Dicing with the Dangerous Lord

chapter Thirteen

Linwood stood at the window of his drawing room, staring out at the street below. All the lightness of the morning had expired. He had engaged in the game and he had lost. His stomach was filled with cold disappointment and the sickening realisation that what he had thought was happening with Venetia last night had been something else all together. A game that continued regardless. He had known the risk and accepted the gamble, staking his heart. And he had been bested by a master. Too beguiled by a beautiful face and a luscious figure, too engaged by a personality that flirted and parried and ensnared. She had filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else, making him forget that which he needed to remember, making him believe that the feelings between them were mutual. Two cloths cut from the same die, both him and her, or so he had thought. But it was as much an illusion as the woman he had thought her beneath the facade of the divine Miss Fox. He had thought he could tell when she was acting and when she was not. But he had been wrong. Last night’s performance had hoodwinked him completely despite all he knew of her. What an actress she was and he, a gullible fool.

In the daylight the blood on the sheets was a stark crimson. In the air he could still smell the scent of her perfume mixed with that of their lovemaking. Against the white of his pillow lay a single long dark hair. And it seemed he could feel again the satin of her skin beneath his hands, the soft sigh of her breath as he caressed her, the passion of her lips as they merged with his. He clenched his jaw so tight that it was painful and escaped to the drawing room, but the picture on the wall was not straight. And beneath was the safe box and all that she had seen within it, exposing the secrets of his heart for her to trample upon. He wondered bitterly that she had not told Clandon about that as well as everything else. He straightened the picture, as if by so doing he could wipe away her touch from it, and let his gaze drift to the bookcase. He stood there like that for a minute, feeling more alone, more hurt, more angry than he had ever felt in his life, which was ridiculous given all that had happened between his family and Rotherham. Then he reached out and rang the bell.

‘Change the bedding, every last bit of it. Air the bedchamber and this one, too, anywhere that she waited. Leave no trace that Miss Fox was ever here.’ He showed nothing of emotion on his face, just his usual deadpan serious expression. Then he took up his walking cane and walked out into the clear autumn day. He needed to think. About Venetia. About where the game went from here.

* * *

‘Lord Linwood called for you, ma’am. I told him you had gone to the theatre.’ Albert hesitated. ‘I hope I did not do wrong in divulging such information. He was most anxious to see you and given that it was him...’ The elderly butler cleared his throat and looked embarrassed.

‘Did he say when he would return?’

‘He did not, ma’am.’

All through the day she expected him to call. She waited for his note. Waited for the sound of his carriage wheels, of his horse, of the brass knocker striking against the plate of her door. But there was nothing. And as the day wore on the joy in her heart faded a little and in its place grew a feeling of unease and disquiet. Even if he had not seen the blood, even if he did not know, she had thought he would have been as anxious to see her as she was to see him. She forced herself to read her script, to focus on her preparations for the opening performance of Rosina tonight. But amidst all the excitement and nervousness that an opening night entailed, the worry over Linwood throbbed like a dull ache.

* * *

He finally arrived ten minutes before she was due to leave for the theatre. She was in the parlour, trying to compose herself for the performance ahead when her butler showed him through.

‘Francis.’ She smiled and went to him, feeling her heart sigh with relief to see him. ‘Your timing is terrible. I must leave shortly for—’ And then she saw his face, and she knew without him uttering a single word that everything had changed. She stopped in her tracks.

‘Francis?’

‘You were not honest with me, Venetia.’ Both his voice and expression were as closed and controlled as the first night they had met.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have told you that I was a virgin.’

His mood was sombre, angry, nothing of what she had expected.

‘That, as well,’ he said.

Everything seemed to catch in that moment. Her heart, her breath, everything in the world all around her. Everything holding still, everything frozen with a sudden dread while she turned her eyes slowly to his.

‘You were gone when I awoke,’ he said.

‘For the sake of discretion. I thought I would see you today. That we would talk.’

‘And then I found your blood on my sheets.’

She swallowed and said nothing.

‘I came here and learned you had gone to the theatre. I was desperate to see you. Desperate to know that I had not hurt you.’ He gave a mocking laugh and shook his head. ‘I went to the theatre. To the stage door...just as you had told me.’

She closed her eyes, knowing what was coming and needing to hear it just the same. Her heart felt heavy, pounding each beat with the same dread that was seeping like ice through her blood.

‘When I came to your dressing room I heard a man’s voice from within—Robert Clandon’s voice.’

She pressed her fingers to her forehead. Lord, no! Please, no!

‘The nature of your conversation stayed my hand upon the door, Venetia.’

She took a shaky breath, knowing that she had to face this head-on, that she could not shy from it. ‘How much did you overhear?’

‘Enough.’

She pressed her lips firm together and tried to swallow the lump that was pressing in her throat.

