by Louise Allen
‘Double or quits?’ Quinn said. ‘I’ve always wanted to be in a position to say that!’ He took what appeared to be an incautiously large swig of wine and waited.
Is Tolhurst the fool Quinn thinks he is? Lina wondered, seeing how he was luring the man into taking one giant incautious gamble.
He was, it seemed. ‘I’ll have to give you a vowel,’ he said. At Quinn’s nod he scrawled IOU and paused. ‘What’s the sum?’
Quinn made a show of adding up the money in front of him. ‘Four hundred.’
‘Eight, then.’ Tolhurst’s hand shook, but he tossed the note into the middle as Quinn pushed his winnings and a further four hundred pound notes out.
‘Good thing I went to the bank this morning,’ Quinn remarked.
There was silence as they began to play. Gregor turned and strolled up to watch over Tolhurst’s shoulder and Lina shifted to keep behind him and to one side so she could see both men’s faces. They were playing whist, she saw, the hands falling reasonably equally at first. Then Quinn began to win and, as he did so, Tolhurst became visibly more anxious, his judgement clearly affected by the tension.
When the last card fell he stared at the tally of points, white-faced. ‘Your…your game.’
‘So it seems.’ Quinn raked the money towards him, stowing it away in his pockets. ‘I must thank you for an entertaining evening. The only thing is…’ he picked up the IOU between thumb and forefinger ‘…I’ll need to ask you for this in a day or two—I’m going over to France for a bit. Could I have your direction?’
Tolhurst stared back white-faced. ‘I… By the end of next week?’
‘No, sorry. As I said, I’ll be leaving. There’s no problem, is there?’ Quinn let the mask of amiability he’d been wearing all evening slip as he stared at Tolhurst and Lina shivered. She would not want him to look at her like that.
‘Goodness, no!’ Tolhurst pulled out his card case and handed one over. ‘No problem at all.’ His hands shook.
Quinn stood up, ignored Gregor, nodded to Tolhurst and walked out. As he went out of the door Gregor shifted so he was alongside Tolhurst. Lina ducked further into the shadows to watch. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose while apparently gazing with interest at the next table. With the handkerchief came a ring that landed on the baize, spinning in the candlelight. Tolhurst’s hand shot out, flattened over the gem and drew it back. He looked around, his gaze sliding over Lina as she watched him from the corner of her eye. Gregor, apparently bored with the game, stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket and wandered over to the door, Lina scurrying behind like a servant who has been taken by surprise.
‘He’s taken it,’ Gregor said as they moved out of the door and into the small courtyard of Pickering Place.
Quinn came out from behind a pillar. ‘Now he’ll need to get it off his hands fast. It is too big and too distinctive to take just anywhere, if he fenced the sapphire, he’ll take this to the same place.’ He led the way back down the passage and climbed into the carriage. ‘Now we wait.’
Lina wished they were alone. She wanted to confess how frightened she had been, how the message in Quinn’s eyes had steadied her and given her courage, but she could not say that in front of Gregor and after a moment she realised she could not say it to Quinn, even if they were alone—he would take it as encouragement, a sign that she was weakening. She swallowed the words, clasped her hands together tightly around the wine bottle against the urge to reach out and touch him, and closed her eyes.
‘Nervous, Celina?’ Quinn asked, his voice sounding like a caress to her ears. ‘I will not let him hurt you.’
‘Just apprehensive,’ she said. Just wanting you. ‘I have been so frightened, it is hard to believe this could be the end of it.’
‘It is.’ His voice was deep and certain and she was conscious for the first time in many days of the slight foreign intonation. He is the adventurer again, not the English gentleman. ‘Why are you clutching that bottle?’
‘Gregor gave it to me.’
‘Then let us all have a drink.’
She passed it to Gregor, who tipped it up for a good swallow, wiped the neck and gave it to Quinn. He drank more moderately, wiped it in turn and handed it to Lina. She put it to her lips and drank a little, imagining she could feel the heat of his lips on the neck, remembering with sudden and shocking vividness how it had felt when she had taken him into her mouth.
