“You were right, Quinn,” she whispered as she draped herself over him.
He had no idea what she meant and didn’t think his voice would work in any case. So he pressed a kiss to her lips and tasted himself, musk and salt all swirled with her natural sweetness.
Where was the dividing line between them? He couldn’t find one. They were more firmly joined than he had a right to hope for.
She nuzzled his neck and sighed. “We really don’t need a French letter, do we?”
CHAPTER 20
Hanover was a charming city of tall half-timbered houses and cobbled streets. Ale houses had brewed their own special recipes for three hundred years in the shadow of massive Marktkirche, the church that had safeguarded the town’s souls since the 1400s. The thriving market was filled with produce from neighboring farms as well as more exotic wares.
The city was a long-standing member of the Hanseatic League, the medieval trading guild. Goods from a thousand ships were unloaded at Bremen and carted or towed on river barges to Hanover’s bustling heart.
Somehow in that frenetic city, Quinn and Viola had to finagle a chance meeting with Neville Beauchamp, plague take him.
“I still say catching the man at the market would answer our needs better.” Quinn led Viola through a section of rosebushes, their tight buds beginning to uncurl enough to hint at the blossom’s color, but not enough to release their perfume.
He wasn’t immune to natural beauty, but neither did he seek it out particularly. The Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen were all well and good, but not the sort of place a man might make a point to visit unless he was squiring a woman on his arm. However, having Viola at his side made up for any inconvenience. “You’re sure Beauchamp will turn up here?”
“I’m certain.” They took a turn around the beds of tulips and daffodils, whose drooping heads were at the end of their blooming cycle. “Neville fancies himself something of an amateur botanist. Sanjay tailed him this morning in the market. Neville was arranging for additional provisions for the ambassador’s entourage to be delivered to the schloss at Celle where they are staying. He wouldn’t be at leisure to speak to me while he was working.”
“Beauchamp isn’t that industrious,” Quinn said with assurance, wishing Viola weren’t on first name terms with the man. He knew Neville Beauchamp’s type, always sniffing around women’s skirts like a dog looking for the nearest bitch in heat. “He’d make time to speak with you.”
She smiled up at him, obviously taking his gruff statement as a compliment of sorts. He ached to plant a kiss at the upturned corner of her mouth, but she’d already warned him to behave himself when he tried to pull her behind a lilac bush earlier.
“The fact that Neville is provisioning the castle means they must intend to stay in Celle for a while. Which tells me the diamond and the prince’s delegation isn’t there yet. Even though I’m sure he’s frightfully busy, Neville won’t be able to resist the Royal Gardens long.”
Quinn hoped not. The sooner Viola had her “chance” meeting with the man and teased out the invitation to stay at the schloss where the ambassador was staying, the better. Quinn’s gut clenched at the thought of her spending any time at all with Beauchamp, but he couldn’t fault the logic of her plan. Staying at the same drafty old castle the diamond would pass through made perfect sense.
“Oh, there he is,” Viola said.
Neville alighted from a hired gig, a sporty little conveyance that would have caught plenty of eyes in Hyde Park. His gaze swept over the gardens with as much joy as a glutton surveying a feast.
“Time for my ‘husband’ to make himself scarce.” Viola nudged him with her elbow.
Quinn reluctantly left her on the path, disappearing behind a lush wall of ornamental grasses. Though he was perfectly hidden in the dense foliage, he could see through the greenery quite well.
So this is how the tiger feels watching his prey from the tall grass, Quinn thought, glaring at Beauchamp so hard he wondered that the man didn’t feel the vehement heat. If Neville put so much as one toe out of line with Viola, Quinn would pounce.
Not that he had a real right to protect her. Though they’d made world-altering love several times, the fact that she’d turned down his proposal of marriage still stung. He hadn’t realized when he’d made the offer that her answer meant so much to him.
He’d never gathered his courage to broach the subject again. Not when he wasn’t sure what her answer would be. A second no would be the last. He sheltered behind their sham marriage as his excuse for trying to keep her from renewing her acquaintance with her old beau.
Viola meandered in Neville’s direction, careful to keep her attention on the plantings. When she was near enough to be sure Beauchamp would notice her, she stopped and fanned herself languidly.
“Doing it a bit too brown, aren’t you, girl?” Quinn murmured. “It’s not that hot a day.”
But the graceful motion of the fan was all it took to draw Beauchamp’s eye to her.
Neville called out and hurried to her side. Quinn was too far away to hear the conversation, but he could read the lust on the man’s face well enough.
He didn’t merely stand near Viola. He hovered over her. She was adept at maintaining a discreet distance, but she had to lead him a delicate dance as they moved along the graveled pathway.
Quinn shifted from one place of concealment to another, careful to keep them in sight. His gut roiled. He’d scrambled from one rocky outcropping to the next avoiding Afghani tribesmen in the Khyber Pass with less agitation.
Beauchamp placed a possessive hand on the small of Viola’s back to steer her toward a particular sort of peony that wasn’t even in bloom yet. He captured her hand and pressed her gloved fingers to his lips.
