tried to swallow the lump that was pressing in her throat.
There was a knock on the door. ‘Your carriage is waiting, ma’am.’ Albert looked from her to Linwood and then back again. ‘Please forgive my intrusion.’ Then made a hasty retreat.
‘Who is Clandon to you, Venetia?’
She shook her head. The one question which she could not answer, not to him of all people. To open up her heart and lay bare the dark secrets of her past. Everything would be lost. And he would hate her for ever, if he did not already do so. ‘He is no one.’
‘No one,’ he said softly. His eyes glittered hard and black. His face was all hard angles, angry and dangerous and heartbreakingly handsome. There was nothing of the gentleness, nothing of the tenderness that had been there last night.
‘Just the man with whom you have been conspiring all along. I thought perhaps he was your lover, but after last night, I know that is not the case. What is your relationship—purely monetary?’
‘You knew?’ She stared at him aghast.
‘Of course I knew. I have known all along. All those questions about Rotherham...’ His eyes blazed with a black fury, but the rest of his face was cold and impassive. ‘Clandon thinks I killed his father so he sent you to entrap me.’
She glanced away, knowing she could not deny it. ‘Then why play the game?’
‘For the same reason as you, Venetia.’
She faced him, head up, standing tall, dry-eyed and defiant even though inside she felt like she was dying. ‘And last night...?’
‘A fitting conclusion.’
His words pierced her heart like a dagger. She slapped his face and the sound of it echoed in the ensuing silence.
Linwood did not flinch, just stood there silent and strong as a rock, those dark, smouldering, dangerous eyes flaying her worse than any of his cruel words.
The air crackled between them.
‘Clandon is right, you are a very good actress, Venetia. But it was worth it to have you in my bed and take from you what all the men in London could not.’
The breath was shaking in her lungs. ‘Get out!’
His eyes held hers for a moment longer, his face dark and unsmiling. Then he gave her a small bow and turned and walked away.
The clock struck seven, but she made no move, just stood silent and still as a statue, all thoughts of the theatre and Rosina forgotten. She waited until she heard his footsteps reach the front door; waited until she heard the thud of the closing door, even though the tears were already spilling silently over her cheeks. Then she clasped her hands to her face and, for the first time since she was a child, wept as her heart broke apart.
* * *
There was an arctic coldness in Linwood as he walked away from Venetia Fox’s house, angry and razing as the winter wind. He nursed the anger, embraced the icy blast of rage, because he knew what would be there beneath when they died away—a raw, weeping wound. His boots echoed against the pavement. The air was chilled against his face.
He walked and he did not look back.
He walked and told himself what she was.
Kept on walking away from her house, away from her. But no matter how far he walked, no matter the distance he put between them, he could not escape what was in his heart. He did not have to think about the route between her home and his, it was so engrained that his feet trod it without a single conscious thought. One street and then another. Past women who looked at him with wary eyes and men who were careful to give him a wide berth. He was halfway home when he realised that he had left his cane behind at Venetia’s house. He, who had never mistakenly left the cane anywhere before. Part of him thought to keep on going and send a footman to retrieve it because he had no desire to see anything of her again. But he knew he could not do that. The cane was a symbol of his office in the Order of the Wolf. He had sworn to guard it with his life and never let it out of his sight. And Linwood was a man who took the oaths he had sworn very seriously. He stopped and began to retrace his steps.
* * *
The scent of smoke touched to his nose before he reached King Street, but he thought nothing of