had warned her that Simon would not send Quinn from the house. Constance had even predicted his words.
'He is my son,' Simon had said. Then, when Noelle had pressed him about the divorce, he had again put her off with vague promises.
'A plank of wood ter 'elp yer cross the street, mum?' Two dirty ragamuffins, a boy and a girl, stood at her side, carrying a long board. Noelle's mind slid back in time to two other children who had carried a board on rainy days and looked for wealthy customers to help across streets.
'Thank you,' she said, managing a smile. When she was across the street, she pressed a shilling on the surprised urchins. 'Buy yourselves a kidney pie and some gingerbread.' The little boy thanked her and even managed an awkward bow before the two scampered off.
Noelle chose an inconspicuous table in the rear of the tea room and soon had a sliver of lemon tart and a steaming cup of tea in front of her. She took a slow sip and pondered the mystery of the animosity between Quinn and Simon. What had happened to make Quinn hate his father so? She rubbed her temples wearily.
'Did you know Quinn is back?'
Noelle's eyes shot to the adjoining table, where two women were seating themselves. All that she could see of the one who had spoken was the back of a well-cut silk pelisse. It was the other woman who held Noelle's attention. In her early thirties, she was extravagantly beautiful with hair as black as a raven's wing and a small mole clinging seductively near the corner of her left eye.
'How do you know that Quinn is in London?' she asked with smoldering excitement, the trace of a foreign accent lending a mysterious allure to her voice.
'I saw him riding in Rotten Row not more than two hours ago.'
'Was he alone?' The black-haired beauty tried to make her question seem unimportant, but the tension around her skillfully rouged mouth betrayed her.
'Oh, Anna!' The other woman pronounced the name with a soft 'a.' 'Surely you are not going to be as foolish about him now as you were the last time he was in London.'
'It is not foolishness! He obsesses me.'
'You and half the other women in London.'
'But he doesn't come back to other women as he comes back to me.'
'Why does he have this hold on you, Anna? We've both been with many other men. None, perhaps, quite as handsome but, still…'
'Because he is exciting, dangerous.' Anna lowered her voice, but the words were still audible to Noelle. 'I want him, but he will not be owned. He is immune to all the tricks that a woman uses. If I pout, he laughs. If I rage at him, he is indifferent.'
'And in bed?' The other woman leaned forward in her seat. 'How is he in bed?'
Anna's eyes clouded, and her lips parted seductively as she stared unseeingly past her companion. 'Like no other. He makes hard, desperate love to me, and I forget everything else. The next time, I vow that I will hold back, make him plead with me. But I know I am lying to myself. He touches me, my strength disappears, and I give him everything.'
Noelle could listen to no more. She did not even bother to count the coins she threw down on the table, so desperate was she to escape overhearing any more of the woman's repugnant confidences.
Much to Noelle's relief, Quinn was not present for supper that night, nor did she hear him return to the house, although it was well past midnight before she turned down her light.
Chapter Seventeen
'Miss Catherine Welby to see you, ma'am.'
'Whatever for?' Noelle wondered aloud as she glanced at the clock on her desk. It was barely ten o'clock, hardly an appropriate hour for a caller to present herself, especially one who had been as consistently unfriendly as Catherine Welby.
'Show her to the drawing room, Tomkins. And I suppose you had better send in tea.'
As the butler closed the door behind him, Noelle reluctantly set aside the stack of invitations she had been answering and banged the lid of the desk shut, rattling a china shepherdess perched on the top. Normally a job she detested, the task had today provided her with an excuse to seal herself away in her parlor until lunch. By that time, she calculated that Quinn would have left the house, and she would have avoided, at least for the morning, another encounter with him.
The heels of her slippers clattered noisily when they hit the marble of the foyer. Automatically she muffled her steps. He had barely been in the house for twenty-four hours, and she already felt like a prisoner.
Smoothing her dress, she entered the drawing room. 'Miss Welby, how nice to see you.'
'Do call me Catherine, and I shall, of course, call you Dorian,' her caller bubbled effusively as she patted the place next to her invitingly. Noelle sat reluctantly, putting as wide a distance between them as the limited dimensions of the settee and common politeness would permit.
'I just know we shall be the best of friends, Dorian. We have so much in common.' She then began chronicling the most recent of her social activities.
Noelle barely listened as she tried to puzzle out the motive behind the unexpected call. She and Catherine Welby had attended several of the same functions; however, they were hardly friends. The fluffy little blonde had barely spoken a dozen words to her, and those had been begrudging.
'I beg your pardon?' Noelle returned her attention to her unwelcome caller, aware that she had missed something.
'I asked if you would like to ride with me in the park next week.'
''I'm sorry, but I don't ride.'
'You don't ride?' Miss Welby's astonishment could not have been greater if her hostess had just announced her escape from a Turkish seraglio.
'I was raised in India, you know.' Noelle adopted a faintly superior air, as if that should explain everything.
'Oh? Quite so.'
There was a brief pause, and then Miss Welby plunged into an account of a new riding habit she was having made, describing each tuck and trim in painstaking detail. Noelle was suppressing a yawn with the utmost difficulty when tea arrived.
'Tell me something about yourself,' Miss Welby commanded as she took up her cup.
'There's little to tell. My parents died in India several years ago and my uncle has graciously offered me his home.'
'So sad to lose your parents. But how lucky you are to have such a kind uncle.'
'Yes, he has been wonderful to me.'
Miss Welby's saucer eyes, as innocently clear as a cloistered nun's, peeked over the rim of her cup. 'And had you met your dashing cousin before you arrived in England?'
'No, we had never met.'
'What a surprise he must have been to you.'
'You can't imagine,' Noelle responded dryly.
Footsteps were faintly audible in the foyer, and Miss Welby's eyes slid covertly to the door. When the steps continued down the hallway, she could not quite conceal her disappointment.
'Is your cousin an early riser?'
'I am afraid I do not know him well enough to be familiar with his personal habits.'
'Miss Cynthia Rowland to see you, ma'am.'
Tomkins had barely finished announcing her when Miss Rowland swept into the room, her ribbons fluttering. 'Dorian, I had a simply marvelous time the other night. You must persuade your uncle to have another ball soon. Now, tell me about your cousin. Is it true he killed a man in a duel and fled from America to escape being arrested? One hears such stories about him.'
Noelle took a deep breath and tried to suppress her annoyance. These silly girls were using her to get a
