The windows at street level that overlooked the pavement had been smashed. Great shards of glass lay like spun sugar across the pavement. She heard the crunch of some crumbs of it before Linwood took her arm, steering her free of it.
‘The glass will pierce your slippers,’ he murmured.
There was no need to rap on the knocker, for the door had been kicked in, the fresh gouges raw and pale in the darkness of the door frame. Venetia used the knocker anyway, giving two light taps, before pushing the door open.
‘Oh, Miss Fox!’ Lily’s face was white, the lines of worry etched clear upon it. ‘Thank God you’re here! Sadie said we shouldn’t disturb you till morning, but the door is busted and the windows, too, and I didn’t know what else to do!’
‘You did the right thing in sending for me,’ she reassured Lily.
As they moved through the hall into the little parlour Venetia stopped and stared around her at the room that was barely recognisable. The furniture had been thrown around, the curtains torn from their poles, the pictures upon the walls and ornaments that had made this place a home smashed and broken.
‘What happened?’
Lily shook her head. ‘It was like this when I got back. Whoever they were, they knew where to find the money. It’s gone. All of it.’
Venetia glanced at the surrounding devastation. The door creaked as the wind played against it and pushed within. The room was freezing, the grate black and dead with burnt-out ashes.
‘Is anyone hurt?’
‘Sadie. She was the only one here. The rest of the girls were out. Still are.’
‘Where is Sadie now?’
‘Upstairs in her room.’ Lily’s mouth tightened.
‘How bad is it?’ Venetia felt her stomach tighten with dread.
Lily’s eyes slid to Linwood, as if only noticing him standing in the background for the first time, and then back to Venetia. Venetia saw the question in them and felt a frisson of guilt that she had brought him into this place of safety.
‘He is trustworthy.’ Her eyes met Linwood’s across the room and, contrary to everything that she knew of him, it felt like the truth. Her heart gave a little spur at the admission, before she turned back to Lily.
Lily did not look persuaded, but she gave Venetia a nod. ‘The animals took the goods by force and without paying, if you catch my drift. All four of them.’
Venetia felt herself blanch. ‘Have you called the doctor?’
Lily shook her head. ‘She won’t see one.’
Venetia struggled to mask the horror from her face and the nausea that was swimming in her stomach. And then Linwood was by her side, his hand upon her arm, both reassuring and strengthening. ‘Go to her. I will do what needs to be done down here.’
She hesitated, uneasy at leaving him down here alone, and afraid of what she would find upstairs.
‘She needs you, Venetia,’ he said.
She nodded, knowing he was right, and with a glance at Lily slipped away.
Sadie’s physical hurts were minor, but Venetia knew that, however much Sadie told her she was all right, the mental scars of what had happened tonight would never leave her. It was the risk that every woman who sold herself ran, the nightmare which they all feared. But even though the nightmare had become a reality for Sadie, Venetia knew it would not stop the girl from selling herself again at some point in the future. It was why this house existed. It was the little she could do. She stayed with Sadie until there was a knock at the door and Lily appeared with a doctor.
‘Your gentleman friend insisted upon it. Supplied the geld up front, too.’
* * *
It was the start of a very long night. Looking back at it, Venetia wondered how she could have got through it without Linwood by her side. They worked together, side by side with the women who returned, wearing their skirts short enough to show the red-flannel petticoats beneath. Sweeping up glass and destruction, fixing what they could. Linwood left and when he returned he had a team of joiners in tow, although God only knew where he had found them at this time at night. And in the lateness of the night they boarded the windows and patched up the front door.
* * *
Dawn was crawling across the sky, diluting the inky darkness in ever-lightening hues by the time Venetia and Linwood eventually left. The streets were empty, the rumble and roll of her carriage wheels loud in the silence.
She looked across the carriage at him. His waistcoat and shirt were marked. There was a rip beneath the arm of his fine dark green tailcoat, where he had been lugging furniture, and his boots were coated in dust and scuffs. The pale silk of her skirt was grubby, and the threads pulled, where she had been kneeling on floorboards. Her hair was dangling free from half of its pins. She scraped it back, feeling tired and dirty, angry and sad with what had happened at the refuge house in Whitechapel.
‘How long have you been supporting them?’ His voice was quiet and held nothing of judgement.
‘A few years,’ she said and hoped he would ask nothing further. She was so tired she doubted she could guard her answers carefully enough. ‘It is a charity that helps women and their children should they wish a means of survival other than that of the oldest profession. And the house we have just left, a place that they may stay however long they choose.’
‘A worthwhile cause.’
‘I am glad you agree. There are many that do not.’
‘How was the woman they...hurt?’ She heard the slight catch in his voice. He sounded as concerned as Venetia felt.
‘Her physical injuries are small enough. But who knows what scars such an ordeal leaves upon the mind? She will survive. Women are strong. They have to be.’
‘Maybe not always as strong as they seem,’ he said softly, and she knew it was not the women in Whitechapel of which he spoke.
Her eyes met his across the carriage. ‘That is why they need smoke and mirrors,’ she admitted. And she smiled a sad smile. ‘Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you for staying. And for everything that you did.’
