Dicing with the Dangerous Lord

chapter Fifteen

‘They have found Rotherham’s missing pistol, Francis.’

Linwood’s father sat across the small table from him. ‘Washed up on a mud bank of the Thames.’ His father’s brow was creased with concern. He had grown older and more haggard than the last time Linwood had seen him. There were bags beneath his eyes as if he had not slept in a long time. ‘The evidence mounts against you.’

Linwood made no comment.

‘Our own newspapers are handling the reporting of the story with sensitivity; the rest of them...well, you can imagine.’

‘I can, indeed,’ said Linwood.

There was a small silence before his father said, ‘I have spoken to all that might hold sway over the case for when it comes to trial, called in every last favour, but...’

‘Rotherham was a duke. And not all of the money or connections in the world can make the murder of a duke go away. An example must be made. A villain caught.’

‘There is a way it might be done.’ His father looked at him. ‘Miss Fox’s evidence is the linchpin in the case. Everything else can be explained away. But not that. If she were to disappear...’

‘Do not dare touch her!’

‘I meant money, a bribe. You always think the worst of me.’

‘I wonder why.’

His father glanced away uneasily. ‘I will give her every penny I have if that is what it takes.’

‘I am warning you. Stay away from her.’

‘Do you honestly think I am going to just sit back and watch you hang because of that whore?’

‘She is not a whore, whatever you may think. And if I hang...well, some things are worth dying for, aren’t they?’

His father closed his eyes and massaged his fingers against his forehead. ‘Why the hell did you tell her?’

‘We played a dangerous game together, Miss Fox and I. I took a gamble and I lost.’

‘Do not think that she holds you or your plight in any regard. She returns to Covent Garden tomorrow night. The seats were selling for twice their normal price and there is not a one left to be had.’

‘Promise me she will be safe,’ Linwood said.

‘I will not harm her,’ his father said, but still Linwood was not persuaded.

‘Swear it, on Marianne’s life.’

He saw the pain in his father’s eyes before he closed them. ‘I swear,’ he said with resignation and only then was Linwood convinced of Venetia’s safety.

They looked at one another across the table.

‘My dark deeds come back to haunt me, first with my daughter and now with my son.’

There was a silence.

‘I should have been the one that killed Rotherham,’ his father said.

Another silence.

‘There is so much I never told you, Francis, so much that I regret in how I treated you through the years. My father raised me hard. And I did the same to you. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought it would make you strong to deal with the toughness of life. But I was cruel and too critical. For that I am sorry.’

Linwood looked at his father.

‘I have made so many mistakes in the past, Francis. I have been a selfish, cruel and ruthless man, but know that I would give my life to rectify all that hurt Marianne...and you. I cannot change what happened with Rotherham. But I can tell you that I love you, that I was always proud to have you as my boy. I should have told you that a long time ago.’

The silence echoed between them.

Misbourne reached across and clapped a hand against Linwood’s shoulder. ‘Son.’ He gave a gruff nod, then got to his feet. ‘I will come again tomorrow morning, and every morning after that, until the trial.’ Then he walked to the locked door and knocked upon it to be released.

‘Thank you,’ Linwood whispered, and could not bring the rest of the words in his chest to his mouth, lest they unmanned him.

* * *

Alice and Venetia sat opposite one another at the breakfast table the next morning, Alice with her pretty pink negligé showing from beneath her dressing gown, her legs bare beneath her skirts, Venetia wearing her new plain dove-grey day dress, her hair caught tight back, her face devoid of all artifice. The butler sat the large silver salver, piled high with letters, on the table before Venetia.

‘Why don’t you put them aside? Read them later when you’re feeling better.’ Alice’s eyes were filled with concern.

Venetia shook her head. ‘I should deal with them now. And I am fine, really, I am.’

‘You don’t look fine. You look like you haven’t slept in days.’

Venetia smiled, but it was a smile that held nothing of happiness. She stared at her coffee cup. ‘I can’t stop thinking of him.’

‘Little wonder after all you’ve been through. But you can’t doubt that you did the right thing.’

‘Can’t I?’ She glanced up at her friend. ‘He will make no defence...’ She winced. ‘Without a defence there is no hope that he can escape a guilty verdict. That they will sentence him to hang is a certainty. Why would he do such a thing? It makes no sense.’

Alice gave a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Maybe he’s had an attack of conscience and intends to take what he deserves, but can’t bring himself to make the admission.’

‘I cannot rid myself of the conviction that there is something I am missing, that I have got this all wrong. It gnaws at me night and day.’ She glanced down at her hands. ‘That and the guilt.’

‘You’ve got nothing to feel guilty over.’