It was such an outrageous thought that she choked. Gregor grabbed the bottle before she dropped it and gave her a firm buffet on the back.
Lina let her spluttering coughs last far longer than necessary, aghast at her own wanton imaginings and glad of an excuse for being red in the face. The door opened and the two sombre men who had been sitting at the card table next to Quinn’s opened the carriage door and climbed in. She swallowed, braced for action, but they were obviously expected.
‘He is leaving,’ one said without preamble. ‘He made no effort to declare that he had found a lost ring. I think he waited to see if you came back, Mr Vasiliev, and now feels safe.’ He seemed to register Lina’s presence as he spoke. ‘Who is this, my lord?’
‘My servant, Hassan,’ Quinn said. ‘Ah, here comes Tolhurst.’ Lina was left in ignorance of their companions, but she supposed Quinn could hardly be expected to introduce them to a servant, whoever they were.
Tolhurst emerged from the passage, hailing a hackney as he did so. Quinn rapped on the roof and after a moment their carriage moved off, down St James’s Street and left into Pall Mall.
‘A bad business, if you have the right of it, my lord,’ the man observed.
His companion nodded. ‘That is very true, Sir James. His elder brother is a fellow magistrate which makes it all the worse. If he proves to be responsible for this, it will be painful to ask Sir George how he wants this handled.’
‘I would rather think you should ask the unfortunate young woman who has been falsely accused,’ Quinn said with a sharpness that had the magistrate staring at him.
‘When Mr Trevor here approached me as your attorney with this accusation and your novel suggestion for testing it, I did not ask what your concern with the case is, my lord,’ Sir James said. Lina forced herself not to shrink back. Not that there was anywhere to go—she was wedged between Gregor’s shoulder and the side of the carriage.
‘I am acting on behalf of Miss Shelley’s aunt. I am part-owner of The Blue Door.’
‘Indeed!’
‘An unusual investment, I agree,’ Quinn said. ‘But one that gave me an interest when it was obvious an injustice had been done.’
‘And where is the young woman at the moment, might I ask?’
‘I have every reason to believe she is in London,’ Quinn said readily. ‘Certainly that is where I last saw her.’
‘We are going into the City,’ Gregor remarked and Lina made herself breathe.
The carriage stopped and the driver got down and came to the door. ‘The other ’ackney’s stopped—what do you gents want me to do now?’
‘Wait here,’ Quinn said, passing something that clinked. ‘There’ll be more when we return and we may be a while.’ He turned back to his silent companions. ‘Now, very quietly, there are a lot of us to go falling over each other’s feet.’
They got out, staying in the shadow of the carriage. Peering around Quinn, Lina saw a figure descend from another hackney and walk off down an alleyway. Quinn followed, Gregor soft-footed at his back, the attorney and the magistrate behind them. Lina stayed on the magistrate’s heels; if she was out of his sight she might also be out of his mind, she thought, wondering just how perceptive he was.
The alley opened out into a narrow street. There was a public house on one corner, brightly lit and busy. A little further along the light reflected on three golden balls. ‘Pawnbroker,’ Quinn said with an air of satisfaction. Tolhurst was standing at the door and they could hear his knocking from where they stood.
There was only a faint gl
immer from the shop, but the light wavered and intensified as someone within approached the door. It opened, there was a low-voiced conversation and then Tolhurst went inside.
Quinn waited until the light had vanished again before leading his four companions forwards over the greasy cobbles. ‘Locked,’ he murmured as he tried the handle. Gregor stooped to the lock. ‘I suggest you look elsewhere, Sir James,’ Quinn added.
‘I am sure he is merely checking it as a concerned passer-by,’ the magistrate whispered back. ‘And look, it is open. I feel it our duty to investigate.’
Gregor eased the door wide and went in, followed by Sir James and Mr Trevor. Quinn bent to Lina’s ear. ‘Stay behind me. When he finds himself cornered, he may be dangerous.’ She looked up and he kissed her suddenly, pulling her to him, his mouth fierce and possessive on hers.