Quinn gritted his teeth so hard he thought he might crack a molar. He reminded himself why it was so important to retrieve the Blood of the Tiger for Sanjay’s people. He tried to summon his old outrage at the Doctrine of Lapse. The cries of the mad holy men rang in his ears and he knew he ought to fear for the innocent British women and children in the cantonments of India, unless the diamond was returned and the unrest could be quelled before it erupted into a full-blown rebellion.
But all he could see was Viola, playing a dangerous game with a man who’d hurt her once. If she still harbored tender feelings for Beauchamp, she was bound for sorrow. He had already proven himself a cad, but if she was set on him, Quinn didn’t know how he could protect her heart.
Or his, he realized with a start. The thought of her with another man made his eyes burn.
Viola dropped her handkerchief and Beauchamp bent to retrieve it. It was the signal. She’d wangled the invitation and it was safe for Quinn to join them.
He returned to the path and sauntered in their direction with studied nonchalance. “Ah, there you are, my dear.” He gave Neville a curt nod. “Beauchamp.”
Neville returned his surly courtesy.
“Isn’t it wonderful, darling?” Viola cooed. “Mr. Beauchamp has invited us to stay at the castle at Celle. The ambassador’s party is there so we won’t lack for good English conversation over dinner.”
Quinn knew he was expected to speak, so he ground out the words. “Damned decent of you, Beauchamp. Bratwurst and pig’s knuckles, I can manage. Conversing in German is beyond me.” Then something made him turn to Viola. “Are you sure you wish to remove from our hotel? Castles are so drafty and I wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.”
She tossed him a bewildered glance. “Of course, dear. Who wouldn’t want to visit such a charming old place? A castle may be drafty, but I’m sure it simply reeks of romance.”
Neville’s smarmy smile confirmed that was precisely his hope. Quinn resisted the urge to knock the grin from his face but it required serious effort.
Viola promised Neville they’d start for the castle that very afternoon and bid him good-bye. Quinn caught a flicker of lusty potential in Beauchamp’s eyes when he made his too-long-to–be-prope
r obeisance over her gloved hand.
She strolled away on Quinn’s arm, laughing and chattering about the budding garden for the benefit of any who might be curious about them.
But Quinn couldn’t help wondering what Viola had promised Neville in exchange for the invitation to the castle. His pride wouldn’t allow him to ask.
Whatever it was, he’d make sure she was never alone with Beauchamp long enough to make good on it.
The castle at Celle was located several hours’ drive from Hanover, over rutted roads that were barely more than cart paths. Quinn allowed that his perception might be a bit colored by his generally surly mood, but the fact that Viola was so blithe about recent developments did nothing to ease his disquiet. She was almost giddy about staying under the same roof as that bounder Beauchamp.
“Neville has promised to give us a tour of the place as soon as we’re settled,” she said as they jostled over a particularly bumpy stretch of roadway.
Bugger Neville. “We’re going there for the diamond, not for sightseeing,” Quinn grumbled.
“If we know our way around the castle, it’ll make pinching the stone that much easier once it arrives. Neville’s providing us with exactly what we need.” She rolled her eyes at him. “What’s gotten into you, Quinn? You’re being a regular muttonhead.”
“Maybe I’m tired of hearing ‘Neville this’ and ‘Neville that.’ He’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. It’s clear to anyone with eyes what his game really is.”
She cocked her head at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re jealous.”
“Of him? Don’t be ridiculous. I just don’t know how you can stand the sight of him. Given your history with the man.”
She laced her fingers and stared out the window at the rolling meadows, bright with the pale green of spring. “So that’s it. You can’t bear my history with him.”
“No, it’s just—”
“Correct me if I am wrong”—her tone was icy and her knuckles whitened as she drew her fingers tighter together—“but I have the distinct impression I am not the first woman you’ve taken to your bed.”
“No, of course not, but that’s not what I—”
“So a man may have as many amours as he pleases, but God help the woman who cannot present him with a maidenhead the first time he’s with her,” she said, tight-lipped.
“That’s not important to me. What happened before we met is none of my business.” That wasn’t strictly the truth. He was jealous of every man who’d ever looked sideways at her, but she didn’t need to hear that. “I only care that you not be hurt now. Viola, I will never reproach you for the past.”
She looked at him then, her hazel eyes welling. “But what if I reproach me?” she said miserably.
“Don’t.” He gathered her up and pulled her onto his lap. His chest constricted when she came willingly. “Will it make you feel better if I tell you I wish you’d been my first too?”
“You do?”
Surprisingly, that was the truth.
He’d tumbled a few willing serving girls in his youth. There’d been a manic summer when he first discovered the miracles his cock could perform. His groin had given him no peace. At the sight of a curved waist or a slim ankle, only mindless rutting or a few minutes behind a shed with his own hand would ease his complaint.
Once he finished school, he shipped out to India, where he’d learned control and the finer points of loving from Padmaa. Those couplings were studied and strangely sterile. Almost as if he were standing at stud, trained to perform. During his sessions with the Indian courtesan, he seemed to hover outside his own body and watch while she put him through his paces.
