Tarnished Amongst the Ton Part 6

'We are close.' She pulled the check string. 'If you get out here and walk around the corner to the left, you'll see the warehouse. Tell the driver to take me to the entrance in a few minutes.'

When she entered the warehouse with a nod to the guard on the door and the scurrying clerks, she found men she recognised inside. Taciturn, shabby figures with notebooks, they made secretive jottings as they pa.s.sed amongst the packing cases and racks. Her fellow dealers spared her curt greetings and a.s.sessing looks, their faces as blank as those of card players in the midst of a high-stakes game.

It was not hard to locate Ashe. He was strolling along the crowded aisles, a faint sneer curving his lips, Joe Bertram, the warehouse manager, at his heels. She watched as he stopped and shook his head over a display of just the sort of small items she was interested in.

'Who the blazes is that?' One of the dealers stopped next to Phyllida and jerked his head at Ashe, who was rolling his eyes at a large vase.

'I have no idea,' she said, hardly able to recognise the supercilious Indian gentleman they were looking at. 'But he looks as though he knows what he is talking about.'

'He's putting the wind up old Bertram. Might lower the prices for all of us,' the man said with a chuckle and moved on.

Ashe approached her, paused and produced a slight inclination of the head. His face was expressionless, an aristocrat showing courtesy to a lesser being. Phyllida ignored him and made a pretence of studying some vast urns before going to the small items. Her heart was racing as she picked up the first delicate tea bowl. There was high-quality famille rose, some exquisite blue-and-white incense burners, charming unglazed terracotta miniature figures, plates... She would have to consider very carefully and bargain hard.

On the edge of her concentration she could hear Ashe, his voice strongly accented as he condescended to take an interest in a suite of vases. She put the pieces she wanted to one side, added some more as sacrifices once the bargaining began, and looked around for Bertram or one of his a.s.sistants. At the doorway there was jostling, laughter, a string of swear words, then Harry Buck and his bullies swaggered in. All around her the dealers faded into the background, like terriers yielding to a bulldog at the bear pit.

Only Ashe, inspecting the base of a bowl, the nervous Mr Bertram and herself were left exposed to the stare of Buck's muddy brown eyes. They flickered over Ashe, visibly dismissed him as a foreigner, over Bertram, who hurried to Buck's side at the jerk of his head, and then fixed on her. Phyllida could feel the stare like the touch of greasy fingers on her skin. Her nightmares began and ended with Buck, his coa.r.s.e laughter, his thick fingers, the smell of onions on his breath. Why was he here? She was trapped.

She kept her eyes fixed on the bowl she was holding, its sides so thin she could see the ghosts of her fingers through the white porcelain. If it had a mark, it was blurred. Phyllida put it down before it fell from her fingers and pretended to make a note.

'Wot we got 'ere, then?' Buck sauntered over. 'Some dolly mop looking for a nice teapot, eh? Bit pricey for you, darlin', best look down the market. Or I can put you in the way of earning some dosh. Take the weight off your feet.'

Perhaps he wouldn't recognise her. He never had in all the times he had glimpsed her in the East End after that first time and she had taken great care that they were only glimpses. She fought to rea.s.sure herself. Why should he recognise in the drably dressed woman in her mid-twenties one terrified seventeen-year-old virgin? How many other desperate girls who needed to earn some dosh, bargaining with the only thing of value they possessed, had pa.s.sed through those dirty hands since then?

But Buck had never been so close, so focused on her alone before. She had always managed to slip away, vanish around corners, merge behind something more interesting when she had inadvertently strayed across his path.

She could smell him now: tobacco, sweat, onions, a cheap cologne. Phyllida gripped the edge of the table and fought the primitive instinct to run.

'I know you, don't I? Where do you deal?' Buck demanded. His shrewd eyes were narrowed on her face.

Phyllida fought for self-possession. If she showed fear, it would only intrigue him more.

He raised one hand as if to take her by the chin and hold her while he studied her face. 'Wot's your name?'

'I do not think the lady wishes to talk. You are distracting her from studying the goods.' The calm accented voice came from her right, then she felt the brush of his coat hem against her skirts as Ashe moved to stand between her and Buck.

'You're not from round 'ere, are you?' Buck said. 'Perhaps you don't know how things go. I was talking to this piece.'

'Things go the same around the world,' Ashe said calmly. 'A gentleman does not trouble a lady.'

'Yeah? Well, I'm no gent and she's no lady.' Buck slammed down a hand on the trestle table beside Phyllida's hip. She flinched away and found one of the bullies had moved round behind her. 'So you take yourself off, pretty boy, before you gets hurt.'

There was a sudden movement, a flash, and a thin knife was quivering in the wood between Buck's thumb and forefinger. The porcelain shivered and clattered together with the force.

