Dicing with the Dangerous Lord

chapter Nineteen

A few hours later Venetia stood before him in the hallway of their own apartment, waiting for him to slip the dark-velvet evening cloak around her shoulders. The evening dress she was wearing was the same deep dark red she had worn on a night on a balcony that seemed a lifetime ago, the silk of the skirt sweeping down to caress the curves he knew lay beneath. Her hair was the same dark-satin lustre, pinned and coiled, with an arrangement of cascading tendrils and curls that teased enticingly around her neck. She looked even more beautiful than she had done on that night that had sealed both their fates, because now when he looked at her he saw not the sensual sophisticated actress, but the truth of the woman beneath.

From his pocket he produced a black leather box and handed it to her.

The breath escaped her in a small gasp as she opened the lid. Inside the necklace of rubies glowed as deep and dark and translucent as the dress she wore and the surrounding diamonds glittered brighter than the stars in a midnight sky.

‘The Linwood rubies,’ he explained. ‘My mother sent them round. As my wife, they are yours by right. It is her attempt at an apology, and a statement of support before all London when you are seen wearing them tonight.’

‘They are beautiful,’ she whispered.

‘Not as beautiful as you,’ he said as he fastened the stones around her neck.

They stood in silence in the candlelit hallway, their eyes clinging together, both of them knowing what they were going out to face in the theatre that night.

‘Are you ready, Venetia?’

‘With you by my side, I will always be ready.’ She placed her hand upon his arm and together they walked out to their town coach.

* * *

The reaction at the theatre was as Linwood had anticipated. There were stares and gaping jaws. There was the buzz of gossiping lips and the too-loud whispered words he could not fail to hear. Murderer. Harlot. Those who had been lifelong neighbours of his parents, the woman who was his godmother, men who had called themselves his friends, turned away, giving both him and Venetia the cut direct. He felt the slow fuse of his temper ignite, not for himself, but for his wife. The ton was cruel and petty and blind to its own hypocrisy. He felt the pressure of Venetia’s fingers against his arm and looked down to meet her eyes. The woman that he saw there was stronger, calmer, more confident than Venetia Fox had ever been. She smiled at him and, despite everything, he smiled back.

‘We would not wish to disappoint them now, would we?’ she murmured and, lifting her lips to his, brushed them with a kiss.

The ladies surrounding them gasped in horror, the men sighed in longing.

‘You are incorrigible, Lady Linwood,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘As are you, Lord Linwood.’ Her smile deepened.

And his heart skipped a beat.

He followed her into their private box, ready to face the world.

* * *

Venetia stood by the window of their day room the next afternoon and watched the dark figure of her husband ride away to his meeting at his club. She watched until he had disappeared from sight. The sun was shining, but the air held the damp chill of fast-approaching winter. She pulled her shawl a little tighter around her shoulders and went to write her letter to Madame Boisseron.

It was only twenty minutes later that the knocker sounded against the door and the butler appeared. ‘Lady Marianne, Mrs Knight to see you, my lady. Are you at home?’

She nodded. ‘Please show her in.’

And then Linwood’s sister was before her, a look of uncertainty upon her face. ‘Lady Linwood...Venetia... I was just passing and I wondered if you and Francis might like to come to dinner one evening next week.’

‘That is very kind, Lady Marianne.’

‘Just Marianne, please. Are we not sisters now?’ Lady Marianne smiled shyly.

‘We are.’ Venetia returned the smile. ‘Thank you, Marianne. I know how hard it must be for you to come here.’

‘Not hard at all. I am only sorry that I did not come before.’

‘Well, you are here now and that is what matters. Please sit down. Will you join me for some tea?’

Marianne smiled again and relaxed a little. ‘I would like that,’ she said and took the chair opposite Venetia’s. Her eyes flitted to the writing block on the desk and the half-written page that lay there. ‘I have disturbed your letter writing.’

‘My hand is glad of the rest,’ said Venetia.

They spoke of small inconsequential things, anything that was safe, and far removed from Rotherham and the trial, and Venetia’s past. Until Marianne set her empty tea cup down upon the tray and rose to leave.

‘Thank you for saving my brother’s life, Venetia.’ She paused. ‘I was right that day in the ladies’ withdrawing room. You do love him.’

‘I love him more than words can say,’ she admitted.

There was a silence.

Marianne fidgeted with the seam of her glove and made no move to leave, giving the unmistakable impression that there was something more she wanted to say but was not sure how to say it. She worried at her lip before finally raising her gaze to Venetia’s and asking, ‘Has he told you why?’

The clock ticked upon the mantel. A lump of coal cracked and hissed within the fire.

‘It is not his secret to tell,’ she replied.

‘No,’ said Marianne softly. ‘It is mine.’

And Venetia remembered Linwood’s explanation for his hatred of Rotherham. He hurt someone close to me very badly.

‘Rotherham,’ she said slowly and felt her stomach tighten with a dreadful foreboding.

‘He was your father, Venetia, but he was also a monster.’

‘He hurt you.’ She felt sick at the thought.

Marianne was silent for a moment. ‘He raped me.’

The shock and horror rendered Venetia speechless before she managed to recover herself. ‘I am so sorry, Marianne.’ And she understood in that moment Misbourne’s angry words and what it must have cost Linwood, and them all, to have Rotherham’s daughter in their family. ‘I had no idea...’

‘We covered it up very well. I would have been ruined otherwise.’

‘Even though it was nothing of your fault.’

‘We both know the unfairness of society when it comes to condemning women, Venetia.’

‘Yes.’

The two women’s eyes held.