With Viola, it was different. She reached inside him and touched the part of him he thought no one else could bear. Perhaps it was because she didn’t really know yet.
He kissed her temple. “I do wish you’d been my only one. And I wish I’d been yours. But since there’s nothing we can do about that, I suggest we forget it.”
“We could pretend, I suppose,” she said, blinking hard to keep the tears in her over-bright eyes. “We could pretend that there had never been anyone else for either of us.”
“We could,” he agreed.
She snuggled deeper into his embrace and he was suddenly glad for the jostling bumps of the ride. His cock rose to meet her soft bum, straining against his smallclothes and trousers with as much erotic hope as the most callow youth.
“So if we were both younger and more impetuous and eager to learn,” she said softly, “what would we do on a long ride in an enclosed coach?”
“First, I’d say it’d be important for us to remain more or less fully clothed. After all, one never knows when a coach might come to a halt,” Quinn said as he untied the bow under her chin and removed her straw bonnet. “But as a younger, more impetuous and eager-to-learn fellow, I’d be dying to see your breasts.”
She smiled naughtily at him. “You mean you’re not dying to see them now?”
“You know better than that. I’d be delirious if you put them on display at all times.” If no one else but he were about to see them, of course.
He claimed her mouth and began working the mother-of-pearl buttons marching down the front of her bodice. The high, tight collar parted, revealing the pale, soft skin of her neck. He kissed his way down to the slight indentation at the base of her throat.
Her breath hitched as his fingers continued to work the buttons till her corset and lacy chemise were bared. He tugged at the bow holding the chemise closed. Once loosened, the thin garment fell away, revealing the soft mounds of her breasts straining above the whalebone corset.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, running his fingertips over her silky skin and teasing the shadowed hollow between her breasts.
She bit her lip, but didn’t make any effort to shield herself from his gaze.
He steadied her on his lap, lavishing kisses on her breasts and gently tugging at the top of the corset with his free hand. He exposed a taut pink nipple, and settled her breast on the stiff lip of the corset. Then he did the same for the other one till they were framed by the blue serge of her traveling ensemble.
“There you are.” He leaned back to survey his handiwork. He pinched one of the pink buds. She gasped. The little nub puckered above its darker rose areola as if begging for more impudent play. His cock throbbed and he imagined rubbing it in the soft hollow between her breasts. “You have, without doubt, the loveliest bosom in England.”
“We’re not in England,” she said, her tone breathy.
“I’d have said the world, but I feared you’d think I was exaggerating so you’d allow me to take more liberties.” He bent to take a nipple between his teeth and bit down lightly.
An involuntary moan escaped her.
“Take all the liberties you like, Quinn.”
CHAPTER 21
Her whole body hummed with anticipation. Her nipples ached and when Quinn plucked them, she jerked at the zing of longing that streaked through her. She no longer cared that she was behaving in a shockingly fast manner.
Wanton, really.
All that mattered was Quinn’s mouth on her skin, his breath raising the small hairs on her nape, his skillful hands playing her body like the finest virtuoso.
Her corset’s boning jabbed under her breasts in a tender spot. The slight pain was buried under the torrent of sensations that washed over her simply because her breasts were exposed and Quinn was fairly worshipping them.
How perfectly wicked to imagine running about with them out like this all the time.
Quinn had put the idea in her head, but she found going about her normal life bare-breasted was a tantalizing prospect to consider while he suckled and licked at them.
“What would it be like to ride a horse with my breasts bared?” she murmured.
“You’d be dazzling. A charging Amazon”—Quinn released her nipple long enough to say—“with sunlight kissing your bouncing bosom a
nd wind whipping past your nipples.”
He whorled his tongue over the tight bud and blew his warm breath across her charged flesh to demonstrate. She shivered with delight.
“What if I were to stroll along Hyde Park with my charms thus displayed?”
“You’d cause a sensation in short order.” He laughed. “There’d be a surge in traffic of all sorts. Who knows? You might start a new fashion, but you’d have to arrange your parasol to keep your bosom shaded lest it freckle unbecomingly.”
“You dislike freckles?”
“I misspoke.” He kissed her neck and nuzzled her earlobe while he rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Warm moisture gathered between her legs. “If your breasts were freckled, I’m certain they’d be entirely fetching. Soon all the best Society would wear their bosoms with spots even if they had to be drawn on each morning with a stick of charcoal.”
She giggled at that. “How perfectly scandalized my modiste will be if I ask her to alter my wardrobe to bare my breasts at all times.”
“Seek out a French seamstress,” he advised soberly. “The French are, in all matters of the flesh, far more worldly and less easily shocked.”
He bent his head to lavish attention on her breasts once more. Viola fought the downward pull in her groin. If Quinn had taught her anything, it was that delay meant delight and she was enjoying their nonsensical lovetalk.
“But perhaps it need not be my whole breast on display,” she suggested as she arched into his mouth. He suckled till she made a helpless little moan.
“Speaking for the male of the species, I cannot support anything less than baring your entire bosom.” He cupped her breast in his palm and thrummed her nipple, taunting and teasing it into an aching peak. “I’m growing exceedingly fond of the fashion concept of an open bodice.”
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