Louise Allen Historical Collection (77 page)

That kiss on the lookout platform high in the trees had been pleasurable, but its ending had not just been frustrating and painful, it had also been confusing. He ran his tongue between his lips as he made himself think of it analytically, conscious that the memory of Celina’s hot mouth, her soft body, the vicious little nip of her teeth, was as arousing as it was unsatisfying.

She had not reacted like a shocked and sheltered virgin, he concluded, ignoring the heaviness in his groin as he washed in cold water. She had resisted for a moment, but he thought that was surprise and anger. There had been an awareness there, a flare of passion and a calculating cunning to feign surrender so she could lure him in, bite and escape. She had been angry with him, unmistakably, but she had also let him carry her, had talked to him calmly and with interest.

Last night she had seemed to get tipsy and to flirt—was that a ploy, or innocence out of its depth?

No, the mystery of Celina Haddon was most definitely still as intriguing as ever. Quinn raked his hands through his hair, caught sight of himself in the mirror and grinned. It seemed that it would be necessary to kiss Miss Haddon again if he wanted to find out more.

‘You look very pleased with yourself,’ Gregor remarked, emerging from a door a little further along the corridor as Quinn shut his own behind him. ‘Have you seen the room your little virgin has put me in now?’

‘She is not my little anything, at the moment,’ Quinn said, as he looked past the Russian into the room behind. ‘Hades, is that a museum?’ The bed was stranded in the midst of a veritable zoo of immobile creatures of every variety of feather, fur and scales.

‘I think so.’ Gregor kicked a stuffed alligator with one booted foot. ‘She has a sense of humour, Miss Celina.’

‘She is punishing you for teasing the household,’ Quinn observed. ‘Choose another room.’

‘And have her think she has frightened me with her creatures?’ The other man grinned. ‘No, I will thank her lavishly. Perhaps she would like to be entertained in here. She might find it…exciting.’

‘Hands off Quinn spoke mildly, but Gregor made the fencer’s signal of surrender.

‘I would not dream of poaching in my lord’s hunting grounds.’

‘Any more of that
my lord
nonsense and I’ll crack your thick skull,’ Quinn retorted as they made for the head of the stairs. ‘And I am not hunting.’

Liar,
he thought as they made their way into the dining room to find Celina seated at the table, her hair twisted up into a simple knot at the back of her head. A few tendrils escaped and curled at her temples and nape. The colour was high in her cheeks and she met his eyes with wary defiance in her own.
Oh, yes, I am hunting and she knows it. But what is my quarry? A little doe or a cunning feline? That is the question.

A
s Lina had predicted, the lawyer was followed next day by first Dr Massingbird, the physician, then Mr Armstrong from the bank and finally the Reverend Perrin, looking, as Michael the footman observed after he had shown him to the study, as though he had sat on a poker.

None of them had required a summons. Doctor Massingbird seemed more than happy to call upon a gentleman who offered him a most excellent Amontillado and could compare notes on the Iberian Peninsula where he had once been an army doctor, but Mr Armstrong had the air of a man who knew he must do his duty by his bank and the vicar looked ready to perform an exorcism when he was shown in.

Quinn had not been exaggerating his reputation in the neighbourhood, she realised. She also realised she was thinking of him not as Lord Dreycott, nor even Ashley, but most improperly simply as
Quinn.
She had been kissed by the man, she told herself, and that certainly argued a degree of intimate acquaintance that explained it, even if it did not excuse it.

She kept finding excuses to pass through the hall and keep an eye on the study door, waiting with bated breath for either the vicar to stalk out of the presence of sin in high dudgeon, as her father most certainly would, or for Quinn to explode with anger after receiving a lecture on his dissolute ways.

Neither occurred.

She was arranging flowers in a vase on the hall table when the vicar finally emerged, looking slightly less rigid than when he had arrived. ‘Mr Perrin.’ She dropped a neat curtsy, her hands full of evergreen stems.

‘Miss Haddon. I trust we will see you in church on Sunday as usual?’

‘Certainly, sir.’ She had attended every Sunday since her arrival, the rhythms of a country Sunday curiously soothing, even though she had been so unhappy in her own village and old Lord Dreycott had flatly refused to accompany her.

The vicar smiled at her and nodded approvingly. ‘Excellent. Miss Haddon, do you have a respectable female to bear you company now circumstances here have changed?’

‘Mrs Bishop, sir.’

‘Hmm. A good woman, but I would wish you had a
lady
in residence.’

‘Thank you for your concern, but I feel quite… comfortable with the present circumstances, sir.’

That was hardly true, but advertising for some respectable companion was too fraught with dangers to be contemplated. ‘Should I need the benefit of female guidance, I am sure I might call upon Miss Perrin’s advice.’ The vicar’s sister, small, timid, with a perpetually red nose and the air of anxious piety, would hardly be much protection against a hardened rake, but the thought seemed to please the vicar.

‘Of course you may, Miss Haddon. Perhaps you would care to join the Ladies’ Hassock Sewing Circle?’

‘I would love to; however, my needlepoint is sadly clumsy.’ It was excellent, in fact, but Lina had sewn far too many hassocks for her father’s church in Martinsdene to want to start again now.

Trimble produced the vicar’s wide-brimmed hat, his gloves and cane and ushered him out of the door, leaving Lina to reflect that they had now received all the calls they were likely to.

‘Would the Ladies’ Hassock Sewing Circle not be amusing?’ The study door swung open to reveal Quinn lounging against the jamb.

‘You were listening at the keyhole,’ Lina said severely, disguising the fact that her hands had become suddenly shaky by jamming foliage into the back of the vase.

