Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (10 page)

“Have you? Thinking better of your half of the bargain, Strathcairn, and wanting to get out of it now that you’ve been warned off? That would account for the fact that you haven’t been seen in days. I assumed you’d decamped to Cairn.”

“I do have a profession, my lady. Unlike you, I cannot spend each and every day strolling idly to my dressmakers.”

“Oh, aye. I’m sure I’m quite the stroller.” She waved her annoyance away, and strove not to say something overly cutting. If she had a profession—which she did—it was far better kept a secret. Especially from him. “Just as I’m sure your business is as important as anything.”

Her obvious irritation had the correct effect upon him. “Your pardon, my lady. The fact that I have been busy with some of the more meddlesome details of my grandfather’s will and estate, as well as in gleaning information regarding the rash of petty thefts—and you were quite right in deeming them petty—is what has kept me occupied, and out of your amusing and highly entertaining company for several days. But I assure you, our bargain, and fulfilling that bargain as soon as possible, has been very much on my mind. I have pleasurably passed some otherwise tedious time planning out the curriculum for your lessons in kissing.”

But Quince heard nothing of kissing. That stealthy sense of alarm was back, hissing and scratching against the backs of her legs like a stray cat. Her mind was now entirely taken up with wondering what “information” he might have gleaned, as well as plotting
 
a chess move six moves ahead, and how best and unobtrusively to ask about that information. “I suppose I’m meant to be flattered.”

His wry smile alone was flattery enough for half the city. “You are. Patience, wee Quince. Rome was not built in a day. And speaking of Romans—”

“Which we were not.”

“Which I was.” He carried on without stopping, though he did smile. “Because I will lay a groat someone comes to this damnable masquerade as a Roman general.”

“No bet. However, to be sporting, we may lay odds as to how many Roman generals and emperors there might be.”

“No bet.” Strathcairn shook his head even as he smiled. “But does not a masquerade—where our identity will be disguised to all but our intimates—strike you as a particularly auspicious place for us to meet, and make good on our bargain?”

Ah. Quince felt the relief fall neatly into puzzle pieces. “Oh, aye.” She favored him with her brightest smile. “It does.”

He nodded as if he were pleased with himself. “So you must tell me what costume you are planning to wear, so I might find you more easily.”

“If you can find me easily, Strathcairn, it means other people will be able to as well.” It was something she had learned in her first forays into robbing the rich—never stand out from the crowd. Even at a masquerade. “I shall endeavor to dress as alike to other costumes as possible, so I shan’t be missed should I escape the ballroom to further our
bargain
.”

Strathcairn smiled his approval. “Clever lass. Commendable logic. But if I cannot find you, then you shall have to find me.”

“I am confident I shall know you instantly, Strathcairn. You’ll be the tall, imposing fellow with the white hair.”

His smile snuck up the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps I won’t be.”

“Tall and imposing?”

She was rewarded by an actual laugh. “Nay. That can’t be helped. But now I have an idea not to wear my hair powdered white so you’ll have as much trouble finding me as I shall you.”

“Oh, holy confectioner’s sugar, Strathcairn. What shall the other New Tories think of that? Don’t tell me you shall crop off your hair, and sport an auld-fashioned wig?”

“Nay. And they shall think nothing of it, I assure you, as very few of my fellow politicians will even be at the masquerade. And to the few who do attend, I shall take care to remain anonymous.”

She could not reconcile the idea of such anonymity from the man who had worn—and was currently wearing—such an austerely ostentatious suit. A suit that practically begged people to pay him heed. “And why is that?”

And there was the hint of color that loosened up that austere Grampian granite. “I think I would do well to heed your example. What you’ve said makes me think that it would be far better to go about unobserved—to be more anonymous. And I’ve another friend in London who once counseled me that one needs to set a thief to catch a thief, as it were.”

All the pleasure leeched out of the day—it was as if the sun had that moment been eclipsed behind the moon, so completely did her pleasure evaporate into the air, and leave her chilled and uncomfortable.

