by Justine Cole
Stabbing dourly at the stains with her handkerchief, Noelle thought how right Constance had been when she had warned her that Simon would not send Quinn from the house. Constance had even predicted his words.
"He is my son," Simon had said. Then, when Noelle had pressed him about the divorce, he had again put her off with vague promises.
"A plank of wood ter 'elp yer cross the street, mum?" Two dirty ragamuffins, a boy and a girl, stood at her side, carrying a long board. Noelle's mind slid back in time to two other children who had carried a board on rainy days and looked for wealthy customers to help across streets.
"Thank you," she said, managing a smile. When she was across the street, she pressed a shilling on the surprised urchins. "Buy yourselves a kidney pie and some gingerbread." The little boy thanked her and even managed an awkward bow before the two scampered off.
Noelle chose an inconspicuous table in the rear of the tea room and soon had a sliver of lemon tart and a steaming cup of tea in front of her. She took a slow sip and pondered the mystery of the animosity between Quinn and Simon. What had happened to make Quinn hate his father so? She rubbed her temples wearily.
"Did you know Quinn is back?"
Noelle's eyes shot to the adjoining table, where two women were seating themselves. All that she could see of the one who had spoken was the back of a well-cut silk pelisse. It was the other woman who held Noelle's attention. In her early thirties, she was extravagantly beautiful with hair as black as a raven's wing and a small mole clinging seductively near the corner of her left eye.
"How do you know that Quinn is in London?" she asked with smoldering excitement, the trace of a foreign accent lending a mysterious allure to her voice.
"I saw him riding in Rotten Row not more than two hours ago."
"Was he alone?" The black-haired beauty tried to make her question seem unimportant, but the tension around her skillfully rouged mouth betrayed her.
"Oh, Anna!" The other woman pronounced the name with a soft "a." "Surely you are not going to be as foolish about him now as you were the last time he was in London."
"It is not foolishness! He obsesses me."
"You and half the other women in London."
"But he doesn't come back to other women as he comes back to me."
"Why does he have this hold on you, Anna? We've both been with many other men. None, perhaps, quite as handsome but, still . . ."
"Because he is exciting, dangerous." Anna lowered her voice, but the words were still audible to Noelle. "I want him, but he will not be owned. He is immune to all the tricks that a woman uses. If I pout, he laughs. If I rage at him, he is indifferent."
"And in bed?" The other woman leaned forward in her seat. "How is he in bed?"
Anna's eyes clouded, and her lips parted seductively as she stared unseeingly past her companion. "Like no other. He makes hard, desperate love to me, and I forget everything else. The next time, I vow that I will hold back, make him plead with me. But I know I am lying to myself. He touches me, my strength disappears, and I give him everything."
Noelle could listen to no more. She did not even bother to count the coins she threw down on the table, so desperate was she to escape overhearing any more of the woman's repugnant confidences.
Much to Noelle's relief, Quinn was not present for supper that night, nor did she hear him return to the house, although it was well past midnight before she turned down her light.
Chapter Seventeen
"Miss Catherine Welby to see you, ma'am."
"Whatever for?" Noelle wondered aloud as she glanced at the clock on her desk. It was barely ten o'clock, hardly an appropriate hour for a caller to present herself, especially one who had been as consistently unfriendly as Catherine Welby.
"Show her to the drawing room, Tomkins. And I suppose you had better send in tea."
As the butler closed the door behind him, Noelle reluctantly set aside the stack of invitations she had been answering and banged the lid of the desk shut, rattling a china shepherdess perched on the top. Normally a job she detested, the task had today provided her with an excuse to seal herself away in her parlor until lunch. By that time, she calculated that Quinn would have left the house, and she would have avoided, at least for the morning, another encounter with him.
The heels of her slippers clattered noisily when they hit the marble of the foyer. Automatically she muffled her steps. He had barely been in the house for twenty-four hours, and she already felt like a prisoner.
