Maggie MacKeever (5 page)

The clock chimed, and the mood shattered. Kate knew the exact instant when Quin realized the foot he so deftly caressed was hers.

He replaced her slippers. Kate drew her feet up beneath her on the bed.

 Quin rose, moved to a chest, picked up a decanter. “So you believe your cousin means you harm.”

Kate accepted the glass he offered her. “Edmund set the kitchen cat afire, after it merely scratched him. Anyway, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Quin frowned. “Your accident?”

“The girth had been cut half through.”

He cursed beneath his breath.

Kate did not care to remember those dark days, when she had lost both Quin and Arabella within the space of a few weeks. “Aunt Dorothea refused to believe her son might have been responsible. Edmund as much as admitted to me that he had. His disposition has not improved with time.”

 “Let me understand this.” Quin sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. “You have no family left, no friends you care to expose to Edmund’s malice. And so you came to me.”

Kate felt her cheeks redden. “Not to expose you to his malice. I hoped that in you Edmund might meet his match.”

“In malice, you mean? I had no inkling my father was going to make an announcement, Kate.”

Kate stared into her glass. She had been fool enough to believe Quin’s promise they would wed. How many times had he made the same promise to some other woman? And broken it as well?

Quin said, quietly, “I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

He hadn’t been meant to know. Kate was an orphan, with no real home of her own. When she told her scholarly uncle she wished to leave, Harlan had been relieved to pass her along to some other relative.

“I made a dreadful scandal,” Quin continued. “My father threatened everything from disinheritance to dismemberment. He could force me to do nothing. I was of age.”

Kate placed her glass carefully on the bedside table. Quin could have found her, easily enough, had he made the effort. But that was water well under the bridge.

He was watching her, an odd expression on his face. “What?” she said.

Quin reached out and touched her hair. “Kate by candlelight. I was admiring your nightdress.” His fingers moved down her throat, came to rest against her pulse. “So modest and demure, yet infinitely more enticing than the most diaphanous shift.”

Her heart was beating frantically. As Quin must realize. Kate leaned toward him, as entranced as any reptile by a snake charmer’s flute. And then she recalled this charmer’s countless nameless conquests, and drew back.

He quirked a quizzical eyebrow. Kate rose, crossed the room and paused in the doorway to her own bedchamber. “I am not naive. You would like to banish me to the ranks of those other women whose details you have forgot. I shan’t let you, Quin.”

He made no move to prevent her leaving, said not a word in his defense. Before her good sense could desert her altogether, Kate closed and locked the door.

Chapter Nine

“
Mais non!”
protested Liliane. “This is a terrible mistake. I would never have on purpose entered milord’s chamber,
je t’assure!”

“Oh, aye. Especially not wearing just your shift.” Samson grasped her by the elbow and marched her up the stair. “Don’t bother to try and explain how you came to mistake his lordship’s chamber for the one given you on the servant’s floor.”

“But
naturellement
I wear my shift! What would you, have me sleep in a state of nature?” Liliane shuddered, dramatically. “A girl could catch her death — I mean, could take a chill.”

Samson beetled his brows at her. “You’d be wise to watch your step.”

“Watch my step? But why?” Liliane glanced down at the stair. “Oh, you mean I must beware of the
cochon
Coffey. But this is why I must spend another night—”

“No,” said Samson. “You
won’t
spend another night. Maybe you’ve discovered you can bamboozle some of the people a great deal of the time, but you won’t bamboozle me.”

Samson wasn’t half so downy as he thought himself. “What is this bamboozlement? I do not comprehend—”

 “You have five minutes to get dressed.” Samson shoved Liliane into the small room where she had previously slept. “Before I toss you out into the street.”

The door closed behind him. Hastily, Liliane gathered her possessions, pulled on her clothes. In the usual way of things, her invasion of her employer’s bedchamber should have led to her being immediately dismissed. But that was not the case. Samson would try and ferret out why Quin had made an exception for Liliane.

Who
was
the dark-haired woman who’d set all her careful plans at naught? Lord Quinton had eyes for only her at breakfast that morning, even though Liliane had been wearing her finest garment, which might have been sackcloth for all the attention he paid.

