"How do you know that Quinn is in London?" she asked with smoldering excitement, the trace of a foreign accent lending a mysterious allure to her voice.

"I saw him riding in Rotten Row not more than two hours ago."

"Was he alone?" The black-haired beauty tried to make her question seem unimportant, but the tension around her skillfully rouged mouth betrayed her.

"Oh, Anna!" The other woman pronounced the name with a soft "a." "Surely you are not going to be as foolish about him now as you were the last time he was in London."

"It is not foolishness! He obsesses me."

"You and half the other women in London."

"But he doesn't come back to other women as he comes back to me."

"Why does he have this hold on you, Anna? We've both been with many other men. None, perhaps, quite as handsome but, still…"

"Because he is exciting, dangerous." Anna lowered her voice, but the words were still audible to Noelle. "I want him, but he will not be owned. He is immune to all the tricks that a woman uses. If I pout, he laughs. If I rage at him, he is indifferent."

"And in bed?" The other woman leaned forward in her seat. "How is he in bed?"

Anna's eyes clouded, and her lips parted seductively as she stared unseeingly past her companion. "Like no other. He makes hard, desperate love to me, and I forget everything else. The next time, I vow that I will hold back, make him plead with me. But I know I am lying to myself. He touches me, my strength disappears, and I give him everything."

Noelle could listen to no more. She did not even bother to count the coins she threw down on the table, so desperate was she to escape overhearing any more of the woman's repugnant confidences.

Much to Noelle's relief, Quinn was not present for supper that night, nor did she hear him return to the house, although it was well past midnight before she turned down her light.

Chapter Seventeen

"Miss Catherine Welby to see you, ma'am."

"Whatever for?" Noelle wondered aloud as she glanced at the clock on her desk. It was barely ten o'clock, hardly an appropriate hour for a caller to present herself, especially one who had been as consistently unfriendly as Catherine Welby.

"Show her to the drawing room, Tomkins. And I suppose you had better send in tea."

As the butler closed the door behind him, Noelle reluctantly set aside the stack of invitations she had been answering and banged the lid of the desk shut, rattling a china shepherdess perched on the top. Normally a job she detested, the task had today provided her with an excuse to seal herself away in her parlor until lunch. By that time, she calculated that Quinn would have left the house, and she would have avoided, at least for the morning, another encounter with him.

The heels of her slippers clattered noisily when they hit the marble of the foyer. Automatically she muffled her steps. He had barely been in the house for twenty-four hours, and she already felt like a prisoner.

Smoothing her dress, she entered the drawing room. "Miss Welby, how nice to see you."

"Do call me Catherine, and I shall, of course, call you Dorian," her caller bubbled effusively as she patted the place next to her invitingly. Noelle sat reluctantly, putting as wide a distance between them as the limited dimensions of the settee and common politeness would permit.

"I just know we shall be the best of friends, Dorian. We have so much in common." She then began chronicling the most recent of her social activities.

Noelle barely listened as she tried to puzzle out the motive behind the unexpected call. She and Catherine Welby had attended several of the same functions; however, they were hardly friends. The fluffy little blonde had barely spoken a dozen words to her, and those had been begrudging.

"I beg your pardon?" Noelle returned her attention to her unwelcome caller, aware that she had missed something.

"I asked if you would like to ride with me in the park next week."

'"I'm sorry, but I don't ride."

"You don't ride?" Miss Welby's astonishment could not have been greater if her hostess had just announced her escape from a Turkish seraglio.

"I was raised in India, you know." Noelle adopted a faintly superior air, as if that should explain everything.

"Oh? Quite so."

There was a brief pause, and then Miss Welby plunged into an account of a new riding habit she was having made, describing each tuck and trim in painstaking detail. Noelle was suppressing a yawn with the utmost difficulty when tea arrived.

"Tell me something about yourself," Miss Welby commanded as she took up her cup.

"There's little to tell. My parents died in India several years ago and my uncle has graciously offered me his home."

"So sad to lose your parents. But how lucky you are to have such a kind uncle."

"Yes, he has been wonderful to me."

Miss Welby's saucer eyes, as innocently clear as a cloistered nun's, peeked over the rim of her cup. "And had you met your dashing cousin before you arrived in England?"

