by Juliana Gray
She didn’t stop to ask if he was all right, if he liked it, if he wanted it, and he was grateful. How could he tell her how many times he had imagined this, aroused and shameful in his prison bed, when the lights were out and he had only the darkness for company? How could he say the base words? God yes, suck my prick until I spend, work me with your tongue and your hot mouth and your sliding fingers until I lose myself in you.
She had no rhythm, no skill at all. She had obviously never done this before. But this was Stefanie, this was her mouth on him, slick and firm and eager and loving, and in less than a minute his climax tingled in his stones and built and built, and he tried to pull away but she held on with the eager mewl of a kitten lapping a bowl of cream, and that single sound was his undoing. He let himself go, he spent luxuriously in her mouth as his hands cupped the curve of her head and his tears wet the corners of his eyes.
When Stefanie arrived in Cadogan Square, dinner had already been cleared and Sir John sat alone in the dining room, rolling the brandy about his snifter and staring into the fire.
He looked up and saw her. “Come in, Mr. Thomas. I expect you’re just back from Old Bailey?”
“Yes, sir.”
She stepped reluctantly into the room, which reeked of smoke and melancholy. Sir John’s face hung in folds of pasty gray, and his eyes were rimmed in red. He sat with his shoulders slumped over the cloth. A cigar sat smoking in a tray near his elbow.
“How is his lordship holding up? Were you able to buck his spirits a bit?”
Stefanie raised her fist to her mouth and coughed. “A bit. I had hoped to go out again, go over the evidence. Something we missed, perhaps.”
“I’ve gone over it a thousand times.” He shook his head. “The interviews with the witnesses, the physical evidence. If only someone had seen something. And that’s the devil of it. There isn’t any actual evidence, not a shred of it, that Hatherfield did the deed. The whole damned house was seething with people. Fairchurch, I believe, did a decent job of establishing that. And yet the jury convicted him. They wanted someone’s blood, I suppose. Wanted someone to pay. Or perhaps wanted to believe that there wasn’t some crazed murderer still on the loose.” He shook his head. “Poor fellow.”
“I haven’t given up hope. Somebody did this, somebody murdered her. There’s got to be some clue somewhere.”
“After all these months? Something new?”
Stefanie shifted her feet. She was itching to be off, to go upstairs with her papers and books, to find something, some technical aspect of law, some overlooked statement that even now might be presented before the court. She had to do something. Something to relieve this ache in her chest, something to think about other than the feel of him on her lips, the knowledge that she might never feel him there again.
Because tomorrow at noon, if nothing else arose, she would have to play her last desperate card.
“Where is her ladyship?” Stefanie asked quietly.
“Out with her maid. I don’t know where. I don’t particularly give a damn.” He picked up his cigar and drew in deep. “I’d wash my hands of her, if I could.”
“She told the court what she knew.”
“Spiteful bitch. That poor fellow. I sent off letters to the Queen today, to the Prime Minister, begging for some sort of clemency. I don’t know if it shall have any effect.” He went to stub out his cigar, and then thought better of it. His hand shook as he lifted the end to his lips. “Do you know something, Thomas? I don’t believe I ever want to see the interior of a courtroom again.”
Upstairs, she tore off her collar and her mustache and jacket. She undid the buttons on her waistcoat and drew a long sigh of relief. After months of blessed flatness, her belly had suddenly begun to swell a fortnight ago, increasing daily, fluttering and quickening with life. Soon she would be too big to hide, and what would she do?
She had to save him. She had to.
She turned to her wardrobe for a dressing gown, and in the corner of her eye she saw a small square envelope on her desk.
Mr. Stephen Thomas, Cadogan Square, London, read the address on the back, but it was not the words themselves that stopped her short.
It was the lettering.
The unmistakable copperplate of Miss Dingleby’s cultured handwriting.
Stefanie had been gone half an hour when the guard announced another visitor.
Hatherfield rose to his feet and straightened his collar.
“Mr. Wright,” he said. “Welcome. I’d offer you a glass of sherry, but . . .” He made an apologetic gesture to the stone walls around them.
“Hardly necessary, under the circumstances.” Nathaniel Wright removed his hat and set it on the table. “A rather decent system of civil bribery you’ve got in place here. I wasn’t asked to grease a single palm.”
Hatherfield shrugged. “They’re good chaps, really. Expensive, but well worth the cost.”
“I quite agree. What can I do for you, old man?” Wright’s tone was that of one friend greeting another in the confines of a club library. Not a single note of awkward sympathy clouded his tone; not a single shade of softness obscured his dark gaze.
“You know the verdict that came down today.”
“Yes, I heard. Hard luck. I’m sorry if my little testimony had anything to do with it. I wish I might have helped you.”
“You did help me. You forbore to mention your encounter with . . . with the lady downstairs, and that has meant everything. Has quite possibly saved her life.”
“While sacrificing yours.” Wright’s eyes were sharp as they regarded him.
Hatherfield motioned to the single chair. Wright settled into the hard wooden seat as if it were an armchair before the fire; Hatherfield lowered himself on the edge of his cot. “You haven’t asked me who she is.”
“It was not my affair.”
“Would you mind particularly if I make it your affair?”
Wright picked up his hat from the table and fingered the edge. “In what way?”
How dim it was, in this cell. No matter how many oil lamps were brought in, it never seemed enough to chase away the dark summer, warm and oppressive. The skin of Wright’s face was dusky, his eyes shadowed.
Say it, old boy. Go ahead. Your time’s run out.
