Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03]

by A Woman Entangled

  “My father will be pleased, I’m sure, to hear of the trial and all the various tactics you employed.” Her head suddenly tilted a fraction, as if a new idea had occurred. “If you’re at liberty Saturday, you might come to dinner and give your own account.”

  He bowed. Not for anything would he let her see he knew this was no spontaneous idea. The certainty that she’d come to the Old Bailey expressly to extend this peace offering, in its guise of casual invitation, rather woke every sympathy and protective instinct in regard to her pride. “I’m sure that would be everything delightful,” he began, but her attention flicked elsewhere as he spoke. To his left and past him. A brief widening of her eyes, a flash of what looked like distaste, and then she was all polite composure once more.

  He knew even before turning what he would see. Whom, rather. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, with a client of Stubbs’s.

  Miss Mary Watson, freed woman, hovered uncertainly several feet away. On perceiving she’d caught his notice, she made a show of her teeth and looked as if she meant to approach him.

  Damnation. With the hastiest of bows he pivoted away from Miss Westbrook, positioning himself to halt Miss Watson’s advance. He was perfectly pleased to represent such people in their pursuit of justice. They were no less deserving of advocacy than the higher born. But he’d be hanged if he’d subject the Westbrooks, who’d ventured in here as polite observers, to a meeting with a woman who entertained men for money.

  “Miss Watson.” He put his hands behind his back lest she be tempted to seize one, as Stubbs’s last presumptuous client had done. “I congratulate you on your freedom.”

  “It were owing to you, sir.” She kneaded her hands before her, as if she had indeed intended to grasp one of his, and now must find another outlet for that impulse.

  “The better part of your thanks must go to Mr. Stubbs. He prepared an excellent brief.” The selfsame brief he now rolled up in his hands, to keep them busy behind his back.

  “And picked an excellent man to argue for me. There’s many as would look down on an unfortunate girl who lives by what means she must.” Her eyes went past him, doubtless to Kersey, who’d done his best, in the questioning, to make her look like a woman thoroughly unacquainted with morality of any kind.

  Nick set his mouth in a line. He couldn’t join her in condemning Kersey, who’d pursued the obvious strategy for a barrister on the prosecution side. It must certainly have been unpleasant for her to hear, but Stubbs ought to have prepared her for that.

  Dimly he registered that the conversation behind him had lapsed. Splendid. Kersey and the Westbrooks must be watching this exchange.

  “He said you’d deal fairly with me, Mr. Stubbs did.” She wrung her hands again and tottered a half step nearer, a tremor in her voice and—God, was she crying?—all manner of unconstrained emotion in her eyes.

  “I hope I do so with every client brought to me by him or anyone else.” A corresponding half step back would bring him nearer to the Westbrooks, whose proximity to this interview was already greater than he’d like. He put the distance in his voice instead. “I thank you for the compliment. Good luck to you.”

  But she didn’t recognize the dismissal. “He said you were just the man to give me a fair defense, and not to judge me for a woman lost.” Yes, they’d covered this point already, hadn’t they? Nearer yet she edged, darting another glance beyond him to the others and dropping her voice to an ardent whisper. “Because of your own connections, I mean.”

  A spasm shot down his arm to his hand, crushing the brief he still clutched. For an instant he felt as if he’d thrust his head into a roaring furnace. His eyes hurt. His lungs hurt. His cheeks blazed with fury and shame, and for all his repeated blinking, he couldn’t seem to see anything but hot light.

  “I’m afraid your meaning is lost on me.” The words practically cracked in his dry mouth. Where the devil was Stubbs, and why couldn’t he keep a leash on his clients? “I haven’t any but the most unremarkable connections.”

  The malevolent light subsided enough to give him a glimpse of her malevolent face wrinkling up its malevolent brow. “Mr. Stubbs, he said you had a brother as married a—” but these words, and whatever word followed, were audible only to him. Because as Miss Watson spoke, so did Miss Westbrook, in a fine, ringing voice that drowned out all else in the vicinity.

