else anyway.’ That was not the solution, but what was? He could not allow her to be forced to marry into complete unhappiness and yet he had no right to help her.
‘Very true,’ Cleo said. ‘I can see that I will have to take things into my own hands. Can I trust you not to tell Grandfather we have had this conversation?’
‘Of course.’ He could see from her face that there was no of course about it. ‘I swear. Cleo, what are you plotting?’ Something dangerous, something that would ruin her, he was horribly certain and if he hadn’t been so damned worried about his precious honour and duty in the first place then she wouldn’t need to.
‘Don’t worry, Lord Quintus.’ Tidy again, she reached for her parasol and stood up. ‘I am not considering a career on the streets.’
He let her go ahead of him, watched as she went to join Maggie and the footman and turned back towards Grosvenor Square. He did not follow her.
* * *
Quin arrived on the Duke of St Osyth’s doorstep two days after the encounter in Hyde Park within an hour of receiving a curt summons from his Grace. He knew himself to be immaculately turned out and his expression calm as the butler opened the door and pronounced, ‘You are expected, my lord’, but his internal state was anything but tranquil.
He had been trying to think of a way to influence St Osyth, a way of helping him understand his granddaughter, but he could come up with nothing. Now he decided to just tell the man straight that he was driving Cleo to despair.
The butler swept him straight into the duke’s study. Quin bowed slightly. ‘Good morning, Your Grace.’ Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he thought as he smiled and waited for the older man to speak. Go down with all guns blazing and tell him what you think of him for putting political and dynastic consideration before his granddaughter’s happiness and well-being.
The duke got up and waved him to a chair. ‘Sit. Damn bad business, this.’ He seemed more worried than hostile.
‘Your note was not explicit, Your Grace.’ His stomach clenched. God, I’m too late.
‘She’s bolted. Cleo, I mean. Left during the night last night, through the kitchens, it seems. That half-trained woman of hers went with her.’
Thank heavens for that small mercy. Maggie was streetwise and tough, although that hadn’t stopped the pair of them getting into trouble in Syracuse, he thought with a stab of real anxiety.
‘That is extremely worrying, Your Grace.’ I sound like some smooth diplomat. War has broken out? How inconvenient. A young woman is alone and unprotected in London? How worrying. Quin gritted his teeth on the angry words. ‘Have you any inkling why?’
‘Taken against the man I intend her to marry, I suspect, foolish chit. Anyone would think she was some lovelorn girl barely out, not a widow of three and twenty.’
‘Perhaps she has run to a man?’
‘She doesn’t know any except you.’
Was that an accusation? Quin took a deep breath through his nose, held it until the urge to call the man out subsided, and said, ‘I can assure you, Miss Woodward was not on my doorstep this morning. I have not seen her for days.’ And she won’t come to me, she doesn’t trust me. ‘Has she money?’
‘A few sovereigns. She left her aunt’s jewels and she took only walking and morning gowns, nightwear, that sort of thing. Enough for a couple of portmanteaux.’
‘Might I suggest Bow Street, Your Grace? Or a private enquiry agent.’
‘Damn it, I am St Osyth! I won’t have some grubby lout prying into my business. You find her, Deverall.’ He glared at him. ‘Money no object, just send me a round total of your expenses at the end of it. No scandal, that’s all.’
Quin found he was so angry that he dared not speak.
‘You aren’t tied up with some mission or another, are you? Not leaving on the noon tide for Russia?’ the duke snapped when Quin remained silent.
All he had planned was the courtship of Lady Caroline and that could wait. Everything could wait. ‘No, Your Grace. I was merely...’ Controlling myself. ‘Thinking. Have you any idea where her woman lives?’ Cleo might have gone there, but he doubted it. She would not want to bring the duke’s wrath down on the head of Maggie’s family. The duke shook his head. ‘Did she leave a note? Has she made female friends?’
‘No note. And she’s been too busy for such fripperies as friends. Time enough for tea parties when she’s married.’
Quin took a firm hold on his temper at the thought of Cleo, lonely and adrift on this emotional desert island where he had stranded her. ‘I must take my secretary into my confidence, Your Grace. He is perfectly discreet and with his help I can work faster.’
‘Very well. Keep me informed twice a day.’
Quin stood. ‘I will let you know when I have something to report. Anything else is simply a waste of time better spent searching. Good day.’
Damned old autocrat, Quin fumed as he ran down the steps and hailed a cab. ‘Albany and fast.’
* * *
George Baldwin was sitting at his desk when Quin strode in. ‘The invitations—’
‘Leave them. Miss Woodward is missing.’
‘Miss Woodward? As in the Duke of—’
‘Exactly. She has left home and nothing, not a whisper of this, must get out.’