Smoothing her dress, she entered the drawing room. "Miss Welby, how nice to see you."
"Do call me Catherine, and I shall, of course, call you Dorian," her caller bubbled effusively as she patted the place next to her invitingly. Noelle sat reluctantly, putting as wide a distance between them as the limited dimensions of the settee and common politeness would permit.
"I just know we shall be the best of friends, Dorian. We have so much in common." She then began chronicling the most recent of her social activities.
Noelle barely listened as she tried to puzzle out the motive behind the unexpected call. She and Catherine Welby had attended several of the same functions; however, they were hardly friends. The fluffy little blonde had barely spoken a dozen words to her, and those had been begrudging.
"I beg your pardon?" Noelle returned her attention to her unwelcome caller, aware that she had missed something.
"I asked if you would like to ride with me in the park next week."
'"I'm sorry, but I don't ride."
"You don't ride?" Miss Welby's astonishment could not have been greater if her hostess had just announced her escape from a Turkish seraglio.
"I was raised in India, you know." Noelle adopted a faintly superior air, as if that should explain everything.
"Oh? Quite so."
There was a brief pause, and then Miss Welby plunged into an account of a new riding habit she was having made, describing each tuck and trim in painstaking detail. Noelle was suppressing a yawn with the utmost difficulty when tea arrived.
"Tell me something about yourself," Miss Welby commanded as she took up her cup.
"There's little to tell. My parents died in India several years ago and my uncle has graciously offered me his home."
"So sad to lose your parents. But how lucky you are to have such a kind uncle."
"Yes, he has been wonderful to me."
Miss Welby's saucer eyes, as innocently clear as a cloistered nun's, peeked over the rim of her cup. "And had you met your dashing cousin before you arrived in England?"
"No, we had never met."
"What a surprise he must have been to you."
"You can't imagine," Noelle responded dryly.
Footsteps were faintly audible in the foyer, and Miss Welby's eyes slid covertly to the door. When the steps continued down the hallway, she could not quite conceal her disappointment.
"Is your cousin an early riser?"
"I am afraid I do not know him well enough to be familiar with his personal habits."
"Miss Cynthia Rowland to see you, ma'am."
Tomkins had barely finished announcing her when Miss Rowland swept into the room, her ribbons fluttering. "Dorian, I had a simply marvelous time the other night. You must persuade your uncle to have another ball soon. Now, tell me about your cousin. Is it true he killed a man in a duel and fled from America to escape being arrested? One hears such stories about him."
Noelle took a deep breath and tried to suppress her annoyance. These silly girls were using her to get a glimpse of Quinn! Was there to be no end to the complications he brought into her life?
"Miss Priscilla Fargate and Miss Cecily Lambreth-Smythe, ma'am." Tomkins's expression was one of faint bewilderment.
By the end of the morning, Noelle had received six female callers. When the last had finally been shown out, her head was throbbing, and her temper was frayed. Storming out of the drawing room, she found Quinn standing in the foyer, speaking with Tomkins.
Noelle marched up to the butler and planted her hand on her hip, pointedly ignoring Quinn. "Tomkins, if any more unmarried ladies come to call, you are to put them in the drawing room and summon Mr. Copeland to receive them. I am no longer at home."
With that she shot Quinn a chafing glare and stalked down the hallway to her parlor.
To Noelle's relief, for the next few days she saw little of Quinn. He was gone much of the time and did not return to take his meals with them. However, life in Northridge Square did not settle back into its familiar pattern. There was a vague feeling of dysphoria —of lives shifted from a comfortable fulcrum and not yet rebalanced. Simon was particularly attentive to her, bringing her small gifts, taking her riding in his carriage, teaching her to play backgammon and vingt-et-un. But, as he volunteered nothing about her divorce other than vague, dismissive references, their relationship was strained.
