focused her mind on what she was here to do—to see that a man guilty of murder did not evade justice. It was the least she owed to Robert and to the man she could only ever call Rotherham, even if he was so much more.
The forest-green silk she was wearing had cost her a fortune, but was worth every penny. Both the cut and colour suited her well and gave her a confidence in her appearance. The skirt clung just a little to her hips and legs, the neckline showed the promise of her breasts. To Venetia it was like donning her armour. She knew her weapons well and wielded them with expertise.
She exchanged pleasantries with Fallingham, Bullford and Monteith. Spoke to Razeby and Alice, who, having taken her advice, was wearing an almost-virginal gown of cream silk that Razeby seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes from. Until, eventually, she found Linwood before her.
‘I believe that you have already been introduced to Lord Linwood?’ Razeby said for the benefit of those that surrounded them. She knew her every move was being scrutinised, that who she spoke to and what she said had every chance of appearing in tomorrow’s gossip sheets.
‘We have met,’ she said and her eyes touched Linwood’s and, despite how much she had steeled herself against it, she felt that same nervous fluttering in her stomach.
‘If you will be so kind as to excuse me, for a moment...’ Razeby melted away, leaving her and Linwood alone in the crowd.
‘Miss Fox,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘Lord Linwood.’
The dinner gong sounded before Razeby’s butler announced that dinner was served in the dining room.
‘Allow me to take you in to dinner.’ Linwood’s voice was low, the words polite, assertive rather than forceful, but there was something in the way he was looking at her that made a shiver run over her skin.
‘What a pleasant suggestion,’ she said and arched an eyebrow ever so slightly. Both of them knew it had been her suggestion. He was cleverer than most men, she thought, more perceptive.
‘I thought so.’ His smile was small, secret, the jest shared between just the two of them.
She flexed her lips in return and, tucking a hand into the crook of his arm, let him lead her into the dining room.
* * *
The food was exceptional, as it ever was at Razeby’s table, guinea fowl and peacock, goose and a pie of turkey and ham combined. A medley of the sweetest quinces, potatoes sliced and scalloped in a cream sauce with capers, rabbit jelly, spiced leeks and ginger-fried cabbage, and an enormous tart, each slice of which contained a different honeyed fruit, and on a fine glass dish all of its own a rich plum pudding. But afterwards, had he to say what they had eaten Linwood could not have told them. His attention was too much on the woman by his side.
She did not flirt. Indeed, she did nothing of what he expected. Rather, the conversation between them flowed easily and naturally. They spoke of Bonaparte and the war that was raging across the Continent, of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and Captain Diamond’s wager with Milton. Anything and everything, but nothing that touched anywhere near the subject of Rotherham and all that worried him.
The time passed too quickly, too comfortably. Just an hour in her company and already he felt something of the darkness lift from him. The burden that he carried grew light. She engaged him completely, making him forget in a way that his family and friends and everyday life could not. And when the plates were cleared away and the table brushed down, he found that he did not want her to leave.
‘I believe our evening is at an end, Lord Linwood.’ Even just the sound of her voice stroked against him to both soothe and excite. He breathed in the scent of neroli that seemed to follow wherever she went and watched her beautiful face and those clear pale eyes that only hinted at the mysteries that lay beneath.
‘It does not have to be,’ he said in a voice that was for her ears only.
They looked at one another, her eyes scanning his as if she would take the measure of him.
At the head of the table, Razeby got to his feet. ‘And now I have a surprise. Something new to bring to my table. A feast for both the eyes and the lips.’
The double dining-room