‘No?’ She stared at her friend. ‘My part in this is written in black and white for all London to read. I cannot hide from it. I was the one who went to the police to repeat the words he told me. Along with the rest of it.’

‘Venetia, he tried to kill you! You’d no choice but to go to the police.’

She shook her head and thought again of the look on Linwood’s face after he had rescued her from the fire. It was not that of a man who had just tried to kill her. What she had seen in his eyes reflected that which was in her own heart—hurt and disbelief and love. ‘Alice,’ she gave voice to the little quiet question that whispered in her ear through the long hours of the night, ‘what if he is innocent?’

There was a stunned silence.

‘How can you think him innocent? He’s guilty as sin. With every day that passes they find more evidence against him. An innocent man would deny the crime, Venetia. He would stand up, hand on heart, and say he didn’t kill Rotherham. But Linwood doesn’t.’

And had the shoe been on the other foot, Venetia would have been saying the same thing to her friend. It was the logical explanation. It was what all London thought. But all London did not know the extent of what had been between her and Linwood.

‘He has to be guilty.’ Venetia could say the words easily enough, but they changed nothing of what she felt in her heart and in the very marrow of her bones.

She leafed through the stack of letters without opening them, knowing they would be yet more offers from newspapers for her side of the story, more offers from gentlemen eager to make her their mistress. And then her eye was caught by one letter different from the others. The top right-hand side was neatly printed with the mark that excused it payment of delivery. She pulled it out, discarded the others and turned it over to break the seal. There, printed on the reverse, was the name of the sender written in a neat hand—The Old Bailey Courthouse.

Her heart stuttered.

Her stomach turned over.

Her fingers stumbled as she broke the seal and unfolded the sheet to read the letter. The shock of the words penned there was so strong she felt physically sick.

‘What’s wrong, Venetia? You’ve gone chalk white.’

‘The date for Linwood’s trial has been set for two weeks’ time.’ Her lips felt stiff and cold.

‘Better for you to get it out the way sooner rather than later.’

‘I am called to attend and testify as the chief witness for the prosecution.’ The piece of paper in her hand began to tremble. She laid it down on the table.

‘They’ll not let you out of it.’

To stand up and face him across a courtroom and speak the words that would tie a noose around his neck. She closed her eyes.

‘You know that, don’t you, Venetia?’

She opened her eyes and met Alice’s gaze. ‘Yes, I know.’ And it seemed to Venetia that the words fell like shards of ice into the silence. She felt bloodless, chilled. And the pain in her chest was so bad that it made her want to gasp.

She swallowed and let her eyes move back to the letter. Then she folded it as if she were perfectly in control of herself and got to her feet.

‘You’ve not eaten anything.’

‘I am due at the theatre. I will get something there.’

Alice gave a nod. ‘Tonight’s performance sold out within an hour of the tickets going on sale.’

‘So I heard.’

She walked to the door.

‘Venetia?’

She stopped and glanced back at her friend.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ Alice asked.

She forced herself to smile, but it felt like it was tearing her lips apart. ‘I will be fine,’ she said. ‘I always am, am I not?’

Alice nodded.

* * *

Venetia threw herself into the rehearsal at the theatre that afternoon, forced her mind to focus on the play, on the script, anything other than Linwood. She became Rosina and that was a lot easier than being Venetia. Everything was busy, everything rushed, urgent, demanding, intense, just as it was on every night of a performance except more so because everyone knew that every seat in the theatre would be filled, that every eye would be fixed on Venetia, every newspaper man ready to rush out and write up his report of Rosina’s leading lady. Venetia let herself be engulfed by it, swallowed up by it. It was what she knew, what she felt comfortable with.

She was fine all of the day and all of the evening, fine as they laced her into the old-fashioned dress of Rosina with its tight bodice that clung to her natural waist line. Fine as they untied the rags from her hair and unwound the wraps of hair so that they shimmered in a long mass of soft curls. Fine as they milled around her, painting her face, and touching her lips and cheeks with rouge.

There were only fifteen minutes to curtain up when they left her alone in the little dressing room to compose herself. But once she was alone she could no longer pretend that the spectre of Linwood was not haunting her. She sat at the little dressing table, very calm and very still, and felt the ache that had not left her chest since she had spoken to the Bow Street officer. She did not let herself look in the peering glass, just glanced at the notes she had written about Rosina, trying, and failing, to focus herself on the part she was about to play.

A sudden flurry of fast, light footsteps pattered outside in the corridor. Venetia glanced up just as the door was thrown open and a small dark-cloaked figure burst in. A finely manicured hand wrenched the cloak’s deep hood back to reveal its wearer—Linwood’s sister, Lady Marianne. The girl’s eyes were dark and glittering and wild. Her cheeks were as pink as her lips. Some of her pins had been dislodged and half of her long fair curls had escaped to muss around her face.