“Quince? Wee Quince, are you quite all right?” Strathcairn moved closer by increments, peering down at her as if he feared she might dissolve into a puddle at his feet.

“Why do you keep calling me that? I’m not wee in the least.” She fought to recover her wits. “And are you are going to set yourself as the thief?”

His smile was the first answer. “Only to steal you away for a good long while.”

Oh, by jimble. Her heart was going to be worn out from all this starting and stopping. It would help if she remembered to breathe.
 

She pasted a smile upon her face. “And just so I might fulfill my part of our bargain now that you appear ready to fulfill yours… You mentioned the petty thefts? What sort of information, if any, have you managed to glean?”

“Aye.” His serious, magisterial look settled back upon his face like a mask, diminishing all his natural warmth. “No one has been fencing the goods—which is the term for dispensing with stolen property—with any of the known pawnbrokers in the city, even the shadier establishments. Which makes me think that the thief is someone who moves within society.”

And just like that, the cold chill in the air seemed to burrow deeper into her bones.
 

Quince knew perfectly well what a bloody fence was, but she’d be a fool to admit it. And while she was obviously a fool about any number of things—including Strathcairn and his kisses—she’d be damned before she’d be a fool about stolen goods. “How can you be sure that someone as scaffy as an auld pawnbroker is telling you—an outsider to Edinburgh—the truth?”

“I have the help of others,” he admitted. “Others well outside the bounds of polite society, to help me along, while you help me within society.”

“Suddenly, I don’t feel so special.” What she felt was nearly sick to her stomach with dread, not only for herself, but for the others who helped
her
. One of whom was only steps away.

But her light rebuke had the desired effect—Strathcairn was smiling again. “Oh, you’re most assuredly special, wee Quince, though it is likely to my disadvantage to tell you so.”

Now she was flattered, as much by the humor in his voice, as by the fond feeling chasing the chill away from her bones.
 

But she batted such a dangerous distraction away. “However you say. But I must be along, Strathcairn. No matter our private arrangements, it won’t do to be seen debating the terms in the public street.”

He replaced his hat, and touched the brim to her. “As you wish, my lady. I am very much looking forward to our next meeting.” His low tone was just encouraging enough to spark a low fire of anticipation in her blood. “I hope you’ll save me a… dance?”

Oh, holy apple tarts. He was already leading her a very merry dance as it was. But there was so much promise in that lovely low rumble of a voice that she simply could not resist.
 

“I’ll save what I may.”

Chapter Six

Quince turned her back on Strathcairn—and by jimble, she needed every ounce of self-discipline she possessed to do so, when all she wanted to do was watch his lovely long legs stride all the way up the street—and made for the safety of the close confines of Jeannie’s shop.

Once through the jangling door, she waited for the familiar quiet to realign her sense of purpose, and calm the strange tension that came from Strathcairn playing his cat to her mouse.
 

Only Strathcairn didn’t know she was his mouse. Or did he? He had already suspected her once—was he prolonging or advancing their acquaintance merely to keep his eye on her? Or was his interest in her strictly personal, and as amorous as her mother feared it might be?

She would not get an answer by asking herself. “Jeannie?” She called through the curtain separating the front of the shop from the workroom. “It’s me, hen.”

“Back here, mileddy,” came the response.

Jeannie, whom Quince had not seen since their timely meeting in the withdrawing room at Lady Inverness’s ball, was coming to her feet next to her worktable. “I was wonderin’ where ye’d gotten yerself to, my Leddy Q.”

Quince greeted the talented seamstress with a kiss, more like the friend she was now than the servant she had once been. Jeannie had been Quince’s maid, and while Quince was no slave to the whims of fashion, she had been quick to recognize both Jeannie’s talent and her ambition—which were entirely wasted on her—and had set Jeannie up in her own dressmaking shop. It had been Quince’s only non-charitable use of her ill-gotten gains.

