Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

“Or you’ll shoot me? I think not.” Mam raised her own gun, aimed at Kate. And then she tossed aside the spectacles, spat out the plumpers that distorted her cheeks, pulled off her wig to reveal faded blonde hair.

Kate stared, struck speechless by more than the drug that she’d ingested. Even Liliane blinked. Quin said, slowly, “So. Kate has naught to do with your vendetta. Let her go.”

“She’s everything to do with it,” retorted Mam, much more distinctly. “Can you deny you would have married
her
?”

Kate might have denied it, could she have untied her tongue. Quin was not the marrying sort of gentleman.

He scowled. “You know damned well, Verena, that I never said I’d marry you.”

“No, but you seduced me easily enough,” Mam — Verena — spat. “I expected any moment you would make an offer. Instead you showed me a clean pair of heels.”

Quin had seduced this woman? A bolt of strong emotion burned through Kate’s mental fog. A sun-drenched afternoon, the feeling of hands against her flesh, the smell of new-mown hay— If Quin had taken Verena Wickersham to and in that stable, Kate would stick a pitchfork in them both.

Verena gestured toward Liliane. “That isn’t all you showed me. Say hello to your by-blow.” Quin and Liliane regarded each other with mutually appalled astonishment. “So you see,” Verena added with relish, “Miss Manvers is merely the icing on the cake.”

This was like watching a melodrama. Kate decided some audience participation was required. “If you refer to Liliane being in Quin’s bedchamber,” she whispered with an immense effort. “Nothing happened. I was there.”

Verena scowled at Liliane. “Nothing happened? But you said—”

 “
You
said he was an elbow-crooker who was full of juice,” interrupted Liliane, scowling in her own turn. “And that he’d die of barrel fever soon enough, but in the meantime he’d bleed freely, and so I should ingratiate myself. But it was all a bag of moonshine. Just look at him! He’s as sober as a judge.”

“He always was a damned unpredictable devil.” Verena sighed. “I daresay his people have taken over my house. There’s nothing for it. We’ll have to shoot them both.”

Liliane moved out of pistol range. “
You’ll
have to shoot them. I’m not aiming to dance the sheriff’s jig.”

Verena kept her gun trained on Kate. “Take care I don’t shoot you too. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”

“
Thankless?
You were going to have me debauched by my own father, you mad old bat.” Liliane snatched up the sherry decanter and brought it down, hard, on Verena’s head.

Chapter Sixteen

Quin hesitated in front of the door leading from his bedchamber into Kate’s. Behind the barrier, he heard sounds of movement. Steeling himself, he turned the knob.

Kate was wrapped in a voluminous nightdress. Her valise sat open on the bed. Quin wore the same clothes he had the night before, not having yet retired.

Without waiting for an invitation, he entered the room. “I would offer my condolences, save that even your aunt’s solicitor agrees your cousin is no great loss. Fitting, I think, that he should have inadvertently died by his own hand. As for our other villain, Verena Wickersham is being restored to her family. An account of recent events will be provided them, along with my strongly worded suggestion that she be confined in a private asylum somewhere, which I suspect they will find preferable to the public embarrassment of her imprisonment and trial.” And Coffey, as result of these recent misadventures, had decided to pursue his pigeon-plucking in another part of town.

Kate leaned against the bed. Her dark hair tumbled loose over her shoulders, and her face was pale. Quin would never forget the fear he’d felt at seeing a pistol trained on her. He said, “How do you feel?

“Like some large unpleasant spider has spun cobwebs in my brain.” Kate brushed loose curls back from her face. “How did you discover where I was? Were you familiar with that place?”

“I was not. Which is why Verena went to such lengths. Liliane glimpsed ‘Mam’ at Moxley’s, and grew alarmed. When you turned up missing she sent Figg to watch the bordello, suspecting Verena would take you there. Liliane had the devil of a time tracking me down, else we would have come for you sooner. I was convinced Edmund was to blame.”

“Doubtless Edmund would have been, had he known I was here,” Kate said. “But why was Liliane so helpful? I mean, if she wasn’t aware you and she were, um, related? I didn’t realize she was so young.”