‘Of course. Think of the gossip you would pick up at the sewing circle.’

‘I never want to sew another hassock as long as I live,’ she said vehemently, then could have kicked herself as speculation came into the green eyes. ‘My aunt is very devout,’ she explained, crossing her fingers in the folds of her skirt before sweeping the plant trimmings into her trug and adjusting the vase.

‘There is no need to hurry off, Celina. I am unlikely to ravish you on the hard hall floor.’

‘Or anywhere, my lord, so long as I have a weapon in my hand,’ she retorted, adding the trimming knife to the trug.

‘Am I not forgiven?’ Quinn had not seen fit to have his hair cut, nor to adopt a more formal style of dress in anticipation of his callers. Lina wondered whether he was aware of how well the buckskin breeches and high boots, the white of his unstarched linen and the relaxed fit of the tailcoat over broad shoulders, suited him. Probably very aware, she concluded, just as he knew how spectacular he looked in his Oriental evening clothes. But it was not vanity, she suspected, but quite deliberate manipulation of those around him.

Today he wanted to make the point that he was a country gentleman at ease in his home and, while courteous to his visitors, not in any way concerned to impress them.
Take me as you find me,
he seemed to be saying.
I am Dreycott now.

‘Are you asking my pardon, my lord? If you are sorry, then of course I forgive you.’

‘But I am not sorry,’ Quinn said softly. ‘Only that it was a less-than-satisfactory experience for both of us.’

‘If you are not repentant, then you cannot hope for forgiveness.’
Now I sound like Papa!

‘I am reproved, Celina.’ The green eyes mocked her, putting the lie to his words. ‘And how are your bruises today? And the part you sat upon so hard?’

‘My bruises are multi-coloured and I am somewhat stiff, my lord.’ Lina put her arm through the handle of the trug. ‘If you will excuse me, I have the vases to do in the dining room.’

‘Why have I become
my lord
again?’ Quinn asked. He straightened up and stood, with one hand on the door jamb, looking at her steadily.

Lina hoped she was not blushing. ‘I find it hard to speak to you in any other way after yesterday.’

‘So your tongue becomes formal, to act as a barrier,’ he said. ‘And how do you think of me, I wonder?’ Now she
was
blushing and he had seen it and that wicked smile was creasing the corners of his eyes and twitching at his mouth. ‘As Quinn now, perhaps?’

The lessons in flirtation came to her aid. Lina lowered her lashes, fluttered her free hand and said demurely, I could not possible say…my lord.’

As she hoped, he thought she was laughing at him and not being serious. The grin became a smile and he shook his head at her. ‘The vicar thinks you should have a chaperon. He obviously considers this a house of sin.’

‘He enquired if I had one and I told him that Mrs Bishop was quite sufficient, as you will know as you were listening at the door. And the
house
is not sinful, my lord.’ With that she stepped into the dining room and shut the door behind her. Would he come in? No, she heard booted steps on the marble heading for the front door.

Lina stood and stared at the empty vase set ready for her flowers. She was enjoying her encounters with Quinn, she realised. She liked his frankness, his teasing, the lack of hypocrisy and cant, even as she was wary of him and frightened of her own reaction to his dangerous charm. The
frisson
of sensual awareness that quivered through her at the thought or sight of him was predictable, she told herself. She was so inexperienced with the opposite sex that any handsome man paying her that sort of attention would produce the same effect.

Quinn was, she could see clearly, the first adult male she had ever been so close to other than her father, and he happened to be an attractive, virile, intelligent, charming, unscrupulous male into the bargain. If temptation was made flesh it would probably be called Quinn Ashley.

It was very fortunate that she had observed the consequences for a woman who fell into sin at first hand. Most of the girls working at The Blue Door had started their journey to the brothel with seduction at the hands of a sweetheart—just as Mama had. A briar thorn stuck in her thumb and she sucked it, wincing at the metallic taste of blood. Papa would turn that into a sermon—the apparently innocent loveliness of the flower hiding pain and danger. But she did not need a preacher to warn her that she was flirting with peril.

Celina began to work on the arrangement, straightening her bruised back as though to stiffen her resolve. Quinn Ashley was too much temptation even for an experienced society lady, let alone her. She must avoid him whenever possible.

Lina succeeded in staying out of Quinn’s way most effectively. She appeared at luncheon and dinner, made unexceptional conversation, refused to notice double-edged or teasing remarks and took her walks when she was certain that he and Gregor were shut up in the library.

Long trestle tables had been set up where the men were laying out and sorting papers as they retrieved them from all over the house. It seemed strange that the wicked Lord Dreycott could so immerse himself in scholarly pursuits. He ought to spend his time with his horses, his guns, his brandy and his cards, she thought resentfully, then she could categorise him very neatly.

For four days after that encounter in the gazebo life at Dreycott Park fell into a routine so disciplined and predictable that Lina felt sometimes that she had dreamed the demanding pressure of Quinn’s lips on hers, the strength of his arms, the heat of his mouth. She was living, it seemed, with a gentleman scholar and his assistant.

In the morning after breakfast, during which a large amount of post appeared, he and Gregor rode out or walked or exercised. They went into the long barn with rapiers and, according to Jenks, practised swordsmanship exhaustively. They wrestled and fought, attracting an audience of all the male staff, which drove the women of the household to exasperated nagging when none of the heavy work was done.

Then the copper was emptied to fill the marble bath and following luncheon they disappeared into the library. After dinner Quinn went to the study to read through his uncle’s work on the memoirs and make notes on how to complete them while Gregor continued to search through cupboards and shelves for paperwork. When they had the papers sorted, Quinn explained, they would begin on the books, creating a brief catalogue as they boxed them up.