I must reclaim my life, she said to herself. “No,” she answered. Her heart beat fast all at once at the task she had set herself. “But I have to. I can’t keep living like this. Using someone like him is the only way back into society. And getting back into society is the only way I will be able to find Nathaniel’s killer and prove my innocence once and for all.”
Rollands nodded. “I understand. The staff is ready to help, my lady. You need only tell us what you want us to do.”
She glanced at her pocket watch on the desk, her focus blurry. She would not get emotional in front of Rollands, even though he was her only confidant. Instead, she gathered a breath, and her courage. “I will do this, and Lord Bellamy is going to help me. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Rollands bowed. “Very good, my lady. I’ll fetch him up, then?”
Lisbeth nodded.
Her butler’s weathered features softened. “Is there anything else you require?”
She gave him a weak smile. “No, that will be all, thank you.”
Rollands bowed and left the room.
She rose from her chair to search out the warm comfort of the fire. The flames leapt and danced in the grate, but the warmth never quite penetrated her outstretched hands. The coals seemed to glow with such life, but she knew it was all an illusion. The embers were nothing but the last warm breath of death.
I am like this fire, she thought.I look alive but inside I feel dead.
She took a deep, painful breath. Still, tears burned behind her eyelids. Is this what she had become? A wisp of smoke, a hazy vapor, a ghost of someone who used to be? She longed to be someone again. To feel wanted. Loved. To prove to them all how wrong they were about her.
The only way to do that was to go through with her plan. A plan that would put her right in the middle of the viper’s pit called thetonand on the arm of a man she did not know, nor want to. But there was no choice. Fate had decreed that man to be Lord Bellamy.
She could hear him whistling, the faint joyful tune so at odds with how she felt. The sound rose up through the incoming fog that slithered like a snake in search of prey, winding its way in and out of laneways and around lampposts as it consumed everything in its path, smothering it in a scaly, smoky blanket of silence.
She had not always felt lost in the fog. There was a time when she had thought life to be full of music and candlelight and dancing. That was before. Before she had married Nathaniel, before she had been accused of his murder. And before everything had turned from light to dark. Thetonhad branded her the Black Raven—the bringer of bad luck and death. And so it had begun: the wagers, the taunts outside her window, and the horrified stares in the street. Was it any wonder she stayed indoors by herself, hardly leaving the house unless necessary?
“Enough!” Her voice quivered with emotions she had spent years binding tight within her.
It was time.
*
This is bollocks!He’d lost all patience, and feeling in his arse, an hour ago and now the entire bottom half of him was numb. Oliver wiggled his toes in his shoes and was happy to see they were still under his control. Although, were he to shoot himself in the foot five times he would surely not feel it. A comforting thought when one wasfreezing to death!He’d faced worseweather as a soldier on the Peninsula, of course, but that was a different place and a lifetime ago.
Oliver took a swig from his flask and saluted the Bow Street Runner who watched him from across the shiny, cobbled street. The runner, hired specifically to report on Oliver’s success or failure, was no doubt cursing him as much as Oliver cursed himself.
What had possessed him to take on this wager? Temporary insanity caused by too much claret at his club, surely. Oh, and a fair amount of bravado as well. A slight fascination with the story of the Black Raven probably had something to do with it, and money, of course. Hours later, he could care less if the Countess of Blackhurst had two heads and a tail, let alone whether she had killed her husband or not. His sole motivation now was to get in and get out of her house and win said wager.
Back in London for only a few weeks after cashing in his commission, Oliver had spent the time ignoring his late brother’s debts and drowning his misery by any means possible. London, he’d found, hadmanymeans. It wasn’t his usual strategy to try to avoid difficulties of any sort, but this was not the physical battle he was familiar with. He’d found himself unable to fathom his grief and the fact he was well and truly in dun territory.
The night had turned chilly indeed and although the runner seemed quite comfortable in his shabbily tailored coat, Oliver was not quite so prepared, dressed as he was in his evening clothes. Even now an ungodly fog rolled in from the Thames.
He hated fog!
Taking out his pocket watch he squinted at it in the dimness of the countess’s front steps. She’d made him wait for two interminably cold hours. If not for his pride, and the emptiness of his pockets, he would have abandoned this ridiculous wager long ago. Had he known his only reward would likely be nothingmore than a loss of sensation in his lower limbs, he would have stayed at his club and taken his chances at the gaming tables.
Unfortunately, he’d allowed himself to be coerced into this damnable situation by his brother’s friend Dalmere, amongst others.
He took another swig from the flask and groaned. That was the last of the brandy. Now what was he to do? A sensible man would have gone home, where it was warm. It became more apparent by the minute that he wasnota sensible man. For lack of any other alternative, he started whistling again.
He’d just built up a really good tune when the door behind him suddenly opened. Thank God!
The Black Raven’s butler stood in the doorway. “The countess will see you now,LordBellamy.” The butler’s sneer was enough to make Oliver think his camping out on her steps was perhaps unwelcome.
Oliver tried to stand up. His legs were mostly drunk, it seemed, and disinclined to participate. It wasn’t until he finally stood he realized how drunk the rest of him actually was. It was like the brandy had abandoned his lower limbs and now rushed to his head to play havoc with his equilibrium. The butler swayed sickeningly from side to side. This was not a good start.
Get in and get out, Oliver told himself.
