by Louise Allen
‘Good God.’ Ashe stopped dead and stared at her. ‘That’s worse than the outfit you were wearing when we first met.’
‘Never mind me,’ Phyllida retorted. ‘What on earth are you doing looking like that?’
He was wearing a high-necked coat of dull black brocade, tailored in at the waist with skirts to the knee all round. Beneath were tight, dark-red trousers tucked into boots of soft black leather and a sash of the same dark red circled his waist. He had not shaved and his morning beard, darker than his hair, made his skin seem darker, too. And the final touch of exoticism was his hair, freed from its tie and touching his shoulders. As he moved his head she caught the glint of a gold ear stud in his right lobe.
‘Don’t you like it?’ One eyebrow rose. Phyllida could have sworn he had done something to make his lashes even sootier. She wished she dared ask what, it looked a useful trick.
‘You look magnificent and you know it,’ she snapped. Over her dead body was she going to let him see that he was the personification of every daydream of the exotic Orient. ‘Do not fish for compliments, Lord Clere. That is hardly the outfit for where we are going.’
‘But I look like a dealer from the East. Someone who knows about Chinese ceramics.’
‘We will see who gets the better deals,’ Phyllida said. ‘Are we acquainted with one another?’
‘I do not think so. I will get the driver to drop me off around the corner and I will go in first.’
‘Why?’ Phyllida picked up her reticule and dropped in the front-door key.
‘In case there is any danger, of course.’ Ashe followed her out and pulled the door to. Phyllida told the driver where to go and they climbed into the hackney.
‘You will deal with that by throttling assailants with your sash?’
‘You are more exhausting than my sister,’ Ashe complained. ‘No, I will stab them with one of the three knives I have about my person.’ He settled back against the battered squabs and crossed long legs.
Knives? Gentlemen did not stroll around London armed to the teeth with knives, not these days. He was teasing her, he had to be. Phyllida resisted the temptation to look for betraying bulges in case he thought she was studying his body.
‘Who is Miss Millington?’ he asked in a rapid change of subject. ‘I couldn’t find her in either the Peerage or the Landed Gentry.’
‘You can’t have her!’ Phyllida sat bolt upright and gripped her reticule. ‘She is for Gregory.’
‘I didn’t say I wanted her, I was simply trying to place her.’
‘Her father is a prominent banker.’
‘Ah, I see. She will come with a substantial dowry and your brother comes with land and title.’
‘Exactly. And they like each other, so I have every hope they will make a match of it.’
‘Your doing, I suspect.’
‘Certainly. It is no secret that our father left Gregory the earldom, a crumbling house, a great deal of entailed land in poor heart and a mountain of debt. We sold off everything that we could and cleared the debts, but that left virtually nothing to live off and certainly no resources to restore the Court and the estate.’
‘So you support the pair of you with your dealing and the shop. What happens to you when Fransham marries? You appear to be a notable matchmaker—can you not turn your talents to your own benefit?’
‘I will not marry.’ Phyllida began to fiddle with a darn on her right glove. ‘In my position…’
‘Nonsense. Someone will fall in love with you—a professional man, a younger son.’
And then she would have to confess the truth about her past. ‘I will not marry,’ Phyllida repeated stubbornly. ‘I have no wish to.’ And even if she could find the right man, and even if he did not care about her birth or her past or the shop, could she bring herself to be a wife to him?
She shivered. Just because she found one man attractive and still dreamt about his kiss and the pressure of his fingers on hers did not mean that if things went beyond kisses that she could bear it. Her body’s instinctive reactions, female to male, were one thing, her mind’s capacity to overcome horror and memory was quite another. Better never to risk it. It felt as though Ashe was tugging her closer and closer to a cliff edge and she had no strength to resist him.
‘We are close.’ She pulled the check string. ‘If you get out here and walk around the corner to the left, you’ll see the warehouse. Tell the driver to take me to the entrance in a few minutes.’