For his part, Simon was not a happy man. The dream of a spring afternoon in Sussex, of Constance, warm and responsive beneath him, was never far from his mind. Now they saw each other only in the company of others, and Constance's unfailing courtesy was like a knife stabbing away at him.
And then there was Noelle. He was experiencing vague pangs of conscience about manipulating her in his determination to see her in place as Quinn's wife.
But the dream of a Copeland dynasty governed him, and as was his habit, he subjugated his emotions. Sensing Quinn's interest in Noelle, he set aside his plan to force the marriage. If it became necessary, he could still arrange for their abduction and then announce to society that they had eloped. But for now he was content to let events follow their own course.
The gaslights of Covent Garden flooded their box as Act Two of The Marriage of Figaro romped to its high-spirited conclusion. Thomas fixed Noelle with a worshiping gaze. "Are you enjoying the performance, Miss Pope?"
"Very much."
"I think the soprano who is singing Susanna is especially fine, don't you?"
"Yes, she is very appealing."
"I cannot tell you when I have enjoyed an evening more."
"The performance is certainly an excellent one, Mr. Sully."
"I was not referring to the opera."
Reaching over, Thomas covered the back of her hand with his own. "Miss Pope, I must tell you that—"
"Tom. old chap, I told Basil it was you." Two uniformed members of the Light Dragoons arranged themselves on each side of Noelle, demanding an introduction. Much to Thomas's annoyance, they did not leave until the interval was over.
As the curtain rose on Act Three Noelle caught sight of Quinn in a box one tier below. He was listening attentively to a woman whose face was in shadow. A slim hand rested possessively on his thigh. When the woman turned her head, Noelle saw that it was Anna, the raven-haired beauty of the tea room. Leaning forward, she whispered intimately in his ear.
Noeiie listened to the rest of the opera with concentrated attention but would have been hard pressed had she been asked to describe it. She applauded vigorously at the end and agreed with Thomas that it had been an exceptional production. He had just settled her cape around her shoulders when he spotted Quinn and waved to him. "So the baroness is in London," he chuckled.
"Baroness?" Noelle inquired offhandedly as they stepped out of the box.
"Anna von Furst, one of the most beautiful women in London and also one of the wealthiest. She and Quinn have been friends for some time."
His pause before "friends" was barely perceptible, but Noelle did not miss it. "And what of the baron?"
"He seems to keep to his schloss in Bavaria. Suffers from dyspepsia or some such. Anyway, one seldom sees him."
It was almost dawn before Noelle fell asleep that night, and she still had not heard Quinn's footsteps coming up the stairs.
Chapter Eighteen
Noelle hurried through the Haymarket, an eddy of light reflecting off the skirt of her emerald dress às she passed under a gas streetlamp. This was her first visit to Soho since the day she had attended the opera with Thomas Sully, and that had been over a week before. She had intended to be safely back in her bedroom long before this, her face cleaned of its camouflage of dirt and cosmetics and her clothing once again tucked away in the back of her wardrobe, but one of the children had fallen and punctured her thigh with a jagged piece of wood, so Noelle had stayed to remove it and comfort the child. Now she was uneasily aware of the throngs of people pushing about her, ready to supply the nocturnal vices the Haymarket offered so abundantly. She thought of her warm bed, a hot bath. Ahead of her the crowd was thinning out. Her steps quickened, and she sighed with relief. It would not be much longer.
It was then that she saw him. He was much too far away for her to make out his features, but she knew instinctively that it was Quinn. He was stopped before a group of children who were turning somersaults and walking on their hands in the hopes of earning their dinner. She watched as he flicked his hand toward the children and knew by the way the urchins began to scamper about that he had thrown them a handful of coins. She froze, waiting to see what he would do next. To her consternation, he began to amble in her direction.
Desperately she glanced about her for a place to hide and then remembered she had passed by an alley only moments before. Quickly retracing her steps, she slipped into the dark mouth of the alley and pressed herself against the wall. She would wait here until he passed.
