of his mother’s pettiness.
‘In that case...’ She calmly topped up her own cup alone and set the pot down.
Lady Misbourne’s face was aghast. She glared at Venetia. ‘How dare you play hostess, madam?’
‘Very easily, when you are too rude to do so, Mother,’ said Linwood.
‘Rude?’ Lady Misbourne gasped and stared as if he had just slapped her. ‘I will tell you what is rude—bringing that woman into my home and expecting me to wait upon her!’
‘Lest you forget, that woman is my wife. And if you cannot treat Venetia accordingly then we will leave right now.’
Lady Misbourne’s face began to crumple and she clutched a wisp of lace handkerchief to her eyes.
‘Have a care how you speak to your mother, Francis,’ Misbourne chided. ‘She is of a sensitive disposition and this is not easy for her.’
‘It is not easy for any of us,’ he replied. ‘You should remember that were it not for Venetia I would be swinging upon a scaffold.’
Misbourne scowled and got to his feet. ‘Hell’s teeth, boy! She is the one who placed the noose around your neck in the first place! Were it not for her, you would have got away with it scot-free. She has manoeuvred you to her advantage. The apple has not fallen far from the tree. After all that Rotherham did to this family, we end up with his bastard lightskirt daughter as part of it. How he must be laughing at us from beyond the grave!’
Linwood knocked his cup over as he got to his feet and squared up to his father. ‘You go too far, sir!’ he said in a deathly quiet tone.
Venetia rose and laid her hand against his arm to stay the tense ready-to-strike muscles beneath.
His father backed away. ‘Maybe. But you are my son, my heir. I might have gone along with and organised your marriage to her to save your life, but you cannot expect me to like anything of the situation.’
‘The situation is not how you imagine.’ Linwood’s gaze held that of his father. ‘Not with Venetia and me...nor any of the rest of it.’ It was as close as he could come to telling him.
And maybe Misbourne understood something of what he was saying, for he put his head in his hands and sighed a sigh of resignation and sadness. ‘Why does it have to be her?’
It was Venetia who answered, her expression strong and angry as she did so. She looked beautiful and incensed. ‘You are asking the wrong question, sir.’
Misbourne’s brow creased. He turned to stare at Venetia.
‘You talk of him getting away with it!’ She shook her head. ‘Your son, who was so determined to take the blame and go to the gallows, and yet could not admit the murder. Did you ever even ask him if he was gui—?’
‘Enough, Venetia,’ Linwood stopped her, but her unfinished word, guilty, echoed unspoken in the air.
‘Is it, Francis?’ She turned to him, a fierceness flashing in her eyes. ‘I hope so.’
His father’s gaze leapt to his, and Linwood saw the shock and the sudden pallor beneath the grizzled grey of his beard, and, for the first time, doubt.
‘Francis?’ his father whispered.
‘You never asked me,’ he said. ‘Not once. Such faith in your knowledge of me.’
‘But...?’ His mother stopped fretting with her handkerchief and got to her feet before his father. ‘What is he saying, George?’
But his father was still staring at him with an expression of frozen horror. Misbourne’s face was ashen, his lips pulled tight and colourless. Linwood met his father’s gaze, looked directly into those black eyes that were so like his own, and lowered his guard to let his father see the truth.
‘My God...’ his father whispered as he finally understood.
‘George?’ His mother sounded frightened.
‘I will leave you to explain, sir.’ Linwood bowed. ‘If you will excuse us, my wife and I must ready ourselves for this evening.’ With Venetia’s hand upon his arm they turned and walked away.
Chapter Nineteen
A few hours later Venetia stood before him in the hallway of their own apartment, waiting for him to slip the dark-velvet evening cloak around her shoulders. The evening dress she was wearing was the same deep dark red she had worn on a night on a balcony that seemed a lifetime ago, the silk of the skirt sweeping down to caress the curves he knew lay beneath. Her hair was the same dark-satin lustre, pinned and coiled, with an arrangement of cascading tendrils and curls that teased enticingly around her