"No, we had never met."

"What a surprise he must have been to you."

"You can't imagine," Noelle responded dryly.

Footsteps were faintly audible in the foyer, and Miss Welby's eyes slid covertly to the door. When the steps continued down the hallway, she could not quite conceal her disappointment.

"Is your cousin an early riser?"

"I am afraid I do not know him well enough to be familiar with his personal habits."

"Miss Cynthia Rowland to see you, ma'am."

Tomkins had barely finished announcing her when Miss Rowland swept into the room, her ribbons fluttering. "Dorian, I had a simply marvelous time the other night. You must persuade your uncle to have another ball soon. Now, tell me about your cousin. Is it true he killed a man in a duel and fled from America to escape being arrested? One hears such stories about him."

Noelle took a deep breath and tried to suppress her annoyance. These silly girls were using her to get a glimpse of Quinn! Was there to be no end to the complications he brought into her life?

"Miss Priscilla Fargate and Miss Cecily Lambreth-Smythe, ma'am." Tomkins's expression was one of faint bewilderment.

By the end of the morning, Noelle had received six female callers. When the last had finally been shown out, her head was throbbing, and her temper was frayed. Storming out of the drawing room, she found Quinn standing in the foyer, speaking with Tomkins.

Noelle marched up to the butler and planted her hand on her hip, pointedly ignoring Quinn. "Tomkins, if any more unmarried ladies come to call, you are to put them in the drawing room and summon Mr. Copeland to receive them. I am no longer at home."

With that she shot Quinn a chafing glare and stalked down the hallway to her parlor.

To Noelle's relief, for the next few days she saw little of Quinn. He was gone much of the time and did not return to take his meals with them. However, life in Northridge Square did not settle back into its familiar pattern. There was a vague feeling of dysphoria -of lives shifted from a comfortable fulcrum and not yet rebalanced. Simon was particularly attentive to her, bringing her small gifts, taking her riding in his carriage, teaching her to play backgammon and vingt-et-un. But, as he volunteered nothing about her divorce other than vague, dismissive references, their relationship was strained.

For his part, Simon was not a happy man. The dream of a spring afternoon in Sussex, of Constance, warm and responsive beneath him, was never far from his mind. Now they saw each other only in the company of others, and Constance's unfailing courtesy was like a knife stabbing away at him.

And then there was Noelle. He was experiencing vague pangs of conscience about manipulating her in his determination to see her in place as Quinn's wife.

But the dream of a Copeland dynasty governed him, and as was his habit, he subjugated his emotions. Sensing Quinn's interest in Noelle, he set aside his plan to force the marriage. If it became necessary, he could still arrange for their abduction and then announce to society that they had eloped. But for now he was content to let events follow their own course.

The gaslights of Covent Garden flooded their box as Act Two of The Marriage of Figaro romped to its high-spirited conclusion. Thomas fixed Noelle with a worshiping gaze. "Are you enjoying the performance, Miss Pope?"

"Very much."

"I think the soprano who is singing Susanna is especially fine, don't you?"

"Yes, she is very appealing."

"I cannot tell you when I have enjoyed an evening more."

"The performance is certainly an excellent one, Mr. Sully."

"I was not referring to the opera."

Reaching over, Thomas covered the back of her hand with his own. "Miss Pope, I must tell you that-"

"Tom. old chap, I told Basil it was you." Two uniformed members of the Light Dragoons arranged themselves on each side of Noelle, demanding an introduction. Much to Thomas's annoyance, they did not leave until the interval was over.

As the curtain rose on Act Three Noelle caught sight of Quinn in a box one tier below. He was listening attentively to a woman whose face was in shadow. A slim hand rested possessively on his thigh. When the woman turned her head, Noelle saw that it was Anna, the raven-haired beauty of the tea room. Leaning forward, she whispered intimately in his ear.

Noeiie listened to the rest of the opera with concentrated attention but would have been hard pressed had she been asked to describe it. She applauded vigorously at the end and agreed with Thomas that it had been an exceptional production. He had just settled her cape around her shoulders when he spotted Quinn and waved to him. "So the baroness is in London," he chuckled.