“Nor did I,” responded Quin, with feeling. “Or she would have never got past the front door. As for her helpfulness, we had struck a bargain. Liliane, it seems, isn’t one to go back on her word. Moreover, she informs me, it isn’t
sporting
to go around snatching people off the street.”

The bawdy house had been a fortress. Verena had not expected to be taken by surprise. However, her staff proved easily seduced by silver, collectively displaying no more loyalty than a louse. Any lingering reluctance was dispelled by a dazzling exhibition of Figg’s prowess at jujutsu, which inspired a number of tarts and customers alike to abandon their mutual exertions and marvel at how this and that were done. At the same time, Samson distracted Mam’s bully boys with an account of how he’d managed to remain upright against Jem Ward for one hundred and thirty eight rounds and one and one-half hours, which wasn’t something often heard straight from the horse’s mouth.

“Beside,” Quin added wryly, “my pockets are deeper than Mam’s.”

Kate lowered her gaze to her hands. “Verena expected that even the Black Baron must be devastated to discover he had defiled his daughter. She underestimated you.”

Quin shouldn’t have been surprised Kate held him in low esteem. Had he not gone to great lengths to prove he gave a damn for nothing and no one? “Having never defiled a daughter, I cannot say how I would have felt. There might have been a certain piquant perversity involved. I was certain I had managed to indulge in every depravity at least once. Not it turns out I have not.”

“You are a failure,” Kate said wryly. “If you bribe enough people, you may prevent word getting out. When I said Verena underestimated you, I meant you had no interest in Liliane.” She fell silent for a moment. “When you and I — were you and she — damn you, Quin, you know what I mean.”

Damn him indeed for his curst reputation. “No. That is: yes, I do know what you mean; and no, I was not. Verena and I were history by the time I met you. At least,
I
thought we were. Verena, as it turned out, intended otherwise. When all else failed, she went to my father and told him I’d taken her virginity. You know the rest.”

“Not even the half of it, I’ll wager.” Kate’s tone was less censorious than curious. “
Were
you her first?”

“Hardly. Nor was she mine.” Quin watched as she picked up a garment, folded it, placed it in the valise. Of course Kate was leaving. Why would she care to stay?

“Where are you going?” he inquired.

“I haven’t decided. Other than that it won’t be Yorkshire.” Kate moved away from the bed. “You said there would be a price for your assistance. I’ve been thinking what your price might be.”

 Quin watched her walk toward him. “I promised you’d be safe with me. It was not the case. Any debt you might owe me is canceled out.”

“I pondered your rakehelly ways,” Kate continued, as if he had not spoken, “and wondered what you would ask of me, and if I would agree. You expressed a curiosity about my other lovers. I will tell you about them now.”

“I would prefer you did not.”

“There have been none.”

Quin stared at her. “None?”

Her eyes fixed on his face. “No one has touched me since you last touched me. I wish very much you would touch me now.”

She stood so close Quin could have easily reached out and touched her. He told himself he must not. Quin had touched a thousand women. Kate had touched only him.

Ah, but he was a sinner, and bound for damnation. Quin raised one hand and gently traced the outline of her face.

Kate turned her cheek into his palm. “You broke my heart.”

Quin raised his other hand and brushed back a loose tendril of her hair. “You badly damaged mine.”

 “Then perhaps we are even.” Kate straightened her shoulders. “About that price—”

Quin set her away from him. “This is madness. You can’t still want me, Kate.”

She smiled at him. “Oh, but I do.”

Lord Quinton was not in the habit of self-denial, or considering what was best for another person. He was uncertain if he had ever before attempted to put another’s needs above his own. Still, it was obvious Kate did not grasp the enormity of his iniquities, else she would not be offering herself to him.

He must disabuse her of her delusions. “I am a bad man.”

“I know you are.”

“Women tend to think they may redeem me.”

“Not I.”

Quin folded his arms so he could not crush her to him. “You believe me beyond redemption, then?”

Kate shrugged, and the nightdress slipped off one slender shoulder. “I believe each man must redeem himself. Providing he is so inclined. On the other hand, I hear the pathway to perdition can prove surprisingly pleasant. I have been lonely, Quin.”

