Touch of a Thief (19 page)

Wh
en 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 sleep. 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 need 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.

“You were right, Quinn,” she whispered as she draped herself over him.

He had no idea what she meant and didn’t think his voice would work in any case. So he pressed a kiss to her lips and tasted himself, musk and salt all swirled with her natural sweetness.

Where was the dividing line between them? He couldn’t find one. They were more firmly joined than he had a right to hope for.

She nuzzled his neck and sighed. “We really don’t need a French letter, do we?”

H
anover was a charming city of tall half-timbered houses and cobbled streets. Ale houses had brewed their own special recipes for three hundred years in the shadow of massive
Marktkirche
, the church that had safeguarded the town’s souls since the 1400s. The thriving market was filled with produce from neighboring farms as well as more exotic wares.

The city was a long-standing member of the Hanseatic League, the medieval trading guild. Goods from a thousand ships were unloaded at Bremen and carted or towed on river barges to Hanover’s bustling heart.

Somehow in that frenetic city, Quinn and Viola had to finagle a chance meeting with Neville Beauchamp, plague take him.

“I still say catching the man at the market would answer our needs better.” Quinn led Viola through a section of rosebushes, their tight buds beginning to uncurl enough to hint at the blossom’s color, but not enough to release their perfume.

He wasn’t immune to natural beauty, but neither did he seek it out particularly. The Royal Gardens of
Herrenhausen
were all well and good, but not the sort of place a man might make a point to visit unless he was squiring a woman on his arm. However, having Viola at his side made up for any inconvenience. “You’re sure Beauchamp will turn up here?”

“I’m certain.” They took a turn around the beds of tulips and daffodils, whose drooping heads were at the end of their blooming cycle. “Neville fancies himself something of an amateur botanist. Sanjay tailed him this morning in the market. Neville was arranging for additional provisions for the ambassador’s entourage to be delivered to the
schloss
at Celle where they are staying. He wouldn’t be at leisure to speak to me while he was working.”

“Beauchamp isn’t that industrious,” Quinn said with assurance, wishing Viola weren’t on first name terms with the man. He knew Neville Beauchamp’s type, always sniffing around women’s skirts like a dog looking for the nearest bitch in heat. “He’d make time to speak with you.”

She smiled up at him, obviously taking his gruff statement as a compliment of sorts. He ached to plant a kiss at the upturned corner of her mouth, but she’d already warned him to behave himself when he tried to pull her behind a lilac bush earlier.

“The fact that Neville is provisioning the castle means they must intend to stay in Celle for a while. Which tells me the diamond and the prince’s delegation isn’t there yet. Even though I’m sure he’s frightfully busy, Neville won’t be able to resist the Royal Gardens long.”

Quinn hoped not. The sooner Viola had her “chance” meeting with the man and teased out the invitation to stay at the schloss where the ambassador was staying, the better. Quinn’s gut clenched at the thought of her spending any time at all with Beauchamp, but he couldn’t fault the logic of her plan. Staying at the same drafty old castle the diamond would pass through made perfect sense.

“Oh, there he is,” Viola said.

Neville alighted from a hired gig, a sporty little conveyance that would have caught plenty of eyes in Hyde Park. His gaze swept over the gardens with as much joy as a glutton surveying a feast.

“Time for my ‘husband’ to make himself scarce.” Viola nudged him with her elbow.

Quinn reluctantly left her on the path, disappearing behind a lush wall of ornamental grasses. Though he was perfectly hidden in the dense foliage, he could see through the greenery quite well.

So this is how the tiger feels watching his prey from the tall grass
, Quinn thought, glaring at Beauchamp so hard he wondered that the man didn’t feel the vehement heat. If Neville put so much as one toe out of line with Viola, Quinn would pounce.

Not that he had a real right to protect her. Though they’d made world-altering love several times, the fact that she’d turned down his proposal of marriage still stung. He hadn’t realized when he’d made the offer that her answer meant so much to him.

