“A connection I would rather forget. Can you walk in those wet skirts?”
“Damn you, Luxborough. Stop talking to your harlot and listen to me!”
Rafe gestured at the viscount with a hand full of boot. “Speak of her like that again, and you will go in the lake. Thea, do you need my help?”
“I can walk. I’ll have to show my legs, but the best harlots always do.”
Defiantly, she lifted her sodden skirts to her knees and marched up the lawn. Rafe fell into step beside her.
“You needed a marriage certificate to get the money, and you didn’t want to marry again, so an invalid marriage to me did the trick,” she summarized.
“Yes. That’s it.”
“Then you kissed me.”
“And then I stopped kissing you.”
“Do not ignore me!” Ventnor stalked around in front of them. “I traveled all the way here to confront you, Luxborough.”
“And now you can travel all the way back.”
Thea and Rafe went around him and kept walking. Ventnor’s black carriage stood outside the house, spattered with mud and pulled by a mismatched set of rented horses. Only the three matching purple footmen did not seem the worse for travel, standing smartly to attention at their approach.
“So you never meant to separate them?” Thea said to Rafe. “Helen and Beau Russell?”
“I told you, I don’t care who marries whom, but I did like the idea of upsetting him.”
“Damn you, Luxborough. I will not be ignored. You will listen to me or I shall—”
“Or what, Ventnor?” Rafe sounded irritable and bored. “What will you do this time? Hire more actors to spread your lies that I practice sorcery and poisoned Katharine?”
Thea’s world tilted again. “Ventnor started the rumors? So the zealot outside your London house was William Dudley the actor?”
“Yes. Apparently, Ventnor placed scores of actors around the country. Everyone needs a hobby, and spreading rumors is his.”
“But why?”
Ventnor offered her a kind, patient smile. “His lordship started it, when he published ludicrous claims that my daughter was insane.”
“Yet it was you who put her in a lunatic asylum,” Rafe snarled.
“No!” Thea said
Ventnor continued as if neither of them had spoken. “For the sake of my family, I could not allow such damaging allegations to pass unchallenged. Naturally, I countered by claiming that Luxborough kidnapped, brutalized, and poisoned Katharine, and thus turned her mind.” With a derisive snort, he indicated Rafe with his stick. “But when he came back with those marks on his face, and his brothers’ deaths making him the earl, it was only a matter of time before the gulls of the world believed he had forged some bargain with the Devil. I would never have dreamed up anything so outlandish, but I confess I played along, as I rather enjoyed the effect.”
“The whole lot is nonsense,” Thea said. “Rafe would never harm anyone.”
“Silence!” The viscount shuddered. “How charming, Luxborough, that your harlot comes to your defense.”
“Enough.” Rafe dumped his clothes and marched to the carriage, sending the footmen scattering like bewigged purple chickens. He yanked open the door. “Get in before I throw you in. I’ll not strike a man your age, but I have no such qualms about shooting you.”
But the viscount only turned to Thea, and added, his tone affable, “Did he tell you how Katharine died? She rode off during a storm, fleeing him. Do you know why she fled?”
And Thea could not help but ask, “Why?”
Rafe looked bleak. “You know why. Katharine feared me.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
Ventnor laughed, once more shaking his ebony stick. “Because you did something to her, and that is what everyone will always believe!”
“Oh shut up, Ventnor.”
Rafe yanked the stick out of the other man’s hands, broke it over his knee, and tossed the two pieces into the carriage. Ventnor quivered with rage, spots of red appearing in his cheeks.
And then he paled.
The color drained away so abruptly that Thea feared he was about to have an apoplexy.
She followed Ventnor’s gaze, wondering what had induced this effect.
Or rather, who had induced this effect.
Sally stood in the doorway, frozen mid-step, staring at Ventnor with a matching look of shock. She, too, was unnaturally pale, unnaturally still. Thea silently willed Sally to march at Ventnor, gun raised in her confident manner, but Sally seemed only to grow smaller and more disturbed.
“You!” Ventnor said. “But they said you were…”