‘You are welcome, Venetia. I am glad that you allowed me to help.’
She glanced away, and when she looked at him again she spoke the truth that was in her heart, ‘You are not the man London thinks you.’
‘Nor you the woman.’
‘Maybe we are two of a kind indeed,’ she murmured the words he had spoken on a moonlit night upon a balcony.
He reached out his hand to her, offering it to her. And she accepted what he offered, folding her fingers around his as she moved across the carriage to sit by his side, their hands still entwined together. It felt right and good, reassuring and soothing after all the distress she had witnessed this night, and the uncomfortable memories that such places always stirred in her.
‘I fear for those women.’ She stared into the distance and saw not the carriage, but another familiar scene from across the years. ‘The men who did this are probably employed by one of the local bawdy houses at which the women used to work.’
‘Then there is a good chance that the Bow Street Runners will find the villains.’
She shook her head at his naivety. ‘The constables will do nothing. This is not the first time there has been trouble, although it was not so bad the last time. The women are prostitutes, the law will do nothing to protect or help them.’ Her voice was bitter, but she was too exhausted to disguise it. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I do not mean to lecture you.’ She leaned back against the seat and him. ‘I fear I am too tired for politeness.’
His arm curved around her, gentle and supporting. ‘Rape is a deplorable crime. The men who did this will be found, Venetia, and punished. On this occasion I am sure that the Bow Street office will be more alert to its duty.’
She was too tired to understand what it was he was saying. Her mind was slow and heavy with fatigue. His body felt strong and warm, and safe. She relaxed against him, gladdened by the feeling that he seemed to care, about justice for a poor woman who had been raped, and about he
r. ‘I fear that you are wrong, but hope with all my heart that you are right.’
‘Justice will be done, Venetia.’
‘Will it?’ His words were strangely bittersweet. Justice for the women. Justice for Rotherham. She did not want to think of the latter implication. Not right at this moment. She threaded her fingers through his and laid her head against his shoulder as the carriage made its way across a still-sleeping city and did not think, but just let herself be with him.
* * *
Venetia retired to bed as soon as she arrived home, but her sleep was not uninterrupted. She dreamed of Linwood.
In the dream she was standing in her bedchamber. It was daytime, she could tell by the way the cold stark light flooded in through the windows, but even so she was wearing her new black-silk evening dress, the one she had been saving for a special occasion, the one that would shock and stir scandal that could only do the theatre, and herself, good. Her hair was pinned up, a few curls arranged to trail artlessly against her neck and the edges of her face. She faced the man sitting on the edge of her bed. A man who was fully clothed, dressed all in black as if their outfits had been deliberately matched. A man who was silent, and whose ebony-dark eyes were filled with passion and with secrets.
‘Do you want me?’ she asked in a low sultry voice. And she did not know why the answer was so very important, just that it was.
Linwood gave no reply. He did not need to. She could see the answer in the way he looked at her, see it in the tension that ran through his body, hear it in the whisper of the air all around, and feel it in the atmosphere that strained between them.
Her gaze dropped to the pistol that she held in her hand, an old-fashioned duelling pistol just like her father’s. It felt too big and heavy, but she held it still and true in its aim at his heart and did not let it waver. Her eyes moved back to his face.
Linwood did not look at the pistol, not even when she pulled back the cock ready to fire or when she moved her finger to rest lightly against the trigger.
‘Linwood.’ She said his name loud and clear and began to walk towards him. ‘Linwood’, again, this time softer, the word almost a caress upon her lips. She walked until there was no more distance between them, until the muzzle of the pistol nosed within the lapels of his jacket to press against the clean white linen of the shirt that covered his heart. And it seemed as she stood there she could feel the beat of his heart vibrate all the way through the length of the pistol, feel the slow steady thud in her hand and her heart.
He whispered a word, one solitary word. ‘Venetia.’ And then he leaned forwards and took her mouth with his. And the kiss changed everything. He changed everything. The pistol was no more. He kissed her and she yielded to him, to the need that had been growing within her since the very first moment they had met. His hands were on her breasts, on her hips, stripping away the barriers between them. Touching her in a way no one else could. Caressing her, kissing her until Venetia could not fight it any longer, until they were naked together, until she was pushing him back flat on to the bed, until they were rolling together in a tumble of limbs and the heat between her thighs was a pulsing inferno of need. She splayed her legs, opening herself to him, needing him, wanting him, straining for what only he could give her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes’, when all through the years she had said no. Linwood’s eyes, deep and dark and smouldering, stared into hers as he positioned himself between her thighs, the tip of him teasing against her, so tantalisingly close, the moment stretching to an eternity of longing.
‘Francis,’ she whispered his given name, her use of it finally admitting what they were to one another. ‘Francis!’ She cried it out loud, needing him, wanting him to take her and make her his.
She woke with a start, her heart pounding in a frenzy, her blood rushing wild and torrential. Her breath was ragged and fast and loud in the silent darkness of the bedchamber. The dream was still heavy and vivid upon her. It seemed so real, so very real that she craned her neck to stare around her, looking for the man from her dream. But the crack of silver moonlight showed nothing but her own bedchamber and a hearth on which the fire had long since died.
