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The forest-green silk she was wearing had cost her a fortune, but was worth every penny. Both the cut and colour suited her well and gave her a confidence in her appearance. The skirt clung just a little to her hips and legs, the neckline showed the promise of her breasts. To Venetia it was like donning her armour. She knew her weapons well and wielded them with expertise.
She exchanged pleasantries with Fallingham, Bullford and Monteith. Spoke to Razeby and Alice, who, having taken her advice, was wearing an almost-virginal gown of cream silk that Razeby seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes from. Until, eventually, she found Linwood before her.
‘I believe that you have already been introduced to Lord Linwood?’ Razeby said for the benefit of those that surrounded them. She knew her every move was being scrutinised, that who she spoke to and what she said had every chance of appearing in tomorrow’s gossip sheets.
‘We have met,’ she said and her eyes touched Linwood’s and, despite how much she had steeled herself against it, she felt that same nervous fluttering in her stomach.
‘If you will be so kind as to excuse me, for a moment…’ Razeby melted away, leaving her and Linwood alone in the crowd.
‘Miss Fox,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘Lord Linwood.’
The dinner gong sounded before Razeby’s butler announced that dinner was served in the dining room.
‘Allow me to take you in to dinner.’ Linwood’s voice was low, the words polite, assertive rather than forceful, but there was something in the way he was looking at her that made a shiver run over her skin.
‘What a pleasant suggestion,’ she said and arched an eyebrow ever so slightly. Both of them knew it had been her suggestion. He was cleverer than most men, she thought, more perceptive.
‘I thought so.’ His smile was small, secret, the jest shared between just the two of them.
She flexed her lips in return and, tucking a hand into the crook of his arm, let him lead her into the dining room.
The food was exceptional, as it ever was at Razeby’s table, guinea fowl and peacock, goose and a pie of turkey and ham combined. A medley of the sweetest quinces, potatoes sliced and scalloped in a cream sauce with capers, rabbit jelly, spiced leeks and ginger-fried cabbage, and an enormous tart, each slice of which contained a different honeyed fruit, and on a fine glass dish all of its own a rich plum pudding. But afterwards, had he to say what they had eaten Linwood could not have told them. His attention was too much on the woman by his side.
She did not flirt. Indeed, she did nothing of what he expected. Rather, the conversation between them flowed easily and naturally. They spoke of Bonaparte and the war that was raging across the Continent, of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and Captain Diamond’s wager with Milton. Anything and everything, but nothing that touched anywhere near the subject of Rotherham and all that worried him.
The time passed too quickly, too comfortably. Just an hour in her company and already he felt something of the darkness lift from him. The burden that he carried grew light. She engaged him completely, making him forget in a way that his family and friends and everyday life could not. And when the plates were cleared away and the table brushed down, he found that he did not want her to leave.
‘I believe our evening is at an end, Lord Linwood.’ Even just the sound of her voice stroked against him to both soothe and excite. He breathed in the scent of neroli that seemed to follow wherever she went and watched her beautiful face and those clear pale eyes that only hinted at the mysteries that lay beneath.
‘It does not have to be,’ he said in a voice that was for her ears only.
They looked at one another, her eyes scanning his as if she would take the measure of him.
At the head of the table, Razeby got to his feet. ‘And now I have a surprise. Something new to bring to my table. A feast for both the eyes and the lips.’
The double dining-room doors opened and six footmen, three on each side, carried in what looked to be a long silver salver on which lay a masked naked woman who had been strategically and artistically decorated in fruit. Sliced oranges overlapped sliced lemons and limes, apples, green grapes and red ones, blackberries and gooseberries—the rainbow medley lay against her skin and over it all a fine white powder of silvered icing sugar had been dusted. He doubted that any of the men would be wondering where the hell Razeby had found such a variety of fruit so late in the year.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Miss Vert.’ Miss Vert, whom no gentleman in the room could fail to be aware of, was a courtesan from the London’s most famous high-class bordello, Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures.
Razeby’s footmen placed the salver on the table before them.
