by Louise Allen
‘My aunt owns The Blue Door. She is unwell and she sent me to Lord Dreycott because they knew each other, a long time ago. I told him the truth. Aunt was certain they would not believe me. Quinn, if they still have not found who took the sapphire, they’ll hang me.’
‘And you saw fit to make me an accomplice after the fact,’ he said grimly. ‘Well, we had better make certain Inchbold believes me, hadn’t we? Come upstairs.’
‘Why?’ Lina stayed where she was. This was a man she found she did not know at all: hard, angry, all humour and sympathy banished.
‘So I can get some return for my lies before dinner?’ She felt herself go pale. ‘No, nothing so pleasurable. So we can put on a convincing performance when Inchbold gets back. I just hope you can act.’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ll try.’ The look he gave her promised a multitude of consequences if she did not, and none of them were good. Shaking, Lina followed him from the study and upstairs.
Quinn halted at her bedchamber door. ‘Show me your clothes.’ Beyond questions, Lina opened the door and pulled wide wardrobe and drawers. ‘Put this on,’ Quinn said, picking up a deep blue silk gown, one of the few she had not dyed.
‘I need a maid for the lacing.’ Lina reached for the bell.
‘Leave it. You’ll make do with me. The less the staff are involved in this, the better, I don’t want to risk their safety, too.’ He took her shoulder, turned her round and began to unhook the back of the gown she was wearing.
‘Quinn! You cannot undress me!’
‘Why not? Or do you only feel comfortable when money has been exchanged?’ he asked.
‘I—no, that isn’t it.’ Lina clutched the bodice of the gown, unsettled more by his brisk handling than she might have been if his fingers had lingered on the bare skin as they brushed it. Quinn gestured impatiently and she let the gown drop, snatching up the other one and pulling it over her head under his cool green gaze.
He laced the new gown up just as impersonally, then turned her back to face him. ‘That must go,’ he said as he tugged out the infill of lace at the neckline. Lina gasped as she looked down to find her breasts half-exposed in the taut silken cups of the bodice. ‘Better,’ Quinn said. ‘Have you paint for your face?’
‘No, I told you—’
‘Come to my room. That sketch is too damn good for my liking,’ Quinn said, his hand hard on her arm as he marched her across the corridor. ‘But it looks as you do now—big innocent blue eyes, hair up neat and tidy. What was the idea? Did he like pretending he was getting an innocent?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Then we make sure you don’t look like an innocent any more; we’ll find the real Celina under the mask of virtue. Sit down.’ He pushed her into an upright chair at the dressing table by the window and went to rummage in the dresser, coming out with a small box. He opened it and Lina saw the inside was fitted out with tiny pots, tubes, brushes and sponges.
‘Macquillage?’
‘From time to time we find ourselves in situations where looking like respectable Westerners is dangerous,’ Quinn said, opening jars and lining a selection up on the table. ‘Sit still.’ He began dabbing and brushing, taking tiny amounts from different pots.
Lina sat like a dummy, obediently turning her head this way and that, opening and closing her eyes as she was told. She felt sick, she felt terrified, as bad as she had in the hours after Tolhurst’s death. The danger was real now, not the faraway horror she had managed to turn it into. She could almost hear the creak of the gallows steps.
‘Don’t cry,’ Quinn said sharply, a fine brush an inch from her left eye.
‘I’m not,’ Lina said, swallowing. He was so angry with her. Of course he was, he had every right. What would they do to him if his deception was discovered?
‘There,’ he said at last, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face the mirror.
Lina gasped. The woman who looked back was her, and yet not her. Subtle shading had narrowed her face, heightened her cheekbones. Her nose looked shorter, her eyes darker. ‘I look older,’ she said, momentarily distracted from her anxiety by the altered image.
‘You look different enough, but not too different. It makes a misunderstanding possible,’ Quinn said. Doing something seemed to have reduced his anger from boiling to simmering point. He was still frowning, but at least, Lina thought, he did not look as though he was tempted to pitch her straight out of the front door.
‘Jewellery.’
‘I don’t have much,’ she ventured.
