surrounded them. She knew her every move was being scrutinised, that who she spoke to and what she said had every chance of appearing in tomorrow’s gossip sheets.
‘We have met,’ she said and her eyes touched Linwood’s and, despite how much she had steeled herself against it, she felt that same nervous fluttering in her stomach.
‘If you will be so kind as to excuse me, for a moment…’ Razeby melted away, leaving her and Linwood alone in the crowd.
‘Miss Fox,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers.
‘Lord Linwood.’
The dinner gong sounded before Razeby’s butler announced that dinner was served in the dining room.
‘Allow me to take you in to dinner.’ Linwood’s voice was low, the words polite, assertive rather than forceful, but there was something in the way he was looking at her that made a shiver run over her skin.
‘What a pleasant suggestion,’ she said and arched an eyebrow ever so slightly. Both of them knew it had been her suggestion. He was cleverer than most men, she thought, more perceptive.
‘I thought so.’ His smile was small, secret, the jest shared between just the two of them.
She flexed her lips in return and, tucking a hand into the crook of his arm, let him lead her into the dining room.
The food was exceptional, as it ever was at Razeby’s table, guinea fowl and peacock, goose and a pie of turkey and ham combined. A medley of the sweetest quinces, potatoes sliced and scalloped in a cream sauce with capers, rabbit jelly, spiced leeks and ginger-fried cabbage, and an enormous tart, each slice of which contained a different honeyed fruit, and on a fine glass dish all of its own a rich plum pudding. But afterwards, had he to say what they had eaten Linwood could not have told them. His attention was too much on the woman by his side.
She did not flirt. Indeed, she did nothing of what he expected. Rather, the conversation between them flowed easily and naturally. They spoke of Bonaparte and the war that was raging across the Continent, of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts and Captain Diamond’s wager with Milton. Anything and everything, but nothing that touched anywhere near the subject of Rotherham and all that worried him.
The time passed too quickly, too comfortably. Just an hour in her company and already he felt something of the darkness lift from him. The burden that he carried grew light. She engaged him completely, making him forget in a way that his family and friends and everyday life could not. And when the plates were cleared away and the table brushed down, he found that he did not want her to leave.
‘I believe our evening is at an end, Lord Linwood.’ Even just the sound of her voice stroked against him to both soothe and excite. He breathed in the scent of neroli that seemed to follow wherever she went and watched her beautiful face and those clear pale eyes that only hinted at the mysteries that lay beneath.
‘It does not have to be,’ he said in a voice that was for her ears only.
They looked at one another, her eyes scanning his as if she would take the measure of him.
At the head of the table, Razeby got to his feet. ‘And now I have a surprise. Something new to bring to my table. A feast for both the eyes and the lips.’
The double dining-room doors opened and six footmen, three on each side, carried in what looked to be a long silver salver on which lay a masked naked woman who had been strategically and artistically decorated in fruit. Sliced oranges overlapped sliced lemons and limes, apples, green grapes and red ones, blackberries and gooseberries—the rainbow medley lay against her skin and over it all a fine white powder of silvered icing sugar had been dusted. He doubted that any of the men would be wondering where the hell Razeby had found such a variety of fruit so late in the year.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Miss Vert.’ Miss Vert, whom no gentleman in the room could fail to be aware of, was a courtesan from the London’s most famous high-class bordello, Mrs Silver’s House of Rainbow Pleasures.
Razeby’s footmen placed the salver on the table before them.
Linwood felt Miss Fox stiffen beside him. He glanced round at where she sat on his left-hand side and caught the look that passed between her and Miss Sweetly. Miss Sweetly gave a tiny shake of her head and smiled at Miss Fox, then the younger actress’s gaze shifted to his, lingering there for only a moment, before moving back to Razeby by whose side she was seated. He saw Razeby thread his fingers through hers where their hands lay on the table, uncaring of who saw it.
He and Miss Fox were seated close to Razeby at the head of the table. Miss Vert’s head lay on the salver before them, so close that he would not have had to stretch out his arm if he wanted to touch her, so close that he could see the slight quiver of the soft green feathers and glittering glass beads that made up the mask that hid the upper half of the woman’s face. Against her mouth a cherry had been placed like a glossy red pearl on the cushion of her lips.
‘Something beautiful to grace the scene while the ladies withdraw to their own refreshment and the gentlemen enjoy their port,’ Razeby said.
The room was filled with lewd laughter and ribaldry, even though the women’s chair legs were yet scraping the floor and not one of them had left. But then they were the demi-monde and did not warrant handling with the same consideration accorded to the respectable women.
Venetia Fox’s expression had not changed. It remained unfazed, controlled, unreadable, yet Linwood could sense that it was as much a mask as the green feathers of the courtesan spread out on the table before them. Her eyes met his and for the smallest of moments they were unguarded and he saw in them outrage and anger and a strength so formidable that it shocked him. Not one word passed her lips, not so much as a frown marred her face, but the tension that rolled off her in great crashing waves was a living, breathing, palpable thing. He wondered that no one else in the room seemed to be aware of it. And then the door closed as suddenly as it had opened and there was nothing there to suggest that she was in any way discomfited.
‘If you will excuse me, Lord Linwood,’ she said in a voice that made him doubt what he had seen in her eyes. And then she was gone.
Venetia asked the footman to fetch her cloak, then discreetly took Alice to one side in the hallway instead of entering the drawing room with the rest of the women.
‘Come with me. Do not stay here.’ Venetia spoke low and urgently, for her friend only. But Alice shook her head.
‘I think Razeby means to increase his offer and I know how to handle him.’ She touched a hand to Venetia’s arm. ‘You shouldn’t trouble yourself about Ellen…’ her eyes slid in the direction of the dining room they had just left ‘… Miss Vert, that is. Razeby won’t let anything happen to her and he’s paying her well enough.’
‘The woman in there, Ellen… was she a friend of yours?’
Alice nodded. ‘Still is. All Mrs Silver’s girls look out for one another, always.’
‘Tell her she can come to me. Tell her I can help her to leave Mrs Silver’s just like I did you.’
‘She doesn’t want to leave. She earns more money than I do. And she likes what she does.’
‘Does she like being at the mercy of all those men in the dining room right now?’
Alice
