A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,125

night I had tucked it into my jewel box for safekeeping. Gilchrist wasn’t the only one to get it wrong, I realised as I took it from him. Gideon must have thought I had dropped it, too. He would have known it wasn’t his, but he would not put me in danger by telling anyone it was mine. He had protected me with his silence.

I slipped it into my pocket and assumed a nonchalant smile.

“I wasn’t sure you had mine. For all I knew it might have been safely back at Fairlight sitting in my jewel box. Besides, I thought it might be more fun to spring it on you in court if you ever managed to get your hands on Gideon.”

His expression was earnest. “He can’t come back, you know. I’ve spent the past weeks persuading Government House that he’s out of reach. If they so much as catch a rumour that he’s back, they’ll force me to take him in. I won’t have a choice, and he will hang.”

“I understand. Tell me one thing. How did you know he was innocent?”

“Because I know who did it. And that’s all you will get from me.”

He was as good as his word. He refused to tell me anything else, and when he handed me over to Quentin, he seemed happy to be rid of me. But I looked back once and I saw him standing alone, his eyes closed, his face pale, his hands clenched at his sides.

“That man looks anguished,” Quentin said, smiling slightly. “You must have been hard on him.”

“You have no idea.”

23

Quentin and I retired to the Norfolk where he had checked us in under assumed names. Bathing arrangements had been almost nonexistent at the prison. It was heaven to scrub myself completely clean and I spent two hours in the bathtub, filling it over and over again until my skin was wrinkled as a raisin’s and I smelled like lilies. Quentin was waiting in my room when I emerged.

“Feeling better?”

“Immensely. Is that dinner?”

“It is. I’ve ordered your favourites and three bottles of champagne.”

“That’s a start,” I told him.

It was hours before we finished and when we did the table was littered with soiled dishes and ashes and the dregs of our champagne. We put out our cigarettes in the butter and danced in our bare feet until the manager came to complain. I poured him a glass of champagne and sent him off with a smile. Cables arrived and flowers, too, enormous bunches of them that filled the room with a thick perfume.

“It appears my incognita has been violated. And it smells like a funeral home in here,” I told Quentin, peering at him through the bottom of a champagne bottle.

“Better than a wedding chapel,” he retorted.

I laughed aloud. “Poor Quentin. Marriage hasn’t treated you very kindly.”

“Cornelia’s pregnant. Again.”

I waved my cigarette. “I should have a talk with that girl. Introduce her to the diaphragm.”

“I wish you would,” he said.

“Oh, God, Quentin. Don’t be morose. You’ve money enough to take care of your brood, and I rather doubt you are even that bothered with them.”

“I don’t mind about me. I mind because of what it does to Cornelia. She changed when we had the twins. No conversation but nappies, no interests but gripe water and teething biscuits. It’s only going to get worse with another baby. I married a lovely girl and ended up with my own grandmother.” He nodded to me. “That’s not the smallest of your attractions, you know. You talk about things. You go places. And you’re always lovely and slim and firm.”

“Careful, old boy. You’re leering now.”

“Your robe has come open,” he informed me.

“So it has.” I didn’t bother to adjust it. Quentin had seen it all before. He leaned close.

“What about it, my beauty? A bit of something warm to remember you by before I go back to cold Cornelia?”

I removed his hands from my body and placed them gently in his own lap. “This is all the something warm you’ll be getting tonight. I’m very grateful to you, Quentin. But if you want payment for services rendered, you’ll have to send me a bill.”

His expression was one of frank astonishment. Then he laughed, a great hearty belly laugh that ended with him wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “My God. It’s finally happened. You’ve fallen in love, haven’t you?”

“No. I wouldn’t know how. But I do know that my life is quite complicated enough just now without throwing yet another