Touch of a Thief (5 page)

She pushed away from him with a low growl in the back of her throat.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He tried to wrap his arms around her again.

She straight-armed him.

“I only meant—”

“I know what you meant,” she said through clenched teeth, staring out the porthole as London slipped away from them. “Now leave me alone.”

She heard the doorknob turn, and called to him, “Lieutenant.”

“Yes?”

“Just so you know.” She straightened her spine and turned to look him in the eye. She could be strong when she had to. Traveling to Paris with Greydon Quinn in that little cabin, she’d need all her strength. “I may not have a derringer, but I do know how to use one.”

His lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. “I’d have been hugely surprised if you didn’t.”

Quinn
leaned on the gunwale and watched the receding coastline until the Dover cliffs disappeared into the mist. The stiff late March wind and salt spray buffeted him, but the top button of his greatcoat remained undone at his neck.

“I am sorry you must leave your home after so soon returning.” Sanjay shivered beside him even though he was more thoroughly muffled than Quinn. Accustomed to India’s baking heat, the prince suffered from England’s cold dampness in every fiber of his southern body.

Quinn waved away Sanjay’s sympathy. Leaving again troubled him far less than he expected. His parents were as tied to the English soil as the two-hundred-year-old oaks surrounding their manor. Quinn was more like a poplar. He thrived wherever he was. Leaving any place, be it England or his adopted India, was a small matter. No place truly seemed like home.

Perhaps he simply wasn’t the type to put down deep roots.

“When would you like dinner served, sahib?” Sanjay asked as a sailor passed them with the rolling gait that marks a seaman even on land.

“Whenever it’s ready.” It bothered Quinn to have the prince pose as his servant, but they’d agreed it was the best way to proceed. Genuine friendship and respect between men of different races was unusual and therefore viewed with suspicion. In order to steal the most valuable treasure ever packed into such a small size, it was best to seem as unremarkable as possible.

“I assume you will dine with
her
.” If Sanjay was truly Quinn’s servant, he’d have been in grave danger of reprimand for the obvious distaste for Lady Viola in his tone.

Quinn nodded. “I don’t like it any better than you do, believe me.”

But not for the same reasons.

Sanjay had distrusted Viola on sight. Quinn had no doubt he could keep the lady close enough to not worry if he could trust her. He was more troubled by the fact that his unwilling partner in crime was a woman.

And he was
using
her.

Though Viola was a thief and independent enough he didn’t feel obligated to cosset her, his sense of chivalry was offended by their arrangement. It wouldn’t bother him a bit to bend another man to his will.

It gnawed at his gut to coerce a woman.

“I sense you share my misgivings,” the prince said. “Perhaps we should reconsider this plan.”

Sanjay didn’t sense the half of it. Not only did Quinn suffer guilt over manipulating Viola into committing yet another burglary, if he hadn’t escaped the small cabin when he did, he might have been tempted to seduce her, using the skills Padmaa had taught him.

Since that first time he’d pulled her onto his bed and felt her soft body beneath his, she’d featured prominently in his most wicked imaginings. Already in his mind, he’d undressed the woman and demonstrated a few of Padmaa’s lovemaking tricks to devastating effect.

“Pleasure is a formidable chain, Quinn-sahib,” the courtesan had told him. “It binds lovers together in mutual need.”

Somehow, he never managed to visualize Viola and himself as lovers. The word was too tame, too gentle. When they came together in his mind’s eye, it was intense. Fierce.

Like tigers mating.

They’d die of bliss if they didn’t kill each other first. He’d never wanted a woman with as much keen-edged hunger as he wanted the one waiting for him in his cabin.

It made no sense to his mind, but his body could care less for logic. A physical entanglement might jeopardize the success of his plans. Once they retrieved the red diamond, what then?

Even though she was wellborn, her larceny meant she wasn’t the fine English Rose men of his station expected to wed. There was a raw sensuality in her kisses. She was not a woman to take lightly and forget.

