‘Where are we?’ Marianne looked about as she brought him the lantern and matches. ‘Are you breaking in?’ He struck a match and, voila, there was light.
‘The warehouse is abandoned. I don’t think it constitutes breaking in if no one’s there.’ Vennor passed her the lantern, his tone terse, his own emotions still running hot over the events of the evening. ‘Hold it up so I can see the lock.’ He bent to the lock, working its combination until the shackle came free. He pushed the gate open. ‘After you, please.’ The less he had to explain to Marianne the better; there was already so much and he hadn’t even allowed himself to think about that kiss yet.
Marianne was undaunted. She swung the lantern around the deserted work yard. ‘I know this place! This is the old Penlerick warehouse.’ She smiled, but not at him or for him. She was still too mad for that, still too disbelieving. She smiled with pride over solving the puzzle. ‘I came here once with my sisters. Your father had just received a shipment of Kashmir shawls and he gave us first pick.’ He remembered that day, the four oldest Treleven girls all crowded around the trunks, oohing and aahing and wrapping themselves in shawls. The drab warehouse had been bright and lively with their laughter.
‘Upstairs. Now,’ Vennor growled. ‘And for goodness’ sake, don’t be flashing that light around for everyone to see.’
‘Who’s to see besides drunkards and whores?’ Marianne challenged. ‘No one’s working this late and we’re behind a gate.’
He took the lantern from her and all but dragged her upstairs in his earnestness to get them to safety. He would not rest easy until they were in his little self-appointed apartment, the door barred against intruders and the night. Fear washed over him afresh as they climbed the stairs. He should be more patient. But by God, he’d nearly lost her tonight! He could not be patient with foolhardiness and they weren’t out of the woods yet.
He unlocked the door at the top of the stairs and she slid him a sideways glance. ‘What is this?’
‘The Vigilante’s lair.’ He bolted the door behind them and set the lantern on the wood table. They were safe now.
Marianne’s eyes were wide with wonder and speculation as she took in the space and began to recalculate her disbelief. She turned in a slow full circle. When her eyes met his again, they were rife with questions. ‘So, it’s really you? You’re the Vigilante?’ Vennor nodded as she took a seat on the low, wide bed which was shoved against a wall. ‘Well, it’s a good thing we’ve got all night. That might just be long enough for you to tell me everything and then explain why you haven’t told me before.’
* * *
The whore at the street corner gathered her thin shawl about her in satisfaction as the lantern went out, hidden from view. She’d found the Vigilante and now she could find him again if she needed to. There was peace in that and hope, too. She gingerly touched her split lip where it was still puffy and swollen. She’d endured a lot over the years for the sake of money, but no more. The man who came to visit her grew more brutal, his demands outpacing his payments. The Vigilante had stood up for a flower girl. Perhaps he would stand up for her if she asked him to.
Her customer had used her sorely once before. People had died because she couldn’t stop him the first time. Now, he was back after a long absence. This time it would be different. If she needed to, she could step forward. She could get help. But that was for later. This was not a step to consider lightly. To betray her nameless lover would be to put herself in great danger. If he found out, he would come for her, she was sure of it. It was too soon yet for such risk. She could endure a bit more and she needed something more substantial to report that would move the Vigilante to action. Rumours would not do. She walked slowly back to the brothel, taking comfort that, when or if the time came, she would have help.
Chapter Nine
This time, Marianne believed him. She sat cross-legged on the bed, her skirts tucked about her, as Vennor finished his tale. She had to remember to close her mouth every so often, so incredible did she find his story. Of course it was true, she saw that now. It explained his social absences, the reasons he showed up late and left early when he did attend an event. It explained how and why he hadn’t given up the investigation of his parents’ deaths. But knowing Vennor’s secret didn’t solve anything. It merely complicated things. The more it explained, the more she questioned if she really knew Vennor at all.
Marianne blew out a shaky breath. ‘Why didn’t you tell me from the start? More to the point, were you ever going to tell me?’ The hurt and anger she’d felt over the discovery was still there. Explanation and understanding had not mitigated it. If anything, it had intensified her sense of betrayal.