Linwood felt Miss Fox stiffen beside him. He glanced round at where she sat on his left-hand side and caught the look that passed between her and Miss Sweetly. Miss Sweetly gave a tiny shake of her head and smiled at Miss Fox, then the younger actress’s gaze shifted to his, lingering there for only a moment, before moving back to Razeby by whose side she was seated. He saw Razeby thread his fingers through hers where their hands lay on the table, uncaring of who saw it.
He and Miss Fox were seated close to Razeby at the head of the table. Miss Vert’s head lay on the salver before them, so close that he would not have had to stretch out his arm if he wanted to touch her, so close that he could see the slight quiver of the soft green feathers and glittering glass beads that made up the mask that hid the upper half of the woman’s face. Against her mouth a cherry had been placed like a glossy red pearl on the cushion of her lips.
‘Something beautiful to grace the scene while the ladies withdraw to their own refreshment and the gentlemen enjoy their port,’ Razeby said.
The room was filled with lewd laughter and ribaldry, even though the women’s chair legs were yet scraping the floor and not one of them had left. But then they were the demi-monde and did not warrant handling with the same consideration accorded to the respectable women.
Venetia Fox’s expression had not changed. It remained unfazed, controlled, unreadable, yet Linwood could sense that it was as much a mask as the green feathers of the courtesan spread out on the table before them. Her eyes met his and for the smallest of moments they were unguarded and he saw in them outrage and anger and a strength so formidable that it shocked him. Not one word passed her lips, not so much as a frown marred her face, but the tension that rolled off her in great crashing waves was a living, breathing, palpable thing. He wondered that no one else in the room seemed to be aware of it. And then the door closed as suddenly as it had opened and there was nothing there to suggest that she was in any way discomfited.
‘If you will excuse me, Lord Linwood,’ she said in a voice that made him doubt what he had seen in her eyes. And then she was gone.
Venetia asked the footman to fetch her cloak, then discreetly took Alice to one side in the hallway instead of entering the drawing room with the rest of the women.
‘Come with me. Do not stay here.’ Venetia spoke low and urgently, for her friend only. But Alice shook her head.
‘I think Razeby means to increase his offer and I know how to handle him.’ She touched a hand to Venetia’s arm. ‘You shouldn’t trouble yourself about Ellen…’ her eyes slid in the direction of the dining room they had just left ‘… Miss Vert, that is. Razeby won’t let anything happen to her and he’s paying her well enough.’
‘The woman in there, Ellen… was she a friend of yours?’
Alice nodded. ‘Still is. All Mrs Silver’s girls look out for one another, always.’
‘Tell her she can come to me. Tell her I can help her to leave Mrs Silver’s just like I did you.’
‘She doesn’t want to leave. She earns more money than I do. And she likes what she does.’
‘Does she like being at the mercy of all those men in the dining room right now?’
Alice glanced away, an uncomfortable expression on her face. ‘It’s the way of the world, Venetia.’
‘Just make her the offer, Alice.’ Venetia looked at her friend. ‘Please.’
Alice nodded. ‘I will, but I know what she’ll say.’
The two women looked at one another.
‘I will see you back at the house later.’
‘Maybe.’
Venetia knew it was pointless to argue with Alice. ‘Remember what I said about holding out despite all of Razeby’s persuasions.’
Alice nodded. ‘I will.’
The footman arrived with her dark fur-lined cloak, sweeping it around Venetia’s shoulders. She thanked him before he disappeared into the background once more.
‘And I’ll convey your apologies to Razeby.’
‘With the utmost insincerity, please.’ Venetia smiled and watched her friend slip into the drawing room.
‘Has my carriage arrived?’ she enquired of the same footman who had brought her cloak.
‘It has, ma’am, but there’s been an accident involving two carts along at the junction. None of the carriages can get out that way. They think it will be an hour before the road will be cleared. Shall you be joining the other ladies while you wait?’
The ribald laughter of the men sounded from the dining room, stoking the disgust and anger in Venetia’s belly. ‘No.’ She would be damned if she’d stay in this house a moment longer. Her stomach cramped tight at the thought. ‘My home is not so far. I will walk.’
‘Walk, ma’am? Alone, ma’am?’
‘Positively scandalous, is it not?’ She smiled at the footman, who was staring at her as if she had grown two heads, and swept through the door that he scrambled to open.
