Smitten by the Spinster Page 8

  “Aye,” he agreed, his smile growing wider, her knees growing weaker. “Wise advice.”

  “Well, here’s some more,” she said. “Quit gaming for this evening. Let them keep what’s left of their riches just for tonight.”

  He leaned in even closer and she felt herself being pulled into him, as if he had his own gravity. Dear God, she was likening him to the sun again. She tried to shame herself into lowering her gaze, stop being taken in by his engaging expression.

  “What shall I do instead?” he asked. His hand brushed her sleeve and she felt the lace rustle against her wrist, or perhaps it was his fingertips.

  “There’s a buffet,” she said weakly, staring at the velvet of his waistcoat, then looking up into his eyes.

  He shook his head and took her hand. “Dance with me, Miss Burnet,” he said, already leading her toward the dance floor.

  She stopped, digging in her heels. “We shouldn’t,” she said, quickly clarifying, “I shouldn’t.” She continued to look at him head on, despite her burning cheeks. “It wouldn’t be proper. But please, you’ll find no lack of partners here. Especially with your new riches.” She tried to make a joke, but her voice was flat as she looked out at the dance floor, all the lovely ladies and gentleman twirling and bowing.

  “Ye’re the only partner I desire,” he said gruffly, pulling her in the opposite direction and out into the dimly lit back courtyard.

  They stood just outside the doors and could still faintly hear the music. He stepped close and held out his hand.

  “This is worse,” she cried, unable to stifle a nervous laugh. He was going to ruin her, but she so wanted to dance.

  He raised a challenging brow and looked down at his outstretched hand. Closing her eyes and sighing, she stepped forward and took it.

  Quinn was better than her, since she’d never actually had a chance to do any of the steps of this time with a partner, but she’d taken years of ballet and tap and quickly caught on. The current tune was lively and he whirled her about, dipping her back on his forearm and lifting her with the music. She was certain he was just making up moves, but she didn’t care and when the music stopped, he pulled her in close, her chest heaving from exertion and from pressing against him.

  A moment later a slower piece started and he swayed in time, still holding her against him. She rested her cheek against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist and let her feet follow his in time. For about twelve seconds. Her senses came rushing back to her then, and she leaned back, pushing out of his warm grip.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said breathlessly, even though she’d recovered from the lively dancing. Her inability to catch her breath was one hundred percent due to proximity to Quinn.

  “Dinna call me sir,” he said softly. His hands still rested lightly at her waist and even through the layers of clothes, she could swear she felt the warmth of his fingertips. “Lizzie,” he said.

  It was the first time he said her name, not Miss Burnet. She never cared one way or another about her name, had tried to go by Eliza for a while because she thought it sounded posh, but it never stuck. She was always Lizzie, a serviceable, sturdy name. But from Quinn it sounded like a lullabye, like the ocean in the early morning, like strumming a harp. She wanted him to say it again, closer to her ear, so she could feel his breath ruffle her hair. Her eyes drifted shut as she leaned against him.

  A clatter by the door made her tear away. A young man had stumbled over a decorative urn, several of his drunken mates close at his heels. They hadn’t yet noticed her and Quinn and she quickly ducked back into the house as soon as the boys were further down the courtyard.

  Quinn followed and took her hand. Spinning around to face him, she blinked at his confusion, but quickly steeled herself against the feelings she couldn’t afford to have.

  “Thank you for the dance,” she said, hating the unnatural sound of her voice. The easy ability to be herself around him was too dangerous, to lose control of her carefully crafted persona frightened her too much.

  She shook him off and continued further into the safety of the crowded room, trying to find Catie. She saw Lady Amberly searching through the people, her face drawn with fatigue and anxiety. It was late, time to go home.

  Chapter 8

  Catie slipped into Miss Burnett’s room and leaned against the door, struggling hard to keep her conscience at bay.

