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

by Annie Burrows

  ‘A new landau.’ She stroked over the leather of the seats and bolster, the soft pale-cream kid of her gloves so stark in contrast to the black leather interior of the carriage.

  ‘My father’s,’ he said.

  Her fingers touched the small neat coat of arms embroidered upon the bolster. ‘The Earl of Misbourne. Does he know that you are using it to squire actresses about London?’

  ‘One actress only,’ said Linwood and deliberately did not answer the rest of her question.

  ‘And yet you have taken an apartment in St James’s Place when your father’s house is not so very far away.’

  ‘You have been enquiring about me.’ The realisation would have been a compliment to any man’s ego and Linwood was no exception.

  ‘No more than you have been enquiring about me. You knew my direction without my telling you the other night.’

  ‘Then it seems we both are caught with an interest in the other.’

  She glanced away, as if unwilling to admit it.

  ‘And yet you are not looking for a protector,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Nor you for a mistress,’ she replied silkily.

  She looked over at him, her eyes meeting his so directly that he felt the desire lance through him swift and sharp. Her mouth curved to a small enticing smile that did not touch her eyes, before she turned her attention to their surroundings.

  They had entered through Hyde Park Corner, taking the fashionable route along Rotten Row, although the lateness of year and the chill in the air meant the park was relatively quiet. They passed only two other carriages, one a group of elderly dowagers, who, having scrutinised the occupants of the landau, turned away as respectability deemed they must. And the other, the Duke of Arlesford and his wife. The two men exchanged a look that held distinct animosity, but Linwood was not troubled by it.

  Overhead the sky was a clear white-blue and the sun hung so low that its pale dazzling light made him narrow his eyes. The chill in the air held the dampness of autumn and the leaves on the trees rustled in the flame-vivid colours, littering the grass around them. But the vibrant vital beauty of the surroundings paled to nothing against the woman sitting opposite him.

  ‘Your performance the other night was excellent.’

  She seemed to still and, for a moment, he saw the flicker of confusion and a slight underlying fear in her eyes. ‘My performance?’

  ‘I brought my mother, my sister and her husband to see the play.’

  She closed her eyes and smiled, and he could sense the release of tension, the relief that flowed through her in its place. He wondered at her reaction, but when she opened her eyes she was her normal self once more. ‘I saw you there, in your father’s box. How did your mother and sister find the evening?’

  ‘Most enjoyable.’

  ‘Your father did not accompany you?’

  ‘He did not.’ He did not expand upon it.

  The breeze stroked against the fur of her hat, so that it quivered soft as down. They drove the rest of the time, speaking occasionally of nothing important, small things, and silences that were comfortable. He had never known a woman who did not try to fill them. Eventually the carriage reached the north-east Cumberland Gate. Her eyes moved to sweep over the greenery of the park and above to the sky and the sunlight. She inhaled deeply.

  ‘Such a fine day,’ she murmured almost to herself, ‘too often I see only evenings and nights’, and then she turned her gaze to him and smiled such a radiant warm smile. ‘Thank you for bringing me out in it.’

  ‘You are welcome’, and he felt his own mouth curve in response to the pleasure that lit her face.

  ‘Perhaps I could tempt you to a hot chocolate at Gunter’s?’ he asked as they left the park. Anything to prolong this time in her company.

  ‘You really have been enquiring of my vices, Lord Linwood.’ She smiled again.

  And so did he.

  And then the carriage turned into Park Lane and the sight there that, for Linwood, shrivelled all the sunshine of the day to darkness.

  A costermonger’s barrow had overturned not far from the corner, spilling shiny red-and-green-striped apples across the road. Children swooped like starlings, chattering and grabbing and quarrelling with each other over the spoils. Linwood’s carriage was forced to stop directly outside the place he least wanted to be—the lone dark scar in the row of pale Portland-stone town houses.