A man would be marked forever by her.

The mere thought of Viola was enough to make him feel achingly male. He’d already visualized her silken limbs, her shuddering sighs. He throbbed to rut her senseless, beating against her like a moth against the glass of a lantern flue.

“. . . and then we can put the lady off in Le Havre and find another way,” Sanjay was saying.

Quinn had missed quite a bit of what his friend thought, but his own about Viola nearly had him spilling his seed in his trousers. It’d been months since he’d had a woman, but he had to get a grip on his reaction to her.

“No,” he said with more force than he intended. “We press ahead. This will work. It has to.”

He turned away and headed for the cabin, like a man destined for the rack.

When he reached the door, he raised his hand to knock, but caught himself. He was supposed to be her husband. It was his cabin, too. He turned the knob and slipped in.

She’d pulled back the bedclothes, stripped a sheet from the narrow bunk and hung it from one of the low beams. A lantern flickered on the far side of the sheet, treating Quinn to her shadowy silhouette backlit on the fabric.

Her
naked
shadowy silhouette. Every curve and line of her form danced on the thin sheet.

“Is that you, Quinn?”

“Have you another faux husband on board, madam?”

“No, thank God. One of you is quite enough.” She peeped around the sheet, showing one smooth bare shoulder. “I’m taking my bath, such as it is. Kindly remain on that side of the cabin.”

“You have my solemn oath that I will not move from this spot.” The mingled scents of warm woman and light floral wafted around the sheet. His balls clenched. Wild elephants couldn’t drive him away.

“The captain had two chairs brought in for us. I left one on your side in case you returned before I was done.”

He
was nearly done. He plopped into the chair, not sure his knees would continue to support him.

She disappeared behind the sheet again, apparently oblivious to the fact that he could make out the dip of her waist, the curve of her calf when she propped a foot on the chair, the swell of her breasts as they fell forward when she bent over to soap her leg.

He ached to hold them. When she spread her legs to shoulder width and her hand disappeared between her thighs, he nearly groaned aloud.

“How long will it take us to reach Paris?” she asked.

Quinn cleared his throat to make sure his voice would work. “Three days, if we have fair weather.”

Three days of pleasurable agony trapped in the cabin with that siren who’d already turned him down twice. Like Odysseus, he ought to have Sanjay strap him to the mast.

She was toweling off. Quinn stared at the tips of his boots with complete absorption. If she peered around the sheet again, he didn’t want her to catch him ogling. It was one thing to want a woman. Another thing to be seen wanting.

“Three days,” she repeated. “Well, I suppose it will give us a chance to become better acquainted.”

She’d already spurned his efforts on that score. He supposed she meant to
talk
to him for three days. Sanjay’s suggestion of putting her off in Le Havre was beginning to have real appeal.

“Tell me, Lieutenant. Why did you go to India in the first place?”

Reverting to his rank was a step backward. “I thought you’d agreed to call me Quinn.”

“I agreed to call you
Greydon
, but you didn’t seem to like it.”

She emerged from behind the sheet, her unbound hair cascading over her shoulders. Auburn highlights sparked in the flickering lamplight and Quinn decided it was one husbandly perk that had been seriously underrated.

She wore a blue velvet robe de chambre. It was a bit threadbare in spots, but the garment covered her decently. If she was at home, she might greet early callers in it, but Quinn couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that her breasts were free of their whalebone prison beneath the silver cord frogs that marched down the front of the soft robe.

She reached up to unhook the sheet. It seemed like a stretch for her, so Quinn stood to help her, starting at the opposite end.

When they met in the middle, he handed her the sheet and looked down at her. At close range, the neckline of her robe plunged low enough to reveal the shadowed hollow between her breasts. He jerked his gaze back to her eyes, but not quickly enough for it to escape her notice.

Her lips curved in a slight smile.

