Touch of a Thief (18 page)

Breakfast was a pleasantly domestic affair. She and Quinn had wakened all tangled up together, their bodies seeking to maintain contact even as they slept. They managed to have a civil and productive conversation about the use of French letters during future bouts of “hatefulness” over their baguettes and tea. Quinn agreed to protect her by procuring a supply of the condoms at once.

By the time Quinn excused himself to shave, she was feeling quite satisfied with the state of the world. Her niggling doubts about the vision at the lake had been shoved aside. When the time was right, she’d talk to Quinn about it. She was all but certain there was something missing from her vision, something that exonerated Quinn.

She’d been in Reggie’s head. Perhaps he’d been tangled up in something under the water and only thought he was being held beneath the surface from above.

Quinn couldn’t have killed him. No man could have the sense of honor he possessed while hiding a vicious crime like fratricide in his past.

Viola was contemplating a second cup of the fragrant blend of tea when Sanjay arrived to clear their table.

“This arrived for you, milady.” He slipped an envelope beneath her napkin. There was no longer any thinly concealed suspicion in his tone. She’d won the Indian prince over. If she needed him, she suspected he’d help her.

“Thank you, Sanjay.” She ripped open the wax seal and felt the blood run from her face.

Sanjay couldn’t help her. Or Quinn either.

Losing pashuns
, the note read in an abominable hand. She deciphered the equally abominable spelling to mean
patience
.
Meet now. And bring a stone if ye no wot’s gud for ye. And yer frends.

It was signed simply
W
.

Her belly curdled. She’d had no idea Willie could write and frankly he’d flown clear out of her mind ever since she’d decided not to leave Quinn. She crumpled the note in her fist, stood and ambled to the curtained window.

“I’ll see about our transport to Hanover this morning,” Quinn said, his voice slightly altered as he spoke out of one side of his mouth for a smoother shave. “What are your plans for the day?”

Viola peered through the slit in the curtain to the street below. There was Willie, lurking near a fruit seller’s newly replenished cart. He cast a look up toward her window and she ducked back behind the curtain.

“A bit of shopping, I think.” She tried not to let agitation bleed into her voice. “I liked Sanjay’s bracelet so much, I want to look for a similar one to use as a companion piece.”

Quinn laughed. “Only because you like the look and feel of it, I hope. You shouldn’t be sucked into his fancy about protection and such. Hindus are a superstitious lot.”

“Aren’t we all?” she said softly. She had no doubt the red diamond was trying to curse her through her vision. If it was powerful enough to sense her presence through the mist of Seeing, she needed all the protection she could get. When she confronted the stone in real life, she’d feel safer dripping in silver and jet.

She rang for one of the hotel serving girls to act as her abigail.

“Why did you do that?” Quinn asked from the lavatory. As long as he was shaving, he left the door ajar so they could continue their conversation. “I’m always happy to help you.”

“Yes, but your kind of help is more conducive to undressing than dressing.” She kept the conversation light as she eased open one of Quinn’s drawers and drew out the stocking filled with jewels. She pinched the smallest emerald and returned the stocking to the drawer exactly as she’d found it. With luck, Quinn wouldn’t even miss it until they divided up the lot when they parted company.

Her chest constricted at that. Quinn had offered to marry her once. He’d probably thought better of it since then. If he were going to broach the subject of marriage again, he might have done it at breakfast when they’d settled on using a French letter in the future. There’d be no need to guard against pregnancy if she were his wife.

Quinn had fallen strangely silent in the lavatory. She started to speak to him, but the maid arrived and they disappeared behind the chinoiserie dressing screen together. She noticed Quinn had shut the lavatory door.

Once she was dressed and the chattering maid had left, Viola called out, “I’m leaving, Quinn.”

The lavatory door opened and he emerged smelling of sandalwood and spice, but his handsome face was stony and unreadable. “Do you need money?” His voice was flat.

“Just fare for the hansom.” She forced a smile. She’d tied the emerald into the corner of her handkerchief and stuffed it into her reticule. Even though it was a small stone, it weighed her down. “I’ll warrant your credit is good at that jewelry shop.”

“No doubt.”

She turned to go, but he stopped her with a hand on her forearm. “No kiss good-bye?”

“Quinn, I’m only going shopping, not to Timbuktu.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, then hurried out the door before she lost her nerve and told him everything.

It was one thing for Willie to threaten her. She deserved it. But his note threatened Quinn well.

And yer frends
.

Malice had shimmered in the malformed letters.

She doubted Willie could harm Quinn physically unless he surprised Quinn on a dark night with a whole gang at his back, but Willie could still make trouble for him. The military career in which Quinn had so distinguished himself probably wouldn’t withstand a scandalous connection with a known jewel thief. Willie wouldn’t be above turning her in to collect the reward, if he decided she was no longer useful to him.