‘I’ve noticed.’ He produced a leather-covered box. ‘Left it all behind when you ran, did you? There should be something in here that is ornate enough to be convincing. Here.’ He handed her pendant earrings with large misshapen pink pearls dangling from them, a pair of golden bangles set with more pink pearls and a fine gold chain.
‘They are beautiful,’ Lina said, holding up an earring and staring at the strange pearl. ‘But they look wrong with the blue.’
‘Exactly. They will look thoroughly vulgar,’ Quinn said, fastening the chain around her neck and twitching it until it fell sinuously between her breasts. ‘They are Baroque-set freshwater pearls and ought to be worn with something subtle to show them off. If you wear them now it will give the impression of a woman determined to flaunt her lover’s latest gift regardless of taste.’
‘I understand.’ Lina nodded; she had seen women like that on the arm of their lovers as they strolled in the park or drove in their new barouches, scandalising passers-by at the fashionable hour for the promenade. ‘I cling, I flirt with you, but I also assess Inchbold rather obviously, then dismiss him as beneath my notice. I pout if I do not have your attention all the time and I have no idea what is going on.’
‘Exactly,’ Quinn said with a sardonic glance. ‘One would think you did this all the time.’
‘I do not,’ Lina began. Quinn silenced her with a wave of one hand.
‘Of course, your speciality is playing the virgin, is it not? Don’t forget, I saw how you experimented with flirtation at the beginning—innocent one moment, knowing the next—until you settled on the part you were to play for me.’
That was close enough to the truth to make her blush, and he saw it. ‘Quinn, I need to explain—’
‘You can try later, if we aren’t in the local lock-up by midnight,’ he said as the dressing gong sounded. ‘I need to get changed. You had better go and do your hair, as differently from that day as possible, and then go down to the salon—and don’t talk to the staff; I do not want them implicated in this.’
Lina opened her mouth to argue, to somehow make him understand. But Quinn was already unbuttoning his waistcoat with one hand and yanking at his neckcloth with the other. She gave up the attempt and left.
Trimble blinked at her as she descended the stairs and Michael frankly goggled before he got his face back under control. Tight-lipped, Lina swept into the salon and sat down, trying to understand what Quinn was doing.
He did not believe her and yet he had not handed her over to Inchbold. Why not? She fought the urge to get up and pace like a caged cat and told herself that she had to trust in Quinn. He was not cruel, she knew him well enough now to believe that. Her safety depended on a man who felt angry and betrayed, and with good reason, and on her own ability to hold her nerve and act in a way that was utterly alien to her.
You are observant and intelligent, she told herself. Think about those women, think about what the girls taught you of flirtation. Become a courtesan in your head.
When Quinn entered the room she got to her feet with a smile and went to him. ‘How handsome you look tonight,’ she said, looking up at him from beneath her candle-black thickened lashes. She laid her right hand on his forearm, stroking along the thick green silk of his coat. ‘Inchbold will never have seen anything like it.’
Quinn turned to walk with her back to the sofa and the long skirts of the coat parted for a moment. There was a dagger in the sash that cinched tightly around
his waist. Lina glanced down and saw the small knife he always wore in his boot was still there and as she bumped against his side she felt the bulk of a pistol.
‘You are armed?’
‘Yes. The woman you are playing would have made a suggestive remark at this point, complimenting me on my magnificent weaponry,’ he added.
‘I am sure it is a very large and powerful pistol,’ Lina responded, opening her eyes wide.
‘Resist the temptation to giggle as you say it.’
‘I have never felt less like giggling in my life,’ she assured him as the dinner gong reverberated from the hallway.
As Michael pulled out Lina’s chair for her, Quinn went to the windows, unlocking each one. She saw him turn the handle of the door at the rear of the room as he passed it. He is making sure we have escape routes, she thought, a fresh pang of fear cramping her stomach.
The meal passed in a dream. Lina forced herself to keep eye contact with Quinn whenever possible, to react to everything he said with smiles and nods, to offer no opinions of her own and to let her hands flutter close to her scandalously plunging décolletage at every opportunity.