When he released her his eyes held hers for a long moment. It was a look of possession, she recognised, the look of a warrior about to go into battle, fired up, needing to assert his ownership of his woman before the fight began. She found herself responding to it, her blood heating, her tension and fears swept up into that one focus of mouth on mouth, the primitive claiming.
They stared at each other, Quinn seeming as shaken as she was, before he gave himself a shake and followed the others to the back of the cluttered shop.
Lina stood for a moment, her hand pressed to her lips, everything—the shop, the danger, the closeness of a magistrate—all swept away by that one kiss. When she managed to regain her focus she saw that the others were grouped on either side of a door that stood slightly ajar. Light spilled from inside and the smell of someone’s supper perfumed the air with a rich aroma of onions.
‘…if it’s another of those bloody sapphires, you know what you can do with it, Tolhurst,’ a voice said. ‘I haven’t shifted the real one yet, need to get it to Amsterdam once the heat’s died down. And as for that paste ring—if you expect more than the guinea I gave you for it, think again. Best I can hope to do with it is sell it to some travelling theatre troop!’
‘This is real, I’m sure of it,’ Tolhurst said. ‘A diamond, for all that it’s an odd cut.’
‘Oriental,’ the other man said with a grunt. ‘Give it here.’ There was silence. Lina could hear several clocks ticking, the crackle of firewood. Something brushed her ankle and she started, reaching out for Quinn without conscious thought. He caught her hand and grinned as the battered tabby cat abandoned her and went to twine around his legs.
‘It’s a diamond, I’ll give you that. But it’s another flaming stone that’ll have to be recut before I can sell it safely. Why can’t you nick something simple for once?’
‘How much?’ Tolhurst demanded. The other man was muttering, apparently working the price out. ‘What? How much? I need more than that! I was taken by some damned sharp I mistook for a pigeon to the tune of eight hundred tonight and the bastard wants paying on the nail like some merchant. He’s no gentleman.’
Lina saw the flash of Quinn’s teeth as he grinned.
‘Another twenty-five then, and that’s your lot. And don’t bring me anything else until I’ve got those sapphires off my hands.’ There was the sound of a key grating in a lock. Quinn nodded to Gregor, let go of Lina’s hand and the two men shouldered through the door, pistols in their hands.
‘What the—’
‘You are under arrest on suspicion of the theft of the Tolhurst Sapphire and of a diamond ring belonging to Mr Vasiliev. I am Sir James Warren, magistrate. Do not attempt to resist.’
Squashed behind Mr Trevor, Lina could see the pawnbroker throwing up his hands, his face bitter with anger as he glared at Reginald Tolhurst. ‘You cack-handed idiot!’
Tolhurst looked around wildly then, to Lina’s amazement, sank down on a chair, buried his face in his hands and burst into sobs. ‘Where is the Tolhurst Sapphire?’ demanded Sir James.
The pawnbroker rummaged in his safe, which stood with the door swinging open, and came out with a small bag. He tipped it out into the magistrate’s hand and they all stared at the deep blue stone burning with cold fire in the palm of his hand.
‘And the ring?’ Quinn asked. The man produced a ring, its stone the exact replica of the unmounted one except, seeing them together, there seemed something less vivid about the stone in the ring to Lina’s untutored eye.
‘Who brought you these?’
‘He did—Reginald Tolhurst. Brought me the genuine article a month ago and I bought it in all good faith,’ the man said. The magistrate snorted. ‘Then he turns up with this paste version, saying he’d substituted it when he stole the real thing and now his father’s died and he daren’t have it found to be a fake. And the next thing I knows, the papers are full of the ruddy Tolhurst Sapphire.’
‘It did not occur to you that an innocent young woman was being accused of stealing something that was in your safe?’ Quinn’s voice was like ice.
‘Just some bawd, weren’t it?’ the pawnbroker said and the next moment was flat on his back on the rag rug in front of the fire.
‘My lord! We need him with his jaw unbroken to give evidence,’ Sir James said. He produced his card case, scribbled a note and passed it to Mr Trevor. ‘Perhaps you would be so good as to take the hackney to Bow Street and send me three Runners and a secure wagon. We will have this place searched.’
