But meanwhile he had no intention of trying to ingratiate himself with minor Norfolk society. He had Great-Uncle Simon’s memoirs to complete, the library and papers to sort out and the intriguing and mysterious Miss Haddon to… To what? Quinn asked himself as he went upstairs to wash before a belated luncheon. That all depended what she really was. Innocent or something else?
That kiss on the lookout platform high in the trees had been pleasurable, but its ending had not just been frustrating and painful, it had also been confusing. He ran his tongue
between his lips as he made himself think of it analytically, conscious that the memory of Celina’s hot mouth, her soft body, the vicious little nip of her teeth, was as arousing as it was unsatisfying.
She had not reacted like a shocked and sheltered virgin, he concluded, ignoring the heaviness in his groin as he washed in cold water. She had resisted for a moment, but he thought that was surprise and anger. There had been an awareness there, a flare of passion and a calculating cunning to feign surrender so she could lure him in, bite and escape. She had been angry with him, unmistakably, but she had also let him carry her, had talked to him calmly and with interest.
Last night she had seemed to get tipsy and to flirt—was that a ploy, or innocence out of its depth?
No, the mystery of Celina Haddon was most definitely still as intriguing as ever. Quinn raked his hands through his hair, caught sight of himself in the mirror and grinned. It seemed that it would be necessary to kiss Miss Haddon again if he wanted to find out more.
‘You look very pleased with yourself,’ Gregor remarked, emerging from a door a little further along the corridor as Quinn shut his own behind him. ‘Have you seen the room your little virgin has put me in now?’
‘She is not my little anything, at the moment,’ Quinn said, as he looked past the Russian into the room behind. ‘Hades, is that a museum?’ The bed was stranded in the midst of a veritable zoo of immobile creatures of every variety of feather, fur and scales.
‘I think so.’ Gregor kicked a stuffed alligator with one booted foot. ‘She has a sense of humour, Miss Celina.’
‘She is punishing you for teasing the household,’ Quinn observed. ‘Choose another room.’
‘And have her think she has frightened me with her creatures?’ The other man grinned. ‘No, I will thank her lavishly. Perhaps she would like to be entertained in here. She might find it…exciting.’
‘Hands off.’ Quinn spoke mildly, but Gregor made the fencer’s signal of surrender.
‘I would not dream of poaching in my lord’s hunting grounds.’
‘Any more of that my lord nonsense and I’ll crack your thick skull,’ Quinn retorted as they made for the head of the stairs. ‘And I am not hunting.’
Liar, he thought as they made their way into the dining room to find Celina seated at the table, her hair twisted up into a simple knot at the back of her head. A few tendrils escaped and curled at her temples and nape. The colour was high in her cheeks and she met his eyes with wary defiance in her own. Oh, yes, I am hunting and she knows it. But what is my quarry? A little doe or a cunning feline? That is the question.
Chapter Six
As Lina had predicted, the lawyer was followed next day by first Dr Massingbird, the physician, then Mr Armstrong from the bank and finally the Reverend Perrin, looking, as Michael the footman observed after he had shown him to the study, as though he had sat on a poker.
None of them had required a summons. Doctor Massingbird seemed more than happy to call upon a gentleman who offered him a most excellent Amontillado and could compare notes on the Iberian Peninsula where he had once been an army doctor, but Mr Armstrong had the air of a man who knew he must do his duty by his bank and the vicar looked ready to perform an exorcism when he was shown in.
Quinn had not been exaggerating his reputation in the neighbourhood, she realised. She also realised she was thinking of him not as Lord Dreycott, nor even Ashley, but most improperly simply as Quinn. She had been kissed by the man, she told herself, and that certainly argued a degree of intimate acquaintance that explained it, even if it did not excuse it.
She kept finding excuses to pass through the hall and keep an eye on the study door, waiting with bated breath for either the vicar to stalk out of the presence of sin in high dudgeon, as her father most certainly would, or for Quinn to explode with anger after receiving a lecture on his dissolute ways.
Neither occurred.
She was arranging flowers in a vase on the hall table when the vicar finally emerged, looking slightly less rigid than when he had arrived. ‘Mr Perrin.’ She dropped a neat curtsy, her hands full of evergreen stems.
‘Miss Haddon. I trust we will see you in church on Sunday as usual?’
‘Certainly, sir.’ She had attended every Sunday since her arrival, the rhythms of a country Sunday curiously soothing, even though she had been so unhappy in her own village and old Lord Dreycott had flatly refused to accompany her.
The vicar smiled at her and nodded approvingly. ‘Excellent. Miss Haddon, do you have a respectable female to bear you company now circumstances here have changed?’
‘Mrs Bishop, sir.’
‘Hmm. A good woman, but I would wish you had a lady in residence.’
‘Thank you for your concern, but I feel quite…comfortable with the present circumstances, sir.’
That was hardly true, but advertising for some respectable companion was too fraught with dangers to be contemplated. ‘Should I need the benefit of female guidance, I am sure I might call upon Miss Perrin’s advice.’ The vicar’s sister, small, timid, with a perpetually red nose and the air of anxious piety, would hardly be much protection against a hardened rake, but the thought seemed to please the vicar.
‘Of course you may, Miss Haddon. Perhaps you would care to join the Ladies’ Hassock Sewing Circle?’