‘Miss Venetia Fox, how very happy you must be with yourself!’ Fury rolled off her in great waves. ‘Your name is on every tongue in London, emblazoned across every newspaper! You have filled the entire theatre!’

Venetia rose to her feet, standing almost a head taller than Marianne. ‘I understand that you are upset, Lady Marianne, but you should leave now.’

‘Why? Because the truth does not make for comfortable hearing?’

‘It would not serve you well if we were to be seen together. And I am due on stage shortly.’

‘And that is all that matters to you, is it not?’

‘I am sorry about your brother, truly I am.’ The words sounded pathetic, even to Venetia’s own ears.

‘Sorry?’ Lady Marianne stared at her as if she were the very devil. ‘How can you be sorry, when it is your words that will hang him?’ she demanded with a fierceness of which Venetia had not thought her capable.

The truth cut through all the pretence that Venetia had woven about herself to get through this day.

‘How could you do it?’ Marianne shouted. ‘You were his lover! You shared his bed!’

‘Lady Marianne—’

‘You promised me that you would not hurt him! I thought that you loved him, fool that I am—but you have no care for anyone other than yourself!’

Venetia caught her breath. ‘He set fire to my home,’ she said, trying to make Marianne understand. ‘He lied—’

‘Never!’ Marianne came right up to her, staring up into Venetia’s face so that Venetia could see how much the girl was trembling with the force of emotion surging through her. ‘My brother would never hurt you! And as for lying—he would rather say nothing than offer a lie! Anything he has done has only ever been to—’

‘Marianne!’ The tall, dark figure of Rafe Knight appeared in the doorway. In one swift smooth swoop he had his wife away from Venetia and in his arms. He stared down into Lady Marianne’s face. ‘This is not the way,’ he said carefully, his eyes holding his wife’s, and Venetia saw the urgent message that passed between Knight and Marianne. There was a fierce protectiveness in that gaze that would have razed all in its path.

Lady Marianne was breathing hard, but she calmed herself and gave a small nod to her husband.

Knight turned his eyes to Venetia and she felt herself quail at the hardness that appeared in them. ‘You will forgive my wife, Miss Fox. She is naturally distressed at her brother’s situation.’ His voice was soft and polite enough, but she had no doubt that his words were warning her.

‘Of course,’ she said.

Knight held Venetia in the full blast of that icy gaze for a moment longer, then he pulled Marianne’s hood to shroud her identity and led her from the room.

The door clicked shut, but Venetia was still staring at where they had stood.

He would rather say nothing than offer a lie! Lady Marianne’s words seemed to hang in the air like an echo, making her feel as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs as she remembered words that were so similar.

A knock sounded. The face of the stagehand, who had come to fetch her, appeared around the door. ‘It’s time, Miss Fox.’

‘Thank you,’ she murmured but she made no move.

‘Miss Fox,’ the stagehand urged.

She gave a nod and had no choice but to follow him out along the corridor towards the stage.

* * *

The seconds were running out. She reached the wings just in time, a heartbeat and then the lights came to life and she was walking out onto the stage as Rosina to the whistles and whispers and murmur of voices all around. So many people filled the auditorium that the theatre seemed to heave at the seams. She heard someone shout Linwood’s name and it was all she could do to show no reaction.

She contrived to be Rosina. Only Rosina. Speaking the words written in the script, moving across the stage as Mr Kemble had directed her. But she was not Rosina. She was Venetia, and all she could hear was the beat of her heart and the whisper of the pact she had made with Linwood. Her blood ran cold. We are sworn to speak the truth or say nothing at all. She kept on acting, kept on going. But everything was falling into place in her mind. The explanation had been before her the whole time, but she had been too blind to see it. She stopped where she was, midline, stood there silent in the middle of the stage. The enormity of the realisation was such that it made all else trivial in comparison.

She stared around her at the facade of Rosina, at the costume and illusion, and her leading actor, Mr Incledon.

The prompt whispered her missing words from within the hidden box at the front of the stage.

The life of the man she loved was at stake.

The cue came again, so loud this time that the front rows of the audience heard.

Venetia looked out at the huge sea of faces. There were murmurs from them now, a fascinated horror in those expressions. Mr Incledon carried on, delivering the next line of his role as Belville and watching her with mounting anxiety.

But it did not matter. None of it mattered, not the play or the audience or the acting career of Miss Venetia Fox. The only thing that mattered was to know if she was sending an innocent man to his death. And there was one simple way to discover that. We are sworn to speak the truth or say nothing at all.

When at last she spoke it was not as Rosina, but as Venetia. ‘I must go to him,’ she said and walked off stage, leaving Mr Incledon and the entirety of the Theatre Royal gaping in stunned silence.