  “We really must go now. Mr. Blackshear, I hope we may see you at dinner Saturday. Mr. Kersey, will you be so good as to show us out?”

  Turn. Bow. Accept the invitation. Thank them for coming, and wish them good day. He couldn’t. And after all he didn’t have to, because even while speaking, Miss Westbrook was herding the others away. She must have perceived his mortification and come to his rescue.

  He didn’t feel rescued. He felt all the more mortified. She must have had an idea of what Miss Watson had been about to say, and wanted to spare him having it heard by others. She must know, then, and had simply feigned ignorance with him for the sake of politeness.

  For how long had she known? And would he ever again be able to speak to her without feeling a suspicion of her pity or distaste?

  “Miss Watson.” The woman was perfectly visible now, the haze of shock and anger having dissipated. Her restless hands clasped and twisted as though she were scrubbing them under a pump. “I fear Mr. Stubbs has described my motivations inaccurately. I provide a petitioner with the best defense or prosecution I can because it is my job to do so. Any man who’d save his best efforts for the clients with whom he happened to feel some affinity has no place in the law.”

  What might be her response to this, he would never know, because here, finally, came the architect of this embarrassment, hurrying down the gradually emptying hallway like a sheepdog after a runaway ewe. “My dear Miss Watson.” Stubbs threw an anxious smile at Nick. “I’m sure I’ve told you Mr. Blackshear is a terribly busy man. Like all barristers. Indeed that’s why clients must do their speaking to the solicitor, and trust him to pass any message along.” His every glance and gesture spelled out an apology. It wasn’t enough.

  “A word, Mr. Stubbs.” Nick waited until Miss Watson had been dispatched some distance away. He set a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder and ushered him to the nearest wall, his other hand still tight about the crumpled up brief. When the solicitor raised his wary bespectacled eyes, Nick spoke. “You will please not to speak of my brother and his personal circumstances again. His marriage has been a cause of pain in our family. It’s not to be bandied about to every Mary Watson I happen to represent.”

  Stubbs’s mouth twitched with what was almost certainly dismay at Nick’s tone; damn his naive, soft-hearted presumption. He inclined his head. “My humblest apologies. She was despondent when I visited her in prison, and fearful of being harshly judged by you—by any gentleman. I wished to reassure her. I didn’t expect she would presume to broach the topic with you.”

  “I ask, Mr. Stubbs, that you refrain from sharing such details of my life story with any client, regardless your estimation of whether that person is likely to accost me in the hall.”

  “Of course. Forgive me. I won’t so wrong you again.” The solicitor was retreating already, preparing to shepherd Miss Watson to some place, it was to be hoped, where she would find no legal professionals to harass. He twisted away with a bow, and in the last instant before his back was turned, Nick would nearly swear a spark of pity had lit the man’s eyes.

  He leaned a shoulder into the wall, to take part of the burden off his suddenly unsteady knees, and watched the two figures until they’d disappeared around a corner. In his left hand the rolled brief crackled; he loosened his fingers and unrolled the pages to see what damage he’d done to some hardworking clerk’s efforts.

  Will toiled for money now, in an office on one of the docks. Speaking of clerks, and working. So Martha had informed them all, because she and her fool husband would insist on acknowledging the cast-off Blackshear brother and even invoking his name
before those siblings who no longer saw him. According to her, he’d found employment in the timber trade, where apparently no one cared what sort of scandals you courted and married so long as you showed up at your desk at the appointed hour.

  All down the left side of each page ran a chaos of puckers and furrows, mangling the clean, elegant letters Nick recognized as having come from the pen of Smithson. He set the pages to the wall and ran his free hand over them in a smoothing motion. Smithson took pride in his work—you could see it in the little loops and tails with which he embellished the first letter of each paragraph—and he deserved better than to have the product of his labor bear all the anger and frustration of a gentleman living out his own private nightmare of disgrace.