  * * *

  Venetia stared at the charred wreckage of the burnt house, wondering if it were fate or Robert’s intervention that had brought the carriage to a halt at this very spot.

  ‘The Duke of Rotherham’s house,’ she said softly and the companionship that had been between her and Linwood only a moment early was ripped away, exposing it for the sham it was, even though it had felt real enough to fool her.

  Linwood said nothing, but she sensed the change in him without even looking. Or perhaps the change was all in herself.

  ‘Apparently it was an act of arson.’ Venetia kept her voice light as if it were not a matter of such consequence of which she spoke.

  ‘Was it?’ All of Linwood’s reserve and caution had slotted back into place.

  ‘Someone must have disliked Rotherham very much indeed.’

  ‘So it seems.’ His expression was closed, cool, almost uninterested in the subject.

  She turned her eyes to his, held his gaze with her own. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Of a fashion. My father and he ran together when they were young.’ His eyes did not so much as flicker. ‘Did you?’

  She felt caught unawares by his question. She doubted any other man would have asked it of her. ‘Only a very little,’ she answered, and it was not a lie. ‘He was a patron of the theatre.’ But Rotherham had also been a lot more than that to her.

  ‘What was your opinion of him?’

  She thought carefully. ‘He was a cold, precise man who liked things his own way, cruel in many respects, arrogant and rich, a man with too much power and yet one who did not default from his duty.’

  ‘Duty?’ Linwood gave a small ironic laugh.

  ‘He was a man of his word, to the letter,’ she said, knowing that, much as she had disliked Rotherham, she would defend him over this.

  ‘He was most certainly that,’ said Linwood with a hard edge to his tone as if he were referring to something specific that had happened between the two men in the past. ‘It seems that you knew Rotherham more than a little.’

  Her heart gave a judder at his words. The seconds seemed too long before she found a reply. ‘Hardly,’ she said in a lazy tone she hoped hid the sudden fear coursing through her. Linwood could not know, she reassured herself. Hardly anyone knew. But it reminded her of how carefully she must tread in this game they were playing.

  ‘Did you like him?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Another truthful answer. ‘I tried, but I could not.’

  His eyes studied hers, and in the silence she could hear the thud of her heart and feel the goose-pimpling of her skin. The game intensified. ‘And you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I doubt there is any who could claim otherwise.’

  She moved her face to the derelict house once more, studying the charred beams and great blackened stones.

  ‘Yet even so, to burn a man’s house to the ground...’ She kept her gaze on the ruined remnants of the once-fine building, asking the question without looking round at Linwood. ‘Why would anyone do such a thing?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am sure they had their reasons.’

  ‘Does any man deserve such hatred, such utter abhorrence?’

  ‘Some men deserve much more,’ said Linwood and his eyes grew colder and darker as he said it.

  ‘Like murder?’ she asked softly and arched her brows.
r />   ‘Undoubtedly.’

  She swallowed, shocked at his honesty. The air seemed to chill around them, the wind picking up in the cold grey light and rendering the silk of her walking dress and

  pelisse too thin against it.

  ‘He is dead,’ she said.

  ‘He is,’ said Linwood and did not sound the least remorseful over it.

  They looked at one another, the mess of apples and hubbub in the street around them forgotten.

  ‘It does not bode well to speak ill of the dead,’ she warned.

  Linwood was not perturbed. ‘I doubt that even Rotherham can return from the depths of Hades to haunt us.’

  ‘You sound sure that he is in hell.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And the hand that put him there? What of that man?’ Her heart was beating hard and fast at her own audacity, and at his. The honesty of the conversation lent it an air of intimacy, of secrets confided between lovers. She was afraid he knew her game, afraid of his answer, afraid of the desire that simmered between them.

  His eyes studied hers, the tension stretching so tight between them that she could not look away even had she wanted to.

  His face lowered ever so slightly towards hers, but whether he meant to kiss her or to whisper the answer she did not know. She leaned in to meet him, wanting it either way.

