Dicing with the Dangerous Lord - By Margaret McPhee Page 0,28
flat upon the table, close to hers but not touching in this so public and respectable place. Yet she could feel the pull of their fingers, the sensation as if he had stroked his over hers. She turned her palm over and saw his gaze drop to where the buttons of her glove gaped to reveal the soft white skin of her inner wrist. And when his eyes met hers again it was as if something passed between them, something shared, something that she did not quite understand.
‘You know my interest is not in Miss Sweetly.’ His voice was low, intimate, velvet.
She held his gaze and kept her words as quiet as his. ‘And yet you recognise her from her days before she came to the theatre.’
He did not pretend to misunderstand. ‘I do.’
She had heard it from Alice’s mouth. She wanted to hear what Linwood would say. ‘Were you her client?’
He raised an eyebrow at her bluntness, then gave her back as good as he got. ‘I have no need to frequent brothels, Miss Fox.’
‘That is not what I asked you.’ It was nothing to do with what she was supposed to be gleaning from him, nothing to do with Rotherham. It should not have mattered to her in the slightest. But in a perverse sort of way it did. Very much so. She found she was holding her breath for his answer.
‘I was not her client, or that of any other woman of the night.’
‘But you offered to pay her.’
His eyes did not waver, just stayed focused on hers.
‘I did, indeed.’
It felt intense and dangerous and very personal, even though they were sitting here sipping tea and eating scones with cream and jam with the most respectable of London’s ton all around.
She leaned across the table to drop the words more quietly than the others. ‘For sexual congress?’
He gave a half laugh, half smile at that. ‘Have I not already told you that I do not pay for sexual congress?’
‘Again, Lord Linwood, you have not answered my question.’
‘And you do ask so many, Miss Fox,’ he said in a soft voice.
She felt a little stab of apprehension. Neither his expression nor the intonation of his voice revealed anything more of his meaning. But her doubt was soothed when he continued, ‘I am sure that Miss Sweetly has already told you the details of what I wanted from her.’
‘Then it may surprise you, as much as it surprised me, that she did not.’ She frowned slightly at the memory. It was hypocritical to feel hurt that Alice did not trust her with the details, given there was so much she, herself, was hiding, but she felt it all the same. ‘You wanted information, but about whom she would not divulge.’
There was a pause. She saw his gaze drop to where her hands lay upon the table, to where she was worrying at the button on the wrist of her glove. She stopped what she was doing and, lifting her delicate cup from its saucer, took a sip of tea before meeting his gaze once more.
‘She really did not tell you.’
Venetia said nothing.
Linwood’s gaze was dark and steady. ‘It is irrelevant to what is happening between us, Miss Fox.’
‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘You paying for information on one of Mrs Silver’s girls?’
‘I am the owner of a newspaper with an interest in such stories. Have you never done anything that you regret?’
‘I take care not to.’
He gave a nod of almost mocking congratulation.
‘Have you any other regrets, my lord?’ She arched her brow, her eyes as serious as his, daring him to tell her of Rotherham.
‘Something of the devil’s blood runs in my family, Miss Fox. A man cannot live a lifetime with such blood in his veins and not have regrets for the actions he has taken...even if they were for the best of reasons.’ His eyes were steady upon her, controlled, watchful in a way that made her feel like he could see right through her game.
Both his words and the look in his eyes made her shiver. She steered the conversation to safer ground, but it did not ease the tension that had appeared between them. It made her uncharacteristically nervous so that she was relieved when the time came to leave and he took her home. The journey was conducted in silence. Even when they came to a halt outside her house and Linwood helped her down from the coach he did not say a word,