Ill-gotten they might have been, but not ill spent. Not by a long shot.

“I’ve been a bit fashed about ye,” Jeannie admitted. “Hadn’t seen ye for days. Thought som’at a goon wrong after ye passed me them buttons at Lady Inverness’s.”

Even if she were no longer her personal maid, Jeannie was still Quince’s confidant and confessor. “Nothing’s gone wrong, exactly,” Quince hedged. “More of a slight hitch in our proceedings.” Jeannie was one of the only people she had entrusted with her secret, and one of two people who were trusted to turn Quince’s stolen bits and bobs into ready money.

“Don’t tell me.” Jeannie set her hands to her hips with resignation. “Ye’ve a change o’ heart. Tho,’ I knew ye would someday.”

Quince hastened to reassure her. “Not a change of heart.” It was far too late for that—it had been too late from the first moment three years ago when she had pocketed a vinaigrette bottle Mrs. Neville Campbell had dropped in the stairwell of the George Street Assembly Rooms, and felt the unholy satisfaction of turning rich people’s portable chattels into ready money for the poor. “Only a temporary change of plan. I had to stop the business, as it were”—she peered back through the shop’s curtain to make sure they were not being inadvertently overheard—“while a certain party is in the city looking into petty thefts.”

Jeannie dropped back down to her bench with a sigh. “I thought that mon were trouble. Saints preserve us, he’s the look of a knobdobber.”

“He’s not so hard-headed, Jeannie, really. He can be quite lovely and larky when he sets his mind to it.” She couldn’t seem to stop herself from defending the inconvenient—and inconveniently attractive—man. “He’s just forgot where he’s come from, is all. That’s what comes from living too long in London, I suppose.” But Strathcairn the man was not her problem—Strathcairn the ambitious politician, government minister and investigator of crime was.
 
“And while the saints might decide to preserve you, I’m going upon the principle that they’re far too busy to help an unrepentant sinner like me. So we’ll have to work it out for ourselves.”

Jeannie nodded her acceptance. “Then what do ye ken?”

“Best to take a wee break from the pilfering for a bit—save our breath to cool our porridge, as it were. At least until the mon in question leaves the city for his highland estate.”

“Aye. That sounds a’right. I’ll be fair pleased when ye see the back o’ him.” The dressmaker made a clucking sound. “I’d not like to cross that mon. But I will say, at least he’s a fair face to goon at.”

Jeannie knew her far too well.
 

“He does have a fair face, indeed. If you like that sort of thing.”

“And ye’d be blind and daft no to like that sort o’ thing.” Jeannie chuckled. “And ye may be many things, my Leddy Q, but yer no daft.”

 
She was daft enough about some things. Strathcairn-shaped things. Kissing things.
 

But she was not stupid. “So you can see how it is? You’ll let Charlie know that things are going to be at a stop for a while?”
 

Charlie was Jeannie’s brother, and the third spoke of their wheel. Quince deposited her stolen goods with Jeannie—for it was nothing out of the ordinary, or strange, for a young woman to regularly visit her dressmaker. Then Jeannie could easily and unobtrusively pass the goods to Charlie, who was the reason Strathcairn wouldn’t find any of Quince’s stolen items cluttering up pawnshops. Charlie was a blacksmith, with a forge on the muddy south side of the city, down behind Back Wall Street, near the riding academy and livery yards, who routinely came up to Menleith’s Close to check on and look after his younger sister, just as a good brother should. It was Charlie who had the wolves’s share of the work, melting down the metal objects, and then bartering or selling the ingots for ready coin, which he then brought surreptitiously back to Jeannie on one of his daily visits. She passed the purse back to Quince, who then deposited the proceeds—minus a small but fair commission for Jeannie and Charlie—into the poor box at the old West Kirk of Saint Cuthbert’s, on the edge of the city, near the Charity Workhouse where dispossessed crofters who had been evicted from their highland farms seemed to gather like lambs huddling together before the slaughter.