Justine Cole - The Copeland Bride

Quinn grinned back at her good-naturedly. "I'll feed her more often. In the meantime, take this with you when you go." He nodded toward the tray, dismissing her.

Noelle watched him. Once again he was acting as though she weren't in the room. The turbulent emotions she had felt the night before were gone. Instead, she was filled with an icy hatred so intense, it consumed her.

"Just a minute." Her voice was cold and steady. She walked purposefully over to Quinn and held out her hand. "I want a guinea."

He raised one dark eyebrow questioningly, but then, with a disinterested shrug, placed a shiny guinea in her hand.

Noelle took it to Brigid and pressed it on her. "Here, take this. I was in need of a friend."

"Why, thank you, miss."

Two could play the game of humiliation. "It's 'missus.' I'm Noelle Copeland, Mrs. Quinn Copeland."

The Irishwoman's apple cheeks paled at Noelle's disclosure. A hundred questions sprang to her lips only to remain unasked. For once the loquacious Brigid was without words.

"Y-yes, ma'am. Thank-thank ya, ma'am." She bobbed an awkward curtsy, her mobcap flopping comically on her curls, and fled from the chamber, closing the door behind her.

Noelle squared her small shoulders and turned to face the American.

Pantherlike, he crossed the room toward her, never taking his eyes from hers. "If you think you can humiliate me, you're wrong. However, you can provoke me, and that would be unwise. You are to flaunt this marriage to no one without my permission, do you understand?"

With every inch of her being, Noelle yearned to slap his arrogant face, to fling herself at him and claw out those unfeeling eyes. But she hadn't the courage, and she hated herself for her cowardice.

"You should have told me, you know." Incredibly she saw pity etched across his chiseled features. "I wouldn't have been so rough. It's not my habit to rape virgins."

"And if I told you, would you 'ave believed me?" She spoke bitterly, knowing the answer even before the question had passed her pale lips. "Of course you wouldn't 'ave… so you just take yer pity and shove it up yer arse."

Ignoring her, he withdrew a small white jar from the pocket of his coat and unscrewed the lid to reveal scarlet rouge. Dipping his finger in the pot, he slashed it across her cheeks and smeared it over her lips.

He began to chuckle infuriatingly. "There, now you look like the girl I married."

The late morning sun shone brightly on the gleaming white door and the ornate lion's head knocker that adorned it. Lifting it, Quinn rapped sharply. Noelle was overawed as she gazed at the brick exterior of the stately London town house that graced fashionable Northridge Square. The door opened, revealing a thin, elderly man dressed in spotless livery. His sparse white eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly at the improbable pair on the doorstep.

"Good morning, Tomkins," Quinn said, ushering Noelle inside.

She was entranced. Her eyes drank in the splendor of the foyer with its glossy black marble floor. Sunlight streamed in through two tall windows and splashed the polished brass wall sconces and the graceful daffodil-yellow settee that rested along one ivory wall.

"Good morning, Mr. Copeland," Tomkins said stiffly.

"Is my father in?"

"In the library, sir." The butler hesitated briefly, then glanced significantly at Noelle. "Do you wish me to announce you?"

"No, I think I'll surprise him." Quinn grinned.

Tomkins inclined his head slightly. "Very well, sir." His back rigid with disapproval, he disappeared noiselessly down the hallway.

Quinn led Noelle into a small anteroom. "Wait for me here. I'll be back shortly." He pulled a key from the inside of the door. "You know it wouldn't be any use to try to escape, don't you? This time I won't be stupid enough to leave the key in the other side of the door."

"You don't really think a locked door would keep me 'ere if I made up my mind to leave, do you, Quinn?" she sneered, using his first name deliberately, spitting it out of her mouth as if it were venom.

He ignored her bravado. "You mean you're not going to try to escape the minute my back is turned? Forgive me if I don't believe you, but honesty is not one of your more sterling qualities. You have no one but yourself to blame for last night. You weren't even an honest whore, were you?"

"Honesty," she said flatly. "What do you know about honesty? More money than you can spend. Never 'ad to worry about a place to sleep fer the night or an empty stomach. It's easy fer you to be able to talk about honesty. You're rich enough to afford it."

"You shouldn't have been so quick to judge me. I might have surprised you."

He closed the door, turned the key in the lock, and headed for the library, where the confrontation he had been anticipating for so long waited for him.

Simon Copeland sat at the massive desk, a large ledger bound in tan calf open in front of him. However, he wasn't really concentrating on the rows of figures that stretched in neat columns down the page. Instead, he was wondering how the shipyard in Cape Crosse was operating in his absence. Once again he was grateful that he had been wise enough twenty-four years ago to choose that small Georgia town on Providence Sound as the location of Copeland and Peale's American shipyard.

He remembered how the older and more experienced shipbuilders had scoffed at him. They warned him that a location thirty-five miles south of Savannah was too isolated, that he would have to depend on slaves because skilled labor would be impossible to come by. But Simon had no intention of building a shipyard on human misery. Instead, he traveled to New York and Boston, where he scoured the shipyards owned by some of the same men who had laughed at him.

There, Simon found freed slaves and experienced craftsmen, many of them immigrants from the shipyards of Scotland and Holland, family men who were disillusioned with the crowded conditions of cities and wanted something better for their children. Simon told them about Cape Crosse with its schoolhouse and three churches. He told them of the new white frame houses that were sitting empty, waiting for families to fill them. And, since they loved ships, he also told them of the kinds of vessels he and Benjamin Peale planned to build. Simon Copeland found his workers.

He remembered how delighted Ben had been at his first sight of Cape Crosse. Damn, he missed him! Simon's fingers fondly stroked the carved walnut as he thought of his former partner sitting at this same desk. Simon was a meticulous man, but he smiled as he recalled Ben's chaotic work habits: rumpled papers scattered haphazardly across the polished top, books strewn about this same room, contracts representing hundreds of pounds stuffed into an empty ale mug on the mantel. Perhaps it was just as well that he and Ben had had an ocean separating them; it was probably the secret of their successful partnership. Since the early years, they had seldom seen each other. Still, it had pleased Simon as he sat in his orderly office in Cape Crosse to think of Benjamin here, running the British branch of the company amidst the cheery chaos that always surrounded him.

Since Ben had died eight months ago, Simon had increasingly come to realize how much he had relied on his partner's good sense. It wasn't happenstance that Simon had purchased the Peales' Northridge Square town house. Benjamin's widow, Constance, who now owned half the company, had decided to remain at her country estate in Sussex during her year of deep mourning. Since she only planned to visit London infrequently as her business affairs dictated, she had sold the elegant Northridge Square home to Simon and purchased a smaller house nearby. He had been here four months now, and it probably would be twice that long before he could return to Cape Crosse. Somehow it had comforted Simon to be here among Benjamin's things as he sorted out the affairs of the English shipyard.