‘Rotherham fled to the Continent before my father and brother could reach him. They swore they would kill him if he ever returned. We never thought he would dare...but he did.’ Her voice tightened on those last words. The dark eyes so like Linwood’s closed and she took one deep slow breath, and then another. When she opened them again she was in control of herself once more. ‘Francis is a good man.’

‘And a man who keeps his oaths,’ Venetia added in a quiet voice.

‘I wanted to tell you, because I knew that he could not. You do understand, don’t you, Venetia?’

Venetia nodded. ‘I think I am beginning to.’

‘Then I am glad that I came here today.’

‘I am glad, too,’ said Venetia, but she could not smile and she did not know whether she was being honest.

She watched Marianne’s carriage draw away and when she turned to face the little room the autumn sunshine had faded from the room and in its place was a cold grey light.

Venetia could not rid herself of the thought of what Rotherham had done to Marianne. The knowledge sickened her to the pit of her stomach. She felt chilled to the bone, no matter how close to the fire she stood. She wondered what Robert would do to any man that raped her. And the ties that bound Linwood to his sister were closer than the ones that bound Robert to Venetia.

Yet Venetia could not help remembering the hurt in his eyes at his father’s assumption of his guilt and the expression, too, on her husband’s face when she defended his innocence—the gratitude, the love and something more, something that touched the very core of her heart and soul. She respected the fact that he had kept Marianne’s secret. He was a man of his word, an honourable man, the man that she loved. As he loved her. And yet she could not dispel the uneasiness that gnawed at her soul. Over a family bound so tight through the darkness of the past, and whom were so utterly convinced of his guilt.

There was an agitation in her, a disquiet that nothing could ease—not tea, or letter writing or staring endlessly out of the window. She could not settle.

She paced, anxious for her husband’s return, but the hour of the clock crept later and Linwood did not come. Darkness spread across the sky and the rain began to tap against the window panes and the wind began to howl, stirring the curtains hanging by the window’s sides.

She sat down at Linwood’s desk and stared straight ahead, thinking of all that Marianne had told her, thinking of the darkness that had brought her and Linwood together. So much had happened in such a short space of time. What had been weeks seemed like years. And she remembered the last time she had sat at this desk alone in the night. The night she had come to search for the evidence that would prove his guilt.

She closed her eyes, remembering the terrible conflict of emotions in her breast, both wanting to find the pistol and book, and dreading it, too. And the moment when he had displayed the contents of his safe. The painting still hung there, the horse parading so proudly before its stable. She wondered if the theatre programme and the handkerchief were still locked in the safe behind, or if he had discarded them when he discovered that she had betrayed him. She turned her gaze away to the bookcase, unwilling to dwell on that thought, or the painting that had provoked it.

What had he thought when he learned that Rotherham was her father? Only in the light of Marianne’s revelation did Venetia appreciate just how difficult that must have been for Linwood. She thought of the cold gaunt man who had been Rotherham and of her mother who had loved him. And she felt the usual shame and anger. He really had been a monster. She pushed the memories away and saw the books that lined the shelves, all the same books that had been there that night. The books on stargazing, the one she knew held the diagram of Pegasus sitting snug beside the book on the daily lives of wolves in Britain. And on the shelf below—a second copy of the very same book on wolves in Britain.

Dread tiptoed down her spine, dipping a hollow in her stomach and turning her blood cold. She wondered why she had not noticed it before. Wolf. The word seemed to leap out from the title, making her think of the silver wolf’s-head, with its two emerald eyes, at the top of her husband’s walking cane.

She took the copy from the lower shelf and laid it on top of the desk. There was a horrible gaping feeling inside of her. She did not want to look inside the book, but she knew that she must. Her fingers were trembling as they touched the dark blue leather cover and opened it.

Her heart did not beat. Life ceased to be. Everything she had believed crumbled to dust. There was no printed frontispiece, no monogram upon the interior of the cover that claimed the book as Rotherham’s or Linwood’s, only a thin neat handwriting that she recognised too well...beneath each dated entry of a journal.

It felt as if she had just been punched in the stomach. She could do nothing more than stare, reeling by the shock of it. She could not move, just stood frozen in disbelief, while all the world outside moved on around her. It could not be true. But she knew very well that it was.

‘Oh, God, help me!’ she whispered. ‘Oh, God!’ She clutched her arm around her stomach while the nausea roiled and expanded. She felt sick, sicker than she had ever done in her life. ‘Please no!’ she prayed, but nothing changed the fact that it was Rotherham’s journal lying there upon the desk.

Her lungs felt small and hard, and there was a terrible cold tightness in her chest as if a band of iron had been fastened around it and was tightening more second by second. And where her heart had been was a pain of such searing intensity that it made her gasp aloud.

She did not know how she made it back round to perch upon the desk chair. She sat in the gathering darkness, numb with shock and pain. For she knew there was only one place from which Linwood could have taken the journal. And she knew what that meant—Robert had been right.

She felt like her heart had been gouged from her chest and she did not really understand why, because she could understand why Linwood had done it, she could even forgive him...for the murder. What she did not think she could forgive him was the betrayal. It was the betrayal that hurt so much. Her own stupid naivety, defiant and ignorant in the face of everyone else’s assertions. And she cringed when she thought of what she had said to his father. At her own gullible determination to defend him.

Linwood had not lied to her. He had never claimed to be innocent. So why did she feel this way, like her every belief of the man that she had married, the man that she loved, had been turned to dust and blown away in the wind? She had thought the game of deception through truth over, that there was only him and her. But Linwood had been playing all along, even after he had won.

She could not cry a single tear. Inside her was a terrible blackness and an anger that seethed and a bleakness that stretched eternal. She could do nothing other than sit there and wait, while outside the wind howled and the rain beat in a rhythmic incessant torrent.