"No…"
"The authenticity of your disguise?"
She frowned. "I – well, I suppose…"
"Oh, stop dithering." He leaned out, grabbed her by the upper arms and hauled her bodily into the carriage, steps and propriety and authenticity be damned. Tense with surprise, she was light, and yet his own weakness startled him. A year ago, he'd not have thought twice about the effort; today, he required all his diminished strength to lift her. Nevertheless, he managed to plop her beside him on the bench with only a small thump, and by the time she stopped sputtering and giggling, they were away. "Phew. You reek of ale."
"I thought you liked ale."
"I do." He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her soundly on the lips. She made a small sound of surprise and her hands came up, as if to push him away. Instead, they settled on his chest and relaxed there, and she returned his kiss with sweet enthusiasm. Beneath the malty ale she tasted delicious, familiar. But it was better than last time, infinitely so, and what he'd intended as a single embrace unravelled into a long string of kisses.
Deep.
Hypnotic.
Luxurious.
Kisses that threatened to blot out the world.
Time passed, in some arbitrary fashion. He became aware of it only very gradually as a cessation of movement, as an unexpected stillness. With some surprise, he realized the carriage had stopped. More specifically, they were in the lane behind his house in Bloomsbury.
"What's wrong?" murmured Mary. Her voice was languorous, remote.
"We're-" He cleared his rusty throat. "We're at my house."
"Oh." She tensed, then swiftly untwined her limbs from his. There was an awkward pause, which they broke simultaneously:
"I ought to go."
"Won't you come in?"
Her eyes widened, and he realized how it must sound. "For a cup of tea. Or a chat. Or – I mean, I didn't have anything in mind. In particular. I only meant, there's no reason for you to go."
She passed one hand over her hair, looked down at her boy's rags. "I don't think I possibly could."
"George isn't home," he said eagerly. "It's only me."
She leaned over to the window and sized up the house. "You must have servants."
He looked surprised. "Of course. But they don't talk."
She looked amused. "Much you know. Servants always talk."
"Does it matter what they say?"
"I-" She seemed unable to explain.
James thought he understood. "I know: you're still a young lady, despite the costume. But you're also half-cut, and I absolutely refuse to take you back to a rough lodging-house in this state."
"I'm not that drunk," she said indignantly.
"Well, I hope you're not utterly foxed; that wouldn't be very complimentary to me. But you'll stay until you're sober." He couldn't help grinning. Her surprise was so very readable, when normally he struggled to guess what she thought.
It was a curious experience, bringing Mary home. He found himself excessively aware of the daily surroundings he had generally ceased to notice: the rattle of his key in the lock, the stiff springiness of the doormat beneath his boots, the way his voice echoed in the high-ceilinged hall. James stood aside to let her enter but she hung back, looking about the garden with a frank curiosity he found impossibly endearing.
The house was fragrant with beeswax polish and baking. Mrs Vine, the family's housekeeper of some thirty years, stepped into the hall. "I've been expecting you these last two hours, Mr James," she said, examining his face with critical eyes. "Though you don't look so worn-out as I expected."
He smiled. "That's the first nice thing you've said to me all week."
She clicked her tongue impatiently. "Go and tidy yourself, for heaven's sake. The scones aren't getting any warmer." Her gaze shifted to something behind him and, while her features didn't move, her voice turned formal and courteous. "Shall I lay a place for this young man in the kitchen?"
With a calm he didn't feel, he said, "Actually, Miss Quinn will take tea with me." He sensed, rather than saw, Mary tense behind him. "Mrs Vine will show you where you can, er, wash your hands."
Not a muscle moved in Mrs Vine's face. She merely nodded and said, in that same neutral voice, "Please follow me, Miss Quinn."