‘Not a man, I assume?’
Quin shook his head. ‘I’ve got to think.’ He slumped into a wing-back armchair, flung one leg over the arm and closed his eyes. Cleo. Would she
try to leave London? No, she knows nowhere else and besides, she’ll understand the way a great city can hide people. She will try to earn her living honestly, but how? She has no qualifications for anything except...
‘Languages!’
‘My lord?’
‘Miss Woodward speaks French, Italian, modern Greek and Arabic.’
Baldwin, always fast on the uptake, reached for three books from beside the desk. ‘Let’s see what the directories have for translators and educational services.’ He glanced up from where he was beginning a list. ‘We’ll find her, my lord. Don’t worry.’
Quin reached for another book and began to search, unsettled by that reassuring smile. It was as if George thought Quin had lost someone of his own. He flattened the pages open at the right spot and pushed it across to George. Who do I think I am fooling? Myself, probably. This is Cleo. My Cleo, and she is all that matters.
* * *
Quin studied the list in his hand and checked the address in Wimpole Street. Eight down, six more to go. He wondered how George was getting on with his list since they had met for a snatched mutton chop and pint of ale at the Red Lion just off Piccadilly. The brass plate on the door was well polished and respectable, as was the location. Throcking and Trimm. Confidential translation services. Linguistic tuition.
He thought he would probably still be repeating his story in his sleep. ‘Good afternoon. I am travelling to the eastern Mediterranean on family business and require some basic Arabic tuition. It is urgent and I do not care what age, sex or nationality the tutor is.’
‘Good afternoon, sir. I am Mr Trimm.’ The gentleman behind the desk in the office appeared to have been polished to a high gleam from the top of his bald head to the toecaps of his boots. ‘Kindly take a seat and I will check our files. Arabic is not a common language, you understand... Ah.’ He riffled through and removed a slip of paper. ‘We have one tutor at the moment for Arabic, but I am afraid they have only just joined us. I have not yet had the opportunity to assess their work. However, by next week I am sure I will have fully tested their abilities.’
Mr Trimm put down the slip and Quin strained to read it unobtrusively upside down. Impossible.
‘I am in rather a hurry and none of the other agencies I have approached have been able to help me. A young man, is it? Perhaps I can interview him myself if you let me have his direction.’
‘A lady, actually. I am afraid we cannot give out addresses. However, I can write to her and ask her to attend the office tomorrow, if that would suit?’
‘Excellent,’ Quin said. He lifted his hat as if to replace it on his head. ‘About two?’ The hat dropped along with his gloves and cane as he made a show of catching it. The little bud vase on the desk overturned, spilling water across the surface. Quin’s elbow knocked the filing drawer, sending it to the floor and Mr Trimm, with a small shriek, dived for it.
Quin leaned across the desk, righted the bud vase, dropped a copy of The Times on the puddle of water and spun the index slip around.
Mrs Anthony
Walker’s Lodging House
3 Trivett Street
He pushed it back and fell to his knees, murmuring apologies.
‘Not at all, sir, not at all. I will just pick this up and then I will take your details. Oh, dear...’
Quin slipped quietly out of the door and hailed a cab. Mrs Anthony—and Cleopatra...it has to be her.
* * *
‘I imagine school is like this,’ Cleo said with a sigh and blotted the fair copy of the translation before looking to see what else she still had to do. Arabic into English. Greek into Italian, English into French. Mr Trimm was very thorough, but then, it had seemed a most respectable agency and the rates he had quoted seemed reasonable.
‘Wouldn’t know—dame school wasn’t like that.’ Maggie shook her duster out of the window. ‘This place isn’t bad, but they could do with a bit more spit and polish.’
Two rooms—one shared bedroom and what was optimistically described as a parlour—and the right to cook their own food in the kitchen and have a shovelful of coals every day, would take all of Cleo’s money in three weeks. Earning was essential, although Maggie declared that she’d soon find a job in one of the inns and chop houses in the area.
‘There’s someone at the front door—sounds like a row,’ Maggie said unnecessarily as raised voices penetrated from the landing. The thin panels rattled as someone knocked and their landlady’s voice could be heard raised in protest.
‘’Ere, I don’t hold with callers in rooms. There’s a parlour downstairs for that. This is a respectable house, I’ll have you know. I’ll not have some rake upstairs!’
‘But I am a very respectable rake, madam,’ a familiar voice said.
Cleo dropped the pen, heedless of ink splatters. ‘Quin.’
‘Well, that’s that,’ Maggie said with a grimace. ‘We’re too high up to climb out of the window. I’d best open the door and we’ll see if we can make a break for it when we get outside.’