He had not been noticeably more impressed by her shift.

Liliane struggled with the fastenings of her gown. No small feat, this inducing a cove to dance the feather-bed jig while at the same time playing the part of an innocent in case what Beau Loversall had said was true, and the infamous Black Baron preferred not to dab it up with an impure.

Be that as it may, or not, he hadn’t wished to dab it up with
her
. Mayhap his appendage had become jaded as result of overuse. Mam had all manner of remedies for such things. One might utilize the bile of a jackal, or asses’ milk, or melt down the fat from the hump of a camel and rub it on a cove’s pizzle just before he set to swiving. Liliane contemplated boiling a ram’s testicle in milk, adding sugar, and forcing it down her employer’s uncooperative throat.

She might have succeeded — mightn’t she? — had they not been interrupted. Who would believe Quin had a partiality for a particular female? A female he didn’t want the world to learn about, judging from the amount of blunt he had promised Liliane to keep the information to herself.

“Time’s up,” said Samson, as he re-entered the room. Liliane crammed her bonnet on her head. “Being as you’re suddenly afraid of your own shadow, Figg here will see you home.”

Liliane eyed the footman, who didn’t suit her notion of the breed, having neither good looks to recommend him, nor broad shoulders or strong thighs. He was only a few inches taller than she, with brown hair, nondescript features, and a slender frame.

Under her scrutiny, he blushed.
“Nom de Dieu,”
she sighed.

“Don’t be misled,” Samson assured her. “Figg has a black belt in Japanese jujutsu.”

Liliane didn’t quibble. That appearances were deceiving, she knew better than most.

Figg escorted her down the servant’s stair, and opened the outer door. “Where to, miss?” he asked.

“Covent Garden,” Liliane replied.

The hour was late, or early, depending on one’s point of view; the fog thick and the lamplights dim. The streets were empty of traffic save for the occasional watchman passing on his rounds, the night-soil cart clattering over the cobblestones. “And so,” said Liliane to Figg, “what is this jujutsu?”

Japanese jujutsu was a martial discipline developed around the principle of using an attacker’s energy against him, instead of directly opposing it, Figg explained; he had learned the science from a sailor met several years ago when his lordship passed a debauched interval in an establishment of less-than-stellar reputation near the London Docks. As he kept watch on their surroundings, Figg went on at some length about throwing, trapping, joint locks, holds, gouging, biting, disengagements, striking and kicking, and other grappling techniques.

“It is of a fascination,” commented Liliane, who rather than listening was deciding what she dared tell Mam, which wouldn’t be that his lordship was betrothed. Nor would she be blabbing about the bargain they had struck, lest Mam demand her cut.

Claws scrabbled on slippery cobblestones. A cat, decided Liliane; or a large rat, or some other less appealing creature of the night. She stepped closer to Figg, slipped her hand through his arm. Beneath the fabric of his coat, she felt solid muscle. Definitely, there was more to the footman than met the eye. “Is this jujutsu something I could learn?” she asked him. “So if someone was to attack me, I could fling him arsy-varsy — er, head over heels?”

Figg blushed, whether at Liliane’s language or her proximity it was impossible to say. She moved closer, so he could take in a good whiff of her seductive perfume.

At least, Mam said it was seductive. Quin had not seemed to find it so. Mayhap there was also something wrong with his nose.

“Have you worked for Lord Quinton long?” she asked. Figg allowed as he had. Further inquiry revealed, however, that the footman knew nothing about anything, or if he did, he wouldn’t tell.

Liliane suspected that, with her decision to bamboozle the Black Baron, Mam might have gnawed off more than she could chew.

The streets were no less empty here near Covent Gardens, resurrection men having temporarily abandoned their quest for corpses, and whores for customers, and footpads for drunken lordlings with more brass than brains. A vast variety of buildings made up this neighborhood: shops and townhouses and tenements, high and low public houses; theaters, taverns and coachmen’s watering houses, all closed at this hour.