'My hand slipped,' Ashe said into the thick silence. 'I find that happens when I am crowded. What a pity if anyone was to fall and break your valuable consignment, sir.'

'Mine?' Buck did not move his hand. His attention had shifted from Phyllida like an actual weight lifting from her chest.

'I think you are the money behind this, are you not? I really do suggest you ask your men to move away. If I were to faint from terror I think I would probably fall against that stand of Song Dynasty wares, which would be a tragedy, considering how valuable they are and the fact that I was prepared to spend a significant sum on that set of vases.'

'You were, were you?' Buck eased his hand away, his eyes fixed on Ashe's face. He was a lout and a bully, Phyllida thought as she fought to get her breathing under control, but he was not stupid enough to lose money to make a point, not if he could save face. No one else could see the knife. And then it vanished as fast as it had appeared, point first into Ashe's left sleeve.

'I was. If we can agree on price. And, if you do not frighten the lady away, I imagine she was about to enquire about the cost of the articles she has set to one side.'

She looked up at Ashe looming large and dangerous next to her. He seemed completely relaxed, but then she was probably tense enough for both of them. He held Buck's stare with his own and the man's wavered.

'Show us your money first.'

'No. We agree a price first. Then I send for the money, then we make an exchange,' Ashe said as pleasantly as if they were chatting over afternoon tea.

'Done,' Buck said with a grunt and moved away, his men pushing past Ashe and Phyllida to follow him.

'Oh, my G.o.d.' She unclenched her fingers from the trestle table and painfully ma.s.saged life back into them. 'Are we going to get out of here alive?'

'If I spend enough money,' Ashe said with a suppressed laugh. 'Have you chosen?'

'Yes.' Phyllida knew she could not just bolt from the warehouse, which was what every instinct was screaming at her to do. It would draw attention back to her and Ashe would be curious. She righted a little figure that had been knocked over with the force of the knife blow.

Ashe gestured to Bertram and stood back as she haggled. Her voice shook at first, but the familiar cut and thrust of bargaining soothed her a little and they agreed a price that gave her almost everything that she wanted. 'I'll take them now,' she said, paid, then stood aside while a porter packed the pieces and Ashe negotiated the price of the vases.

'They are Northern Song,' Bertram declared. 'Very rare.'

'No, they are southern celadon ware. Thirteenth century, quite late for Song,' Ashe countered.

He knows what he is talking about. It was easy to watch and listen to Ashe, to the rhythm of that lovely, lilting accent, to the fluent movement of his hands as he gestured. He had become less European, more Indian, just by the way he pitched his voice, the way he stood. He did not nod, but swayed his head from side to side in the sinuous Indian gesture of agreement.

Fascinated, she watched, saw Bertram's nervous glances to the back of the warehouse, guessed he was under orders from Buck about the price. Ashe was going to pay in money for coming to her rescue.

'I'll help this lady out with her purchases,' he said when the deal was concluded. 'And I will send for my man with the money. Do not pack them until I get back, we wouldn't want anything to get chipped, would we?'

Or subst.i.tuted, Phyllida thought. But what man with the money?

Ashe summoned the waiting hackney, helped her in and put her purchases on the seat. 'Go around the corner and wait,' he said to the driver. 'I'll be about half an hour. If anyone else approaches, drive off and circle round, I do not want the lady bothered.'

No one approached, but after a few moments Buck strolled out and leaned against the door frame, his eyes fixed on the hackney. He made no effort to approach, but it felt as though his speculative gaze could penetrate the walls and see her, huddled in the furthest corner like a rabbit in a trap.

Twenty minutes later Ashe wedged the box containing his vases on the seat next to Phyllida's porcelain and swung into the hackney. 'All right? I had to make a pretence of going for the cash. If they'd had any idea how much I was carrying...'

'Yes.'

Ashe studied her face and the way she gripped the strap far too tightly, even allowing for the carriage's lurching progress over the uneven cobbles. 'That was Buck again, wasn't it? The man from the quayside.'

'Yes.' After a moment she seemed to force herself to add to the stark monosyllable. 'You might say he's the local lord of crime. He owns the b-brothels, runs the gaming dens, takes protection money from all the shopkeepers.' Her voice was as tight as her fingers on the leather loop.

'You are scared of him.'

'Everyone with any sense is scared of Buck. Except you, apparently.'

'Perhaps I have no sense. Why do you come into this area and risk meeting him?'

'Because this is how I earn my living.' The look she shot him said clearly that he did not understand. 'I have to buy cheap and sell high, so I scour the p.a.w.nshops, talk to the sailors, buy from warehouses like this one. But if I had known Buck owned it, I wouldn't have come,' she admitted. 'And thank you. I should have said that immediately. You were... You knew exactly how to treat him. I just freeze, he makes my skin crawl.'