  Heat rushed into his cheeks all over again at the memory. How much had the other Westbrooks overheard? Would he now have to contend with blunt questions from Miss Viola—who, for all he knew, might judge Will to be the wronged party in the whole affair—as well as a new awkwardness with Miss Westbrook? They’d invited him to dine there on Saturday. He couldn’t imagine how he was to—

  “Nicholas Blackshear?”

  He twisted. An auburn-haired man of perhaps five and thirty stood a half-dozen feet away, eyebrows raised, head angled slightly forward, silk hat in one hand. Auburn-haired gentleman, rather. Five syllables, shaped into a polite inquiry, were enough to make the genteel accent clear, and, even with hat off and head bent, his air was one of consequence and command.

  Nick’s stomach lurched. He’d completely forgotten the possibility of—

  “I take the liberty of presenting myself, though I believe my name has already been made known to you.” The gentleman’s head inclined a graceful few degrees more. “James Barclay, until recently Lord James Barclay; now simply Lord Barclay. Baron.”

  NICK SEIZED his self-possession in fistfuls. Barclay wasn’t the only man here who’d been raised as a gentleman. Regardless what one’s wayward siblings might do, one did know how to behave. He rolled Smithson’s mangled pages into one hand, and pushed off the wall to approach the man with his other hand held out.

  “Ah, yes, Charles Westbrook prepared me for the possibility of this meeting. Was this your first experience of the Old Bailey?” His mind turned quickly. Barclay’s being here at all probably meant he hadn’t heard before of the Blackshear scandal. But how much of the exchange with Stubbs had he witnessed?

  “I’ve never before had the privilege.” He had a good, firm handshake, and eyes bright with interest. “I got here early and watched five cases. I was utterly transfixed, particularly by your own trial. Westbrook spoke most highly of you, and it’s apparent to me he didn’t exaggerate.”

  “I’m fortunate to have studied with him. He taught me much.” His hands went behind his back again, that Lord Barclay not be distracted in his errand by the sight of the crumpled brief.

  “I hope you speak the truth, and don’t merely make a show of modesty. I depend upon the notion that such skills can indeed be taught. If what I observed in the court today was rather a product of innate talent, then I fear it’s all up with me.” A dent appeared in one cheek as he grinned. A sort of incomplete dimple, halted halfway through by a scar.

  “Nonsense.” Probably one oughtn’t to say nonsense to a lord. But the conversation had suddenly taken a turn into territory where Nick was most comfortable. So long as they spoke of trials and persuasion, he could bear himself with that ease conferred by perfect confidence in his own authority. “Diligence and a desire to succeed will get a man further than talent in most things. And if you’ve led men in the army it’s likely you’ll already possess some of the pertinent skills.”

  “I suspect your impressions of soldiering may be colored—as admittedly mine once were—by what you’ve seen in novels and plays. I assure you I never once had occasion to deliver a rallying speech in the manner of Henry the Fifth. A point for which my men were undoubtedly thankful.” He would make an excellent pupil. That was already plain. He hadn’t that tedious fragility of self-opinion so many men had. A teacher wouldn’t have to tiptoe round his lordly dignity.

  With effort, Nick kept his fingers from tightening on the already much-abused brief. He wanted this. The pleasure of imparting his expertise to someone so eager to learn; the chance to have influence with a member of Parliament; the myriad channels such a connection might offer for the industry of an ambitious man … Could he let himself hope Barclay had heard the conversation with Stubbs, or perhaps had even known all about the scandal beforehand, and thought it of no consequence? It wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. Mr. Westbrook, to take one example, was of that mind.

  “I shan’t detain you any further.” The baron glanced left and right, to acknowledge how the corridor had emptied about them. “But you’re amenable, I hope, to discussing this at some greater length, and seeing whether you can’t make a credible speaker of me?”

  I’d like nothing better. However it’s best we begin on a footing of honesty and therefore I cannot, in conscience, keep you ignorant of facts that could alter your own amenability to the arrangement. He could say that.

  Before I answer, I feel I must disclose certain details connected with my family name, and give you a chance to honorably withdraw that invitation. That, too, would be a response of integrity.

