Page 8 of A Talent for Temptation
Lord, she hadn’t meant to say that. But he’d driven her to it with his nonsense about Gregory and his refusal to just let her seduce him so she could delay ending things with him.
His black gaze narrowed on her. “I can’t believe that. What could you possibly have in your past to make me not want you as my wife?”
A curtain of silence dropped between them, pierced only by the crackling of the fire in the hearth and the quickening beat of his heart beneath her hand.
Devil take him. “You’re going to make me say these things, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Jerking her hands from his, she rose. “Fine.” She walked over to the brandy decanter and poured some.
“I don’t want any more brandy,” he said.
“It’s not for you.” She took a swig, then faced him defiantly. “And that should be your first clue. I am not the fine lady you apparently think I am.”
“I was already getting that impression from the whole knife-in-the-reticule thing,” he said dryly. “And your not being a ‘fine lady’ is precisely what appeals to me.”
“Really? So it wouldn’t bother you at all to hear that I’m an orphan, left at the Foundling Hospital by who knows whom? That I don’t know the exact date of my birth or where I came from or who my parents are? That they might well have been criminals or madmen?”
“I don’t care,” he said as he rose from the settee.
“You haven’t heard all of it. Before I met my husband, I served as a lady’s maid in a merchant’s household in Edinburgh. I used to be aservant,Quinn.”
Eyes blazing, Quinn walked toward her. “I don’t bloody well care.”
“No? You will when you hear the rest of it.” She gulped more brandy, just for emphasis. “I am adisgracedservant, dismissed from my post.”
That seemed to give him pause. “Does Fulkham know?”
She nodded. “He was there when it happened.”
Quinn searched her face. “Tell me all of it.”
Her throat tightened and she turned away, afraid to see the look on his face when she revealed the rest. She shouldn’t tell him all her secrets; Gregory wouldn’t approve.
But she was tired of the secrecy. “Gregory was in Scotland to meet some dignitary when he happened to attend a party thrown by my employer. One of the male guests caught me alone and attempted to have his way with me. Gregory stepped in to prevent it.”
“As well he should have. I hope he broke the fellow’s nose.”
Quinn’s fierceness startled her, then warmed her. “Most men would blamemefor what happened, not the man.”
“As you said, I am not your typical Englishman. And clearly, neither is Fulkham.”
That brought a brief smile to her lips. “True. He defended me to my employer when the guest claimed I’d tried to seduce him. Sadly, my employer didn’t care who was at fault. He dismissed me without a reference for making trouble involving two of his prominent guests.”
“Bastard,” Quinn muttered.
Heartened by his response, she faced him. “Indeed. Edinburgh was so small a community that I would never have found another respectable position if Gregory hadn’t offered to find me one.”
A cloud descended over Quinn’s features. “As what?”
“Not whatyou’rethinking, apparently. Gregory wanted me to serve as a lady’s maid to a new English colonel’s wife, who was moving to Gibraltar, where her husband was to be the commanding officer of the regiment.” She swallowed. “Gregory wanted me to . . . er . . . report to him about the officers who came in and out of their house.”
Quinn blinked. “You were Fulkham’s spy?”
“Notwere.” She steadied her shoulders. Gregory would never forgive her, but how else could she make Quinn see how hopeless this was? “Am. I’m his spy still. He saved my life that day. If he hadn’t stepped in, you know perfectly well what would have happened to me—either that night or later, after I lost my position.”
She could see in his face that he did know. Such women invariably ended up as kept women . . . or worse. No one would hire a servant dismissed for lewd behavior. “So in exchange I . . . ‘do his bidding,’ as you put it.”