James watched them down the hall. Mrs Vine sailed ahead, tall and regal, while Mary followed three steps behind, quieter than he'd ever seen her. He wasn't at all certain he'd done the right thing in bringing her here. What on earth was happening to him? A kiss or two was one thing; what had passed between them in the carriage quite another. She had no right to overturn his world so easily, and perhaps not even realize she'd done so. And here he was, inviting her into his private domain. It wasn't wise to allow her so much insight into his life when he scarcely knew anything beyond her name. But it was much too late for such caution now. Mary followed the Amazonian housekeeper up two broad flights of stairs, struggling with equal measures of disbelief and amusement. The disbelief was at being here, in James's house, the private expression of the man. He was such a guarded character, and this suggested a new degree of intimacy she was reluctant – even afraid – to consider. The amusement was more straightforward. Mrs Vine, charging ahead, was a perfect music-hall servant: hatchet-faced, razor-tongued, and the rest. She'd probably served the Eastons since James was a wee fat baby (impossible to imagine!) and didn't even blink when James brought home a scruffy little boy who turned out to be a woman.
The beer was beginning to wear off. She was certain of that, if little else. Her limbs and movements were much more her own, she was fiercely thirsty, and she had a desperate, cramping need to pass water. How many pints had she drunk – two? Three? More than she'd ever had before, that was certain – and she'd thought she was being so careful. Evidently, she still had everything to learn about men, whether they were hardworking labourers or arrogant gentlemen.
Mrs Vine paused on the second-floor landing. "I hope I'm not presuming too much, Miss Quinn," said the housekeeper in her formal, public voice, "but would you care to perform a more thorough toilette?" At Mary's mystified look, she added, "I could draw you a bath…"
Mary ought, she knew, to have been mortified. What must this woman think of her, tumbling into the house with James, filthy and dishevelled and demanding food and baths! Instead, Mary could think only about the magic word "bath". "Oh yes, please," she said rather fervently. "If it's not too much trouble…"
It was an absurd thing to say. Baths were trouble, plenty of trouble, what with the boiling of water and hauling it up three flights of stairs, never mind taking the slops back down and laundering the towels. But the corners of Mrs Vine's mouth seemed to suggest majestic approval and Mary soon found herself in a special room designed just for bathing. It was a rather swanky idea, the separate bathroom with its glazed tiles, piped-in hot water and self-draining tub, and she was rather amused by the notion of James as a bath-obsessed modernizer.
As her second bath in the space of a week, it was a thorough betrayal of the authentic worker's life. Baths ought to be infrequent luxuries for Mark Quinn, not regular affairs, and they ought to occur in shallow tin tubs by the kitchen fire, never in purpose-built temples to cleanliness. But this afternoon, Mary didn't care; she'd never revelled so much in soap and water in her life. On climbing out, she found that Mark's grimy clothes had vanished from the other side of the privacy screen. Laid out in their place were a fine linen nightshirt, immaculately pressed and fragrant with cedar, and a light dressing gown. They were much too big for her, the nightshirt billowing around her ankles and the dressing gown trailing on the floor. James's familiar scent settled around her, warming her and making her shiver at the same time. She felt bold and scandalous; almost fallen. Exactly the sort of woman she'd never been.
She brushed her hair – an odd sensation, the bristles scraping her bare neck. And then Mrs Vine appeared to conduct her downstairs once again. The stark formality of the drawing room – James and George were not, apparently, devoted to knick-knacks and cushions – made her curl a little into herself. Much of her awareness was focused on the two flimsy layers of fabric that swathed her body, her only barrier against nakedness in this unfamiliar masculine domain.
James was reading a book, his long legs unfolded over the length of a sofa, but he leapt to his feet when she entered. For once, there was no acerbic comment. Instead, he looked almost shy. "Mrs Vine will bring tea shortly."
She sat gingerly in the space he indicated, beside him on the sofa. "She must think it so strange, my arriving in boy's clothing, and having a bath, and her providing fresh things, and a nightshirt at that!"
"I imagine the nightshirt is the only thing I have that comes even close to fitting. And even that buries you."
"Well, perhaps you ought to keep a stock of women's clothing on hand, just in case."
He grinned at that. "D'you plan on returning often? Or are you trying to work out how often I entertain half-naked young ladies?"
She blushed furiously. "Neither!"
"Really? Because it sounded like one or the other, to me…"
This was the James she knew. Despite his teasing – or rather, because of it – she was suddenly much more at ease. "I'm sure you meet any number of half-naked young ladies, but daren't bring them here for fear of what your brother would say."
"Extraordinary. That was meant to be your cue to fly into a jealous tantrum."