It would mean her utter ruin.

And by association, Quinn’s.

She emerged from the hotel, but didn’t wave down a cab. Instead she walked toward the fruit seller. She didn’t see Willie anywhere, but she felt the weight of eyes on her. She walked on.

He’d make himself known when it suited him.

She’d stolen from him! Quinn’s fingers curled into fists.

Sanjay always warned she would, but he hadn’t listened. He wouldn’t have believed it, if he hadn’t seen her do it, if he hadn’t watched her reflection in his small shaving mirror. Cool as ice, she’d opened his drawer and helped herself to his stash of jewels.

He didn’t stop to see how much she’d taken. He was too busy shadowing her from the hotel. She walked across the fashionable Parisian street as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She was a vision in French lace and frippery.

By God, she should be. He’d paid enough for that bit of French folderol. The price of that ridiculous little hat alone would feed an Indian family for a month. He’d bought her a whole goddamned new wardrobe, hadn’t he?

And she’d stolen from him.

She turned suddenly and looked over her shoulder, but he ducked into a bakery doorway. The aroma of fresh bread swirled over him, making him nauseous. The thought of food roiled his belly.

He trusted her. He half believed he
loved
her.

And she’d stolen from him.

Damn it all to hell, he’d have
given
her everything he had if she’d only asked.

He peered around the corner. Viola was on the move again. After a quick glance around, she turned down one of the narrower side streets which seemed to dead end into a decaying court surrounded by sagging tenements. It was lined with refuse and overlooked by rickety balconies of abandoned pieds à terre as the neighborhood shifted abruptly from respectable to seedy. He ducked into one of the buildings and shot up the stairs two at a time. He’d be able to watch her more easily from above.

His chest constricted. A woman alone was much safer on the broad thoroughfares than in the tangled spokes that branched off them. Even in broad daylight, a lady of quality had no business endangering herself by wandering the byways.

It wasn’t safe.

But Viola wasn’t the type to enjoy safe, he realized. She was unlike any woman he’d ever met. She broke into people’s houses and stole their valuables. She wandered London at night, dressed as a man and reveling in the freedom it gave her. She unraveled the mysteries of a tumbler lock as fast as the canniest of light-fingered second-story men. And what lady would have made such enthusiastic love with him in the library after being interrupted in the ambassador’s office?

Viola flirted with life on the edge of respectability. She reveled in danger and mayhem.

Why had he ever thought he could cage a bird like that?

He’d dressed her in the trappings of a lady. He’d claimed her as his wife before the expatriate society of Paris, but she was still a thief at heart.

As he crept out onto one of the balconies and looked down on her, he realized she’d certainly stolen his.

“Wot
ye got fer me, milady?” Willie demanded from behind an abandoned cart. He stepped around, blocking her way.

Viola dug into the reticule and came up with her hanky. Her fingers trembled as she untied the knot. “An uncut emerald. Untraceable. Gorgeous color. It’s very fine.”

She handed the jewel to him. “Now, this terminates our association.”

Willie grinned and shoved the emerald into his trouser pocket. “Them’s mighty fancy words for a simple man like me, but they make me think ye don’t want to do business with me no more.” His grin faded and his brows beetled in a terrifying frown. “I’d be beside myself if I felt ye didn’t want to continue to make use of me services. I do terrible things when I get angry, milady. Terrible things.”

“You forget yourself. I am the daughter of an earl.” Viola straightened her posture and put on her haughtiest expression. Willie was just the sort of bully to whom one could not afford to show fear. “I will not be threatened by the likes of you.”

“I wouldn’t be so hoity-toity if I was you. Ye’re naught but a common thief, milady. One step up from a light-skirt and not so very long a step at that, what with you cavorting about Paris in the company of a man ye haven’t tied no knot with.” Willie took a step closer. “And I didn’t make no threat. It were a promise. Why, I could wring yer neck like a chicken if I was of a mind to.”

Panic raking her spine, she backed away half a step. “We’re in a public place.”

“Not so public as all that. But the Frogs don’t mind a spot o’ trouble. They looks at it as entertainment. Don’t ye mind how they lopped off all them noble’s heads just ’cause they could? Damn me, if they didn’t have the right idea.”

He shot her a greasy smile. “But ye’re worth more to me with yer head on yer shoulders. Lots more. The little green bauble ye brought me is just the down payment. If ye want to be quit of me for good, I can accommodate ye, but I need a last big haul for me troubles. Something to tide me over in me dotage. I want the rest of the lieutenant’s jewels.”