'He's a bully. He won't risk being hurt-in his body or his wallet. A man prepared to stand up to him, someone he doesn't know, armed and unpredictable-he would back down. There is nothing you, or any woman, could have done with him in those circ.u.mstances.'

'Yes,' Phyllida agreed, her knuckles almost splitting the thin leather of her gloves. She was still desperately upset by the threat of violence, Ashe realised. All this calm acceptance of what he said was simply a cover.

'Phyllida, it is all right to have been frightened, you can stop being brave about it.'

She shook her head and muttered something he did not catch, beyond one word, feeble.

'That is nonsense,' he said sharply and could have kicked himself when her lower lip trembled for a second before she caught it viciously between her teeth. 'Come here.' He turned and, before she could protest, lifted her on to his knees. He untied her dreadful bonnet and threw it on to the seat opposite. There was a tussle over her grip on the strap, then she let it go and turned her face into his shoulder. 'You can cry if you want to, I don't mind.'

Phyllida took a deep breath, but there were no sobs. Ashe put his arms around her to hold her steady from the jolting and waited. 'Thank you,' she muttered.

'Don't mention it. I mean it, you may cry,' he added after a moment. 'I'm a brother, don't forget, I have training for this.'

That provoked a m.u.f.f led snort of laughter from the region of his shirt front. She was not weeping, he realised, although she seemed to find the embrace comforting.

Sara always used to hurl herself into his arms and sob noisily over the frustrations of life, the little tragedies, the general unfairness of parents. But it was a long time since his sister had cried on his shoulder. As Phyllida relaxed, her body becoming soft and yielding against his, the memory of a sisterly hug faded.

The last time he had held a woman like this it had been Reshmi in his embrace and she had been weeping in bitter, betrayed grief because he had told her he would not take her back with him as his mistress when he came to England. And they had both known that he could not marry a courtesan from his great-uncle's court.

Phyllida stirred, settled against him, taking comfort, he supposed, from his warmth and the strength of the man who had just intervened to protect her. His reflexes, sharpened by the aggression at the warehouse, brought the scent of her, the feel of her, vividly to him. Subtle jasmine, the heat of her body sharpened by fear, the rustle of petticoats beneath the plain woollen fabric of her skirts, soft, feminine curves made to fit his hard angles and flat planes.

His body reacted predictably, hardening, the weight low in his belly, the thrill of antic.i.p.ation, of the hunt. He would protect her against everything and everybody. Except himself. He wanted her and he would have her.

Chapter Eight.

It would be bliss to stay here, wrapped in Ashe's arms, sinking into the sweet illusion that everything was all right, that she was loved and cared for by this strong man who would sweep her away from all her troubles. I love you, Phyllida, he would murmur. I do not care about your birth or any secrets you keep from me. I will marry you.

Such a sweet fantasy. Just a minute more. Or perhaps not. Phyllida became aware that however gallantly Ashe had protected her at the warehouse, and however brotherly this embrace might have been at the beginning, he was not thinking brotherly thoughts now.

He was aroused. As she snuggled into his lap there was no mistaking the matter, the crude physical reality of male desire. His hands might be still, but his breathing had changed. His body was tense, as though he was holding himself in check. It would not take very much encouragement, she sensed, to shatter that control. She was not the usual unmarried lady, fenced about with rules and a.s.sumptions that a gentleman was expected to observe, and she had given him every reason to believe her unconventional and reckless.

The temptation to twist around in Ashe's arms, to seek his mouth, to savour his heat and pa.s.sion and strength, fled like mist in the sun. He would, she sensed, be a generous, careful lover, but even if she could subdue her fears about making love with him, she could not hide what had happened to her from a man with experience.

And afterwards? Had she really been thinking of risking that hard-won acceptance in society, her good name, simply for the dream of an hour in this man's arms? Besides, Ashe might well reject her encouragement, she told herself. Just because his body reacted to a woman on his lap it did not mean that he wanted her.

The shock of the confrontation with Buck, the heart-stopping threat of violence, had disordered her emotions and her judgement.

'Oh, good Heavens, look, we are nearly at Great Ryder Street,' Phyllida said with a brightness that sounded entirely false to her own ears. 'What on earth has happened to my bonnet?' She regained her seat with as much dignity as she could muster and found the hat lying on the dusty floor of the cab. 'Thank you, I am so sorry I allowed my nerves to be so overset.' She swiped at the dust with enough violence to crumple the bunch of artificial violets tucked under the ribbon.