The little minx was teasing him. It would serve her right if he swept her up and plunged his hand down her bodice to claim a soft breast. He knew how to tease a woman beyond bearing. She had no idea whom she was dealing with. Of course, if she was aware of the light show she’d just given, he might be in for a sensual surprise as well. In several respects, Viola Preston was no lady.

But he was trying to be a gentleman. Mostly.

Quinn stepped back a pace.

“You haven’t answered my question.” She moved to close the distance between them again.

For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what she’d asked. “There are any number of questions you haven’t answered for me either.”

“Well, it appears we shall not be in want of topics for conversation the next three days then.” She turned and made up the bed, tucking the corners with practiced efficiency.

“For the daughter of an earl, you seem unusually accustomed to domestic chores.”

She lifted her chin as she plumped the single pillow. “One does what one must.”

“Is that why you steal?”

She shot him a glare. “If it’s any of your business, my father died and left my side of the family penniless because I had the misfortune of being born a daughter instead of a son. I steal because I enjoy sleeping indoors and eating regular meals. And want my mother, sister and niece to do so as well. Satisfied?”

Not even close, but his cock would just have to bear the ache till he managed to settle himself.

“Many people live in reduced circumstances without resorting to theft.”

“I am not
many people.
” She packed her toiletries back into a small bag and crouched down to stow them in the valise she’d tucked under the bed. “And you’re not
many people
either. You’re the heir of a viscount. Reportedly far more than solvent even before you left for India. You had no need to make the choice usually relegated to second sons.”

“I was born a second son.”

“But according to DeBrett’s, your brother died in childhood.”

“You investigated me.”

“It seemed prudent to at least look you up in the registry of peers since you forced me to travel to Paris with you.”

He winced inwardly at the word
forced
.

She cocked her head at him. “Why purchase a commission when you could while away your inheritance in gaming hells and brothels like most men who are waiting for a title?”

A captaincy in the military meant putting the greatest possible distance between himself and his father, but he’d already revealed more about that than he should have to her. “It seemed the right course of action at the time.”

“No doubt you always choose the right course.” Her tone was laced with subtle sarcasm. “Was it for adventure, Lieutenant?”

“It appears you have found me out.”

She smiled thinly at him. “Then we are more alike than you might imagine. I freely confess my thefts allow me to do things most women wouldn’t dream. Dressed as a man, I’ve roamed the city at night alone. At first, my heart pounded at every footstep, and I started at every barking dog. But later, I reveled in the choices a man’s clothes gave me.” She stopped before the porthole and looked out. The first hint of moonlight kissed her cheek. “I know that must sound incredibly tame to you, but for a woman of quality, it’s an unheard of freedom.”

She turned to fix him with her direct gaze. “What freedom lured you to India?”

Did she know some young bucks chose a stint on the subcontinent because it offered the opportunity for unbridled sexual experimentation? Quinn had limited himself to Padmaa and her tutelage, but in the Gorgeous East a man of means might purchase any sort of sensual escapade he could imagine.

And some Quinn would never conjure up on his own in a million years.

“Duty to country lured me to India,” he said.

Her lip curled. “If that’s what you wish to believe.”

“Why don’t you believe it?”

“Because I think you found waiting around for your father to die boring beyond bearing.”

“There’s where you’re wrong.” Satan couldn’t collect the old bastard soon enough to suit him.

“Life is beastly unfair, don’t you think? My father’s death means my family is set aside. Yours means you take your place as a peer of the realm.”

Injustice always clawed his spine. Even injustice done to a thief.

“I’m sorry for your misfortune, Viola.”

Her robe slipped down one shoulder. The exposed skin glowed with health in the light of the flickering lamp. His soft palate ached to taste that delectable flesh with a string of kisses.

“Do you think the unfairness you experienced gives you license to right the wrong with another wrong?” he asked.

“Apparently you do or we wouldn’t be bound for Paris.” She adjusted her robe to cover her shoulder completely. “Barring the fact that I’ve yet to see you on a white horse, this whole desperate escapade smacks of a quest. I suspect you tilt at windmills as often as you can.”