Viola’s jaw gaped. She couldn’t steal from Quinn. She didn’t regard the emerald she’d lifted as a theft. More like an advance payment on what he’d owe her once they had the red diamond. There was honor of a sort among thieves. While Quinn was encouraging and even joining in her larceny, it wasn’t for personal gain. He believed stealing the Blood of the Tiger was a sin mitigated by the greater good of restoring it to Sanjay’s people.

He’d never forgive her if she actually stole from him.

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, ye can and ye must, if ye don’t want something bad to happen to the gentleman. Ye see, a bloke like me can always find fast friends to help him with a bit of skullduggery in a city like this.”

In London, people disappeared all the time. It was easy to pretend such things didn’t happen in the comfortable West End, even in her threadbare, not-quite-fashionable but still respectable part of it. But on the hardscrabble side of town, bodies washed up in the Thames or were discovered by a dustman in an alley and no one was ever punished for the crimes. It was an unpleasant truth she’d discovered when she first dipped her toe in a life of lawbreaking.

The seedy underbelly of Paris was probably no different.

“But if ye don’t get me wot I want, don’t worry. Ye can console yerself that the lieutenant won’t suffer much,” Willie said, his voice smarmy. “In fact, he’ll never even see us comin’.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, a blur dropped down from one of the balconies above them, landing on Willie. He and his assailant rolled on the dirt-clogged cobbles in a tangle of arms and legs. After a few moments’ scuffle, Willie was pinned beneath the big man, who sat astraddle his chest, pummeling the lights out of him.

“Quinn!” Viola was relieved and horrified in equal measure. He must have tailed her to that squalid little lane. Judging by the growled threats proceeding from his mouth, he’d overheard much of the exchange with her fence.

“And if you ever”—Quinn stopped throwing bruising punches and wrapped his fingers around Willie’s beefy throat—“bother the lady again—”

Willie made gagging noises and tried to buck Quinn off, but his movements grew more sluggish as his air supply dwindled. His face turned an alarming shade of purple before Quinn released him.

“There won’t be a hole deep enough for you to hide in, you miserable piece of filth.” Disgust emanating from every pore, Quinn climbed off Willie and stood over him, lip curled. “If you try to make trouble for Lady Viola, if I ever hear your name connected with hers, if I so much as see your ugly face again, make no mistake, I will kill you.”

Rage rolled off him in barely contained waves. Viola didn’t doubt Quinn’s words for an instant. She knew in his capacity as a soldier, he’d probably killed his share of men in battle. Murder—killing of a very different sort—glinted in his gray eyes.

He bent over and fished the emerald from Willie’s pocket. “No man steals what’s mine.”

Willie gasped for air like a carp on the riverbank and offered no resistance.

Quinn shot a glare at Viola that clearly said
And no woman steals from me either.

He grasped her elbow and whipped her around, dragging her out of the narrow lane and back onto the broad thoroughfare. She had to trot to keep up with his determined stride.

“Quinn, please, you’re hurting my—”

“Madam, for your own safety, I suggest you refrain from speech,” he said, tight-lipped. He didn’t release her, but he eased his hold a bit.

Viola suspected she’d bruise all the same.

He hustled her down the street to their hotel, through the busy lobby and up to their suite without another word or a single direct glance at her. She might have been no more important than an oversized carpet bag he was forced to lug. Once he slammed the door and locked it behind them, he turned the full force of his angry gray gaze on her. “What the hell was that about?”

“If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, we have nothing to discuss,” she said primly and perched on one of the wing chairs.

“Like hell we don’t.” He leaned both hands on the arms of the chair, forcing her into the tufted back. “Civil, you say? You steal from me bold as brass. You consort with the lowest sort of riffraff, making God knows what kind of Faustian deal, and yet, you expect me to be civil?”

She lifted her chin. “Did it occur to you that my actions were solely for your protection?”

“Oh, yes. I heard the bugger’s threats, but I can’t believe you’d take them seriously. Do you think I can’t take care of myself? And you?”

“No one can be eternally vigilant.”

“Watch me,” he said through clenched teeth. “It still doesn’t give you the right to steal from me.”

“I didn’t steal from you. By rights, half those jewels in that stocking belong to me. Or at least they will once we find the diamond. I merely took a small portion of what is mine in advance.”

“Without so much as a by-your-leave.” He shook his head and began to pace the small area like a caged leopard. “A bit presumptuous of you, your ladyship, since we’ve yet to locate the stone. We don’t even know we’ll find Baaghh kaa kkhuun in Hanover once we get there.”

She knew with certainty they would, but she refused to tell him how. If he was this upset over the mundane aspects of her thieving abilities, how would he react to the news that she could hear the voices of gemstones and receive visions from them?