Her breath blew puffs of mist into the night-chilled air, but although beneath the heavy weight of the blankets and covers she was trembling it was not from cold. Quite the reverse. Her body was aflame and hungry with desire. As she shifted her nightdress rasped coarse against her swollen nipples. And between her thighs burned a need frightening in its strength. A throbbing. An ache. A yearning for the touch of a man with a handsome face, unsmiling, dangerous, with dark, dark eyes that spoke to her soul.
She touched where he would have, sliding a trembling hand between her legs, to the place that was slick and wet with desire. ‘Francis,’ she whispered as her finger touched, and her body’s response was swift and unexpected. She gasped aloud, her body arching and exploding with a shimmering sunburst of sensation that took her beyond the curtain-dimmed loneliness of her bedchamber, soaring high to a place she did not know.
Her heart was racing when she returned to her body. The haze of desire cleared, leaving her with a cold, clear realisation. She rolled onto her side and hugged her arms around her, feeling guilty and ashamed and more alone than ever, because the boundaries between pretence and reality were blurred, and of that which was happening between her and Linwood she no longer knew what was play-acting and what was not. The man she was coming to know was not the one she had expected to find. To the man she was coming to know she was in danger of yielding all that she had sought through the years to protect...her body, her respect...and maybe even something that touched dangerously close to her affections. And that was something that Venetia could not allow to happen.
* * *
The next day seemed to go wrong from the very start. She overslept, then woke late with a headache, feeling tired and unrested following the long hours of wakefulness in the night. She accidentally caught the skirt of her dress and tore it, there was a problem with the range, which meant the cook had been unable to heat water let alone cook anything, and she could not find the pages containing her lines and notes on stage direction. As if that was not bad enough, one of the horses had gone lame in a leg so there was a surgeon to organise and then a rush to catch a hackney carriage to the theatre.
* * *
She arrived late to find Mr Kemble in a black mood and the whole cast waiting for her. She had trouble remembering her lines and everything was going from bad to worse when she saw the small wiry man down in the stalls talking to Mr Kemble. There was something about him, an air, a bearing, that gave away his official position before she saw him slip the dark wooden truncheon into an inner pocket of his jacket—a Bow Street Runner. The uneasiness whispered through her like a winter wind through a graveyard.
‘Gentleman from Bow Street office to see you when you’ve got a minute, Miss Fox.’ The stage hand spoke quietly enough, but she knew that his visit would spark the curiosity of the rest of the cast.
‘Have him come to my dressing room.’
All she could think of was that Linwood had been found out, that he had been arrested, charged with the murder. She could feel her heart in her throat; hear the way it made her voice ring higher. The nervousness threaded though her pulse, making her feel sick. She did not let herself look at him, just focused her mind on the lines, speaking them loud upon the stage until somehow she got through the scene. It seemed too long and yet not long enough before she made her way from the stage through the narrow corridors that led to her dressing room.
The man was leaning against the wall beside her door. ‘Mr Collins of the Bow Street office.’ He stepped forwards, introducing himself and slipping his baton from his pocket to show her the crest fixed to it. ‘I wonder if I might have a word, Miss Fox.’
‘Of course.’ She preceded him into the dressing room and waited until he closed the door behind him before she spoke again.
‘How may I be of assistance, of
ficer?’ She did not sit down, just leaned against the edge of her dressing table, her hands holding loosely to it.
‘Oh, no, Miss Fox.’ The wiry little man shook his head and blushed. ‘Nothing like that. I came to let you know the good news. We’ve closed one of our top priority cases. One in which you have an interest, although the office understands the requirement for absolute discretion...’ his eyes glanced at her with undisguised admiration ‘...when it comes to your involvement in the matter.’
Something writhed in Venetia’s stomach, something black that felt a lot like dread. She gripped hard to the dressing-table edge, even while her mouth curved in a cool smile and she held the man’s gaze with a brazen confidence that belied all that she was feeling. Waiting. And waiting for him to say the words.
‘We’ve caught them.’
The blood was thrumming so loud in her ears that she almost did not hear the last word. Them.
‘Got all four of them locked up snug in the cells at Bow Street.’
‘All four of them,’ she repeated and suddenly realised that he was not talking about Linwood.
‘They won’t be bothering any women in Whitechapel again. Your charity works are safe, Miss Fox.’
The relief made her almost light-headed. She sat down in the chair, the thoughts whirring in her head. ‘How did you come to catch them so quickly?’
‘It was the strangest thing. Fifteen years in the service and never seen anything like it before, miss. All four of them had an attack of conscience. Came to the office and turned themselves in. Gave a full confession and everything. No need for the unfortunate victim...’ he glanced down at his notepad ‘...a Miss Sadie Smith, I believe, to give evidence in court.’
‘That is good news indeed, Mr Collins.’
‘And it seems there will be no need to mention your association with the charity.’
‘Even better.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me.’
He smiled in return and gave a bow before leaving. The door closed after him.
Dicing With the Dangerous Lord Page 11
