Rogue in the Regency Ballroom. Helen Dickson
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to do, I promised Cook I’d stay on and help. Besides, Ma doesn’t like me having to pass through the woods and by the lake, you see. She says there are too many scallywags roamin’ about for a decent girl to be walking home alone after dark. Why, she says anything might happen.’
‘I see. You may go.’
‘How long have you been here?’ Mr Quinn asked calmly when Sadie had closed the door behind her. ‘And by what right do you spy on me in my private rooms?’
Undaunted, Amanda lifted her head with a small but stubborn toss. ‘I have been here long enough to see the shameful thing you have done. Sadie is young enough to be your daughter. What were you thinking?’
Mr Quinn threw up his hands. ‘Amazing! A proper little prude! And you a married woman,’ he mocked. ‘Sadie is seventeen going on thirty. Did she look ashamed to you?’
Recalling the way Sadie had thrown back her shoulders and lifted her head, her action had told Amanda quite clearly that she was neither ashamed nor regretful.
Mr Quinn smiled, a smug, self-satisfied smile that infuriated Amanda. ‘She wanted it as much as I did. It was not the first time and it will not be the last. But if you must prowl around after dark, to save any embarrassment on your part, I would advise you to confine yourself to your own part of the house—unless, of course, you were looking for something that might be of more interest to your habits.’
Amanda seethed. How dare the man take the offensive by accusing her of creeping about the house and spying on the servants? ‘You forget yourself, Mr Quinn. My father will have harsh words to say to you about this.’
‘Really?’ He lowered his head, becoming thoughtful. Henry O’Connell was the only man Quinn had any regard for, and he had never told anyone the role that his employer had played in his life, or the gratitude Quinn felt for him. However, over the years since he had begun working for Henry, he had acquired a good, strong foothold both in the business and with Henry. Yes, it was a good, strong foothold and it was not a position he was prepared to relinquish because this girl could not keep her mouth shut.
‘Now listen to me,’ he said, moving closer until he towered over her. ‘Your father must never hear of this. You must never tell him what you have seen.’
‘But I have a duty to tell him what goes on beneath his roof, especially something as sordid as this. He does not condone this kind of behaviour among the servants and you, more than anyone, should know that. You hold a position of trust in this house, and you have just breached it.’
‘Have I? We shall see. Who do you think will benefit from the confession? Certainly not Sadie or her poor, misbegotten family that depends on what she earns here. If she is thrown out, there’ll be no work for her in any other house. Would you want that on your conscience—to see her family go to the workhouse? Think what it will mean. The story will become common gossip. Oh, no, Amanda, for her sake—and your own—you must say nothing.’
Amanda looked at him steadily. His words sounded like a threat. ‘What do you mean—for my sake?’
He gave a small, corrosive laugh. ‘I mean, I wonder how your father will react when he learns of your own guilty little secret—you know … about what you got up to in Charleston.’ Watching her face with idle malice, he saw it change, grow pale, then freeze.
‘You would not tell him about that?’
‘Not if you keep your mouth shut about Sadie and me. You have much to be grateful to me for on that matter; when Henry questioned me, I told him Mr Claybourne was an English gentleman, well connected, and with sufficient means to keep his daughter in the manner in which she had been raised. Since he has done nothing about that, I can only assume he has decided to let the matter of your marriage rest. So, you see, you owe me. For your silence we both stand to gain something, and you will have nothing to fear from me.’
Amanda saw a viciousness in Mr Quinn’s expression she had never seen before. She had known this man nearly all her life. She couldn’t credit what he was saying and the coldness in his eyes. She knew she was trapped. Caution alone trimmed her anger. If this was to be the price of her silence, then so be it.
Mr Quinn read her thoughts correctly. ‘I see we understand each other.’
‘Oh, yes. I understand perfectly, Mr Quinn,’ she replied tersely.
‘Good. Then if you don’t mind, my time has been disturbed quite enough for one night. But one thing before you go. I need no instructions from you on how to conduct myself in public or in private. Remember that.’
‘Oh, I will. I can see you are quite besotted with Sadie, but you’re a little long in the tooth, don’t you think, to turn lovesick over a seventeen-year-old girl with a well-rounded bosom.’
‘I assure you I am not in my dotage yet. Sadie will attest to that.’
‘I’m sure she can, but I have no intention of asking her. Goodnight.’
With an artificially subservient sweep of his arm as she left, Mr Quinn bade her goodnight.
Making her way through the house to her room, Amanda now realised that she had never given much thought to Mr Quinn as being anything other than her father’s most trusted employee who always kept himself aloof and apart from the lowlier servants, but beneath his austere mien he was nothing but a brute.
By the time she reached her room she had come to accept that the bringing of the incident to her father’s attention would do her no good. What mattered was that her marriage to Kit must not be brought into the open. She realised that she must never divulge what she had seen and must subdue her own feeling of outrage, wiping the sordid incident from her mind; but she would never forget and never, ever, forgive Mr Quinn for daring to think he could threaten her with exposure to cover his own sordid misdeed.
On a cold day in February, tired of being cooped up in the house, buttoning herself into a warm coat and heading for the stables, Amanda went in search of her father. There had been a rainstorm earlier, but now the land glinted and shone beneath the sun’s glow. Yesterday two horses he had bought at the Don-caster horse sales had arrived, and along with the animals a man to look after them. A man, her father had proclaimed excitedly, who knew more about training horses than anybody he knew.
Standing beneath the foggy green shadow of massive ancient oaks, she paused, her eyes drawn to her father. Wearing a chequered cape and hat, he was leaning on his walking stick, looking over the fence into the paddock. Amanda shifted her gaze to see what held his attention.
Two splendid horses caught her eye, one a rich chestnut and the other a glistening black stallion with a man astride its back. It was a fine, spirited beast, tossing its noble head and twitching its tail. Fighting the bit, the animal bucked and pranced sideways and then reared up. Amanda was spellbound as she watched the rider, with spontaneous talent, master that huge, half-wild horse with superb skill. Riding with the easy grace of a man in perfect harmony with his own body, he was obviously a genius. Eventually he brought the animal under control so that it became almost docile. Sliding off, he dug into his pocket and produced a tasty titbit. The horse looked at him suspiciously before curling his top lip and eating it.
When the man strode over to her father, Amanda was about to turn away, not wishing to interrupt, when something about the man, something familiar, caught her attention, causing her eyes to open wide in overwhelming disbelief.
Immobilised in the cataclysmic silence that seemed to descend on her world, her right hand pressed to her throat, she was rendered incapable of thought, speech or action. As her mind raced in wild circles, her thoughts tumbling over themselves, she thought she must be seeing things, that she must be suffering from some kind of delusion. But that rich dark brown hair, rough and tousled, his harshly angular face, the hardness that was an integral part of him, the arrogant way he held his head—surely there could be no other man like that anywhere. Suddenly and quite inexplicably, Amanda’s heart gave a joyful leap, but as quickly as a cry sprang to her lips, so it was silenced. Shock waves tingled up and down her spine and she wondered at this cruel trick of fate.