Vennor stopped pacing and faced her. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know. I thought it would be safer for them, and for me, if I kept that piece of my life separate. If I were discovered, I didn’t want my friends to become leverage to use against me. Nor did I want to embroil them in scandal.’ He shrugged. ‘And maybe I was just too embarrassed. I knew what Inigo would say. Every time I thought about saying something, I could hear Inigo’s voice in my head, lecturing about the danger, about how there was no heir if I fell, about the futility of searching a cold trail.’
That sounded like Inigo. ‘But not about the scandal,’ Marianne defended their friend softly. ‘He would have been worried for you, that’s all.’
Vennor managed a wry smile. ‘Can I tell you something? I saved him once, as the Vigilante. Brenley’s thugs came upon him one night. It was three to one and Inigo was struggling.’ Vennor gave a chuckle as he remembered. ‘When I was sure he was all right, I ran home as fast as I could, for fear the first place Inigo would go would be my house. I was the only other one in town. Cassian was on honeymoon and Eaton was in Cornwall. I was right. I had ten minutes on him. He came banging on my door shortly after midnight.’
Marianne laughed, too. The story broke through some of the tension that crowded the space, but she wouldn’t let the story derail them. Vennor had explained, but there was more to accomplish in this little room with its low bed and wooden table. How many nights had he slept here, unwilling to go home to the town house and its memories? ‘I understand why you didn’t tell Inigo or the others. But why not me?’ She returned to her original question. ‘I thought we were friends, Ven. Friends who told each other everything.’ She’d told him so many secrets over the years and she’d thought he had told her all his secrets, too.
Vennor came and sat on the bed beside her. He reached for her hand and threaded his fingers through hers in a familiar gesture. ‘At first, I didn’t think it would last. I thought it would be short-term, that either I’d find the clues I was looking for or I wouldn’t, and that would be the end of it.’ He gave her a sheepish grin, ‘I wasn’t sure I’d be any good at it, either. Perhaps some pride was at stake.’ He laughed.
‘But it did last. The Vigilante is a celebrity now,’ Marianne argued.
Vennor shook his head. ‘And now I am in so deep I can’t leave it. I kept thinking I couldn’t tell you because you’d be angry I didn’t tell you sooner. Looks as though I was right,’ he teased and she smiled. Pieces of themselves, of who they were together, were coming back, slowly conquering the anger and betrayal, but she feared those pieces might not fit back together in the same way as before. She’d seen a new side of Vennor tonight—a man who could pick locks, who could fight four men in an alley with deadly intent. The man she’d seen wasn’t an urbane duke, but a far more primal creature, and a far more passionate creature.
‘I should have told you,’ Vennor confessed. ‘Not knowing didn’t keep you safe. In fact, it did just the opposite.’ His voice dropped. ‘God, Marianne, when I realised what you’d done, where you’d gone, I bolted out of the Mayfields’ ballroom only to realise you could be anywhere.’ He stopped, his head bowed, and she felt him shudder. ‘What if I’d chosen differently? What if I’d gone to Seven Dials instead? I
wouldn’t have been there. Those men, Marianne, they were all over you. If I’d failed you, I would never have forgiven myself.’
‘Hush, everything is fine.’ Marianne stroked his back, comforting. She could handle her own fear, but not his. ‘You guessed right and all’s well that ends well.’
He peered up at her through blond locks. ‘Has it ended well, Marianne?’
‘I’m unhurt beyond a bruise or two and a need for carefully applied rice powder tomorrow,’ she tried to joke, but his question could not be brushed away with humour. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly as she took up his hand again, her fingers flexing as they slid through his. Physically, the evening had ended well. She was indeed unhurt, which was no small thing given what might have happened. But other things had been, if not exactly hurt, then definitely changed; their understanding of one another and most certainly of their friendship had been tested by fire tonight in more ways than one. The steel of their friendship was bent. Might it be forged anew? What would it look like? She respected that he was leaving that decision up to her. It was a testament to his strength of character that he had the confidence not to force his own preferences on her.
