reached into the opening.
There were no plates within.
Constance was waiting in her sitting room until it was late enough to go to bed. Her life was falling into a familiar pattern, now that Tony was part of it. She would nap in the afternoon, and have dinner, alone. She then sent the servants to bed early and spent the rest of the evening reading before the fire until almost midnight. Then she would find her own way to her room.
Shortly afterwards, her lover would come, and they would pass the hours until dawn.
Tonight, she had chosen Byron to keep her company until bedtime. She smiled and closed her eyes. When she had asked Tony to read to her, he had looked into her eyes and recited the poems from memory.
If she was not careful, she would become quite spoiled by his attentions. When the time came to return to reality, she would remember that Tony’s behaviour was an aberration of character, and a sign of the minimal depth of their relationship. Men might spout poetry to their mistresses, but never to their wives.
But it was lovely, all the same. ‘So lovely,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, you are.’ When she opened her eyes, Jack Barton was standing in the doorway.
She stood up and backed away, until she felt her shoulders bump the wall behind her. ‘How did you get into my home?’
He smiled at her, as always. ‘You gave me your key.’
‘Only because you forced me to. And Tony got it back for me.’
‘Tony.’ Barton sniffed in dismissal. ‘He is not much of a thief if he does not realise that keys can be copied. I let him take the one, and kept the duplicate, assuming rightly that I might need it later.’
‘Get out. I shall ring for the servants.’
‘I would not advise that.’ Barton pulled a pistol from his pocket, and pointed it in her direction.
‘Go ahead and shoot. You would not dare,’ she said and started for the bell pull.
‘Not you,’ he replied. ‘But I will shoot the first one through the door, if you ring for help. If you remember my last visit, you know I am capable of it.’
Her hand faltered before it reached the pull.
Barton nodded. ‘Very good. You must agree, it is better if we remain alone. And since you have dismissed the staff for the evening, they will not disturb us.’
‘But we will not be alone for long,’ she threatened. ‘I am expecting a guest.’
‘Anthony Smythe?’ Barton shook his head in disappointment. ‘I doubt he will be troubling us again. It was very simple, in the end, to beat your lover. It is a pity that I could not be there to see him fail. But I needed to be away from the house, to lure him in.’
‘What do you mean?’ Constance felt a chill.
‘The minute I was away, I have no doubt that he rushed into the house, ready to search the study. If he made it past the traps I set for him without falling to his death, he is still in for a nasty shock. The safe he has been trying to open for the last several weeks is, to the best of my knowledge, empty. I have never had reason or ability to open it. It was left by the previous owner of the house. For all I know, the man took the key to the grave with him. If he has not found them already, I doubt that your Mr Smythe will have sense to intuit the location of the things he is looking for.
‘I fear, darling, that in his initial excitement, he may have forgotten all about you.’
Constance tried not to imagine Tony, dangling unsteadily from a ledge or lying in a broken heap at the base of Barton’s house. He had made it into the house. She must believe that he had survived, if she meant to keep her wits about her. ‘I doubt he is so easy to beat as all that. He will come to my aid when he realises that you have tricked him.’
‘But if your vulnerability occurs to him later, he will come rushing back here, breakneck, to rescue you. He enters your room through the window, does he not?’
She stared at him, keeping her expression a blank.
‘Oh, come now. There are no secrets left between us. I have seen the ivy that leads right to your room. I doubt an agile climber could resist such an easy path. Now, where was I?
‘I have left him my plans for the evening. When he realises that I mean to have you while he is chasing after nothing, he will come rushing back to this house, to the bedroom, where he expects to find us. I will be waiting…’ he gestured with the pistol in his hand ‘…to rescue you from the intruder, bent on entering your room. One shot, as he is framed in the window. He will die from the bullet, or the fall, or a combination of the two.’
‘It will be murder. And I will tell anyone who will listen.’
‘I doubt anyone will, Constance. And even if they do, you might think before you speak. We will be in your room, together. There will be no question as to why I am there. It would be better, for you, should the world think that Smythe was attempting to rob you. If it appears you were entertaining two gentlemen, you will be the talk of the town.’
The book of poems slipped from her hands and dropped to the floor.
‘And you will want me to be free of prosecution. You will need my protection for quite some time, I think. If I am in jail for murder, or worse, you will gain nothing by it but revenge. Your reputation will be in tatters. You will not see another penny out of your idiot nephew, for he will cut you from the family for the disgrace.
‘On the other hand, if I am free, I will take care of you, just as I have always promised. We may have to leave the country, at least for a time. My business is not going quite so well as I’d hoped. But we will have the comfort of each other.’
Constance felt something snap, deep inside her. This was not how her life was to end. She was not some pawn to be passed from man to man and abandoned as they chose. She could not very well sit waiting for a rescue that might never come. Suppose Tony was dead, as Barton hoped. Or worse yet, on his way to her window so that she could watch him shot before her eyes and disgraced as a burglar.
She would not let it happen. If anyone was to be shot tonight, it would not be Tony.
Barton gestured with the gun.
‘We will go to your room, and wait.’
‘I suppose I have no choice,’ she said.
‘We have been over this before, Constance.’
‘If I submit willingly to you, will you spare Anthony Smythe?’
Barton laughed. ‘That offer is no longer available to you. What transpires now is a matter between gentlemen. You need not concern yourself with it.’
‘It is not the act of a gentleman to shoot an unsuspecting man.’
He smiled. ‘It is plain, Constance, that you are trying to prolong the
