really…’ she stammered. ‘I couldn’t put you to so much trouble…’
The very last thing she wanted was for Quinn to see her home. But neither, she suddenly realized, did she want to stay at the apartment.
Since she’d agreed to come back with Richard, the whole mood of the evening had altered. So much had happened that both her mind and her emotions were in a whirl. She needed time to think, to get over the shock of seeing Quinn again.
As it was, she knew it would be impossible to go to bed with Richard tonight without a dark, mocking face coming between them…
Shuddering at the very idea, she added jerkily, ‘I’ll get a taxi later.’
She must talk to Richard. Tell him she had a headache… Make some excuse…
‘I doubt if there’ll be any taxis willing to venture out.’ Quinn’s level tones penetrated her thoughts. ‘The fog’s getting thicker by the minute.’
He indicated the windows, where nothing was visible but opaque grey mist. ‘If you don’t leave with me now, you’ll almost certainly be stuck for the night.’
Suppose he was right? If she was stuck, with only one bedroom it could prove difficult…
‘And believe me it’s no trouble,’ he added briskly. ‘I pass the end of Hawks Lane.’
As though the matter was settled, he strode across to the cupboard, retrieved her coat and held it for her.
Seeing that a furious-looking Richard was about to intervene, Elizabeth made up her mind. Giving him a speaking glance, she said, ‘In the circumstances I think it would make sense to go.’
Just for a second he looked ready to protest, then, apparently thinking her decision was because she wanted to observe the proprieties, being a gentleman, he stayed silent.
Slipping into her coat, she went on a shade awkwardly, ‘It’s been a tiring evening, and I’m more than ready for some sleep.’
If they’d been alone, Richard would almost certainly have taken her in his arms and kissed her with pleasurable skill and expertise, but, clearly inhibited by the other man’s presence, he gave her a mere peck on the cheek.
‘You’re off on Monday, aren’t you?’ His voice was tightly controlled. ‘So I’ll see you Tuesday. Perhaps we can go to Swann Neilson and discuss a suitable setting for the diamond?’
‘Lovely.’ She managed to smile at him, while a strange presentiment made a chill run through her.
‘Was that shiver caused by cold or excitement?’ Quinn’s mocking voice asked, as they left the penthouse together.
Without thinking, she answered, ‘Neither. Just a goose walking over my grave.’
His heavy-lidded eyes gleaming green as a cat’s between thick dark lashes, he remarked softly, ‘I once knew a girl who used to say that.’
Elizabeth cursed her careless tongue as, a hand at her waist, Quinn escorted her across the small foyer and into the lift.
Like some jailer, he stood much too close for comfort, but, afraid to move away in case it was obvious, she made herself stay where she was.
They descended without speaking, while she tried to convince herself that his remark had just been an idle one.
But suppose he’d guessed? Her blood ran cold at the thought.
Oh, why on earth had she left with him? In retrospect it had been a stupid and dangerous thing to do. Like jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire.
At least she would have been safe with Richard. If she’d simply told him that she didn’t want to sleep with him, he wouldn’t have pressed her.
Or would he?
He didn’t take kindly to being disappointed, and nothing had gone as he’d planned.
Still, he wasn’t an insensitive man, and without knowing the truth about Quinn surely he would have appreciated that the evening’s events had affected her, and forgiven her change of heart?
But now it was too late.
Outside, the fog was dense and clammy, enveloping the hotel entrance, obscuring the ornamental façade and turning the wrought-iron lamps into hovering, luminous ghosts.
There were hardly any pedestrians about, and a lot fewer cars than usual, the normal Park Lane traffic noise muffled and muted.
‘Looks pretty bad, sir,’ the doorman remarked.
‘Conditions certainly aren’t improving,’ Quinn agreed, dropping a generous tip into his ready palm.
‘Perhaps it would be wiser to stay?’ Elizabeth suggested eagerly. ‘They’d almost certainly have a room, and it would save you having to drive in this.’
‘I don’t see it as a problem.’ Already the car door was open and, a hand beneath her elbow, Quinn was helping her in. ‘I’ve driven in worse.’
As they joined the slow-moving traffic and began to crawl through fog-shrouded streets, tense and nervous, she stared straight ahead, until the amorphous grey mass made her eyes ache.
Needing to break a silence that was lengthening and beginning to get intolerable, she said, ‘This is the kind of fog one reads about in Victorian melodramas.’
Her normally clear, well-modulated voice sounded somewhat hoarse and strained.
‘Don’t tell me you read Victorian melodramas?’ While pretending to be shocked, Quinn’s sidelong glance was tolerant, even a trifle amused.
Relaxing a little, she admitted a shade ruefully, ‘I’ve developed quite a passion for them.
He laughed. ‘Does Beaumont approve of your taste in literature?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You don’t appear to know each other too well.’
‘We know each other very well.’ Even as she spoke she was aware that wasn’t the truth. Richard only knew the cool, collected, rather reserved woman she had become.
All her warmth and passion, her easy gaiety and generosity of spirit, her joie de vivre, were dead and gone, buried beneath the tombstone of the past.
‘When did you two meet?’ The question seemed to be an idle one.
‘When I started to work for Lady Beaumont.’
‘And when was that?’
Elizabeth wondered whether he was genuinely interested or just making polite conversation. But either way it seemed better to talk than sit in silence.
‘Last February,’ she answered. And, feeling on relatively safe ground, she went on, ‘The writer I had been working for was going abroad. I needed to find another job, so I joined an agency who sent me as a temp, after Miss Williams, Lady Beaumont’s