There was a knock on the door. ‘Your carriage is waiting, ma’am.’ Albert looked from her to Linwood and then back again. ‘Please forgive my intrusion.’ Then made a hasty retreat.

‘Who is Clandon to you, Venetia?’

She shook her head. The one question which she could not answer, not to him of all people. To open up her heart and lay bare the dark secrets of her past. Everything would be lost. And he would hate her for ever, if he did not already do so. ‘He is no one.’

‘No one,’ he said softly. His eyes glittered hard and black. His face was all hard angles, angry and dangerous and heartbreakingly handsome. There was nothing of the gentleness, nothing of the tenderness that had been there last night.

‘Just the man with whom you have been conspiring all along. I thought perhaps he was your lover, but after last night, I know that is not the case. What is your relationship—purely monetary?’

‘You knew?’ She stared at him aghast.

‘Of course I knew. I have known all along. All those questions about Rotherham...’ His eyes blazed with a black fury, but the rest of his face was cold and impassive. ‘Clandon thinks I killed his father so he sent you to entrap me.’

She glanced away, knowing she could not deny it. ‘Then why play the game?’

‘For the same reason as you, Venetia.’

She faced him, head up, standing tall, dry-eyed and defiant even though inside she felt like she was dying. ‘And last night...?’

‘A fitting conclusion.’

His words pierced her heart like a dagger. She slapped his face and the sound of it echoed in the ensuing silence.

Linwood did not flinch, just stood there silent and strong as a rock, those dark, smouldering, dangerous eyes flaying her worse than any of his cruel words.

The air crackled between them.

‘Clandon is right, you are a very good actress, Venetia. But it was worth it to have you in my bed and take from you what all the men in London could not.’

The breath was shaking in her lungs. ‘Get out!’

His eyes held hers for a moment longer, his face dark and unsmiling. Then he gave her a small bow and turned and walked away.

The clock struck seven, but she made no move, just stood silent and still as a statue, all thoughts of the theatre and Rosina forgotten. She waited until she heard his footsteps reach the front door; waited until she heard the thud of the closing door, even though the tears were already spilling silently over her cheeks. Then she clasped her hands to her face and, for the first time since she was a child, wept as her heart broke apart.

* * *

There was an arctic coldness in Linwood as he walked away from Venetia Fox’s house, angry and razing as the winter wind. He nursed the anger, embraced the icy blast of rage, because he knew what would be there beneath when they died away—a raw, weeping wound. His boots echoed against the pavement. The air was chilled against his face.

He walked and he did not look back.

He walked and told himself what she was.

Kept on walking away from her house, away from her. But no matter how far he walked, no matter the distance he put between them, he could not escape what was in his heart. He did not have to think about the route between her home and his, it was so engrained that his feet trod it without a single conscious thought. One street and then another. Past women who looked at him with wary eyes and men who were careful to give him a wide berth. He was halfway home when he realised that he had left his cane behind at Venetia’s house. He, who had never mistakenly left the cane anywhere before. Part of him thought to keep on going and send a footman to retrieve it because he had no desire to see anything of her again. But he knew he could not do that. The cane was a symbol of his office in the Order of the Wolf. He had sworn to guard it with his life and never let it out of his sight. And Linwood was a man who took the oaths he had sworn very seriously. He stopped and began to retrace his steps.

* * *

The scent of smoke touched to his nose before he reached King Street, but he thought nothing of it until he turned the corner into the street and saw the commotion. His heart stopped and his stomach plummeted at the sight. Much farther along the street, from the house that was Venetia’s, a flurry of people spilled out to crowd upon the pavement. And in the bow window of her drawing room, bright against the darkness of the night, was the flicker of golden flames. Then he was running, sprinting the length of the street. Venetia!

It happened so fast. From one small golden flicker of light within to the glass cracking and splintering, and the flames roaring to consume with a fury. By the time he reached her house the smoke was belching thick and black into the night and the flames licked like those on a bonfire. The crowd of servants in the street stared with smoke-blackened faces and eyes wide with terror. Maids and footmen alike shrieking, sobbing and wailing. Neighbours tumbled out onto the street in their housecoats and slippers. Someone already had a bucket in hand, the water in it a drop in the ocean that would be required to quench the blaze. He saw Albert alongside two footmen he recognised. But of all the figures, all the faces that he scanned, he could not find Venetia’s.

‘Venetia!’ he bellowed, but in the chaos there was no answer. He made his way to Albert and when he got closer he saw that the old butler had Linwood’s cane in his hand.

‘Thank God you came back, my lord, she’s still inside!’ Albert cried and pressed the cane into his hand.

Linwood took the cane with a murmur of thanks. Then he pulled the handkerchief from his pocket, dipped it in the bucket of water as he passed and tied the wet handkerchief around his face. The front door was lying wide open. He walked into the hallway over which flames were already creeping.

