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'Every time you ring he looks worried,' Brendan told her. 'He hasn't needed to tell me anything. I can read his face.'
Quincy walked to the window and stared down into the busy street below. 'Maybe he picked up that I was feeling rather fed up,' she said. 'The magazine editor has been hustling me around London like a sheepdog with a stray sheep and I was sick of it.'
'You've done something to your hair,' Brendan noticed. 'I like it,' he added. 'It's very pretty like that.'
'Thank you,' said Quincy, turning to smile at him. It was very kind of him to come all this way with an idea of protecting her, even if it was galling that he should feel she needed protection.
His face brightened as he saw that her first flare of irritation had faded. 'I suppose you wouldn't come out and show me London?' he asked. 'We could have lunch somewhere.'
She hesitated, her eyes on the couch behind him, then her face hardened. Last night she had come very close to giving Joe Aldonez what he wanted and she was not so innocent that she didn't realise he might have been playing with her, deliberately exaggerating his own weariness in order to seduce her. Quincy looked ahead to the next few days, alarmed. Joe had somehow gained an advantage over her last night. In the dangerous duel between them he had snatched several points from her without her understanding what was happening. He might well plan to wage a campaign from now on which, he could hope, would end in Quincy weakly surrendering. Maybe Brendan was right. Maybe Joe was ruthless. How could she be certain either way? She barely knew him; she knew Brendan. Only a blind fool would trust a man whose background was so different from her own.
Brendan saw the uncertainty in her eyes. 'Please, Quincy,' he pressed, and she nodded.
'Okay, I'll get ready—where did you want to go?'
'You're my guide,' he said, looking delighted. 'What should I see? The weather is so terrific I thought we could go for a trip on the river.'
'I haven't done that yet,' Quincy said. 'I'd love it— you get the boat from Charing Cross. If the tide is right you can go up river towards Windsor, but if the river is too high you have to go down towards the sea. Whichever way you go, you get a great view of London.'
When they left the flat, she saw that Brendan had not been exaggerating—the morning had that clear, bright freshness which spring sometimes gives to surprise you, the sky cloudless blue, the wind brisk but not sharp, and the trees along the Embankment bursting out into full leaf, it seemed, overnight.
'Why don't we walk to Charing Cross?' Brendan suggested, so they walked quickly along the river, following the twists and turns of it as it lay chained within the old concrete walls rising from the river bank. On the far side of the water, the windows of office blocks flashed back the sunlight at them, and a motorboat chugged past, dipping and rising on the choppy waves.
'What have you been up to while you've been here?' Brendan asked, and she told him with wry self-mockery.
'I felt a fool,' she ended, and Brendan looked at her, nodding.
'I'm not surprised. They're using you.'
'I'm not that much of a fool,' Quincy snapped. 'I realised that. I'm angry with myself for agreeing to come here in the first place, but I let myself be talked into it, and now it's too late to back out.' She stopped, sighing. 'There are only another few days to go then I'll be back home,' she ended, wishing her heart did not sink as she said that.
They reached Charing Cross to find that the only boat available was going down past St Paul's and Tower Bridge since the tide was not right in the other direction. Although the weather was bright, the water was far from calm and the trip was distinctly lively. Quincy and Brendan sat on the open deck, clinging to the rail, watching the grey waves churning along the side of the hull. The London skyline edged the river on each side, many of the landmarks so familiar that they did not need the voice of the guide on the tannoy to point them out. Quincy stared in horrified fascination at the crumbling old wharf which had once been the scene of executions during the dangerous time when pirates sailed the seas of the world. Convicted pirates had been chained to the dock to await the rising tide which would drown them, the guide told them, making her shudder.
'I went to the London Dungeon yesterday,' she told Brendan. 'The waxworks are all frightening; executions and murders, the most horrible scenes. I couldn't wait to get out.'
'Have you been to the Tower?' Brendan asked, and she nodded.
'Carmen Lister took me there.'
The boat turned back to Charing Cross half an hour later. Quincy was huddled in her coat, her skin whipped icily by the freshening wind blowing from the sea. On either bank she saw the flat, featureless marshes of Essex stretching away to a grey horizon, seabirds rising at the river edge, from the muddy shores, their spread wings flapping as they took flight.
When they reached Charing Cross again, they disembarked, walking stiffly at first before they accustomed themselves to being back on dry land. They had lunch at a popular restaurant near Trafalgar Square, traffic swirling past noisily.
'Where are you staying, Brendan?' she asked as they drank their coffee.
'A small hotel near Regent's Park,' he said. 'It's quite quiet there at night.'
Quincy glanced at her watch, frowning. 'I ought to go back to the flat in case I've been missed—Carmen Lister said she would ring me this afternoon and tell me what plans they have.'
As they left the restaurant a taxi swung past and Brendan hailed it. Quincy climbed in with more haste than common sense, and banged her head violently on the edge of the door. She sank into the seat, holding her hand to the throbbing bruise. Brendan clambered after her, told the driver where to take them, and asked Quincy anxiously if she was badly hurt.
'I'll be okay,' she said, but her head was aching so much she could not speak again for a whole minute.
It only took the taxi five minutes to cover the ground from Trafalgar Square to the flat in Chelsea and as it came to a halt outside the building Brendan got out and helped Quincy to descend, his arm around her waist. He paid the driver and looked down at her with a worried frown.
'I hope you haven't got concussion—that was quite a knock you took.'
'It's wearing off,' she said, forcing a smile.
