Page 63 of Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride (Transformation of the Shelley Sisters 3)

‘I knew when you brought me to London,’ she confessed. ‘I realised on that journey. And I knew I had to hide it because I could not bear for you to have to pretend, or be kind or pity me.’

‘Why did you stop trying to prevent me duelling?’ he asked as he traced her brows with his finger, followed the whorl of her ear as though discovering her all over again. My explorer. My adventurer and I am his new found land.

‘I almost tried moral blackmail, pretending I would marry you if you did not fight. I realised I could not do that to you, not if I loved you. Because your honour told you to challenge Langdown and your honour is everything to you.’

‘You are everything to me,’ he whispered, his voice husky. ‘You have my heart and my soul and my honour in the palm of your hand. I have the licence. I told them at St George’s that we would marry in a month because I thought you would want to buy bride clothes, plan properly. But we can wed where, and when, you want.’

‘St George’s,’ Lina said, leaning in to touch her lips to his. ‘The first of June and there will be roses everywhere.’ She felt suddenly shy through the happiness. ‘Quinn, do you want…now, I mean?’

; ‘To make love to you? Yes, I do.’ He caught her back and kissed her hard, possessively. ‘But shall we wait for our wedding night? I made love to you once before, lay with you. That filled me with guilt, but now I can remember those few moments when we were one with wonder—and anticipation. There has been no-one for me, since that moment, and now there never will be. Only you.’

‘Only you,’ she repeated, awed by what she saw in his face, the need for her, the control he would exert if she wanted that. ‘Yes, I would like to wait, Quinn.’

‘I love you,’ he said as he lay back on the bed, arms flung wide, his face smiling and full of joy.

‘Quinn! Your hand!’

‘What?’ He held out his right hand, grimacing at the blood. ‘Damn, the stitches have gone. That must have been when I picked you up.’ His grin was rueful as she jumped off the bed and ran to pull the bell cord. ‘Perhaps it is as well that we are resolved on patience, I suspect I would not be able to do justice to just how I feel about you, my love.’

‘I suppose there is no point in asking you to take care, is there?’ Lina asked. Life with Quinn would always be like this—she must just become used to it. A tamed wolf was only a lapdog; she wanted hers wild and free.

A maid put her head around the door. ‘Find my servant, if you please, and have hot water sent up and the doctor called.’ She turned back to the bed and helped Quinn off with his coat. ‘Thank goodness you chose swords; at least it is a clean cut and not a festering bullet wound.’

Worrying about Quinn’s wound helped bring Lina down to earth for the rest of that day and into the next morning. The doctor came and went, Quinn refused to be sensible and to rest, which she assumed was likely to be the pattern for their married life, and instead swept her out shopping, his arm in a dashing black sling. Prudence followed at their heels, organising packages to be sent back to the Maid’s Head, carrying the precious Norwich silk shawl he insisted on buying.

They ate dinner in the private parlour, hardly speaking. Lina found herself reaching out to touch his hand, looking up to meet his eyes. It all seemed too wonderful, too precious to need words.

‘I must go and find my room,’ Quinn said at last when the clock struck ten. They had been sitting in the same chair, Lina curled up on his lap, her head on his shoulder. They were learning to be at peace with each other, she thought. ‘You must sleep: we have an early start tomorrow.’ It still took another half-hour of kisses before he left.

At the door he turned, laughter in his eyes. ‘Do you think Simon was matchmaking when he added that codicil to his will?’ he asked. ‘I do, the clever old devil.’

Now, sitting in the chaise, with the luxury of four horses in the traces eating up the miles back to London, Quinn seemed more inclined to talk.

‘Do you want me to keep the Park?’ he asked.

‘I really do not know. The people were so hostile. I do not want to run away, and I do love the place, but it will be hard to put that day in church behind us.’

‘We can lease it out, make it part of the inheritance for the children,’ Quinn suggested.

‘Oh. Children.’ She had not thought of that. ‘You would like children?’

‘The thought of yours is rather pleasant. One of each to start with and see what we think after that?’

‘You cannot order them up.’ She shook her head at him, amused. ‘You have to accept what arrives. But two would do nicely to start.’ He would make a good father, if hair-raisingly inclined to involve the children in dangerous exploits, she feared. How old would a child have to be to begin riding on a camel? she wondered. She imagined a miniature version of Quinn outfacing a crocodile.

‘I have to get down to finishing Simon’s memoirs and getting a publisher,’ Quinn continued. ‘Is the London house all right or would you like to find something else? You must furnish it as you see fit, of course. It is yours.’

‘It is perfect,’ Lina said, a small doubt, like a puff of cloud across the sun, making her uneasy. ‘How long will the memoirs take?’

‘I must get back to Constantinople before the autumn storms make the Mediterranean difficult,’ he said. ‘I need to get my business out there organised. But actually, I doubt it will take me beyond the end of August if I employ a secretary and copyist. There was lack of order and linking passages are needed, that is all.’

So he was going abroad three months after the wedding. A three-month honeymoon in the company of old Simon’s memoirs and then she would be alone again. ‘How long will your business in Constantinople take?’ Lina asked, trying to sound bright and interested. And she was interested only… Naval wives manage, she told herself. This is what he does, who he is. Do not try to make him someone else, someone less. Remember the wolf and the lapdog.

‘How long would you like?’ Quinn asked her.

Lina stared, puzzled. She did not want him gone a moment longer than he must, of course. And then she realised what he was asking.