When she entered the warehouse with a nod to the guard on the door and the scurrying clerks, she found men she recognised inside. Taciturn, shabby figures with notebooks, they made secretive jottings as they passed amongst the packing cases and racks. Her fellow dealers spared her curt greetings and assessing looks, their faces as blank as those of card players in the midst of a high-stakes game.
It was not hard to locate Ashe. He was strolling along the crowded aisles, a faint sneer curving his lips, Joe Bertram, the warehouse manager, at his heels. She watched as he stopped and shook his head over a display of just the sort of small items she was interested in.
‘Who the blazes is that?’ One of the dealers stopped next to Phyllida and jerked his head at Ashe, who was rolling his eyes at a large vase.
‘I have no idea,’ she said, hardly able to recognise the supercilious Indian gentleman they were looking at. ‘But he looks as though he knows what he is talking about.’
‘He’s putting the wind up old Bertram. Might lower the prices for all of us,’ the man said with a chuckle and moved on.
Ashe approached her, paused and produced a slight inclination of the head. His face was expressionless, an aristocrat showing courtesy to a lesser being. Phyllida ignored him and made a pretence of studying some vast urns before going to the small items. Her heart was racing as she picked up the first delicate tea bowl. There was high-quality famille rose, some exquisite blue-and-white incense burners, charming unglazed terracotta miniature figures, plates… She would have to consider very carefully and bargain hard.
On the edge of her concentration she could hear Ashe, his voice strongly accented as he condescended to take an interest in a suite of vases. She put the pieces she wanted to one side, added some more as sacrifices once the bargaining began, and looked around for Bertram or one of his assistants. At the doorway there was jostling, laughter, a string of swear words, then Harry Buck and his bullies swaggered in. All around her the dealers faded into the background, like terriers yielding to a bulldog at the bear pit.
Only Ashe, inspecting the base of a bowl, the nervous Mr Bertram and herself were left exposed to the stare of Buck’s muddy brown eyes. They flickered over Ashe, visibly dismissed him as a foreigner, over Bertram, who hurried to Buck’s side at the jerk of his head, and then fixed on her. Phyllida could feel the stare like the touch of greasy fingers on her skin. Her nightmares began and ended with Buck, his coarse laughter, his thick fingers, the smell of onions on his breath. Why was he here? She was trapped.
She kept her eyes fixed on the bowl she was holding, its sides so thin she could see the ghosts of her fingers through the white porcelain. If it had a mark, it was blurred. Phyllida put it down before it fell from her fingers and pretended to make a note.
‘Wot we got ‘ere, then?’ Buck sauntered over. ‘Some dolly mop looking for a nice teapot, eh? Bit pricey for you, darlin’, best look down the market. Or I can put you in the way of earning some dosh. Take the weight off your feet.’
Perhaps he wouldn’t recognise her. He never had in all the times he had glimpsed her in the East End after that first time and she had taken great care that they were only glimpses. She fought to reassure herself. Why should he recognise in the drably dressed woman in her mid-twenties one terrified seventeen-year-old virgin? How many other desperate girls who needed to earn some dosh, bargaining with the only thing of value they possessed, had passed through those dirty hands since then?
But Buck had never been so close, so focused on her alo
ne before. She had always managed to slip away, vanish around corners, merge behind something more interesting when she had inadvertently strayed across his path.
She could smell him now: tobacco, sweat, onions, a cheap cologne. Phyllida gripped the edge of the table and fought the primitive instinct to run.
‘I know you, don’t I? Where do you deal?’ Buck demanded. His shrewd eyes were narrowed on her face.
Phyllida fought for self-possession. If she showed fear, it would only intrigue him more.
He raised one hand as if to take her by the chin and hold her while he studied her face. ‘Wot’s your name?’
‘I do not think the lady wishes to talk. You are distracting her from studying the goods.’ The calm accented voice came from her right, then she felt the brush of his coat hem against her skirts as Ashe moved to stand between her and Buck.
‘You’re not from round ‘ere, are you?’ Buck said. ‘Perhaps you don’t know how things go. I was talking to this piece.’
‘Things go the same around the world,’ Ashe said calmly. ‘A gentleman does not trouble a lady.’