  May I ask whether you overheard the conversation I was having a minute or two before you first addressed me? Direct, scrupulous, and aboveboard. That was the tone he ought to take.

  “Of course,” he said, and bowed. “I’d be honored.”

  “THIS WAY, if you please, Miss Westbrook.” The butler returned from putting away Kate’s cloak and she followed him, finally, after years of wishing, through an archway to the main staircase of Harringdon House.

  The main staircase alone was worth the wait.

  Square in the middle of the room—not sidled up to one wall, as in Papa’s house and every other she’d seen—the thing rose, a dark, polished, lacy-railinged work of art, its steps narrowing incrementally until the last step gave on to a landing all painted ivory-white. From there the staircase split into two staircases, curved staircases, doubling back above her at the left and right walls until they reached a second landing.

  Wasteful, Viola would have said. Why have two sets of stairs going to the same place? It’s an ostentatious show of wealth and nothing more. Her sister had accompanied her as far as Berkeley Square, but had gone off down the street to eat ices and, no doubt, make trenchant private observations about the fashionable people who were also eating ices.

  She was glad Vi had declined to come in.

  Her heart beat hard as she followed the butler up the stairs, and when she came to the landing and turned for her first look at what lay beyond, it seemed possible her knees would simply give way.

  How had Papa never seen fit to mention that he’d grown up amid such splendor? Did people who lived in magnificent surroundings perhaps take the beauty for granted, and even cease to notice it? She never would. Even as a toddling child, she could never have looked on these soaring pale walls, this meticulous plasterwork, that overhead dome set with windows through which sunlight filtered down and not felt a bone-deep sense of wonder.

  I ought to have been here as a child. Acquaintance with this house ought to have been my birthright. She’d meant to not have bitter thoughts on this visit. It was difficult, though, to keep from wondering how many ladies without even a drop of Westbrook blood had tripped unthinking up and down these stairs, coming to call on the countess or some other member of the family and never in doubt of a welcome.

  She’d come to a stop, she realized, and was staring like some country bumpkin who’d never been inside a house before. She groped for the poise she’d practiced in front of the mirror at home. “It’s very pretty.” Graciousness, her last, best weapon—the dagger she’d whip out from her garter when all her armor had been stripped away—came readily to hand, and shaped her confusion of sentiment into a complim
ent to the butler. As if he’d personally overseen the scheme of ivory and gold, and wrought the next landing’s Corinthian columns with his own bare hands.

  He inclined his head from the step where he’d halted, the very picture of modest pride. “We’re told it’s some of William Kent’s finest work.” We. She would be jealous of a servant now, if she wasn’t careful, for the unthinking ease with which he claimed a place in this house, this family.

  “William Kent, of course. He brings such grandeur, doesn’t he, such tasteful luxury to the public spaces in a house.” She’d never heard of William Kent before this moment. No matter. The remark would serve for an architect or a plasterer. And she would file the name away, beside the Adam brothers and John Nash, for possible use on later occasions.

  The butler led on and she followed, one covetous hand skimming along the iron balustrade. The fingers of her other hand felt through her reticule for the shape of her card case. She would not be ashamed of her card, fashioned as it was of the third-rate paper that had been all she could afford. If it sat among the other cards on Lady Harringdon’s tray like a drab gray goose who’d stumbled into a flock of swans, well, that much of a contrast must she make to the rest of the company with her elegant manners and the swanlike grace of her person.

  Let other ladies shine with their skill at the harp or their knowledge of current affairs. She knew her strengths.

  Her heartbeat settled into a cadence of calm self-possession as she arrived at the first-floor landing. To the left and the right, broad doorways, each topped with an elaborately scrolled lintel, opened onto whatever triumphs of decoration lay beyond—but she would not again gape stupidly at the handiwork of Mr. Kent. She busied herself in drawing out a card, as she followed the butler through the left-hand doorway and a series of eminently gape-worthy rooms, and when they arrived at the double doors to the parlor, he took the card and read out her name to the four ladies seated within.