Dicing with the Dangerous Lord - By Margaret McPhee Page 0,95

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 Hounslow 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.

He held her until there were no more tears to shed, until her eyes were dry and gritty. He held her until the storm, both inside and out, subsided and there was only the comforting beat of his heart. She turned her lips to where her cheek had rested, to the fine white lawn of his shirt, wet through from her tears. She could feel the beat of his heart beneath her lips. She kissed him there, his heart, kissed the pulse point in his neck, kissed his chin, kissed his mouth, with all the love that was in her heart. Their mouths slid together, clung with such sweet tenderness. And then she stared into his eyes, so dark and soulful, as her hands stroked against the