‘Yeah? Well, I’m no gent and she’s no lady.’ Buck slammed down a hand on the trestle table beside Phyllida’s hip. She flinched away and found one of the bullies had moved round behind her. ‘So you take yourself off, pretty boy, before you gets hurt.’
There was a sudden movement, a flash, and a thin knife was quivering in the wood between Buck’s thumb and forefinger. The porcelain shivered and clattered together with the force.
‘My hand slipped,’ Ashe said into the thick silence. ‘I find that happens when I am crowded. What a pity if anyone was to fall and break your valuable consignment, sir.’
‘Mine?’ Buck did not move his hand. His attention had shifted from Phyllida like an actual weight lifting from her chest.
‘I think you are the money behind this, are you not? I really do suggest you ask your men to move away. If I were to faint from terror I think I would probably fall against that stand of Song Dynasty wares, which would be a tragedy, considering how valuable they are and the fact that I was prepared to spend a significant sum on that set of vases.’
‘You were, were you?’ Buck eased his hand away, his eyes fixed on Ashe’s face. He was a lout and a bully, Phyllida thought as she fought to get her breathing under control, but he was not stupid enough to lose money to make a point, not if he could save face. No one else could see the knife. And then it vanished as fast as it had appeared, point first into Ashe’s left sleeve.
‘I was. If we can agree on price. And, if you do not frighten the lady away, I imagine she was about to enquire about the cost of the articles she has set to one side.’
She looked up at Ashe looming large and dangerous next to her. He seemed completely relaxed, but then she was probably tense enough for both of them. He held Buck’s stare with his own and the man’s wavered.
‘Show us your money first.’
‘No. We agree a price first. Then I send for the money, then we make an exchange,’ Ashe said as pleasantly as if they were chatting over afternoon tea.
‘Done,’ Buck said with a grunt and moved away, his men pushing past Ashe and Phyllida to follow him.
‘Oh, my God.’ She unclenched her fingers from the trestle table and painfully massaged life back into them. ‘Are we going to get out of here alive?’
‘If I spend enough money,’ Ashe said with a suppressed laugh. ‘Have you chosen?’
‘Yes.’ Phyllida knew she could not just bolt from the warehouse, which was what every instinct was screaming at her to do. It would draw attention back to her and Ashe would be curious. She righted a little figure that had been knocked over with the force of the knife blow.
Ashe gestured to Bertram and stood back as she haggled. Her voice shook at first, but the familiar cut and thrust of bargaining soothed her a little and they agreed a price that gave her almost everything that she wanted. ‘I’ll take them now,’ she said, paid, then stood aside while a porter packed the pieces and Ashe negotiated the price of the vases.
‘They are Northern Song,’ Bertram declared. ‘Very rare.’
‘No, they are southern celadon ware. Thirteenth century, quite late for Song,’ Ashe countered.
He knows what he is talking about. It was easy to watch and listen to Ashe, to the rhythm of that lovely, lilting accent, to the fluent movement of his hands as he gestured. He had become less European, more Indian, just by the way he pitched his voice, the way he stood. He did not nod, but swayed his head from side to side in the sinuous Indian gesture of agreement.
Fascinated, she watched, saw Bertram’s nervous glances to the back of the warehouse, guessed he was under orders from Buck about the price. Ashe was going to pay in money for coming to her rescue.
‘I’ll help this lady out with her purchases,’ he said when the deal was concluded. ‘And I will send for my man with the money. Do not pack them until I get back, we wouldn’t want anything to get chipped, would we?’
Or substituted, Phyllida thought. But what man with the money?
Ashe summoned the waiting hackney, helped her in and put her purchases on the seat. ‘Go around the corner and wait,’ he said to the driver. ‘I’ll be about half an hour. If anyone else approaches, drive off and circle round, I do not want the lady bothered.’
No one approached, but after a few moments Buck strolled out and leaned against the door frame, his eyes fixed on the hackney. He made no effort to approach, but it felt as though his speculative gaze could penetrate the walls and see her, huddled in the furthest corner like a rabbit in a trap.