"Wot are yer doin' 'ere, me lovely? This is no place ter find customers."
Fingers as plump as sausages fastened around Noelle's arm, and she spun around to look into small weasel eyes cushioned in pillows of fat.
" 'Ow 'bout warmin' me bed tonight?"
"Take yer bloody 'ands off me," Noelle growled, the accent of the streets natural to her as she marshaled her defenses to combat this additional danger. She tried to pull away, but the fingers only bit deeper into her flesh.
" 'Ere, now, 'at's not bein' very friendly." From the pocket of a gaudy plaid waistcoat draped with chains and stained with the noisome remnants of past meals, he pulled out a folded bank note, holding it up between his first two fingers.
"There's more where this come from if you an' me get on."
"I ain't interested." Noelle nodded her head in the direction of two prostitutes passing the entrance of the alley. "Take yer business over to them, why don't yer?"
"Because I've taken a fancy ter you."
With that he jerked at her arm, dragging her farther back into the darkness. Noelle doubled up the fist of her free hand and swung at his jaw, barely feeling the bone, cushioned as it was by a thick layer of fat. He let out a soft grunt and then swung at the side of her head with his open palm. The blow momentarily stunned her.
"So, yer likes it rough, do yer? Yer'II get plenty of that where yer goin'."
Noelle shook her head to clear it, dimly aware of the crowds milling near the entrance of the alley who were oblivious to the drama being played out so close to them. She knew she must act. Abruptly she let her knees buckle, and as she dropped she slipped her free hand under her skirt and pulled out the knife that was strapped to her calf. Before her abductor could react, she thrust it upward and pointed its tip at his throat. He dropped her other arm, fear flickering in his eyes as he felt the deadly point touching his flesh.
"You scum," she spat out. "Next time you'd better think twice afore y a put yer 'ands on a woman wot says no." With a flick of her knife, she lightly scored the length of a fatty fold. A line appeared like a piece of red string around his neck.
"Yer cut me," he whimpered, his great jowls quivering.
"Yer lucky I didn't kill ya."
She backed away from him, thankful that her long skirts hid the trembling in her knees. The past two years had changed her more than she had realized, and the sight of the blood she had deliberately drawn sickened her. "Now get out of my sight," she ordered.
A fist unexpectedly darted out from behind her, slashing down agonizingly on her wrist and sending her knife flying. Great h
ands grabbed her arms and pinioned them behind her while a knee crashed into the small of her back. Blinding pain tore through her body.
"Not so fast there," her unseen assailant growled. "I don't like the way yer been treatin' me friend."
"Wot took yer so long, Geòrgie. Like to kill me, she did." The fat man rubbed the back of his hand along the bloody line encircling his neck. "Look wot the bitch did ter me." He held up the crimson smear.
"I should of killed ya," Noelle hissed.
Again, the knee slammed into her back. Despite herself, she screamed as searing shafts of agony raced through her body. The viselike grip on her arms tightened cruelly until she felt as if her shoulders were pulling from their sockets.
"Any more from you, and I'll snap yer back in two." The voice of the man called Geòrgie rumbled threateningly in her ear. "Let's get 'er to the boat. She's the last of the lot. We'll make a pretty penny from this night's work."
Noelle tried to focus through the pain. These men were white slavers! They were members of one of the gangs who prowled the streets of London, looking for young girls to ship to the most infamous brothels of Europe, brothels where no desire was too perverted, and the most twisted of appetites could be satisfied.
The fat man leaned over and picked up her knife from the ground. "Not so fast, Geòrgie. I got a score to settle with this one."
With the handle of the knife clenched in his fist, he held up the shiny blade inches from Noelle's horrified gaze.
"I'm gonna carve me initials in that pretty face of yers."
" 'Ere now, don't be markin' up 'er face. We'll lose money on 'er. Do it someplace wot won't show as much."