It was a relief to feel the chill of the night air against her skin and in her lungs. And even more of a relief to hear the front door close behind her. She instructed her carriage to wait in case Alice decided to use it. Her slippers made no noise against the pavement as she made her way past the few carriages that waited there, along to the end of the street and past the scene of the collision of the two carts.
She thought of Miss Vert lying there on the salver, exposed and vulnerable, and the thought made a hollow of her stomach. She thought, too, of Linwood in there with the other men, feasting upon the woman, and a wave of disgust flooded through her blood. She walked on, turning down Bear Street and heading towards Cecil Court. She was listening, watching, aware of the darkness that surrounded her and the emptiness of the streets. There was a risk in walking, especially alone, but the thought of staying in that house, knowing what was happening in the dining room, made the risk one she was prepared to take. Ten minutes more and she would be home. Ten minutes more and she would be safe.
The street lamps in this stretch had not been lit, which whetted her nervousness all the more. She found herself walking faster and clutching all the tighter to her reticule. A small dark shape darted out from the stairs that led down to beneath the door of the smart town house she was passing, making her start and inhale a breathy gasp. The cat mewed at her before running off into the night, its sooty fur merging with the blackness of the night. She gave a small shaky laugh, annoyed at herself for being so jumpy, telling herself not to be so ridiculous… just as the two men stepped out from where they had been sitting on the same stone-hewn stairs and, side by side, sauntered towards her.
Venetia stopped.
‘Didn’t mean to startle you, ma’am.’ The man’s voice was as rough as he looked. He was about thirty years of age, of medium height and bulky build. A dark cap had been pulled over his head, hiding his hair. There was a sleazy insolence in the way he was looking at her that negated the politeness of his words. His companion was younger, with a face that had been ravaged by the pox and eyes that threatened violence and more. Venetia’s heart began to thud in earnest.
She saw their gazes wander over the heavy fineness of her long cloak, over the small glittering reticule, the handle of which was looped around her wrist beside the sparkle of her diamond bracelet, before sweeping back up to her face.
‘Bit dangerous for a lady to be walkin’ the streets all alone at this time of night,’ the bulky man said. ‘Especially one that looks like you.’
Venetia did not deign a reply.
‘But then again, maybe you’re no lady.’ That brazen appraisal swept the length of her body again, as if he could see through the thickness of the cloak that shrouded her. ‘Ain’t you that actress?’
Her mouth felt as arid as a desert as she hid her hands and the reticule within her cloak.
The man saw the slight movement and laughed. ‘That’s not gonna help you, darlin’.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she said, ‘but this might.’ She slipped her hand from the cloak and aimed the small ivory-handled pistol at the ruffian.
He smiled, but she saw something flicker in his eyes. ‘So you want to play it the hard way?’
Her own lips curved in the semblance of a smile. ‘Walk away now and I will not shoot you.’
‘I don’t think so, lady. Besides, I doubt you even know how to—’
‘Oh, but I assure you….’ her finger squeezed before the sentence was finished ‘… that I do.’ The shot was loud for such a small weapon.
‘You shot me!’ He stared at her as if he could not believe it, clutching at his blood-seeping thigh.
Venetia began to run, but the other thug tackled her as she passed, grabbing her and holding her in a vicelike grip that she could not escape.
‘We gotta get out of here, Spike. The noise of the shot’ll have the watch here. What will we do with her?’
‘Bring her with us. I’ve got a score to settle with the bitch.’
Venetia tried to control the panic.
‘I do not think so.’ A voice sounded from a little away, a voice that was low, but so deadly and certain that it cut through the night like an arrow, and made her heart tumble with recognition: Linwood.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Spike asked.
‘That is irrelevant. Move away from the woman.’ The expression on Linwood’s face did not alter. It was closed, indifferent almost. And all the while his gaze remained fixed and steady on the villain. There was an unnerving stillness about him, a calm that was more dangerous than any swagger or shouted bravado. The very air was ripe with danger, the threat so real that only a complete fool would fail to recognise it.
No one moved. No one spoke. But Venetia felt the villain’s fingers tighten around her arms.
