Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Never Trust a RakeDicing With the Dangerous LordA Daring Liaison

by Annie Burrows

  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.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was later than Linwood had anticipated by the time the meeting of the Order of the Wolf finished. He did not go for a drink with the others, but came straight home. He knew as soon as he opened the door of the drawing room that something was wrong.

  It took a moment for him to see her sitting there in the darkness. The fire had almost burned itself out. The room was chilled and dark.

  ‘Venetia?’

  He picked a candle from its holder and lit it from the glowing embers on the hearth, then used it to light the others in the candelabrum.

  Taking it with him, he moved towards her. ‘I did not think you would still be up. The meeting went on longer than I expected.’

  ‘Did it?’ she said and there was a deadness in her tone that made his blood run cold.

  ‘What has happened?’ he asked, coming to stand before her.

  ‘Marianne came to see me today.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said softly.

  ‘She told me what Rotherham did to her.’

  ‘Then you understand why I could not tell you.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘I am relieved to hear it.’

  ‘But not why you lied to me.’

  ‘I have never lied to you, Venetia.’

  ‘Have you not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What will you swear that on, Francis?’

  ‘Whatever you wish.’

  ‘My life? Or Rotherham’s, perhaps?’

  ‘What is this about, Venetia?’

  Her eyes held his for a moment and then moved pointedly to the desk.

  His scalp prickled as he followed the direction of her gaze. There, on the top of his desk, lay the journal he had taken from Rotherham’s study on the night of his murder. ‘I see.’

  ‘So do I. At last. Rotherham’s journal. Did it amuse you to make me believe you innocent? Were you laughing at my naivety? And your parents, too? And I am the one supposed to be trained in acting!’

  ‘It is not as you think. I can explain the presence of the journal.’

  ‘As you can explain the murder of Rotherham? Or are you going to keep on deceiving me with your clever game?’

  His lips pressed firm. ‘The game between us was over a long time ago, Venetia. And even through it, I have never deceived you.’

  ‘No, perhaps not, if one wants to be pedantic about it. How very clever you have been—such careful choice of words, such cunning tactics.’

  ‘For once in my life I used nothing of cunning.’

  ‘No? Swearing an oath to me to speak the truth or nothing at all. Then staying silent rather than make a defence. I would call that cunning.’ She laughed, but it was a bitter sound. ‘No wonder you never could deny it, not even to me when we were alone. And I, fool that I was, thought it was because you were protecting someone.’ She gave an angry laugh again but this time he saw tears in her eyes. ‘And you were—just not in the way that I thought. You killed Rotherham to protect Marianne.’

  ‘Venetia—’

  ‘And do you know the worst thing of all, Francis?’ She faced him in defiance of the tears in her eyes. ‘Had you been honest with me, had I known that you killed him, I do not think it would have made any difference.’ The tears spilled to run down her cheeks. She swiped them away with angry fast movements. ‘You have made an utter fool of me.’

  ‘You are wrong, Venetia.’ He came to her, but when he went to take her in his arms she fought against him and tried to turn away. He stopped her with a gentle grip, forcing her to look at him, knowing that she had to hear the truth.

  ‘I did not kill Rotherham. I give you my oath on that.’

  The words echoed loud in the silence. Outside the rain battered in great swaths against the window and the panes rattled and the curtains swayed in the onslaught of the wind, making the flames of the candles flicker wildly and casting his face in dangerous shadows.

  She was breathing so hard and fast that every in-breath grazed her breasts against his chest.

  ‘You have his journal.’

  ‘I do. But I did not kill him.’

  A heartbeat and then another and the agony in her eyes tore at him.

  ‘I can tell you of it, all of what happened that night, now that I am not bound by Marianne’s secret.’

  She looked into his eyes a moment longer, then she gave a nod.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  Linwood walked to stand by the window and stared out at the dark fury of the night. ‘You were right. It was all about protecting Marianne. She told you what he did to her?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I can understand why you wanted to kill him.’

  ‘Believe me I did. My father, too. And we would have done three years ago, but he ran, fled to the Continent.’

  ‘And you burned his house as a warning to him not to return.’

  He shook his head. ‘I burned his house to destroy his journals. He had documented the details of his interest in Marianne through the years, what he had done to her and his past association with my father. If anyone had read them...I could not risk what that would do to my sister.’

  ‘But Rotherham did not stay in Italy. He came back to London earlier this year.’

  ‘For Marianne. He was obsessed with her.’

  Venetia shuddered at the thought. ‘She is younger than me, his daughter.’

  ‘It was of no account. He was a man who took what he wanted. And he wanted Marianne, even after she was married. You have met Rafe Knight, Marianne’s husband.’

  She nodded. ‘He is a man one would not wish to cross.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Linwood remembered just what it was like to cross Rafe Knight. ‘Knight would have killed Rotherham had Marianne not stayed his hand.’ He did not see the darkness of the street outside, but the sun setting against Houn
slow Heath on a day not so very long ago. ‘Rotherham was allowed to escape with his life on the proviso that he again left the country. But he was defiant. He stayed, even attended the same social occasions as Marianne. It was as if he were intent on taunting her, on taunting us all.’

  ‘I can only imagine what that must have been like.’ She slid her hand to cover his.

  There was a silence.

  ‘I went to the house he was renting that night, to warn him that he had a day to leave London. But when I got there...’ Linwood closed his eyes remembering the scene. ‘He was already dead.’ Rotherham slumped over his desk and the great pool of dark blood that glistened and dripped in the candlelight. He could smell the metallic tang of it even now. ‘Someone had beaten me to it, but only just. He was still warm.’

  ‘You thought it was your father who had shot him.’

  ‘My father’s arm is weak.’ She remembered the way Misbourne’s arm had hung stiffly by his side. ‘He cannot fire a pistol,’ he said. ‘It had to have been Knight. He loves Marianne, you see.’ He paused, turning round to face her. ‘So I found the journal and I left. The weeks that followed were a torment. I was glad that Rotherham was dead, but I was angry, too.’

  ‘Because you knew that there would be an investigation. And you feared that Marianne’s name would be uncovered.’

  He nodded. ‘And because part of me wanted to have done the deed myself.’

  ‘And then I came asking questions,’ she said softly.

  ‘And then you came asking questions.’

  They looked at one another.

  ‘You did not offer a defence because you could not risk them digging deeper and finding Knight.’

  ‘If they hanged Knight, it would destroy Marianne. And she has suffered enough.’

  ‘It must have been a heavy burden to carry alone.’

  ‘I am glad that I can finally tell you, Venetia.’

  The silence was loud and so filled with emotion that she thought it would burst. The tears were rolling down her cheeks freely now. She made no move to wipe them away. He opened his arms and she went into them and pressed her cheek against his heart and wept with relief, and wept for his pain and all that he had endured. She wept and outside the rain and wind raged as surely as the emotion in her heart.