Figg was explaining how Japan’s first martial art had originated in 23 B.C., when Emperor Suijin ordered wrestling champion Tomakesu-Hayato to fight Nomi-no-Sukene, who then kicked Tomakesu-Hayato to death in a unique fighting style that developed into jujutsu. An alternate theory suggested jujutsu had its origins among the samurai between the eighth and sixteenth centuries as an unarmed fighting style, kicks and punches having little effect if a warrior had to defeat an armed and armored opponent without the advantage of a sword; and so pins and throws, chokes and joint locks on unprotected targets like the neck and wrists and ankles had evolved.

Liliane halted on a street corner. “This is far enough.” She’d not be bringing Figg within arm’s reach of the nanny house where she lived with Mam.

He looked as if he might argue. Liliane raised up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his cheek. “
Merci.
You have been most kind to escort me
.”
Figg blushed and bowed and fled.

Liliane stifled a giggle. For all his skill at jujutsu, the footman had almost tripped over his own feet.

She heard a sound behind her. No scrabbling of claws, this, but shoe leather on cobblestone. Slowly, Liliane turned around.

Coffey stood beneath a street lamp, swathed in a greatcoat with as many capes as any coachman, the faint light making a halo of his fair hair. “Thought you were going to give the lad a tumble. It was you as lured me into that hallway with your artful glances, no matter what lies you told Quin.”

“It was no lie to say you put your hands where they weren’t invited,” Liliane responded, edging backward. “And I did nothing of the sort.”

Coffey begged to differ. He knew a short-heeled wench when he saw one, or so he said; and he saw in Liliane just the sort of female who needed only the slightest nudge to roll over on her back.

“Crackbrain
,
” hissed Liliane, indignant. “Have you already forgot I kicked you in your cullions and knocked you in the nose?”

Coffey reached into his greatcoat and pulled out a fistful of banknotes. “Come down off your high ropes. I’ve a bit of business to suggest.”

Liliane eyed the money. True, Coffey was a pig. However— “Talk to me,
mon chou
.”

Chapter Ten

Kate sat at the breakfast table, sipping chocolate and trying to impose some order on her chaotic thoughts: her cousin wished to kill her; Quin wished to ravish her for all the wrong reasons; and she couldn’t say which circumstance disturbed her more. Seated across the table from her, Beau Loversall was enjoying a hearty meal of kippers and eggs.

Kate stiffened as Quin entered the room. Beau made a welcoming gesture with his fork.

Quin moved to the sideboard. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence, Beau? Another early morning ride?”

He was going to pretend nothing had happened between them, Kate decided. Well, to be fair, nothing
had
happened, save that Quin had rubbed her feet and then tried to seduce her, but of course she hadn’t let him, and damned if she didn’t want to dissolve into tears.

“Mrs. Thwaite has become rather too demanding. I’m letting her cool her heels. Since Mrs. Ormsby is currently engaged with her spouse, I find myself at loose ends.” Beau glanced at Kate. “
Does
absence make the heart grow fonder, do you think?”

‘Fonder’ didn’t come near describing the condition of Kate’s heart, which from one moment to the next could not decide whether to break or burst. “I daresay it depends on the situation. A case could as easily be made for ‘out of sight, out of mind’.”

“There’s a pretty setdown.” Quin pulled out a chair. “I am uncertain which of us it was intended for. Speaking of setdowns, how proceeds your pursuit of the divine Miss Fletcher?” He, too, glanced at Kate.
“‘
Divine’ being Beau’s word, not mine.”

“You must need spectacles,” said Beau. “Only a man with failing vision would deny Miss Fletcher is sublime.”

“Divine, sublime, perceptive.” Quin reached for the coffee urn. “Beau’s pursuit of the lady isn’t proceeding apace.”

 “So it may seem on the surface,” Beau admitted. “However, was I a betting man—”

“Are you not?” Kate inquired.

Quin poured coffee into a cup. “Beau prefers to wager on the game of hearts. Females afford him a more gratifying return on the investment of his funds than do cards and dice. That is, they once did. Alas, how the mighty are fallen. Never did I think to see the day when Beau Loversall dangled at an opera dancer’s slipper strings.”

“I am
not
dangling!” Beau insisted.

“Of course you’re not,” soothed Kate, and nudged the jam pot beyond his reach.

“Of course he is,” Quin differed. “However, I have a solution to his predicament that will serve us all.”