'Where do you want the porcelain taken? Here or the shop?' Ashe asked, as though they had not been entangled in an embrace in a public vehicle, with no window blinds, for the past ten minutes.

'Here, please.' She would not be fl.u.s.tered or allow him to guess how she had so nearly allowed her feelings to overcome her good sense just now. The cab drew up at the kerb, Ashe helped her down and took the key to open the door for her before lifting down her package and carrying it into the hallway.

'You will not go back there.' He seemed to tower over her in the narrow s.p.a.ce and she could feel her resolution not to reach for him weakening again.

'The warehouse? No.' She could promise that with heart-felt sincerity.

'Too much to hope that you will not go into that part of London again, I suppose.' Ashe touched her cheek with the back of his hand. 'I have been able to distract Buck twice, I might not be there the third time.'

'I will be careful.' Her own hand was over his, although she had no recollection of lifting it.

'Here, guv'nor! You want to go on, or wot?'

'My coachman awaits,' Ashe said. He stopped at the foot of the steps and looked back. 'Au'voir.'

'Au'voir,' she echoed as she pushed the door closed. The box sat in the middle of the hall, something immediate to do. Something real. Phyllida took a deep breath. 'Gregory! Are you home? I need some help.'

'This is from Lady Arnold.' a.n.u.sha Herriard looked up from a letter in her hand. 'She invites us for a few days at the end of the week to their estate near Windsor. I had been speaking to her about Almack's and the importance of vouchers for Sara and she tells me that two of the patronesses will be there, which is thoughtful of her.'

'Ashe and I were going down to Eldonstone,' the marquess said. 'Are these vouchers so important?'

'Essential, Papa.' Sara shook her head at him in mock reproof. 'You have not been paying attention. If you want to marry me off well, then Almack's is the main Marriage Mart.'

'Ghastly expression.' Ashe put down his own afternoon post and shuddered. 'Someone asked me if I was taking part, as though it is a sporting event.' He supposed it might be, if he saw himself as the waterbuck pursued by the hounds.

'There is no hurry for you,' his mother said, pa.s.sing the letter to her husband. 'Do not look so hara.s.sed, Ashe.'

'There is no denying that a daughter-in-law who knows the ropes would be a help for you,' Ashe pointed out. It was one of the reasons for marriage that he kept reminding himself about and his mother's rueful smile only reinforced the point.

'It sounds as though you would have plenty of choice if you come to this house party,' his father remarked as he scanned the sheet in his hand. 'And several of the peers I want to talk to will be there by the look of it. Sooner or later I must sort out my political affiliations and a relaxed country gathering is probably a good a place as any to make a start.'

'So you want to postpone our trip to Eldonstone?' Ashe asked him.

'I would say, yes, but then there is this letter from Perrott.' He handed it across the luncheon table. 'It seems my father had no patience with the ornaments and collections of his forebears and the place is stuffed with crates and boxes filled at random with every kind of stuff. Perrott frankly confesses himself at a loss as to know how to begin to sort it out and what is of value and needs special care and what is not.'

'Poor devil,' Ashe said with a grin. 'He sounds thoroughly exasperated. I'll go by myself, if you like. At least I can sort out Oriental porcelain and ivories for him and have a stab at any gemstones.' His father was expressionless and Ashe tried to a.s.sess how many bad old memories the thought of the family home was stirring up. 'Of course, if you want to be the first one to return there...'

'No.' The marquess shook his head. 'I only ever saw the place once. My father and grandfather were at odds, as you know. By the time I came along my father was not received. I went there in the hope the old man would stop my father packing me off to India. I got as far as his study and no further.'

'I'll go, then,' Ashe offered. 'I can manage to postpone my plunge into the Marriage Mart for a few days.' The feeling of reprieve was a surprise. He had not expected to actually enjoy the experience of finding a wife, but neither, he thought, had he been dreading it. Not that Eldonstone, haunted by his ancestors and heavy with the burden of unwanted responsibility, was likely to be much of a holiday.

'We'll have to hire an expert, I suppose,' his father said. 'Get it sorted, cleaned up, catalogued and evaluated.'

There was a murmur of agreement from his mother. No one, it seemed, was eager to tackle the chaos of the big house. The gloom of the town residence was bad enough. 'I have made some progress here,' she said. 'Most of the clutter has been stripped out of the main salon and I had that cream silk I brought with us made up into curtains. Come and see what you think.'

They followed her through into the largest reception room, full of admiration for the transformation. 'This is just the right setting for a present I have for you, Mata.'

Ashe fetched the celadon vases from their packing case and set them on the grey marble of the mantelshelf. The subtle green seemed to glow in the light the cream curtains allowed into the room.

'Now those are perfect. Thank you, darling. Where did you find them?'