Trevor hurried out and Gregor hauled the pawnbroker to his feet and set about tying him to a chair. ‘What about this one?’ He jerked his thumb at Tolhurst who looked up, his red-rimmed eyes glassy with fear.
‘I am hoping he is going to make a run for it.’ Quinn ran a finger down the barrel of his pistol.
‘We must take him to Sir George and see what he wants done,’ the magistrate said with a warning shake of his head.
‘That is not justice.’
‘It is the best way to avoid scandal. I imagine Sir George will make his brother’s life hell for this—stealing his father’s ring, replacing it with paste and then stealing the paste version from his father’s hand as he lay dying so he might not be discovered? Despicable.’
‘It could have been murder, if Miss Shelley had been hanged,’ Quinn said. ‘I know a man who trades with the British penal colony in New South Wales. I will tell Sir George Tolhurst that he can arrange passage there for his brother or I will make a scandal that will rock the Tolhursts to their foundations.’
Reginald burst into tears again. Lina found she could not stand it. This pitiable excuse for a man had almost been the death of her, had given her weeks of fear and nightmares; now he was revealed as a pathetic, greedy, selfish creature not even worth hating.
She pushed the door open and stumbled out of the stuffy little parlour into the crowded shop. She wanted to run away, away from here, away from the torture of seeing Quinn every day. She wanted to go back to the peace of Dreycott Park, but she would not even be able to go to church or the village shop without running the gauntlet of hostile villagers.
She wanted her aunt and Katy and the other girls, but she knew now that their world would never be one she could be happy in. She wanted to go home to Martinsdene and find her father had forgiven her and that Meg and Bella were there, too, but she was certain he never would and that there was no one there for her now.
Lina knew she wanted Quinn as a starving woman wanted bread—not because it tasted good but because her life depended on it. But she could not have him. He did not love her and her soul would wither between the brief interludes when he came home to be kind to her, to rub the salt in her wounds. He would find adventure and interest and other women on his travels and then he would come home to a world of scholarship women were not allowed to share.
If she told him how she felt about him, she was certain those intervals at home would be few and far between. He was free and wild and independent and he could not change for her. Nor, she realised as she stared blankly at a bad oil painting in the gloom, would she want him to. To love someone truly was to love them as they wer
e, not want to change them.
‘Lina?’ It was Quinn. He moved like a cat through the dark cluttered space and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Thank you. You have probably saved my life,’ she said, turning so that she was against his chest. It was weak and self-indulgent, but she thought she could stand there, hold him, hope for his embrace and he would suspect nothing but that she was overcome with relief and gratitude. Which she was, but it was neither that made her shed silent tears into the linen of his shirt. ‘I am sorry I did not trust you with the truth at first. What will happen when that Runner, Inchbold, finds out about this? He will know you deceived him.’
‘I will talk to him, apologise. I hope he will understand that it was a matter of life and death. With the true culprit identified and Sir James involved, he will see there was little choice.’
It would not be easy for him, she knew. Lina rested her hot cheek against Quinn’s shirtfront and imagined this proud man having to confess that he had lied to an officer of the law. It touched his honour. As she thought it he said, ‘Just Langdown to deal with and we can get married.’
Protesting about marriage was pointless; he was implacable, she could sense it. ‘Why must you risk your life?’
‘To draw a line, to retrieve what I lost ten years ago,’ he said. ‘Will you accept that, Celina, and not seek to persuade me against what I have to do?’
She thought of moral blackmail, of asking him tremulously what she would do if he was killed and did not marry her. But her own sense of honour revolted against that. Live or die, she would not be his wife, and to suggest anything else was to lie to him.
‘Yes,’ Lina said. ‘I will not mention it again.’ But in her heart she knew what she had to do.
Chapter Twenty
‘Could Gregor take me to The Blue Door?’ Lina asked Quinn as the Runners piled into the pawnshop bringing light and noise with them. ‘I would like to be with my aunt for a while.’
‘Of course.’ He was distracted by questions Sir James was asking and not concentrating on her, she saw with relief. ‘Ah, there is Inchbold. Best you are out of the way before I speak to him.’