arrived with Mrs Silver on his arm, breaking apart the intensity of the moment.
‘Indeed?’ said Linwood but his eyes stayed fixed on Venetia.
* * *
Linwood let the questions hang between them, the ones he had asked and the ones that were silent. That Clandon and Venetia had pretended not to know one another was a sign that boded ill. Was she spying for her lover? Or was Rotherham’s illegitimate son paying her? He remembered her strange response to his allusion to her performance, and he thought again of her questions that seemed to edge more and more around Rotherham and the duke’s murder. And he understood now what lay behind them. Clandon and Venetia thought him guilty of Rotherham’s murder. It was a bittersweet realisation.
Mrs Silver, madam of the highest-class brothel in St James’s, was wearing her customary muted dove-grey dress, as sober and respectable as those worn by her girls were provocative and revealing. Mrs Silver might have been accompanying him, but Devlin’s gaze was engaged entirely on Venetia, lingering over the curves that the audacious scarlet gown revealed too well. Venetia stepped closer to Linwood.
‘Miss Fox.’ Devlin kissed her hand. Venetia accepted his greeting with grace, but she did not allow her hand to linger in Devlin’s possession, withdrawing it immediately and slipping it casually around Linwood’s arm. It was a statement to Devlin and perhaps something of an answer to himself.
‘Linwood.’ Devlin’s gaze was cool and appraising, observing the message Venetia’s body was so clearly sending. Then to Venetia, ‘I saw your play the other night. Splendid performance. As usual.’
‘Thank you. You are too kind, sir,’ Venetia said and she smiled with her eyes, if not with her mouth, in that bold, provocative way he had come to recognise.
‘Have you seen it, Mrs Silver?’ Devlin asked the woman by his side.
‘I have not, sir.’ Mrs Silver smiled, but her gaze, when it finally moved to Venetia, was cold.
He noticed that neither woman actually spoke to the other.
‘May be I shall get up a little party and take you,’ Devlin said, but his focus was once more on Venetia, more specifically on the smooth white skin that the neckline of the scarlet dress revealed.
‘Such a delightful offer, but unfortunately I am engaged every night of this week, and next,’ said Mrs Silver.
Venetia’s mouth curved up ever so slightly at the edges, but the atmosphere between the two women was so frosty that Linwood wondered how Devlin failed to notice. ‘If you will excuse us...’ And with the smallest of curtsies Venetia and Linwood were drifting away towards the other side of the room.
‘Do you have your answer, Lord Linwood?’
He looked into those beautiful silver-blue eyes and all that they were hiding. ‘I am not sure that I do, Miss Fox.’
‘You wish me to spell it out, my lord?’
‘I wish to be certain of where we stand.’
She held his eyes for a moment longer. ‘Very well.’ She released his arm, stepped to stand before him and reached her lips to touch his ear. ‘I am yours. And yours alone.’
Even knowing what he now knew of her, even with the worst of his suspicions he felt the words stroke against him as if she had boldly traced her fingers against the length of his manhood.
Her gaze moved to his once more.
‘I am glad to hear it.’ He captured her hand in his, a small surreptitious movement, but one of possession before the crowd all the same. He would take what she offered because Linwood knew it was always best to keep one’s enemies close, and play them at their own game. And more than that, he wanted to ensure that Clandon’s suspicions remained focused on him alone.
And he would take what she offered, because, despite everything, he wanted her.
Devlin and Mrs Silver walked past them again. He saw the veiled hostility in Venetia’s eyes as she looked at the woman—and her realisation that he had seen it when she returned her gaze to his.
‘It seems I must work a little harder upon my acting skills when it comes to Mrs Silver.’
‘There is nothing wrong with your acting skills, when you choose to employ them.’
Her hand went very still beneath his.
‘Ever the flatterer,’ she said, choosing to take it as a compliment, but well aware of the edge to their conversation.
‘Never the flatterer, but then you know that of me, by now.’
‘I suppose that I do...even if I know little else of you.’ He wondered if she realised how close to