The wooden balustrade was beginning to burn as he ran up the stairs, the smoke so dark and thick and acrid that it burned his eyes and made it difficult to see.

‘Venetia!’ he yelled. ‘Venetia!’ against the roaring fury of the fire.

And then he saw her through the smoke at the top of the stairs, a vision from his dreams, white-faced, her hair dark as midnight, the emerald-green of her dress vibrant beside the orange fire all around. She was coughing as the thick smoke forced her back.

Behind him the flames leapt up the staircase. He reached her, his body pressed against hers, pushing them both back into her bedchamber, slamming the door closed behind him, buying them a few precious minutes.

He saw the fear and shock in her eyes when she looked at him and he would have done anything to wipe it away and protect her.

‘The stairs are gone,’ he said.

Her eyes clung to his. ‘There is no other way out, Francis. We are trapped.’

He shifted his gaze to the window.

She saw where he looked. ‘We are one floor up. It is too high to jump.’

‘Not if we break the fall.’

He wrenched the sash window up and the surge of cool air brought the fire through the door. He freed the sword from his cane, slashing the rope of the window’s pulley system and ripping the cord out. The window thudded shut with a reverberating crash and the intensity of heat in the room was unbearable. He sheathed the sword into the cane, then tied a bowline at the end of the cord and looped it around the metal fastener of the window. The smoke was thickening as he smashed the cane’s silver wolf’s-head at the window, shattering the glass. He cleared the worst of the jagged edges and cushioned the cord across it. Then he climbed backwards through the window frame, cord wrapped tight around his hand, standing up to balance on the outer ledge. He reached his hand for Venetia. But she made no move to take it.

‘The cord is not long enough,’ she cried.

‘We have no choice, Venetia, you have to trust me.’

She hesitated, glancing back at the flames splintering through the door, before meeting his gaze again.

‘Please, Venetia,’ he said and she reached her hand to his and let him pull her up to stand on the ledge by his side.

‘Look at me, Venetia. Look only at me.’

She locked her eyes on to his.

‘Hold tight to me. Arms round my neck. Legs around my hips.’

She fastened herself to him and he stepped off the ledge, the cord straining through his hands as they slid towards the ground. The rope ended twelve feet short of the ground, but he landed first and rolled, cushioning her.

Then he had her up in his arms, carrying her clear of the inferno to the safety of the distant road where the crowd was gathered.

The fire brigade had arrived, a bucket chain was in place, water sloshing everywhere in an attempt to bring the fire under some semblance of control.

When they were clear he sat her down on the pavement, kneeling down by her side. There were smears of soot on her face, her hair was dishevelled and the emerald silk of her dress was singed and tattered. Her eyes clung to his as if his body and hers still dangled entwined upon that cord from the window.

He took her hand in his and she looked down to where the rope had cut through the leather of his gloves and burned his skin. And when her eyes met his again he could see the tears that tracked through the soot on her face and feel the tremble that ran right through her.

He eased off his coat and wrapped it around her. ‘Venetia...’ he whispered as he gently stroked the long dark strands of hair from her face.

‘Thank God, Venetia!’ Alice Sweetly arrived, falling to her knees before Venetia, while Razeby stood by her side. ‘We saw the blaze from my back-bedchamber window. When Razeby said it was your house I prayed that he was wrong.’ And then Alice was cradling Venetia against her. ‘Oh, thank God, you’re safe!’ she said again.

Razeby’s gaze moved over Linwood’s shirt before meeting his eyes. ‘You all right?’

Linwood gave a single gruff nod.

Alice was still talking to Venetia. ‘Don’t you worry, Venetia. Everything’s going to be fine.’ Then to Razeby, ‘It’s all right if she stays with me isn’t it? Can you carry her home?’

‘Alice,’ Razeby said gently and touched a hand to her arm, trying to pull her back, his eyes flitting to Linwood.

But Linwood was already on his feet with his cane beneath his hand.

‘Look after her,’ he said and turned and walked away into the night.

* * *

The next morning Venetia and Alice sat at breakfast in Alice’s dining room when the front-door knocker sounded.

‘Surely the reporters haven’t discovered your whereabouts already.’ Alice frowned.

Venetia gave a little sigh and pulled her dressing gown a little tighter around her. ‘They would have found me sooner or later.’

‘Heston will get rid of them. It’s grand having a butler to do such things, isn’t it?’

Venetia smiled at her friend. ‘Things are working out well between you and Razeby.’

‘They are.’ Alice nodded. ‘I’m happy.’

‘I really am glad for you, Alice.’

They smiled at one another.

‘Enough about me. We’ve got you to think about, Venetia. After last night we need to—’

But there was a knock at the dining-room door and Alice’s butler appeared. ‘There is a Mr Clandon at the front door to see Miss Fox.’

Venetia felt a flutter of panic.

