by Juliana Gray
The Duke of Olympia steepled his fingers together and leaned forward. His blue eyes met Hatherfield’s with the intensity of a bolt of lightning. “I assure you, my dear fellow, nothing is more important to me than the happiness and well-being of my precious niece.”
“Nothing, Your Grace?” Hatherfield said bitterly.
The duke spread his hands. “My dear, dear Hatherfield. Why else do you think I entrusted her to you?”
TEN
Old Bailey
July 1890
Hatherfield’s barrister was not pleased, and he let his client know it.
“I am not pleased, Lord Hatherfield. You attend these proceedings as if they were a tennis match, and not a trial for murder in which your own life hangs in the balance.” Mr. Fairchurch had a broad face full of luxurious brown whiskers, and he twitched them all with the force of his discontent.
Hatherfield leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “I assure you, Mr. Fairchurch, the weight of the matter lies heavy upon my shoulders. I haven’t the slightest intention of seeming—oh, what’s the word, Mr. Thomas?” He swiveled to Stefanie with a smile.
She did not return it. “Blithe. Insouciant. Unnaturally cheerful.” She sat between two enormous piles of documents, and in the shadow of this crevasse the strong bones of her face looked almost gaunt. She leaned another inch toward him and said accusingly, “Lighthearted.”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s the word. But I see no reason to be downcast. Look at the pair of you, like moping owls. Have you no confidence in the British system of justice? The finest in the world.”
“Only if the defendant takes a proper interest in his own case,” said Mr. Fairchurch.
“I do. I listen to every word, I assure you. Even the Latin ones.”
“To say nothing of this nasty surprise from Mr. Wright. Why the devil didn’t you say anything of the business? Weren’t you aware?”
Hatherfield looked at Stefanie. “I was well aware.”
“Then . . .”
“Mr. Fairchurch,” said Stefanie, without looking away from Hatherfield’s face, “I believe your meeting with the judge and prosecution takes place in another two minutes?”
Mr. Fairchurch thrust his hand into his pocket and produced a watch. “Dash it all! I shall return shortly. Do try to talk some sense into the man, Mr. Thomas, and get to the bottom of this Harlowe business.”
When the door clicked shut behind him, Hatherfield cast aside his careless air and reached across the table to take Stefanie’s hands. “My dear . . .”
Her hands jerked away. “Stop that. If anyone were to see us . . .”
“He’s just left.”
“Don’t be a fool.” Her eyes were wet. “Don’t you understand? You’re on trial for your life, Hatherfield. Your life.”
“There’s no danger. I have every confidence in . . .”
Stefanie rose from her chair so quickly, she almost overturned it. “In the British justice system. I know. But we have nothing, Hatherfield. Nothing but your word. And why on earth did you never tell me that Mr. Wright was bribing your stepmother to arrange a marriage between you and Lady Charlotte?”
“He was bribing the both of them, as I understand it.”
“But why didn’t you say anything? All of a sudden, the prosecution has an actual motive!”
“Because I didn’t think anyone else knew. It was a private matter.”
She rose from her chair and went to the small window, overlooking an alleyway. “I wish Sir John himself were defending this case. Fairchurch is competent enough, but . . .”
“You know he couldn’t. He was right there in Belgrave Square, the night of the murder. We’re fortunate that Fairchurch agreed to take you on as his clerk; at least this way Sir John can pass along his unofficial advice.”
“I doubt he’ll be pleased about today’s developments. I wouldn’t want to be in Lady Charlotte’s shoes, if Sir John decides she knew about this arrangement of her brother’s.” She ran her finger along the dusty edge of the window sash. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
He said nothing. She turned, arms folded, and found that he was watching her intently. “How are you, Stefanie? How are you getting on? Nelson is looking after you, isn’t he?”
Stefanie made a short laugh. “Nelson is a bulldog. He’s waiting outside this very door, I daresay.”
Hatherfield let out a long sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath for a week. For the first time, Stefanie noticed the lines about his blue eyes, the delicate trace of strain on his pale golden skin. “Good man.”