Cleo shouldn’t have been glad to see him, elegant and faintly smiling while Mrs Walker brandished a large wooden spoon and threatened to call the Watch, but she was. So very, very glad, just for a second. Then the unhappiness flooded back.
‘Good afternoon, my lord.’
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Anthony, Miss Maggie.’ Quin stepped inside and closed the door firmly on the furious landlady. ‘I suggest you pack immediately for I do believe she means to call the nearest Charlie with his stick to have me thrown down the stairs.’
‘You have come to take me back to Grosvenor Square.’ It felt better to be standing. Cleo put her shoulders back and her chin up.
‘No... Pack and come back with me to Albany and we can talk. Cleo, don’t look at me like that.’ Quin reached out and touched her cheek with the back of his hand.
Her eyes stung, her lids felt heavy. Cleo closed them for a moment until she had the tears under control. Quin would take her back, of course, but at least it was a respite. ‘How did you find me?’ she asked when she had her voice under control.
‘I thought about how you might earn your living and then Baldwin and I worked our way through all the likely agencies until I found Mr Trimm.’ Quin was talking in a calm, conversational tone as he ushered them out and down the stairs, pausing on the landing to juggle the portmanteaux into one hand while he offered several banknotes to Mrs Walker. The landlady changed from fury to fawning in the time it took her to look at what she had in her hand.
‘George is holding the fort,’ Quin continued as he opened the door of the waiting hackney carriage and helped them in. ‘The duke has been sending messengers demanding news of my progress at hourly intervals, which is a trifle wearying.’
‘My grandfather came to you for help?’
‘He summoned me,’ Quin said and leaned across to drop the blinds. ‘He told me to cancel whatever foreign trip I was about to embark upon and find you.’
‘He is the limit! The arrogance of the man is incredible—as if you would just drop everything and do as he asks.’ Cleo thought for a moment. ‘But you did, didn’t you?’
‘I was worried about you, Cleo. You and Maggie together are bright and you are brave, but you are not used to the perils of London and he told me you had little money. After that morning in the park I knew you were desperate.’
Nice sentiments. Quin had warned her about Dryton, he was kind to her—but he still answered to her grandfather. She was sore with disappointment and fearful of what would happen now, but most of all she was saddened that it had been Quin who had tracked her down.
There was no point in quarrelling about that now. ‘Grandfather told me I must consider proposals,’ she said bitterly. ‘I disliked Dryton on sight, but I suppose all the rest will be as bad. It is so hypocritical, these double standards for men and women.’ She fell silent, wishing the blinds were up so she could at least look out of the window and pretend this was not happening. Coward. ‘Quin—’
&n
bsp; ‘No, I do not, if you are about to ask me if I keep a mistress,’ Quin said. ‘I am not a monk, I have liaisons. I believe that marriage vows are made to be kept,’ he added.
That is nice for Lady Caroline, Cleo thought. Has he asked her yet? Perhaps the duke’s imperious summons had interrupted his courtship. He must be so weary of her. ‘You had best take me back to Grosvenor Square. I cannot see there is anything to talk about.’
‘I think there is,’ Quin said. The carriage turned sharply and then stopped. ‘Here we are. Pull down your veil, Cleo.’
She stepped down into a rectangular courtyard of red brick with what looked like an impressive house at one end. Quin paid the driver and brought them through the wide door under its elaborate fanlight. In front of them stretched a long paved corridor, open at the sides.
Quin nodded to a porter and led them along it. ‘My chambers are along here. Hurry, I do not want you seen.’ He opened a door, calling, ‘George!’
‘My lord.’ The secretary Cleo remembered from her arrival in London appeared from a room in his shirtsleeves. ‘I beg your pardon, Miss Woodward. Excuse my undress.’
‘George. Pack a bag, take money for a few days and escort Miss Maggie here to her family, send to let me know where you are and stay in the area until you hear from me. I want Miss Maggie looked after and I do not want you involved in this any more than you are already.’
‘Miss Cleo needs me,’ Maggie protested as the secretary nodded and disappeared back into the room
‘She has me. The duke is not a man to take kindly to being thwarted. If he should decide to cast blame on you for this, I want you somewhere safe. I wouldn’t put it past him to have you arrested for kidnapping or procuring if the mood takes him.’
‘Ready, my lord. I’ve taken fifty pounds from the strong box. Off we go, Miss Maggie.’
‘But—’
‘Go,’ Cleo urged. ‘Lord Quintus is right, I do not want you blamed in any way. I will write,’ she called as George took Maggie’s arm, checked which was her bag and hurried her out, still faintly protesting.