He’d never gathered his courage to broach the subject again. Not when he wasn’t sure what her answer would be. A second
no
would be the last. He sheltered behind their sham marriage as his excuse for trying to keep her from renewing her acquaintance with her old beau.

Viola meandered in Neville’s direction, careful to keep her attention on the plantings. When she was near enough to be sure Beauchamp would notice her, she stopped and fanned herself languidly.

“Doing it a bit too brown, aren’t you, girl?” Quinn murmured. “It’s not that hot a day.”

But the graceful motion of the fan was all it took to draw Beauchamp’s eye to her.

Neville called out and hurried to her side. Quinn was too far away to hear the conversation, but he could read the lust on the man’s face well enough.

He didn’t merely stand near Viola. He hovered over her. She was adept at maintaining a discreet distance, but she had to lead him a delicate dance as they moved along the graveled pathway.

Quinn shifted from one place of concealment to another, careful to keep them in sight. His gut roiled. He’d scrambled from one rocky outcropping to the next avoiding Afghani tribesmen in the Khyber Pass with less agitation.

Beauchamp placed a possessive hand on the small of Viola’s back to steer her toward a particular sort of peony that wasn’t even in bloom yet. He captured her hand and pressed her gloved fingers to his lips.

Quinn gritted his teeth so hard he thought he might crack a molar. He reminded himself why it was so important to retrieve the Blood of the Tiger for Sanjay’s people. He tried to summon his old outrage at the Doctrine of Lapse. The cries of the mad holy men rang in his ears and he knew he ought to fear for the innocent British women and children in the cantonments of India, unless the diamond was returned and the unrest could be quelled before it erupted into a full-blown rebellion.

But all he could see was Viola, playing a dangerous game with a man who’d hurt her once. If she still harbored tender feelings for Beauchamp, she was bound for sorrow. He had already proven himself a cad, but if she was set on him, Quinn didn’t know how he could protect her heart.

Or his, he realized with a start. The thought of her with another man made his eyes burn.

Viola dropped her handkerchief and Beauchamp bent to retrieve it. It was the signal. She’d wangled the invitation and it was safe for Quinn to join them.

He returned to the path and sauntered in their direction with studied nonchalance. “Ah, there you are, my dear.” He gave Neville a curt nod. “Beauchamp.”

Neville returned his surly courtesy.

“Isn’t it wonderful, darling?” Viola cooed. “Mr. Beauchamp has invited us to stay at the castle at Celle. The ambassador’s party is there so we won’t lack for good English conversation over dinner.”

Quinn knew he was expected to speak, so he ground out the words. “Damned decent of you, Beauchamp. Bratwurst and pig’s knuckles, I can manage. Conversing in German is beyond me.” Then something made him turn to Viola. “Are you sure you wish to remove from our hotel? Castles are so drafty and I wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”

She tossed him a bewildered glance. “Of course, dear. Who wouldn’t want to visit such a charming old place? A castle may be drafty, but I’m sure it simply reeks of romance.”

Neville’s smarmy smile confirmed that was precisely his hope. Quinn resisted the urge to knock the grin from his face but it required serious effort.

Viola promised Neville they’d start for the castle that very afternoon and bid him good-bye. Quinn caught a flicker of lusty potential in Beauchamp’s eyes when he made his too-long-to–be-proper obeisance over her gloved hand.

She strolled away on Quinn’s arm, laughing and chattering about the budding garden for the benefit of any who might be curious about them.

But Quinn couldn’t help wondering what Viola had promised Neville in exchange for the invitation to the castle. His pride wouldn’t allow him to ask.

Whatever it was, he’d make sure she was never alone with Beauchamp long enough to make good on it.

The castle at Celle was located several hours’ drive from Hanover, over rutted roads that were barely more than cart paths. Quinn allowed that his perception might be a bit colored by his generally surly mood, but the fact that Viola was so blithe about recent developments did nothing to ease his disquiet. She was almost giddy about staying under the same roof as that bounder Beauchamp.