Twenty minutes later Ashe wedged the box containing his vases on the seat next to Phyllida’s porcelain and swung into the hackney. ‘All right? I had to make a pretence of going for the cash. If they’d had any idea how much I was carrying…’
‘Yes.’
Ashe studied her face and the way she gripped the strap far too tightly, even allowing for the carriage’s lurching progress over the uneven cobbles. ‘That was Buck again, wasn’t it? The man from the quayside.’
‘Yes.’ After a moment she seemed to force herself to add to the stark monosyllable. ‘You might say he’s the local lord of crime. He owns the b-brothels, runs the gaming dens, takes protection money from all the shopkeepers.’ Her voice was as tight as her fingers on the leather loop.
‘You are scared of him.’
‘Everyone with any sense is scared of Buck. Except you, apparently.’
‘Perhaps I have no sense. Why do you come into this area and risk meeting him?’
‘Because this is how I earn my living.’ The look she shot him said clearly that he did not understand. ‘I have to buy cheap and sell high, so I scour the pawnshops, talk to the sailors, buy from warehouses like this one. But if I had known Buck owned it, I wouldn’t have come,’ she admitted. ‘And thank you. I should have said that immediately. You were… You knew exactly how to treat him. I just freeze, he makes my skin crawl.’
‘He’s a bully. He won’t risk being hurt—in his body or his wallet. A man prepared to stand up to him, someone he doesn’t know, armed and unpredictable—he would back down. There is nothing you, or any woman, could have done with him in those circumstances.’
‘Yes,’ Phyllida agreed, her knuckles almost splitting the thin leather of her gloves. She was still desperately upset by the threat of violence, Ashe realised. All this calm acceptance of what he said was simply a cover.
‘Phyllida, it is all right to have been frightened, you can stop being brave about it.’
She shook her head and muttered something he did not catch, beyond one word, feeble.
‘That is nonsense,’ he said sharply and could have kicked himself when her lower lip trembled for a second before she caught it viciously between her teeth. ‘Come here.’ He turned and, before she could protest, lifted her on to his knees. He untied her dreadful bonnet and threw it on to the seat opposite. There was a tussle over her grip on the strap, t
hen she let it go and turned her face into his shoulder. ‘You can cry if you want to, I don’t mind.’
Phyllida took a deep breath, but there were no sobs. Ashe put his arms around her to hold her steady from the jolting and waited. ‘Thank you,’ she muttered.
‘Don’t mention it. I mean it, you may cry,’ he added after a moment. ‘I’m a brother, don’t forget, I have training for this.’
That provoked a muff led snort of laughter from the region of his shirt front. She was not weeping, he realised, although she seemed to find the embrace comforting.
Sara always used to hurl herself into his arms and sob noisily over the frustrations of life, the little tragedies, the general unfairness of parents. But it was a long time since his sister had cried on his shoulder. As Phyllida relaxed, her body becoming soft and yielding against his, the memory of a sisterly hug faded.
The last time he had held a woman like this it had been Reshmi in his embrace and she had been weeping in bitter, betrayed grief because he had told her he would not take her back with him as his mistress when he came to England. And they had both known that he could not marry a courtesan from his great-uncle’s court.
Phyllida stirred, settled against him, taking comfort, he supposed, from his warmth and the strength of the man who had just intervened to protect her. His reflexes, sharpened by the aggression at the warehouse, brought the scent of her, the feel of her, vividly to him. Subtle jasmine, the heat of her body sharpened by fear, the rustle of petticoats beneath the plain woollen fabric of her skirts, soft, feminine curves made to fit his hard angles and flat planes.
His body reacted predictably, hardening, the weight low in his belly, the thrill of anticipation, of the hunt. He would protect her against everything and everybody. Except himself. He wanted her and he would have her.
Chapter Eight
It would be bliss to stay here, wrapped in Ashe’s arms, sinking into the sweet illusion that everything was all right, that she was loved and cared for by this strong man who would sweep her away from all her troubles. I love you, Phyllida, he would murmur. I do not care about your birth or any secrets you keep from me. I will marry you.