He responded by holding her gaze until she felt the colour stain her skin. His voice became deeper, slower, his lids heavier as he watched her. When she glanced away, and it was always she who could not hold the look, she found herself staring at his hands, the long fingers caressing his wine glass, or dextrous on the carving knife. The scratches left by her nails had healed, faster than she had feared, leaving red marks that she wanted to soothe with her fingertips.
Her breath became shorter and a strange, disturbing heat began to build low down in her belly. Lina tried not to shift restlessly on her chair, but her breasts felt full and tight and there was a disconcerting, intimate pulse between her thighs that made her flustered and uneasy.
The meal ended after what seemed an eternity and Lina began to rise, to leave Quinn to his port. ‘No, stay,’ he said. ‘Our visitor will be here shortly. Michael.’ The footman set the decanters on the table and waited, attentive. ‘That is all for the present. When Mr Inchbold calls, announce him at once.’
The man went out, leaving them alone, and she closed her eyes, seeking some relief from the intensity, the tension.
‘Come here,’ Quinn said, taking a tiny jar from his pocket and unscrewing the top. He dipped his forefinger into it and it came out red. ‘Pout for me, Celina.’
Reluctant, she stood beside him while he touched colour to her lips as though painting an intricate picture. The touch was assured and disturbing as the cream caressed her lips, lingering over the fullness of the lower, gliding across the upper. ‘There.’
Through the open window the sound of carriage wheels penetrated even the heavy curtains. Lina tried to step back to return to her seat, but Quinn took her hand and stood. ‘Just one finishing touch,’ he murmured, bent his head and kissed her, right on her painted mouth.
Chapter Twelve
Lina gasped, pulled back, but found herself held tight in arms that gave her no freedom to do anything but arch her back, pressing her lower body intimately against Quinn’s blatant arousal. His mouth roamed over hers, his tongue pushed between her painted lips and into her panting mouth with complete assurance. If he remembered that she bit, it did not appear to concern him now.
There was no possibility of struggling, hardly any air to breathe, only the heat of him, the thrust of his tongue into the quivering moistness that seemed to arouse him so much, the strength of his hands, flat against her spine, the fingers splayed on her bare skin of her shoulders.
She wanted him to stop, she was frightened of her own response, the torrent of utterly undisciplined, alien feeling that swept through her—and yet when Quinn did lift his mouth she put her hands up to pull his head down to her again.
‘Oh, no, my passionate little virgin,’ he said, his voice husky even as his eyes mocked her. ‘There is no time for that now.’ He took a napkin from the table, touched around her lips with it, then dragged the back of his hand over his own mouth, leaving a betraying smudge on his cheek. Quinn turned her to face the overmantel mirror and Lina stared at the pair of them. Her mouth was swollen and pouting, red from rouge and kisses. Quinn’s eyes under the heavy lids were bright, alert, aroused. ‘We’ll do.’
He sat down in his chair again and pulled her back on to his lap. ‘Ready?’
‘After that?’ Lina stared into the green eyes so close to hers and tried not to pant.
‘Pretend you want to wheedle the nice big diamond I’ve got in my room out of me,’ Quinn suggested, low-voiced, as the door opened.
‘Mr Inchbold, my lord.’ Lina did not dare look at Trimble, but she was sure that the butler’s perfectly modulated tones faltered when he saw them.
‘Show him in, if you please.’ Quinn raised his head from nuzzling her bare shoulder and pushed her to her feet. ‘Go and sit down, there’s a good girl. You’ve had the pearls; I’m selling the diamond.’
Lina turned in a swish of silken skirts and sat down, thankful her chair was so close. Whether it was that kiss or the appearance of the Runner, she did not know, but her knees felt like jelly. She put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, pouted her lips, and looked down the length of the table at the doorway.
Inchbold was a solid man, not tall, but broad across the chest. He had a face that looked as though it had been in many a fight and would be quite happy to engage in a few more. He was dressed like a countryman of the middling sort: neat in good cloth of a plain cut, but with pockets that bulged and boots that looked as though they had moulded themselves to his big feet.
‘My lord. Miss Celina.’
He was looking to see how she reacted to the name. Celina let her eyes stray over him in a leisurely assessment, then merely nodded.