‘Then send him away. Miss Fox is hardly recovered enough to be receiving visitors.’

‘The gentleman is being most insistent, ma’am. He says he will not move from the front step until he has seen Miss Fox.’

‘Then fetch the footmen to see him off—’

‘No,’ said Venetia quickly. ‘I will see him.’

Alice glanced round at her in surprise. ‘If you’re sure?’

‘I am.’

‘In that case, show him into the drawing room, Heston.’ Then, to Venetia, ‘Do you wish me to come with you?’

‘Thank you, but there is no need.’ Venetia shook her head. ‘I will handle Mr Clandon easily enough.’ She paused, seeing the look on Alice’s face. ‘He is...an old friend of mine.’

‘Oh,’ said Alice and she could see exactly what type of old friend Alice was thinking. ‘I didn’t realise.’

Venetia’s cheeks warmed at Alice’s mistake. She hated this subterfuge, all this misleading and dishonesty, but she could not very well tell her friend the truth.

She was so desperate to get her brother out of there as quickly as possible that she did not bother to dress before seeing him.

Robert was standing by the sofa, his face pinched and white, as she closed the drawing-room door behind her.

‘I came as soon as I heard.’ He came to her, his eyes scanning her face. ‘I had to know that you were all right.’

‘You should not be here, Robert. You risk too much.’

‘Be damned to that, Venetia! You expect me to sit twiddling my thumbs at home pretending that all is well when I do not know the condition of my own sister? If you were hurt or at death’s door? God damn it! I came past your house. I saw what little is left of it. I cannot begin to tell you what it felt like to see that smouldering black ruin. If you had any idea...’ He turned away to control the extent of his emotion.

‘Forgive me, I did not think.’ She had not thought of Robert at all, she realised with a pang of guilt.

His eyes were filled with concern. ‘Did you take any hurts?’

She shook her head. ‘I am fine, really I am.’

‘Thank God for that.’ He blew out a sigh, closing his eyes and rubbing a hand against his temple. She could not help but notice the tremor in his fingers and knew how very frightened he had been for her. ‘What the hell were you even doing in the house, Venetia? You were supposed to be at the theatre.’

She hesitated, not really wanting to tell him, but knowing that she should. ‘Linwood came to see me.’

‘Linwood was there?’ The shock was transparent on her brother’s face.

She nodded. ‘We argued—he knows the truth, Robert. I did not realise but he has known all along.’ When he was making love to her. When she loved him and thought he loved her.

‘About me?’

‘Of what you and I were about. The gathering of information, the seduction, the entrapment—whatever name it owns. He does not know you are my brother—he thinks I am in your employ.’

‘He knows?’ Robert’s eyebrows rose. ‘Little wonder you did not find the pistol if he was forewarned of your interest.’ He paced, then turned to her suddenly. ‘Tell me, was he present when the fire started?’

She shook her head. ‘He had left some little time previously.’

‘My God,’ he whispered in a way that made her blood run cold. ‘A man with a history of burning houses. A man who confessed a crime to you. A man who caught you searching his rooms and with whom you had argued. Who knew you had set out to seduce and entrap him...’ His gaze shifted to hers and in them his thoughts showed clear.

‘No! It was not like that.’

‘Then what was it like?’

She shook her head, knowing that she could not reveal what had been between her and Linwood. Not even sure that she understood it herself. ‘He would not hurt me.’

‘Would he not?’

‘It was Linwood who saved me and risked his own life to do so. Why would he do that if he started the fire?’

‘Maybe he was seen. Maybe he realised it looked too suspicious for him. Or he just wanted to play the hero. I do not know, Venetia.’ He looked down, closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead again, talking almost to himself. ‘I honestly had no idea it would go this way.’ He stopped and glanced up at her. ‘I know you do not want to, but you are going to have to go to the police. Tell them about the fires, the one at our father’s...and the one at your home.’

Her heart was beating very fast. ‘No!’

‘Yes, Venetia,’ he insisted. ‘He tried to kill you, for pity’s sake! What are you going to do? Sit back and wait until he tries again? This has gone far enough. It stops here and now. I have already lost my father to that bastard and I will be damned if I let him have you.’ He paused. ‘Either you go to the police and tell them, Venetia, or I will.’

‘You would not!’ She stared at him in disbelief.

‘Oh, but you know that I would.’

‘If you do that, everything will come out about you and me and Rotherham, and about...my mother. All that I have gone to such pains to hide.’

‘If that is the cost of saving your life, then it is small price to pay.’

‘It would destroy me!’

‘Hardly. He killed Rotherham. I am not going to stand back and let him kill you. So you go to the police today, Venetia. Or I will go to them tomorrow.’ He looked at her. ‘I know you do not like it, but it is for the best.’

They looked at one another for a moment and there was a stubborn determination in his eyes that she recognised from old. Then he gave her a nod of his head and left.