  They’d all returned from the party, and too worked up with happy memories to sleep, Catie settled herself in her window seat and stared dreamily out at the dark night. Her feet ached from dancing and she was stuffed full to bursting with food. Oliver had been the first to ask her to dance, and she wished she could have spent more time with him, but Miss Burnet explained she couldn’t show favoritism to anyone too soon or people’s tongues would wag. And Miss Burnet seemed to think she could do far better than Oliver Cliffstone, had in fact introduced her to Lady Hollingsborn and her son Edwin, who was going to have some grand title one day. Catie couldn’t remember which but Miss Burnet was plenty pleased by it.

  It had been a perfect night, and she wanted to savor it before she went to sleep, but then she saw Miss Burnett tiptoeing around from the back of the house, looking up and down the street, then scurrying off in a great hurry. It had set her curiosity to spinning, making her think of the message Miss Burnet received before they all left for the party. A few minutes later, Quinn exited the front door and made his way more casually down the street, probably to gamble away the money he’d just won that night.

  The more she thought about her brother, the angrier she got at him. He’d been on edge lately. She could tell something was wrong, even though he was putting on a charming face for Lady Amberly and Miss Burnet. He wasn’t himself, and hadn’t been since Lachlan died. He’d say he had to be different now that he was in charge, but it was more than just added responsibility. He was keeping something from her, and that was why she decided to search his room.

  That hadn’t touched her conscience one little bit. She was sick and tired of being treated like a child, coddled and kept in the dark. Lachlan had done it, her Auntie Gwen did it, and now Quinn. The only way she’d ever learned anything was finding it out on her own, and she’d been listening outside doors and sneaking looks at things she wasn’t strictly meant to look at since she was a wee lass. If they bloody thought she was old enough to get married, they could bloody tell her if something was going on with the clan. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had troubles before.

  When she crept into Quinn’s room and turned his things upside down, she found a message from home. They’d only been there a few days, the messenger must have rode day and night from the moment they’d left. Sure enough, something was wrong and Quinn was wanted back at home. She was taken aback to find they hadn’t wanted Quinn to come with her at all, and felt betrayed and treated like an outsider. Did her own family and friends, people she’d known all her life, consider her only by her English half, counting the days until they could be rid of her?

  Her heart sank further at the thought of Quinn leaving. As much as she wanted to hit him a good lot of the time, and as lovely as her new English auntie was to her, she didn’t want him to leave her. Well, whatever happened, all she could do was have a stiff upper lip about it. She recalled Miss Burnet’s words on her first day here, how she could choose whoever she wanted, due to her fortune. Her resolve solidified as she looked down at the message from Quinn’s advisor, a person she thought loved her, who she thought of like another brother. Pretty much telling Quinn to abandon her and race home to settle some dispute.

  She decided there and then to marry the person she liked best, title or no title, and to hell with what Quinn or any of her other so-called family thought about it. When the crops went to hell, maybe she’d send them a few bags of grain. Maybe she’d invite them to her estate one day. Maybe she wouldn’t.

  After she was done being outraged at the message from home, she dug around some more, to find something so stran
ge, she had to sit down on the edge of the bed. It was a letter written in her brother Lachlan’s own hand, giving a load of detailed instructions to Quinn on how to handle the farm, and the clan, and even her. The end puzzled her most of all. It begged Quinn’s forgiveness, and if Quinn should tell her the truth, he prayed she would forgive him as well. The truth about what? Why should he need her forgiveness? Her hands shook so badly, she had to place the page on the bed to read it through again. Questions flew through her mind like screaming crows, jostling at one another for her attention, but she couldn’t focus on any one thing. It was all too confusing.

  Her brother had been killed in a fire that had been set during a battle. He’d married Isobel Glen, the daughter of their perpetual enemy, and subsequently became laird of that clan after her father died. Lachlan’s death had been sudden and unexpected. When did he have time to write all these instructions?