And even though she was waiting for it, holding her breath in expectation, Linwood’s move, when it came, still shocked her. He lashed out quick and deadly as a viper, the wolf’s-head of his walking cane flashing silver in the moonlight as he swung it to land hard against the head of the villain who held her, sending the villain reeling and freeing her. Then Linwood kicked the leg of his accomplice that held her bullet. The man screamed with pain as he crumpled to writhe in agony on the pavement.
Linwood did not even look at the men he had felled. Just walked up to her and, taking hold of her arm, guided her briskly away down the street. By the time the doors of the surrounding houses had opened and lanterns were being held aloft, Venetia and Linwood had been swallowed up by the darkness. Only when they turned the corner into the next street, the street in which she lived, did Venetia stop and stare up into his face.
‘What are you doing here? I thought that you were still at Razeby’s. I thought you were…’ Eating fruit from a courtesan’s naked body like every other debauched gentleman in the marquis’s dining room.
‘The after-dinner entertainment was not to my taste.’
Her eyes searched his, looking for the lie and finding no hint of it.
‘And then I learned that you had decided to walk home alone.’ He sounded as if he were distinctly not amused. His face was as stern as when he had faced the two ruffians. ‘A foolhardy decision, Miss Fox, and I had not thought you foolish.’
She flushed beneath the harshness of his criticism, knowing he was right and balking all the more because of it. ‘I had no mind to stay in that house a moment longer. Besides, I was not exactly defenceless.’
‘So I saw.’ And she was not sure if he meant what he said or was being ironic. Her cheeks burned hotter. They both knew what would have happened had he not arrived.
‘Next time, wait for me.’
‘Next time?’ she demanded, her temper sharpened by her wounded pride. ‘I believe you are a trifle presumptive, my lord.’
He said nothing, gave no hint of reaction upon his face. Just looked at her and there was something in those dark eyes that made her feel ashamed of her pettiness.
‘Forgive me,’ she murmured, glancing away. ‘I am grateful for your intervention.’
She turned her eyes back to his and they looked at one another through the darkness. She should feel as afraid of him as the two ruffians that they had left behind. But what she felt was wary curiosity and physical attraction, not fear.
‘I will see you safely home, Miss Fox.’ He did not offer her his arm. He did not smile.
She gave a nod, knowing that she was close to ruining all that she had worked upon with him, knowing that she should say something to redeem herself and the situation, but unable to do so. She felt uneasy, uncomfortable, shaken more than she wanted to admit. Not by the two men, but by Linwood.
They walked side by side, in silence, an awkwardness between them that had not been there before, only stopping when they reached the front door of her home.
‘Goodnight, Miss Fox.’ She felt as if there were a hundred miles between them, that all of the rapport that had flowed between them earlier in the evening had gone, that she was in danger of losing the game when it had barely begun. He rapped the knocker on her front door, then walked away.
‘Linwood,’ she called out, before she could change her mind.
The dark figure stopped by the railings. He turned slowly and looked at her, and the light of the nearby street lamp illuminated him in its soft yellow glow. She walked slowly towards him, ignoring the front door opening behind her, walked right up to him, her gaze never breaking from his, reached her face up to his and brushed his lips with her own.
‘The next time I will wait for you,’ she said softly.
She saw something flicker in the darkness of his eyes, then she found herself in his arms, his mouth upon hers, kissing her.
Linwood’s mouth was masterful. He kissed her and she forgot what any of this was supposed to be about. He kissed her and Venetia had never known a kiss like it. Her heart thundered, her pulse raced, every inch of her skin shimmered with a desire that was all for him. She had never experienced anything so raw, so powerful, so shockingly arousing. Her body melded to his, her arms winding themselves around his neck as she clung to him, wanting him with a passion that roared in her ears and fired her blood to unbearable heat. His tongue stroked against hers, lapped, teased, enticed, and her own leapt to meet it. He kissed her and everything else in the world seemed to slip away and the heat for him, the desire for him, roared with a primitive ferocity.
She broke the kiss, drawing her face back and staring into his eyes, those dark dangerous eyes that hid so many secrets. She was shocked at her loss of control, shocked at the strength of feeling coursing through her, at the blatant physical desire that had her body pressed to his and a heat scalding the tender skin of her thighs. She stepped back, opening up a space between them, feigning a control she did not feel.
