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She had asked him to kiss her out of curiosity, pure and simple, because she was never going to get the chance to be kissed again and he was, after all, just her friend and the only man she could possibly ask such a thing of. And now…Now she realised she had started something that she could not stop, for herself at least. You could not put that sort of knowledge back in the bottle and forget you did not know what a man’s mouth felt like on yours, how his body felt, so intimately close. How he tasted, smelt. How this man felt. And there, at the back of her mind, was the nagging doubt that it had not been simply curiosity, that she had wanted him to kiss her because…
‘That was very interesting.’ Elinor sat up abruptly. It was essential she gave him no clue how this had affected her. If he thought she was a little idiot for naïvely asking him to kiss her, so much the better. ‘I can quite see why young ladies are not supposed to do it.’ She made herself look at him again and was surprised to find that he was still Theo, large and friendly and smiling at her, the dimple appearing in his chin. If she leaned forwards, she
could just reach it with her lips. No! No, this wasn’t the same. He had not changed, but she had.
‘Thank you,’ she added, sounding stilted to her own ears. Knowing how she felt, guessing how she must look, Elinor had a sudden recollection of a number of occasions when she had seen Cousin Bel looking just like that. Goodness, that must have been when she was meeting Ashe! Hastily she shut down her imagination and concentrated on smoothing her skirts.
‘It was my pleasure, I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ Theo said, as though she had just thanked him for carrying her easel. ‘I did,’ he added, making her blush.
‘I said it was interesting,’ Elinor said, speaking sharply in her anxiety least he think she would want him to do it again. ‘I certainly will not allow Count Leon to do any such thing,’ she added.
‘I should hope not. Save all your kisses for me,’ Theo teased. At least, she supposed he was teasing—they would not do this again, of course. His expression became suddenly serious. ‘You now know so much about why I am here that it is probably more dangerous, for both of us, not to tell you the whole.’
Elinor caught her breath. At last he is going to confide. And whatever it was, however dreadful, at least it would be something she could deal with intellectually, not some emotional puzzle she could not understand.
Chapter Seven
‘I told you that I make my living buying and selling antiquities.’ She murmured assent, forcing her scattered wits to focus on this and not on what had just happened. ‘I often work for collectors, on commission. Sometimes for a specific object, sometimes simply to keep my eyes open for whatever it is that interests them—early Italian paintings, small Roman ceramics and so forth. In the case of the late Count de Beaumartin, it was to track down the dispersed furnishings and paintings from his Paris house and the chateau.
‘I had some success and gained his confidence. He hinted that he had an object of great worth he wished to sell, but it was for a specialised market. Finally I managed to tease out of him that it was a piece of seventeenth-century metalwork of a highly erotic nature. I need not go into detail—’
‘For goodness’ sake, Theo, you may as well. I am not going to faint away.’ It was completely unladylike, but now, with her body still singing from his kiss, she was more than a little curious about what a highly erotic item might look like.
‘Very well, don’t blame me if you are shocked. Two hundred years ago the then count was highly dissolute, positively depraved in fact. He, and like-minded friends, formed a club of sorts to indulge these tastes.’
‘Like the Hellfire Club,’ Elinor interrupted. ‘Sir Francis Dashwood. Don’t look like that,’ she added as Theo stared at her. ‘Mama does not censor my reading and there are books on every sort of subject in the library. I think we have something on him because of the architectural interest of the temple and catacombs at West Wycombe that Dashwood built.’
‘This was very much worse than Dashwood’s play-acting at monks and nuns with his friends,’ Theo said grimly. He did not sound even faintly titillated by the tale he was unfolding. ‘Dashwood employed prostitutes, but de Beaumartin took the women he wanted by force, and the more innocent they were, the better. He died mysteriously and the rumours were that outraged local peasants, tired of their daughters being debauched, rose up and murdered him.’
Elinor felt a sudden chill. This was not amusing any more—they were talking about a seriously unpleasant man. ‘A revolting person—but surely that is not why you are warning me about the present count?’
‘No. The family has spent a century and a half trying to live down the association of their name with depravity. But rumours still persist, amongst them the tale that objects of great value and artistic merit were created for the fellowship to use in their rituals. The finest of them was a chalice and that was what the late count offered to sell me. He needed the money and it is not an object that could ever be shown publicly.’
‘But you have seen it?’
‘Yes. I saw it, drew it and went back to England to discuss it with a certain connoisseur—let us call him Lord X—who collects objects of that nature. He owns some of Dashwood’s paraphernalia as well, but this far surpasses them in quality.’
‘May I see the drawings?’ she asked, interested in the craftsmanship more than anything else. She knew nothing about early seventeenth-century goldsmiths’ work.
‘Certainly not! I returned, with a very substantial amount of money and the authority to negotiate with the count. I purchased the Chalice from him at their Paris house, we exchanged receipts, I left for the coast. An hour from Dover I stopped at an inn to eat and change horses and I was attacked, knocked unconscious and the Chalice and the count’s receipt stolen.’
‘You have no idea by whom?’ Elinor found she was leaning forwards, her fingers clasped tightly together, completely caught up in the tale.
‘I thought at first it was Count Leon. He is very unhappy about the scandalous object being out of their family control. However, when I heard that his father had been found dead the next day, his head split open on the hearth, I did wonder. Would he go to such lengths to avert even the hint of scandal? But sons have killed fathers before now and it may have been an accident in the course of a quarrel.’
‘So you have come back to find it?’
‘I have told him I want to buy it, not revealing that I already have. He says he does not have it, that it has been stolen, but I do not know that I believe him. There were others I suspected, but they are all converging on Beaumartin. Why should they do that if they have the Chalice?’
Elinor gave an unladylike whistle. ‘No wonder the atmosphere was tense. From the way you spoke to the Marquesa, is she one of the suspects?’
‘She is in the same business as I am. Whether she was ever married to the Marqués de Cordovilla, or even if that gentleman existed, I have no idea. We met, acted upon a certain mutual attraction, and I can only guess she found my notebooks. So she is a possibility. She certainly has the cold-blooded determination for theft, to hit me over the head and possibly even to murder. And there are the two English collectors, man and wife, Sir Ian and Lady Tracey, who appear to have become aware of the Chalice from a leak at Lord X’s end of things. I had thought I had disposed of them neatly with a harmless trick. I would not suspect them of the violence, to be honest, but they owe me a grudge, and I cannot afford to dismiss anyone.’
‘And they are attending the house party, too. Goodness.’ They were silent. Elinor digesting what she had just heard while Theo picked daisies and began to pull the petals off, his expression one of brooding thought. Doubtless he had gone over and over the conundrum, all to no avail. ‘I can understand why you started to become alarmed that you had involved Mama and me. Never mind, I am sure I can be a great help,’ she reassured him.
‘You will be no such thing,’ he said hotly. ‘You will be a perfect English miss.’ Elinor snorted. When had she ever been one of those? ‘You will pretend this is a normal houseparty and—’
‘Steer clear of my host who may be a parricide, my fellow guests who may also be murderers, one of whom was your lover and the other two who are your deadly rivals?’