  She realized there was more on the back, and not sure she could take any more, stared at the wall for a few moments before gathering her wits to read it. What she read so shocked her, she stood and paced the room, completely forgetting she was trespassing and needed to be mindful of the time. Her brother could return at any moment and then she’d be in trouble. Her shock turned to anger as the worry about Quinn’s return set in. Let him find her with the letter. She had loads of questions for him. What could he possibly say to her that would explain what she’d read?

  The back of the letter had the strangest and most frightening instructions, what seemed to be a spell for moving around in time. It involved chanting words Catie didn’t understand, a variety of herbs, and the worst, the most horrible, the blood. It seemed like the darkest witchcraft. Had her beloved brother Lachlan gone mad before he died, and was Quinn following in his footsteps?

  Quinn had his faults, some might say he was a bit degenerate, but he’d always seemed of sound mind and good character to her. His gambling and occasional drinking were just ways to blow off steam from the extreme amount of pressure Lachlan always put on him when he left on his raiding or hunting expeditions. She knew in her heart he was a good man. Both her brothers were. Weren’t they? What she’d seen on the back of that page froze her to her bones. Blood and chanting and time travel? Her mind reeling, she realized she needed to get out of there and hurriedly put everything away the way she’d found it.

  And now she was about to ransack her chaperone’s room. Her anger and confusion had settled in her chest and she wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to justify to herself the reason for searching Miss Burnet’s things as well as Quinn’s. If she was caught, they’d send her back to Scotland without blinking. Just a few days earlier that would have been fine by her, but now she quite liked London. Her kind new aunt would be so ashamed, and she’d never see her new friend Oliver again. The thought of Oliver, and his smiling, kind eyes, almost made her turn around and go back to her own room to try to sleep away the disturbing things she’d learned.

  It was the recollection of Quinn and Miss Burnet’s many exchanged looks to one another that kept her heading up the stairs. It was possible they were just flirting. It was completely probable given Quinn’s reputation, but now that Catie had the seed of suspicion rapidly growing in her mind, it shadowed any sensible thoughts that might have made her turn back. She wouldn’t put it past Quinn to have chosen Miss Burnet for reasons other than merely guiding her through the morass of society. Perhaps they were in cahoots together!

  She’d worked herself into a fine frenzy of indignation and only felt the slightest twinge of guilt when she opened Miss Burnet’s small wooden jewel box. Disappointment welled when all that it held were a few pieces of cheap jewelry. She rifled through the book on the bedside table and carefully sorted through the chest of clothes, finding the most bizarre and spectacular pair of shoes she’d ever seen. They were wispy, with tiny silver buckles and thin shiny straps, and the highest, most tottering heels she’d ever seen. Her foot was way too big as she compared them against the bottom of her slipper, but she tried one on anyway, holding onto the headboard of the bed for balance as she teetered on the magnificent shoe. ‘Made in Italy’ was neatly written in gold on the sole, and on the bottom of the inside she made out the words ‘Genuine Leather Sole - Balance Man Made’, along with the number 37.

  She shook off the fascination with the shoes and put them back under all the other clothes. She had a mission to find information, not try on all Miss Burnet’s things. That was just creepy, and wasn’t her intent. Pushing down her shame, she lay flat on the floor and peered under the bed. Her heart raced when she saw a box under there, and reached for it, getting a face full of dust bunnies for her trouble.

  The box was wrapped four times with string. Catie made sure to count as she unwound it, feeling like a foreign spy, and realizing with a jolt that was exactly what she was right now.

  “This is wrong,” she whispered, her hands poised over the lid of the box. There was still time to turn back and keep a bit of her integrity. “Bugger it all,” she muttered, flipping off the top. There was no turning back now.

