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as you only bankroll thievery, your hands don’t carry any taint? How convenient.”
    “I’m not doing this for myself. I—” He closed his mouth abruptly.
    “You’re stealing that red diamond for someone else,” she guessed. She came around the table and walked her fingers up the center of his hard chest. “Are you trying to impress some woman?”
    “No.” He caught her hand and held it still.
    “I’m the one taking all the risks. I think I deserve to know the particulars. You can start with what your father did to make you hate him and finish with why this diamond is so important to you.”
    “You already know all you need to know.” He released her hand and backed toward the door.
    “I don’t think so.” She followed, not willing to let him retreat when she sensed she was winning the skirmish.
    “This conversation is over.”
    “Not until you—”
    He grabbed her and pulled her flush against his body. Surprise forced all the air from her lungs. Their gazes locked, and he bent slowly to cover her mouth with his. Her lips parted and his tongue swept in to claim her dark moistness.
    She knew she ought to pull away, but his strength would make the contest woefully lopsided. And his warm, wet mouth on hers sapped her will to resist. She tasted brandy on his tongue. His rough chin scratched against her smooth one. His breath feathered hotly across her cheek. She felt herself melt into him without being able to stop it.
    She began to kiss him back, chasing his tongue and nipping at his bottom lip. Her fingers curled around his lapel and pulled him closer. He groaned into her mouth.
    His hands left her waist and found her breasts, stroking and circling them through the heavy serge fabric. Her nipples hardened and ached beneath their whalebone prison. Longing sang in her veins and pooled between her thighs.
    It had been so long.
    But she remembered the bitterness that followed bliss.
    With reluctance, she slipped her hands into his and pulled them away from her needy breasts. Finishing off their kiss she drew away gently. “You, sir,” she whispered, “do not fight like a gentleman.”
    He grinned down at her, bending to touch his forehead to hers. “I guess that makes us even, because you certainly don’t kiss like a lady.”
    She pushed away from him with a low growl in the back of her throat.
    “I didn’t mean it like that.” He tried to wrap his arms around her again.
    She straight-armed him.
    “I only meant—”
    “I know what you meant,” she said through clenched teeth, staring out the porthole as London slipped away from them. “Now leave me alone.”
    She heard the doorknob turn, and called to him, “Lieutenant.”
    “Yes?”
    “Just so you know.” She straightened her spine and turned to look him in the eye. She could be strong when she had to. Traveling to Paris with Greydon Quinn in that little cabin, she’d need all her strength. “I may not have a derringer, but I do know how to use one.”
    His lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. “I’d have been hugely surprised if you didn’t.”
     

 

     
     

CHAPTER 4
     
     
    Quinn leaned on the gunwale and watched the receding coastline until the Dover cliffs disappeared into the mist. The stiff late March wind and salt spray buffeted him, but the top button of his greatcoat remained undone at his neck.
    “I am sorry you must leave your home after so soon returning.” Sanjay shivered beside him even though he was more thoroughly muffled than Quinn. Accustomed to India’s baking heat, the prince suffered from England’s cold dampness in every fiber of his southern body.
    Quinn waved away Sanjay’s sympathy. Leaving again troubled him far less than he expected. His parents were as tied to the English soil as the two-hundred-year-old oaks surrounding their manor. Quinn was more like a poplar. He thrived wherever he was. Leaving any place, be it England or his adopted India, was a small matter. No place truly seemed like