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“If he does, then I’ll deal with him. It’s the least I can do after what you did for me.” Oliver put his arms around her, and despite herself Vivianna relaxed against him. He felt so good.
“Maybe I didn’t express myself quite as I should have when I first arrived,” he said against her hair. “I should have said you were the bravest, most wonderful woman I know. And that in capturing Lawson and finding those letters I owe you a lifetime of thank-you’s.”
“Eddie found the letters,” she reminded him, her breath warm against his neck. “And Ellen.”
“I’ll thank them, too.”
He leaned back, gazing down into her eyes. His mouth was so close; and then he smiled. Suddenly there he was. Oliver, the man who had turned her into a passionate and loving woman. The man who had set the seductress in her free.
Her Oliver.
Blindly, Vivianna lifted her lips to his.
The door at the end of the gallery banged open. “Miss! Miss!” Eddie’s voice echoed wildly all around them. “The bobbies are here!”
After that there was no time for kisses. Oliver seemed to know one of the policemen—Sergeant Ackroyd—and he showed him the letters. Vivianna saw his expression twist in disgust. Then the lion was rolled back and Lawson, gray-faced, eyes watchful, was helped out.
“This man,” he said in a shaking but authorative voice, “kept me prisoner. You know who I am. Arrest him!”
Oliver shook his head. “It’s no use, Lawson. They know. We all know. Even if you manage to convince them they’ve arrested the wrong man, it can’t be for long. Soon everyone will know. Even Queen Victoria…especially the queen.”
Lawson’s mouth turned down. “Ancient history,” he retorted angrily, but it was a bluff.
“I hardly think she will view it in that way. That you wrote to Sir John Conroy, offering him your support in his efforts to bully the queen? That you were prepared to help him rule the country from behind the throne after her coronation? You even put yourself forward as prime minister. From memory I think your words were, ‘I know how to handle spoilt bitches. I have a kennel full at home.’”
“Old news,” Lawson cut through his words, the desperation more audible. “Folly, I agree, but why should a man’s reputation be damned for something that happened so many years ago?”
Oliver could not help but be amazed by him. Lawson stood tall and intimidating, looking half crazed with self-righteousness. He could not believe he had done wrong; he would not believe it. There was no repentance in him. Everything must be sacrificed to the altar of his own ego—Anthony, Oliver, even the queen herself.
“How did you get the letters back from Conroy?” Oliver asked him, stepping closer.
Lawson flashed him a vicious look. For a moment it seemed as if he would not answer, and then anger tightened his jaw. “I paid him for them. I had to buy them back. He agreed and I thought it was all over, and then they happened to be delivered to my house when Anthony was there, waiting for me, alone.”
“And he noticed the address and the handwriting and he could not help himself. He read them.”
Lawson shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I do say so, my lord. He found you out. He was cleverer than you. He was a better man than you.”
“Stubborn and stupid.” Lawson dismissed his oldest and dearest friend.
Oliver nodded to Sergeant Ackroyd, and two of the constables came forward and planted large hands on Lawson’s shoulders. “You are going to be taken to see the queen, Lawson,” he said softly. “You can explain it to her. And then I want to know all about how you murdered Anthony.”
Lawson stiffened. “You can prove nothing.”
“Perhaps. But I mean to try.”
For a moment it seemed as if Lawson would refuse to go, and then his face went slack and he shook his head. “To be locked up by a scatterbrained woman and two grubby brats,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe his ill fortune.
“You should never underestimate the power of a woman,” Vivianna declared, thinking of the queen.
Lawson cast up his eyes. “Take me away, gentlemen, I beg you.”
Oliver barely had time to smile at her as he followed them out.
Vivianna hurried after them, but Oliver was all business now. He was accompanying the policemen and Lawson back to London. Vivianna stood on the front steps of Candlewood and watched while he drove away and the two children waved frantically at the departing vehicles.
Then she sat down on the stairs.