“Neville has promised to give us a tour of the place as soon as we’re settled,” she said as they jostled over a particularly bumpy stretch of roadway.

Bugger Neville.
“We’re going there for the diamond, not for sightseeing,” Quinn grumbled.

“If we know our way around the castle, it’ll make pinching the stone that much easier once it arrives. Neville’s providing us with exactly what we need.” She rolled her eyes at him. “What’s gotten into you, Quinn? You’re being a regular muttonhead.”

“Maybe I’m tired of hearing ‘Neville this’ and ‘Neville that.’ He’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. It’s clear to anyone with eyes what his game really is.”

She cocked her head at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re jealous.”

“Of him? Don’t be ridiculous. I just don’t know how you can stand the sight of him. Given your history with the man.”

She laced her fingers and stared out the window at the rolling meadows, bright with the pale green of spring. “So that’s it.
You
can’t bear my history with him.”

“No, it’s just—”

“Correct me if I am wrong”—her tone was icy and her knuckles whitened as she drew her fingers tighter together—“but I have the distinct impression I am not the first woman you’ve taken to your bed.”

“No, of course not, but that’s not what I—”

“So a man may have as many amours as he pleases, but God help the woman who cannot present him with a maidenhead the first time he’s with her,” she said, tight-lipped.

“That’s not important to me. What happened before we met is none of my business.” That wasn’t strictly the truth. He was jealous of every man who’d ever looked sideways at her, but she didn’t need to hear that. “I only care that you not be hurt now. Viola, I will never reproach you for the past.”

She looked at him then, her hazel eyes welling. “But what if
I
reproach me?” she said miserably.

“Don’t.” He gathered her up and pulled her onto his lap. His chest constricted when she came willingly. “Will it make you feel better if I tell you I wish you’d been my first too?”

“You do?”

Surprisingly, that
was
the truth.

He’d tumbled a few willing serving girls in his youth. There’d been a manic summer when he first discovered the miracles his cock could perform. His groin had given him no peace. At the sight of a curved waist or a slim ankle, only mindless rutting or a few minutes behind a shed with his own hand would ease his complaint.

Once he finished school, he shipped out to India, where he’d learned control and the finer points of loving from Padmaa. Those couplings were studied and strangely sterile. Almost as if he were standing at stud, trained to perform. During his sessions with the Indian courtesan, he seemed to hover outside his own body and watch while she put him through his paces.

With Viola, it was different. She reached inside him and touched the part of him he thought no one else could bear. Perhaps it was because she didn’t really know yet.

He kissed her temple. “I do wish you’d been my only one. And I wish I’d been yours. But since there’s nothing we can do about that, I suggest we forget it.”

“We could pretend, I suppose,” she said, blinking hard to keep the tears in her over-bright eyes. “We could pretend that there had never been anyone else for either of us.”

“We could,” he agreed.

She snuggled deeper into his embrace and he was suddenly glad for the jostling bumps of the ride. His cock rose to meet her soft bum, straining against his smallclothes and trousers with as much erotic hope as the most callow youth.

“So if we were both younger and more impetuous and eager to learn,” she said softly, “what would we do on a long ride in an enclosed coach?”

“First, I’d say it’d be important for us to remain more or less fully clothed. After all, one never knows when a coach might come to a halt,” Quinn said as he untied the bow under her chin and removed her straw bonnet. “But as a younger, more impetuous and eager-to-learn fellow, I’d be dying to see your breasts.”

She smiled naughtily at him. “You mean you’re not dying to see them now?”

“You know better than that. I’d be delirious if you put them on display at all times.” If no one else but he were about to see them, of course.

He claimed her mouth and began working the mother-of-pearl buttons marching down the front of her bodice. The high, tight collar parted, revealing the pale, soft skin of her neck. He kissed his way down to the slight indentation at the base of her throat.

Her breath hitched as his fingers continued to work the buttons till her corset and lacy chemise were bared. He tugged at the bow holding the chemise closed. Once loosened, the thin garment fell away, revealing the soft mounds of her breasts straining above the whalebone corset.