‘Take a seat, Inchbold.’ Quinn waved a hand at the chair opposite Lina. It was a considerable concession to a man like Inchbold to offer him a chair at table. Lina wondered if Quinn intended to disconcert the other man, but he merely nodded his thanks and sat stolidly on the broad satin seat. Experienced and not easily intimidated, she thought, her stomach churning.
Quinn poured two glasses of port and pushed one across. ‘Now then, this is my Miss Haddon. Are you going to tell me she is a witch who is able to be in two places at once?’
Inchbold reached into the breast of his coat and produced a sheet of paper, which he unfolded and spread out on the table, flattening it under one meaty hand. ‘The footman who let the Shelley woman in is reckoned to be a bit of an artist,’ he said. ‘Seems this is a good likeness, by all accounts.’
Lina glanced at the sketch that had been strongly done in charcoal and pastels. The man had caught her perfectly: wide-eyed with fear, her mouth a thin line as she pressed her lips together to stop them trembling. Now she maintained her sultry pout and let her lids droop. As she tipped her head on one side a loose ringlet brushed her cheek, quite unlike the simple arrangement she had worn at Sir Humphrey’s.
‘Who says that’s me?’ she demanded petulantly, copying as nearly as she could the London tones overlain with gentility that Dorinda, one of the girls at The Blue Door, used.
‘Information laid locally as a result of the notice in the Morning Chronicle,’ Inchbold said, continuing to look at the drawing and then back up at Lina. Mrs Willets, she thought. Mrs Willets and not my letter to Mrs Golding after all. ‘We knew you—’ Quinn cleared his throat ominously ‘—this Shelley female was seen at the Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, so it seemed likely she caught the Norwich coach—’
‘Or Bath or Bristol or Cambridge or…’
‘Yes, miss. Quite.’ The Runner glowered at her. ‘It was possible she caught the Norwich coach, so a respectable source local to here saying that a mysterious female had turned up aroused our interest.’
‘Who are you calling a mysterious female?’ Lina demanded.
‘You, my dear, are as mysterious as Woman always is,’ Quinn said, reaching out
a hand and running one finger possessively down her cheek.
Lina nuzzled against his hand like a cat seeking caresses and Inchbold’s scowl deepened. ‘You know London, do you, miss?’
‘Course I do.’ She tipped up her chin and gave him a saucy look. Goodness, but this was scary—and exhilarating. She would not think about Quinn, not yet.
‘Know the house of The Blue Door do you?’
‘All the girls know that one. Class place, that is. Not that I need a house, I like to be independent. You know, have my own gentleman, exclusive.’
‘And what were you doing in France?’
‘My last gentleman fancied seeing Paris, now we’re at peace with them again. Lost all his money in the Palais Royale at vingt-et-un, didn’t he? So he dumped me.’
‘And I picked her up,’ Quinn said. ‘I don’t believe in leaving a gaming house except with money in my pocket and a pretty girl on my arm.’ He reached out and picked up the sketch, looking from it to Lina and back again. ‘Inchbold, she’s blonde, she’s blue-eyed—as so many blondes are—and she’s a young lady of an accommodating disposition. But otherwise, where’s the resemblance? And delightful as it is to share a glass of port with you, I have to confess there are things I would rather be doing with my evening.’
The Runner frowned. ‘Looks like I’ve been led on a wild goose chase.’
Don’t show relief, don’t faint, don’t laugh… ‘Looks like you have,’ Lina said with a sniff. ‘And I know who sent you on it, too. That sour-faced old bat, Squire Willets’s wife.’
‘Taken against you, has she?’
‘Thinks I’m not respectable,’ Lina said.
‘Actually, she’s taken against me,’ Quinn interjected. ‘I have a certain reputation and Miss Haddon here does not take kindly to being given the cold shoulder. The ladies have had a set-to and one of them appears to be of a vindictive disposition.’
The Runner eyed Quinn’s exotic evening attire and cleared his throat, then tossed back his port and got to his feet. ‘Aye, well, I’m sorry to have troubled you, my lord. Miss. And I thank you for your co-operation. There are those who would have taken umbrage.’
