“Tart, then.”
“What are you doing here?” Miss Quinlan huffed, and he grudgingly released her warm body.
Rakecombe could ask the same question but didn’t. One shouldn’t hurl stones in houses of glass and he needed to make haste, but…
Miss Quinlan looked exceptional – prickly hauteur evident in every tense muscle, swathed in the palest of blue silks.
After their…tussle, her breath was fast, and he willed his gaze to rise.
It aided not – livid eyes, sable curls and cherry-red lips. He couldn’t say which feature stood out – perhaps none, but they all contributed to a delicate yet tenacious visage.
“I expect I’ve better reason than you to be here,” he drawled, before discerning the very moment her sharp mind deduced he’d been personally invited to the fawning Lady Gibbon’s bedchamber.
He couldn’t help the small jolt of pleasure as her eyes crinkled with what he would like to call hurt. Her strong fists clenched in her silk gown, lips thinning in…jealousy?
It would be nice to know he wasn’t the only one besieged by a certain mocking green-eyed monster.
“I thought you’d have better taste,” she snarled.
Yes, definitely jealousy and he smiled with satisfaction, causing those bottomless eyes to flash with ire. He couldn’t have Aideen Quinlan, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t able to play a little… He’d take a leaf from Winterbourne’s book for once. “Lady Gibbon, or Myrtle as I like to call her, has a fine–”
A strident female voice from the hallway snapped him from his taunts.
Damnation, he didn’t have time for this as informants’ lives were at risk. The Irish minx caused him to lose his wits.
Rapidly, he scanned the room. They couldn’t be found here, for many reasons, and Miss Quinlan seemed to realise the same, as she rushed to the long delicate curtains concealing the balcony French doors.
Earlier, however, he’d noted the shutters had been kept open and if they hid behind those curtains and the moon dared to cast its glow, they’d be lit up as a silhouette tableau.
“No, the wardrobe,” he hissed, striding over to it.
“No,” she hissed back. “In stories, they always hide in the wardrobe and always get found out.”
Returning an exasperated glower as the voices neared, he nevertheless opened the wardrobe but found it would plainly give no quarter. Below the array of vivid dresses sat rows and rows of small boxes, each with a letter of the alphabet.
He tapped his cane on the letter P, one task solved, but as for the other…
Quietly, he closed the door and grabbing hold of Miss Quinlan, he hauled her to a tall gilt screen painted with flying cherubs part folded in the far corner of the room.
Squashing behind the sturdy florid eyesore, they both stood silent and still as the door rattled on its hinges.
“What a disaster, Simpson,” bemoaned Lady Gibbon, rustling into the room.
“Yes, my lady.”
More rustling.
“Lord Stewart is a caw-handed bottle-head. Red wine all down my Prussian blue silk dress. The man is blind.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The sound of buttons slipping.
“And not only that, but Lord Barnett’s wig fell in the punch, and Lady Blackburn nearly set light to her turban on my Ormolu gilt and marble candelabra – silly trollop.”
A light choke and Rakecombe glared down at Miss Quinlan in the shadows, fist held to her mouth, eyes dancing with hilarity. Slowly he raised a finger to his lips.
She removed her hand and stuck her tongue out, the juvenile jade. If she wasn’t careful, he’d–