She dropped back into her chair. Her eyes hurt with the effort of holding herself together. Not allowing the shameful tears to break free in the face of him. “Hatherfield, please. You have to do your best. You have to fight this. For my sake, if not for yours. My uncle has left town, I’ve no idea where to find my sisters. Even Miss Dingleby has cut off all communication. You cannot leave me alone, do you hear?”
“Sir John will take care of you.”
She slammed her fist on the table. “I don’t want Sir John. I want you!”
He rose to his feet slowly, as if keeping himself in check by the most herculean effort of self-control. He said softly, “A man with the stain of a murder accusation in his past? Even if I’m acquitted, Stefanie, I’m no longer suitable for you. If I ever was.”
She leaned forward, across the narrow table, and grabbed his hands. “Don’t say that again. Ever. I will fight for you with everything I have, Hatherfield, every ounce of brain and muscle I own, and I expect you to do the same for me. As you did, before all this. As you fought so hard for me when I needed you.”
The light leapt into his eyes at last. In the flash of a leopard capturing his prey, he snatched her face between his broad hands and said, next to her mouth, “Stefanie, little one, you don’t know what it costs me to . . .”
The doorknob turned.
Stefanie fell back in her chair, heart pounding, ears ringing.
“Well, gentlemen?” said Mr. Fairchurch. “Have we come to a satisfactory solution?”
“Yes, sir,” Stefanie said stoutly, tunneling her gaze between Hatherfield’s fierce eyes. “I believe I’ve put the matter to Lord Hatherfield in the clearest possible terms.”
ELEVEN
Cadogan Square, London
November 1889
Every lamp and chandelier in the drawing room of Sir John Worthington’s Cadogan Square mansion glittered brilliantly upon the company scattered across its cushions, but the Marquess of Hatherfield, pausing at the threshold, felt a cold shadow close over his chest.
“My dear boy,” said his father, looking up from his glass. “There you are at last.”
“Father. Good evening.” He crossed to the woman occupying one side of the sofa, in intimate conspiracy with the dainty figure of Lady Charlotte Harlowe. “Your Grace.” He took her outstretched hand and brought it near, but not quite touching, his lips.
“My dear Hatherfield,” said his stepmother. She smiled beautifully. “You’re late.”
“I beg your pardon. I was escorting young Mr. Thomas home.”
“How good of you to take such an interest in our protégé,” said Lady Charlotte. “And where is the dear fellow now?”
Hatherfield turned to her. She held her hand out expectantly for another almost-kiss, another not-quite greeting. “Lady Charlotte. Mr. Thomas is upstairs, I believe, changing into a dinner jacket.”
“A dinner jacket! Does he have one, indeed?”
“So I would imagine.” Hatherfield pivoted back to where the two men stood, holding their drinks, shirtwaists stiff and necks stiffer. “What a tremendous surprise, Father. I had no idea you were dining with Sir John tonight.”
“A pleasant surprise, I hope.”
“Of course.”
“We see you so rarely, Hatherfield, that we thought perhaps the mountain must come to Mohammed.” The duchess’s voice was as clear and cold as an Al
pine lake.
As her heart, Hatherfield thought grimly.
He glanced at the doorway. Where the devil was Stefanie? He needed a friendly face, a single conspiratorial glance, a sense of some sort of kindred spirit. They’d hardly exchanged a word in the hansom, returning from Temple Bar. He had sat waiting for her on the street, counting the other clerks as they filed out, until at last her figure had emerged from under the soot-smeared lintel. Mr. Stephen Thomas. Her Royal Highness, Princess Stefanie, dressed in her plain black overcoat and bowler hat, her bristling little mustache and worn dark shoes. She’d glanced up and down the street, as if looking for him, and he’d stepped forward and blinked away the sheen that had somehow materialized in his eyes at the sight of her. Her brave jaw and slight shoulders, her sharp eyes and delicate note, her strength and her vulnerability. He wanted to press her safe into his heart, he wanted to press himself safe around her. “Good evening, Thomas,” he’d said instead. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”
And that was that.