‘Can you forgive me, Marianne? For keeping it from you?’ Light from the lantern cast shadows over the planes of his face. The imprint of her palm on his cheek had begun to fade. He was not the only one who needed forgiveness.
Marianne nodded. Forgiveness seemed a good place to start for them both. ‘Can you forgive me for breaking my word to you and for slapping you?’ But forgiving wasn’t the same as forgetting and she thought it would be a while before they fully overcame what the other had done, as evidenced by the silence that hung between them. Despite their joined hands, there was distance. She could forgive him the deception, but she couldn’t forget what her discovery would cost her. ‘I suppose this means I can’t publish my story,’ Marianne said at last. ‘Perhaps I couldn’t have published it anyway. Perhaps it was an ill-fated idea from the start.’ Not just the story, but the whole thought of being a journalist, of escaping marriage. The realisation swamped her, threatening to overwhelm her. Her choices were gone now. She’d not lived up to the ultimatum she’d given herself. She needed to succumb to marriage. Perhaps it was true, that one could not escape one’s fate.
‘When do you know it’s time to give up?’ She leaned her head against his shoulder with a sigh. Tonight had turned her world upside down. ‘I was so hopeful when I left the house tonight. I never dreamed it would all fall apart.’ Never dreamed she’d be attacked, never dreamed the Vigilante would rescue her, that he would turn out to be her best friend, that her best friend would turn out to be someone she’d only thought she knew, or that her best friend would kiss like sin itself and that she would kiss him back.
‘If there’s a time to quit, I haven’t reached it yet.’ Ven’s arm was around her, drawing her close to the warmth of him against the coldness of the room. ‘I hope you haven’t either,’ he whispered into her hair.
She looked up at him. ‘Have you found leads, then? Is the investigation truly alive and well?’ She hoped for his sake it was. Three years of nothing was a long time to live on hope alone.
‘No, there’s been nothing new since Bow Street closed the case. It took me six months or so to figure that out.’ Vennor leaned back against the wall, taking her with him.
‘So, why do you persist in playing the Vigilante?’ Marianne curled up in the arc of his arm. She was getting drowsy and he was deliciously warm.
‘Because they need me. These people need the Vigilante. I can be their hope when there is no other.’
Marianne smiled in the dimness of the room. ‘So I wasn’t far off the mark the other day when I called the Vigilante a revolutionary.’ This she could reconcile. The Vennor she knew had been raised under the aegis of the Cornish Dukes whose legacy was civic service and care for all of humankind regardless of station. The Vennor she knew would want to see every last person fed and clothed, sheltered and protected, educated and employed in gainful use of their services. It was the primal ferocity she couldn’t account for. ‘Dukes can do that, too, you know. You can save people without wearing a mask and lurking in dark alleys.’
‘Not these people you can’t,’ Vennor murmured. ‘They need more than food baskets and charity, Marianne. They need a protector, someone who will stand up for them against unimaginable evil.’ His hand ran up and down her arm in a slow, idle massage. ‘Just last month, I rescued a girl from a brothel. She’d been sold to the madam by her father for gin money and she was going to be sold again that night to anyone who paid enough gold for first rights to her.’
‘How awful.’ Marianne suppressed a shiver. She’d had a taste of that brutality tonight. ‘What happened to her?’ She imagined the Vigilante as he’d been tonight, all in black and masked, racing to the girl’s aid, carrying her away in his arms.
‘She’s a maid in Nikolay Baklanov’s employ now on Leicester Square.’ Nikolay was a Russian prince who ran a riding academy in town. She’d met him once—a tall, dark-haired fellow, very striking, as was his wife. ‘But I can’t put them all into the households of my friends. It would be too suspicious, for one thing, and there’s just not enough work for another. My friends only need so many maids and footmen.’ Vennor sighed, the burden of the Vigilante weighing him down. ‘Right before Christmas, I found a baby left in a tavern alley in Seven Dials, wrapped in rags.’