How could he refuse her? Quin had been lonely, too. Furthermore, he owed Kate a debt, or she owed him one, or they were in each other’s debt for events that had transpired today and yesterday and seventeen years ago— He was a little muddled as to who owed what to whom.

Quin lifted Kate into his arms and carried her across the room. He placed her on the bed and paused, allowing her this last opportunity to change her mind. She drew her nightdress up over her head and dropped it on the floor.

Well. What was a man to do?

His breath on her flesh, her lips and teeth against his skin; a caress here, and there, and oh yes,
there.
Quin took his time, kissing her slowly, thoroughly, with infinite patience and pent-up passion, and found it oddly difficult to breathe as she did the same to him; kissed her and caressed her until she had lost all reason, and he had as well. It was the first time again, both his and hers, though he could not recall precisely when his first time had been; the first and also somehow the last, because for all his women, Quin had made love to no other, and never would.

It was not the pathway to perdition he travelled with Kate, but to paradise.

The Black Baron was not known for a tendency to cuddle following the amorous congress, or before it for that matter, but after he had divested Miss Manvers of what little virtue he had left her, they lay entwined, his cheek resting against her breast.

Quin found all this quite pleasant. So pleasant indeed he thought he might like to do it frequently, and for a long time. “What now, my Kate? I am yours to command.”

She was too wise to ask him for how long. “The south of France, I’m told, is particularly nice this time of year.”

And because she did not ask him, Quin answered her unspoken question. “I never forgot you for a moment. I have always loved you, Kate.”

EPILOGUE

 “Married!” Beau stared aghast at Liliane. “Surely you jest.”

“It is true,
je t’assure
,” Liliane informed him. “I witnessed the ceremony myself.” She half-expected Beau to ask why
she
should have been present, but he was too stunned.

The gaming rooms were doing a brisk business. Gamblers were losing vast sums at faro and E.O. Adele eyed Liliane speculatively, as did Rosamund, from across the room. Doubtless they were wondering how she came to be acting as hostess in Lord Quinton’s absence, albeit under Samson’s shrewd skeptical eye; concluding her rise in status was result of blackmail; speculating how Quin had been caught out, and what misstep he had took.

Beau, meanwhile, was brooding. What was the world coming to when the most wicked of all the wicked stepped into parson’s mousetrap? Love changed a man, and not for the better. He vowed to make bloody sure the malady never afflicted him.

 “So now you are the most wicked rakehell in all of London,
”
remarked Liliane, a little wickedly herself.

“Profligate in residence,” Beau murmured. “It has a nice ring. What is it you’re keeping from me? Could I persuade you, do you think?”

Liliane winked at him. “I am no tell-tale, monsieur.”

He laughed and pinched her cheek, and then excused himself. Miss Mary Fletcher having at last succumbed to his charms, Beau currently had his eye on Signorina Alfonsina Giordano, a tempestuous Italian actress newly arrived at the Theater Royal.

Liliane watched him make his way through the crowd. Lord Quinton’s marriage wasn’t common knowledge, but unless she’d mistook her mark, it soon enough would be.

She entered the next room, where hazard was the game of choice, caught a curious glance from Daphne, who was casting the dice. Liliane moved among the guests, stopped to speak with this person and that. Tonight she wore a blue silk gown made high up to the neck, one of the advantages of her new status being she no longer need put her assets on view, which resulted in the patrons flocking round her, men being the contrary creatures they were.

In the front room, croupiers waited on either side of the rouge et noir table, rakes in hand. They, too, would be conjecturing what she had on Quin. Liliane exchanged a nod with Samson and stepped out into the hall.

She paused there for a moment, savoring her solitude. Though few knew it, Moxley House now belonged to her. Since she was too young to own property outright, Quin would act as her guardian until she came of age.

Whenever that might be. Liliane wasn’t certain of her birth date.

Just think, she might be a baron’s side-slip.

Or she might not, Mam having scant acquaintance with either virtue or the truth.

Liliane had never particularly wanted a father. She had no higher opinion of the opposite sex than she had of her own.

On the other hand, Quin was much more generous than Mam. He had been so appalled by the possibility of parenthood that he made generous provision for Liliane despite their mutual reservations, and then immediately removed himself from the vicinity, which suited her just fine.