Now, he’d have given his left arm for a glimpse of her.
“Working late again, was he?” said Sir John. “Good lad. Needs a bit of discipline, of course, but his mind is first-rate. Absolutely first-rate. Sherry?”
“Please.”
Sir John addressed the liquor tray. “I do appreciate your taking an interest in the boy. Just what he needs, a bit of polish. A sterling example.”
“I don’t know about that.” He took the glass from Sir John.
“Nonsense,” said Lady Charlotte. “Mr. Thomas is immeasurably fortunate to have found such a well-placed sponsor. So fine and virtuous a gentleman as you, James.”
He drank deep. “You flatter me.”
“Naturally!” the Duke of Southam said jovially. “Naturally she does! The dear girl.”
“Very dear.” The duchess took Lady Charlotte’s hand and squeezed it fondly.
Lady Charlotte cast her eyes downward and blushed. “You are all so terribly kind.”
“Because we love you, my dear girl. So beautiful and charming and accomplished. The perfect young lady. Isn’t she, Hatherfield?” The duchess smiled at him.
He polished off the sherry and glared at his father. “Indeed.”
“Is everything quite all right, James?” asked Lady Charlotte. “You seem distracted this evening. Not your usual warm and engaging self.”
“Aren’t I? It must be the chill in the air.” He went to the drinks tray and refilled his glass.
“The chill? I don’t feel any chill. Do you feel a chill, Your Grace?”
“Not at all, my dear,” said the Duchess of Southam. “Perhaps it’s all this sherry Hatherfield is drinking.”
“My dear stepmother. At the moment, I don’t believe there’s enough sherry in the world.”
“Hatherfield! What the devil do you mean by that?” said the duke.
“He’s not at all himself,” said the duchess.
“Perhaps he’s ill,” said Lady Charlotte. She rose to her feet in a rustle of silk and hurried in his direction. “He did say he felt a chill. My poor James.” She came up from behind and reached upward to lay a pair of cool fingertips upon his forehead.
He brushed them aside and stepped away. “I am not ill. For God’s sake. All of you. I am simply . . .”
“Exhausted, isn’t that right?”
The voice from the doorway floated out cheerfully, causing everyone to jump and the duke to spill his sherry with a vulgar oath that hung in the air in a most unseemly fashion.
Mr. Stephen Thomas—Stefanie—stepped forward with a brilliant smile. “My fault, I’m afraid. I kept him up far too late last night. I won’t say what we were up to”—a devilish wink, as she stepped past several pairs of astonished eyes on her way to the drinks tray—“as the subject is not at all suitable for ladies.” She poured her sherry to the brim and clinked her glass against Hatherfield’s with a happy crystalline chink. “Your health, sir.”
“By God,” said the Duke of Southam, stunned. “Who the devil’s that?”
“My new clerk,” said Sir John.
Hatherfield gazed down at Stefanie’s face, amused and a little flushed, the slender mustache dark against her creamy skin. Her black tailcoat squared neatly atop her shoulders; her white shirtfront spread crisply across the smooth swell of her chest. Her auburn hair shone dark with pomade, sleeked back to expose her forehead and cheekbones, high and strong and fearless. She looked back at him with those large, bright eyes of hers, rimmed with extravagant black lashes, dancing with shared secrets, and something whooshed in Hatherfield’s ears, as if a hurricane were galloping past, spinning and roaring and tumbling him off his feet.
The sound of a man falling in love.
He smiled back at her and set down his glass.
“Your Graces,” he said, “may I present Mr. Stephen Thomas, kin and protégé of the Duke of Olympia himself. Mr. Thomas is the cleverest chap in London and, so I’ve heard, the next great colossus of the English bar.”
Three sharp taps rang through the snug air of Stefanie’s third-floor bedroom, the instant she had struggled out of her tailcoat.