  And then his tiger was shouting that the road ahead was now clear, and the spell that had bound them alone together in the middle of a busy street was broken. There was nothing she could do to capture it back. With a lurch, the carriage started on its way again.

  She wondered what she would have done if he had confessed his guilt in that moment or if he had kissed her so publically in broad daylight, and the thought made her shiver.

  ‘You are cold.’ He was a man who missed nothing.

  ‘A little,’ she admitted. The damp chill seemed to have seeped into her very bones.

  He took the travel rug from his seat and tucked it over her knees.

  ‘Would you mind if we postponed our trip to Gunter’s until another day, my lord?’

  ‘As you wish.’

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘I have shocked you with my blunt talk,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘I am not a woman so easily shocked.’ Yet she was shocked by the level of the hatred for Rotherham that she had glimpsed in him, and, even more, by the way that Linwood made her feel. It took all of her acting skills not to show it, to resume once more the mantle of the cool, unruffled actress. On the seat beside him lay his cane, the silver wolf’s-head of the handle watching her, its emerald eyes clear bright green in the daylight, so piercing that it seemed they could see beneath all her disguises to the woman beneath. She turned away from the wolf’s gaze, closing her mind to such foolish imaginings.

  ‘Do you work tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And tomorrow night?’

  ‘That, too.’

  A silence.

  ‘I am free on Sunday night,’ she offered.

  ‘I am otherwise engaged on Sunday,’ he said. ‘And it is not an appointment I can change...or forgo.’

  ‘How unfortunate for you,’ she said drily.

  He smiled at that. ‘We could take tea at Gunter’s on Friday.’

  ‘We could,’ she said in a tone that neither agreed nor disagreed with the suggestion.

  His carriage came to a stop outside her house and Linwood climbed down, taking her hand to help her down the steps. She could feel the warmth of his fingers through the leather of their gloves. His hand lingered a second longer than it should have.

  She looked into those dark eyes and, standing this close in the harsh clear daylight, could see that they really were black, rather than a dark brown. No one had black eyes, save for Linwood...and the devil.

  ‘Two o’clock,’ she said, then lowered her lashes and made her way to the front door that stood open for her entry. She did not look back at him, just let Albert close the door and kept on walking all the way up to her bedchamber where she stripped off her gloves and moved to the shadowed edge of the window. Linwood had climbed back into his landau, but it had not yet drawn away.

  Even from here she could feel the danger that exuded from him...and the attraction. As if sensing her focus, Linwood glanced up at the window and, even though she was hidden, his eyes seemed to meet hers, as if he could see her as clearly as if she stood in full brazen view. Her heart stumbled. She held her breath until he turned away and gave the order to drive on.

  She watched the landau and the dark figure within until she could see it no more, wondering at how much she had told Linwood, she who normally told little of the truth. This was turning out to be a game like no other she had played. A game of higher stakes and one in which she must reveal more of herself that she was used to. But sometimes to breach an opponent’s defences it was necessary to lower a few of your own. A very dangerous game indeed. And one she knew she had to win.

  * * *

  Linwood dreamed of the charred remains of Rotherham’s house that night. And of the fires that had transformed it from a fine mansion to the black skeleton it now was; flames that had illuminated the London night sky for miles around and generated a heat that had smouldered for a week. It was a dream that had haunted him often, but this time it was different. This time, the dark figure by the window, the figure that he always willed in his heart to be Rotherham, seemed to shimmer and morph amidst the golden roar of the fire. He strained forwards, his eyes stinging and raw from both the smoke and the heat, desperate to see Rotherham burn, but it was not the duke he saw standing there, but a woman, a woman with dark hair and a white slender neck, a woman whose lips had so often teased and enticed with the hint of a smile, and whose eyes, so pale and so beautiful, only hinted at the woman within. The woman was Venetia Fox.

