Touch of a Thief

by Mia Marlowe

  Maybe it was only her body getting in the way of her reason. She simply couldn’t bear for Greydon to be a monster. If there was any other explanation for what she’d Seen, she clutched at it with the desperation of a drowning victim herself.

  “I suppose the courier bearing Baaghh kaa kkhuun could stay aboard a sailing ship all the way around the Horn of Africa and straight on to London,” Quinn said sullenly.

  She caught the tip of her right glove in her teeth and pulled it off. “Is it likely something that precious would be risked on a long ocean voyage?”

  “No.”

  “Overland, then.” She removed the serpent ring, peeled off her other glove and rolled the pair together.

  “Through a progression of royal residences perhaps,” Sanjay suggested. “Does your Queen Victoria have a string of summer palaces someplace away from the dampness of England?”

  Viola laughed. “No, we English enjoy our soggy weather and wouldn’t dream of leaving our dreary little island on that account.” She saw a way to turn Quinn’s thoughts in the right direction without revealing how she’d hit upon the correct route.

  “But come to think of it, Prince Albert is from the Kingdom of Hanover. The Royal House has many holdings there, so no doubt there’s a drafty castle or two on the continent to which the royal couple can escape. Do you suppose the diamond might be routed through there?”

  Quinn sank into one of the wing chairs. “I don’t know. It might just as easily have gone round the Horn. Perhaps we should return to London and wait for the diamond to arrive.”

  “In case it’s escaped your notice,” she said dryly, “the Royal Collection is not as easy to break into as the ambassador’s office.”

  Not to mention the fact that the Beefeaters who guarded the royal jewels wouldn’t be as bemused by finding a couple in flagrante delicto in the vault as the embassy guard had been. Viola had never seen Quinn so discouraged, but she had to discourage him a bit more in order to move him toward seeking the jewel in Hanover. “Once the red diamond is in the queen’s possession, it’s as good as gone.”

  “She is right,” Sanjay said.

  Quinn stared into the dead fireplace for a moment. “I suppose it would make sense to send the diamond into a region controlled by those bound to the English throne.”

  “Hanover is bound by blood to its past monarchs and by marriage to our queen,” she agreed quickly. “Oh! Lord Wimbly said something about hearing that Prince Albert was sending a contingent of his people there this spring for some unknown reason,” she extemporized.

  “Did he? Well, the old fellow always keeps an ear to the ground, or at least his wife does and he can’t help knowing what she hears. If there is a contingent of the Prince’s entourage descending on Hanover, the chances the diamond is coming through there are increased.” Quinn stood. “I’ll arrange a coach for us tomorrow.”

  “Lord Ashford rides again. No doubt your title will help wangle another invitation for us in Hanover.” Viola smiled in satisfaction. She only hoped they arrived in the northern city before the diamond came and went.

  And that she had another set of silver and jet jewelry to protect her other hand before she touched the benighted thing in truth, instead of sensing the red diamond in a vision.

  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 t
urned 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.

  CHAPTER 18

  “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.