She went still, both hands poised at her necktie, and looked about the room.
Tap tap tap. A touch louder.
Stefanie frowned at the door. Who on earth would be wanting her company at this hour? Surely not Lady Charlotte, who had been casting such murderous glances across the dinner table whenever she thought Stefanie wasn’t looking. In the first place, an unchaperoned nocturnal visit would be highly improper. In the second, her ladyship couldn’t possibly think she could get away with violent homicide in her uncle’s own house, what with modern techniques of criminal science and that chap with the deerstalker running amok across London, making his uncanny deductions.
Stefanie opened the door and peeked out.
Nobody there.
Tap tap tap.
Stefanie slammed the door shut and whipped about. Eight feet away, the face of the Marquess of Hatherfield pressed against her wet windowpane, his beauty rather smashed and distorted by the glass and the lurid shadows.
She let out her breath in a gust and crossed the room. “You might have said something,” she said, thrusting open the sash. “You nearly killed me with fright.”
“Nonsense. You’re not susceptible to frights of that kind. Thank God.” He crawled through with an expert twist of his sleek body and leapt nimbly to Stefanie’s floor. A cascade of droplets shook forth from his golden hair.
Stefanie tossed him a hand towel from the basin. Her heart was thumping so quickly, she thought she might be dizzy. He seemed to take up all the space in the room, all the air, as if the sun itself had popped through her window to land, still burning, on her rug. “You know, there’s this delightful invention called a staircase. Paired with a door, it’s a really remarkable way of gaining entrance to someone’s room. Or exit, for that matter.”
“I’m trying to reform my dull ways, per your instruction.” His face emerged from behind the towel, grinning widely, his damp hair tousled as if he’d just emerged from his bed. “Also, I didn’t want to be seen.”
Thump thump, went Stefanie’s heart.
She snatched the towel and hung it back next to the washstand. “Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why didn’t you want to be seen?”
“Oh, that.” The window was still open. Hatherfield closed it with care and turned back to Stefanie. “Because if I’d been seen, I might have been followed. And if I’d been followed . . .”
He stood directly before her, all warm and glowing from having climbed up gutters and scuttled across rooftops in the dreary London drizzle. The line of his lips was softer now, more tender. “If you’d been followed?” she said breathlessly.
He took her hands and kissed each one. “If I’d been followed, someone might see me do this.” He placed his warm palms along her cheeks. “And this.”
He bent his face and kissed
her lips.
Stefanie gasped into his mouth. He tasted of brandy and cigars, as she did, but on his breath the combination seemed a thousand times more potent, more masculine. She savored it for an instant, until he lifted his head.
“Oh,” said Stefanie.
“Again?”
“Yes, please.”
His lips were soft and gentle and deliciously damp. He reached a little deeper this time, slowly, a rich and wavelike movement that spread like flame through her head and chest and belly. The most sensuous kiss in the world. She slid her arms underneath his overcoat and upward along the back of his ribs, his hard and muscled shoulders, and his hands slid into her hair, his fingers caressed her scalp, and his mouth, oh God, his hot brandy mouth! Hatherfield’s mouth. She ran the tip of her tongue along the tender inner skin of his upper lip, and he groaned from deep in his chest.
The sound of that groan stirred some alchemical reaction inside her, something dark and transformative. She raised her right knee and wrapped her calf along the back of his oaken thigh; her hands scrabbled along the edge of his jacket, seeking out his waistcoat and the shirt beneath, the warm skin she wanted ferociously to touch and kiss and devour.
He murmured something and drew back, just an inch or two. But it was enough.
Stefanie slid her leg back down to the floor. She was panting; so was he. His eyes were soft and serious as he searched her face. His lips parted slightly, as if he were about to tell her something, some declaration, and she realized in horror what she’d just done. The deception she had just willfully practiced on him; not like in the wardrobe, where she had no choice, but out here in the open, touching him with her tongue, wrapping her leg around him. Letting him believe she was something she was not. Letting him believe she was something he wanted.