  She stood there calm and still as if she accepted her fate was to burn, but in her eyes he saw fear. He was running towards her, running to save her, running so hard that his lungs were bursting and the coppery taste of blood was in his throat and on his lips. But it was too late and, as he watched, the flames exploded to consume all around them and he knew with a terrible certainty that he had destroyed her. And in his chest were the same feelings of anger and worry and loss that he could not rid himself of.

  He woke with a start, the sheets and bedclothes twisted around his legs, his skin beaded with sweat even though the room was chilled. He was breathing hard and his stomach was balled with dread and with fear. The dream had felt too real and more disturbing than those that usually troubled his nights. He threw the covers aside, climbed from the bed and moved to the window, where he opened the curtains, staring out over the darkened street. The street lamps had guttered to nothing and the moon had long since set. He stood watching until the frenzied thump of his heart had slowed to its normal pace and the sweat dried cold upon his skin. Venetia’s appearance in the dream was no doubt due to their being stopped outside the burnt remains of Rotherham’s house that day, and the subsequent conversation that had ensued. He supposed that her interest in Rotherham was only natural, but that knowledge did not make him feel any better. Linwood did not return to bed, only found the bottle of brandy and poured a stiff measure, then sipped it until the dawn light crept across the sky.

  * * *

  When Venetia came off-stage the next night a flurry of flowers were delivered to her dressing room. There was an enormous bunch of lilies, large and trumpeted, their centres laden heavy with vibrant orange pollen and a perfume so overpowering that it lay heavy in the small dressing room. A lengthy love poem was contained within Devlin’s note that accompanied the flowers. Venetia knew that he had no interest in love, only sex, and that he thought she was his for the buying. She folded the note over and left it where it lay without reading the poem.
In addition to the lilies were four bouquets of roses and two of chrysanthemums, all from different admirers. And, on its own, a single spray of small cream-coloured flowers that she did not recognise amidst some glossy green leaves. The card was merely signed L. The flowers stood out amongst all the others because they were not showy or beautiful or colourful. She bowed her head and sniffed their perfume, then she understood.

  ‘You’re smiling, so I’m thinking they must be from Linwood,’ said Alice.

  ‘Indeed, they are.’

  ‘Not exactly flowers to woo a woman.’

  ‘Quite the contrary,’ said Venetia quietly.

  Alice’s expression showed her disbelief. ‘What are they?’

  ‘They are the flowers of the Spanish Orange tree.’ Venetia passed the spray to her friend.

  Alice gave the flowers a cautious sniff. ‘Oh!’ Her eyes widened. ‘They smell exactly like you.’

  ‘My perfume is made from their blossom.’

  ‘He’s a clever one, all right.’

  Not so clever to see through her, Venetia hoped. But, as the subtle bittersweet scent of the flowers drifted up to her nose, she could not help feeling a pang of worry.

  * * *

  Linwood did not come to the green room that night and Venetia was relieved. She knew that Robert would be waiting for her. And she knew that the game with Linwood was heading in a direction she had not foreseen.

  She hesitated by the small stage door of the theatre that night, her eyes scanning the darkness for her half-brother.

  ‘I am here, Venetia.’ Her name was a whispered hiss.

  ‘Robert.’

  He climbed into the carriage after her. The door closed with a thud and then they were off.

  * * *

  The carriage had long since disappeared into the darkness when the shadow finally moved from the periphery of Hart Street into which the stage door of the Covent Garden theatre exited. A figure stepped out from where it had stood, hidden by the darkness, poised still and silent beside the damp stones of the opposite wall. He watched for a moment longer before he turned and walked away, retracing his steps silently back down the road towards the busy throng of Bow Street. There was no one to witness his progress, none to know he had ever even been there, and, even had there been, the man remained faceless in the dark moonless sky. When he reached the street he disappeared into the straggle of the crowd, just one more theatre-goer who had lingered to talk or for other more licentious pursuits. But beneath the glow of the street lamps two tiny sparks of green fire glowed within the head of his walking cane.