“Who was that fellow?” Quinn demanded.

“My fence,” she admitted, slumping a bit under his dark scowl. “Well, a thief can’t very well convert stolen goods into cash without one, can she?”

“You mean the man followed you from London?” His mouth tightened in a hard line. “Why did you tell him where you were going?”

“I didn’t tell him. I had to visit his shop to sell that pearl the day we sailed. My mother needed the money before I left, but I never breathed a word about Paris or the red diamond. I swear it,” she said miserably. “Willie has ways of finding things out.”

“So you gave him the emerald to . . . what? Appease him?” Quinn raked a hand through his hair so hard, Viola expected to see clumps of his dark curls come out, stuck between his fingers. “Even if you gave him everything we have, it wouldn’t be enough. Fellows of his ilk are never satisfied.”

Viola templed fingers in her lap and fixed her gaze on them. Quinn was right. Willie would always threaten, always try to blackmail her.

“How did you know he was here?”

“He sent a note.” Quinn didn’t need to know she’d run into Willie in Paris once before, when she was attempting to leave him.

“How does he know I possess any gemstones in the first place?”

“I discussed it with Willie before I broke into your town house. He has a friend who knows where all the secret vaults are built into the homes on your street. How else do you think I was able locate the wall safe so quickly?” she said wearily. “Besides, if you didn’t want anyone to know about it, you shouldn’t have made it known at your dinner party that you had a fistful of jewels.”

“I was trying to draw out the Mayfair Jewel Thief at the time.”

“Which you did quite successfully. You were just expecting the thief to be a man.”

He sank into the wing chair opposite her. “It would have made matters a damn sight easier.”

In her mind, Viola heard her father’s voice, lamenting that she had not been the son he’d hoped for. It was his complaint all through her childhood and she hated it. God had made her female. It wasn’t her fault, then or now.

“How unfortunate. I’m sorry my gender is such an inconvenience to you.” Acid crept into her tone.

“I didn’t say that.”

“The fact that I’m female worked very well for you when we were caught in the ambassador’s office. But I suppose you could’ve dropped a gentleman thief’s trousers and buggered him just as easily. Come to think of it, that might have been an even better distraction for the guard.”

“Viola!”

He was shocked at her vulgarity. So be it. She was feeling rather vulgar at the moment.

“Swiving one’s wife—excuse me, one’s pretend wife—isn’t nearly as distracting as being caught with a male lover. So once again, my femininity is a detriment.”

Choler crept up his neck like a red rash. His eyes glittered dangerously. She was making him angrier, but she didn’t care. She could be angry too.

“I didn’t say I wished you were a man,” he said, clipping his words.

“It was implied.”

“Well, imply this.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “From now on, you’re not going anywhere without me.”

“I will not be hedged about as if I were a child.”

“If you were a child, I’d take you over my knee and warm your bum good and proper,” Quinn said, his gray eyes blazing. “I still haven’t abandoned the idea completely, so don’t tempt me further.”

The only reason she’d taken the emerald to Willie was to protect Quinn. Why couldn’t he give her the least bit of credit for good intentions? “You don’t trust me.”

“Trust has nothing to do with it. I’m trying to protect you, you little ninny.” His voice was rough and throaty. “Besides, trust is earned. And you’ve not done anything to warrant it this day.”

He was a fine one to talk about trust. Hadn’t she given him the benefit of the doubt after seeing a vision that all but proved him guilty as Cain?

She almost threw her knowledge in his face. But then she’d have to explain about her gift and how she’d seen that horrific vision at the lake. She wasn’t prepared to share that part of herself with him.

Not when he wouldn’t accept the part she already had shared.

Quinn rose to his feet. “Come. We haven’t any more time to waste on this.”

Oh, yes, let us not squander time on anything so unimportant as what we are to each other.
Viola bit her tongue to keep the bitter words from flying out.

“We have some business to attend to,” he said.

“Such as?”

“We still need passage on a coach bound for the German territories.” He offered her his hand. She ignored it and rose without his assistance. “And I believe you still want that jet and silver set, or was that just a ruse to get out of the hotel?”

“No, I fully intended to visit the jewelers after I concluded my business with Willie,” she said stonily. “You have credit I can exploit, you see.”

If he was determined to think the worst of her, by God, she’d show him the worst.

He looked at her sharply. “Yes, I do see. Maybe for the first time.”

“Well, let’s be off then.” She rose, smoothing a strand of hair behind her ear. “At least we won’t need to stop by the apothecary.”

“Oh?”

“You don’t need any French letters,” she said with a poisonous smile. “You won’t have cause to use them.”