  All she found were a few tatty old books, mostly plays and a couple filled with musical scores. Unable to pinpoint why she was disappointed, she started to close the box back up when a bit of bright white at the bottom of the pile caught her eye. It wasn’t a book, but a folded up envelope. She turned it in her hand, admiring the crisp, bright paper, then unfolded it and held it for a moment. If she opened it and read what was inside, she might find out something she didn’t want to know, very much like she had in Quinn’s room. Or she could just end up invading her new friend’s privacy and be a truly horrible person.

  “I’ve gone too far already,” she said, glancing around. There was no one to agree with her, or give her any reason not to do it, so she opened the envelope and slid out its contents.

  The paper was odd, with its torn edge dotted with neatly placed holes and blue lines running all across it. The message written on it was preposterous and made her head spin even more than it had in Quinn’s room. It couldn’t be real. It was just something to do with the books of plays that were along with it in the box. Pure fantasy, nothing more. But it was made out directly to Miss Burnet, her name was on the envelope as well. Catie sat on the floor, reading it over and over until she’d memorized it, feeling sicker with every pass of her eyes across the page. Who was Miss Burnet? What was she?

  Her eyes blurring with tears, she hastily put everything away, too distraught to remember to keep order or count wraps of the string. She shoved the hateful box back under the bed and staggered to her own room. The party was now a distant memory, as if it had happened months ago and not just that evening. Catie knew she had to deal with her new information, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it at the moment. As much as she wanted to find Quinn and make him tell her everything was fine, she knew she could no longer trust him. If Lachlan was still alive and by some dark magic gone to another time, if Miss Burnet herself was a part of it, neither one of them could be trusted.

  When she got to her own room, she collapsed on the bed and burrowed under the covers, dejected and shaking. A new, devastating idea grew until it surpassed every other bleak thought in her head. What if Lachlan was in trouble? What if he’d been coerced into leaving them? She tossed and turned until the sun glowed through her curtains, then finally fell asleep, hating everyone.

  Chapter 9

  Lizzie paused in front of the alley and looked up and down the street. It was extremely dangerous for her to be out so far past dark, and the little knife in her pocket didn’t seem as comforting to her as it did during the day. The closest light seemed miles away, not a soul in sight, and the shadowy depths of the alley seemed to go on forever. If she had to go down it, she decided she’d rather just go back to the house and await further instructions. No information about getting home could lure her into that smelly passage. She turned to leave, so spooked she was about to break into a run, when a skinny man stepped from the all
ey. He stopped a respectful distance from her and nodded a greeting.

  She took a step away. He wasn’t much taller than her, and he looked sickly, pale and angular in the moonlight. One of his buggy eyes twitched at her and he swept his black knit hat off his head and clutched it to his chest. His clothes weren’t right at all, and against her better judgement she leaned in to get a closer look. He wore an oversized tuxedo jacket over a ragged sweater, which was jammed bulkily under a striped waistcoat, the only thing that could have remotely been from this time. On his lower half, it looked like he had on tight fitting jeans tucked into motorcycle boots. All the air left her lungs in a shocked wheeze.

  “Who are you?” she gasped.

  He smiled and slapped his hat back on, then dug in his jacket pocket to produce a card. “Solomon Wodge,” he said, surprising her further by sounding like a posh Cambridge professor. “My calling card.”

  She took the card, and unable to read it in the dark, tucked it into her sleeve. “When are you from?” she hissed.

  “Whenever I want,” he said, staring at her disconcertingly.

  Frustrated and feeling the edges of fear, she clenched her fists at her sides. “Why did you want me to meet you here? Is there a new message from Lord Ashford? Is he still going to be able to make it?”

  Wodge’s hand snaked forward and grabbed her wrist, jerking her into the dark opening of the alley. “When is he coming?” he demanded. “Are you in league with the witches?”

  She was good and scared now and shook her head. “What? Witches?”

  A part of her wanted answers from this man who clearly came from another time, and a part of her wanted to kick him and run. Though he wasn’t much bigger than her, he was wiry and strong and his fingers dug painfully into her wrist.