theatre seemed to heave at the seams. She heard someone shout Linwood’s name and it was all she could do to show no reaction.
She contrived to be Rosina. Only Rosina. Speaking the words written in the script, moving across the stage as Mr Kemble had directed her. But she was not Rosina. She was Venetia, and all she could hear was the beat of her heart and the whisper of the pact she had made with Linwood. Her blood ran cold. We are sworn to speak the truth or say nothing at all. She kept on acting, kept on going. But everything was falling into place in her mind. The explanation had been before her the whole time, but she had been too blind to see it. She stopped where she was, midline, stood there silent in the middle of the stage. The enormity of the realisation was such that it made all else trivial in comparison.
She stared around her at the facade of Rosina, at the costume and illusion, and her leading actor, Mr Incledon.
The prompt whispered her missing words from within the hidden box at the front of the stage.
The life of the man she loved was at stake.
The cue came again, so loud this time that the front rows of the audience heard.
Venetia looked out at the huge sea of faces. There were murmurs from them now, a fascinated horror in those expressions. Mr Incledon carried on, delivering the next line of his role as Belville and watching her with mounting anxiety.
But it did not matter. None of it mattered, not the play or the audience or the acting career of Miss Venetia Fox. The only thing that mattered was to know if she was sending an innocent man to his death. And there was one simple way to discover that. We are sworn to speak the truth or say nothing at all.
When at last she spoke it was not as Rosina, but as Venetia. ‘I must go to him,’ she said and walked off stage, leaving Mr Incledon and the entirety of the Theatre Royal gaping in stunned silence.
Chapter Sixteen
From somewhere beyond the prison yard a church bell sounded eight times and Linwood knew that the divine Miss Fox would be on stage now, playing a part while all of London watched. The betrayal felt bitter in his stomach, yet if it were to happen all over again he knew he would do nothing different. It seemed, somehow, that from that first moment upon the balcony of the green room all that followed had been inevitable. As if he ever could have walked away from her. She was the other side of himself. Two people removed from the rest of the world as it played on.
A draught made the candle flames flicker wildly and a commotion sounded outside his cell. Raised male voices, whistling, cheers, shouts, wolf whistles of male appreciation. And then silence. A ripple of foreboding whispered against his ear, followed by the scrape of the key in the lock of his door. The scent of her perfume touched his nose. He raised his eyes and saw Venetia standing there, dressed as Rosina.
The guards stood transfixed by the sight of her and he could not blame them. Venetia Fox was a sight to take any man’s breath away. The luminous pallor of her skin contrasted with the cascade of dark satin of her hair and the deep red of the costume she was wearing. The dress was very risqué, the bodice laced tight to hug her waist and allowing the peep of a white chemise beneath. It outlined the hourglass curves of her body, its low neckline barely containing the swell of her pale breasts. In the soft flickering candlelight she was the very epitome of every man’s fantasy. He felt his blood heat at the memory of her in his arms, of that silken skin beneath his hands, of their bodies merged as one, of the soft cry of his name upon her lips as she found her climax. It took every ounce of his self-control not to show any reaction.
‘Lord Linwood,’ she said, but the formality did not hide her slight breathlessness. She stood there, seemingly as calm and controlled as ever, and yet she was not as calm as she pretended. He could see it in her eyes, in the too-rapid rise and fall of her breasts, feel it in the tension that vibrated in the air between them.
‘Miss Fox.’ His