‘Did you take it to an orphanage?’ The thought of Vennor with a baby in his arms made her smile. He would be an extraordinary father. But the story didn’t end the way she’d thought it would.
‘No, the baby died before I could get help for it. I couldn’t save it. I was two streets from the orphanage and I just felt the life go out of it, felt that last little breath against my chest.’ The pain in his words silenced her. There was no comfort she could offer. Reassurances would sound pitiful. ‘That baby needed more than a charity basket. That baby’s mother, whoever she was, needed more, too. I can’t even imagine what level of despair drives someone to think their child has a better chance in an alley than with them.’
She could not imagine it either as she hugged him. ‘I’m sorry, Ven.’ She was quiet for a while, thinking. When she spoke again, her words came slowly, her mind still forming around an idea. ‘People need to know how bad it is. People need to understand that a charity basket isn’t enough, that it doesn’t bring real change, that the only thing that brings real change is education and the opportunity for honest work in return for honest wages.’ She sat up, and brushed her hair out of her face, her excitement growing as renewed purpose flooded her. ‘I can’t tell the Vigilante’s story now and perhaps you were right—I never could. But there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of stories that need to be told right here and I can tell them. I can interview them, with the Vigilante’s help. Together, Ven, we can tell their stories and we can make change happen.’
‘All four of us—the Vigilante and M.R. Mannering included, eh?’ Vennor was grinning for the first time that night. His thumb ran thoughtfully over her knuckles.
‘I like that...you smiling. It means we might survive this.’
Vennor laughed. ‘I would hope our friendship could survive one mishap.’
She looked down at their hands. The new awareness between them was rising again now that other issues had been settled. Would they survive that? To explore it might be the real threat to their friendship. ‘But it wasn’t just one mishap, was it?’ It was time to beard the other ghost in the room. ‘You kissed me tonight.’
Vennor’s hand tipped her chin up, forcing her eyes to meet his, his mouth close to hers as he whispered, ‘I don’t consider that a mishap, and I’d like very much to do it again.’ With a gentle movement, his mouth closed the short distance between them, taking her in a slow kiss that was as thrilling for its languor as the kiss in the alley had been for its ferocity. Her mouth op
ened to him, his tongue tracing her lips, tasting her mouth, coaxing her to taste his.
This was a deliberate kiss, a kiss for savouring. There was no danger, no anger to get in the way of passion’s exploration. She wanted to drink and drink from him until her thirst was satiated; she wanted to press her body against him as she’d done in the alley; she wanted to feel his strength against her. The terror of the street seemed far away. She lay back on the wide bed, her arms wrapped around Vennor’s neck, his body warm against hers, desire driving her. She was safe here because this was Vennor, both the man she knew and the man she did not. She was eager to explore them both with her mouth, her hands and even her heart.
Chapter Ten
His body answered her eagerness with an enviable earnestness of its own that could, for a while, transcend the reasoning of his mind as it called out cautions at every kiss and caress. Her touch was a hot flame branding him as surely as it soothed him. What they were doing right now on the mattress of his makeshift bed posed a greater risk to their friendship than any secret he’d kept from her.
Passion once engaged could not be withdrawn or forgotten. These moments would exist with him for ever—the sight of her bright hair tumbling about her shoulders in a lantern-lit cascade, framing her oval face with its slim, elegant nose and the enticing fullness of her mouth. Neither was he likely to forget how her body pressed against him, untutored but unerringly instinctive in the lift of her hips and the arch of her back, to all of which his hungry body cried out, yes!
They might have been able to explain away the alley kisses as a one-time event born of extreme circumstances and perhaps even some identity confusion. He wasn’t himself when he was the Vigilante, but an entirely different being who answered to no law except his own. Perhaps it was the same for her when she was M.R. Mannering and not the Incomparable. She hadn’t known who she was kissing in the alley nor who was kissing her. But here, in the small boxy warehouse office-cum-apartment, they could not escape who they were. On this bed, they were Marianne and Vennor.
The Confessions of the Duke of Newlyn Page 8