He began.
“I expect I shall be sentenced to hang tomorrow, and the execution will likely be carried out shortly thereafter. Stefanie . . .” He steadied himself. “She is five months gone with child, she is moreover in danger of her life, and I would go to my end with a far easier heart if I knew that someone capable—someone loyal, someone with the power and will to protect those under his care—were looking after her affairs.”
The words, as he spoke them, caused a peculiar stabbing pain in the region of his heart. As if someone were slicing the organ from between his ribs.
“I see.” Wright’s fingers were long and brown as they circled about his hat. “Are you asking me to marry her?”
“That’s not something I can ask of another man. In any case, the choice remains hers.”
Wright spun his hat and watched him. “You love her,” he said at last.
Hatherfield breathed quietly. When he could speak, he said, “More than my own life.”
“So it seems.” Tap tap tap went Wright’s fingers on the smooth felt of his hat. “If I were to take this charge, I would need, as a practical matter, to know who she is. What danger threatens her.”
“She is the youngest princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof.”
Wright startled in his chair. “By God!”
“Yes. You perceive the peculiar nature of her case. Why I could not allow her to identify herself. At the moment, there is no one of her own family to protect her, no one to restore her to her birthright. The Duke of Olympia is her guardian, but he’s left London entirely, and I haven’t heard from him in months.”
Wright rose from his chair and paced across the room. “By God.”
“I have alread
y endowed her with all I have. The houses, the rest of the money from my mother’s side. The properties are nearly ready to sell, and I hope you’ll assist her in obtaining the best possible price.”
“I have a question,” Wright said, facing the wall.
“What is it?”
“Why me? You will pardon my observing that we are hardly friends.”
Hatherfield watched the back of Wright’s dark head, his straight shoulders. “Because you’re a man of your word. A loyal protector of a sister with no necessary charge on your duty or affection. The most trustworthy gentleman of my acquaintance.”
Wright turned. His voice was low and respectful. “By God, Hatherfield. What a man you are.”
Hatherfield rose to his feet. “Will you do it?”
Wright stood quite still, his large black body filling the space against the wall. He regarded Hatherfield with a peculiar expression. “I am honored beyond measure by your trust in me, Lord Hatherfield. I shall endeavor my utmost to carry out your wishes.”
“And the child?” He could hardly say the words.
“Will be raised under my protection.”
Hatherfield turned away. “Thank you,” he whispered.
The wall stared back at him, gray and lifeless. How many days left? Hours of this life? How was it possible that you could count the minutes and seconds remaining to you in this world, with the woman you loved? How did you find the courage to leave, while your precious child grew inside her?
Behind him, Wright made not a sound.
“I have carried a special license in my pocket, in hope of a favorable verdict,” Hatherfield said at last. “You may want to do the same.”
“If she agrees.”
“She will not, at first.” Hatherfield held up his hands and stared at the palms, crisscrossed with old lines, thickened with callus. “She has a regal will. And the noblest heart in the world.”
“I shall endeavor to be worthy of her.”
Two knocks shook the door, closely spaced and urgent. The thick wood slid open.
“Sir.” The guard’s voice was laden with respect for the dead. “A message for you, express.”
Hatherfield took the paper from his outstretched hand, and waited until the door closed again before opening it.
He read the few scrawled lines. For a moment, in the prison of his shock, their meaning was lost on him.
And then, as if charged by electricity, his brain burst back into life.
“Good news, I hope,” said Wright.
Hatherfield looked up and turned. The blood was shooting in his veins, but it was a familiar sensation, the brilliant heightened awareness of purpose. The way he had once felt, in another lifetime, when steadying his boat at the start of a race. When a summons arrived in a plain envelope from the Duke of Olympia. “The opposite, I’m afraid.”
“I am at your service.”
Hatherfield refolded the paper while his thoughts assembled and resolved into clarity. He considered Wright’s figure against the wall, his height and breadth and stance.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “have you a taste for subterfuge?”
Wright crossed his arms and smiled, white toothed in the dimness. “Subterfuge? I am not opposed to it.”
“In that case, I would be very much obliged if you would be so good as to lend me your hat.”
TWENTY-NINE
The wide silver moon flashed on the cobbles ahead. Stefanie gripped the frame of the hansom in anticipation of the curve around Trafalgar Square. The Nelson Column gleamed whitely above her for an instant, and then it was gone.
Victoria Embankment, the note had said. Near the Temple Underground station.
Miss Dingleby would help. Miss Dingleby would know what to do. The wildest possibilities swung about her brain, tantalizing her with hope. With Miss Dingleby’s help, she could perhaps spring Hatherfield from prison. Together they could hide him, they could even spirit him back to Germany, and bring her father’s murderers to justice at last. He’d be safe from prosecution behind the familiar old walls of Holstein Castle. With Hatherfield by her side, she could face her old life again. They could marry, they could heal the wounds brought about by all the upheaval. A royal wedding, a new little prince or princess. She put her hand protectively over the small swell of her abdomen.
And perhaps, one day, they could clear Hatherfield’s name.
The driver brought them expertly down the approach to the Embankment. She hadn’t had time to find Nelson and tell him where she was going, but that didn’t matter. Miss Dingleby could be trusted.
She peered ahead, between the horse’s swiveling ears. In the distance, to the left, between the trees of the Embankment, she could make out the hulking box of the Tube station. She rapped on the roof. “Just there!” she said.
“I don’t like it, sir,” said the driver. “I don’t think the master’d like it, neither.”
“I’m meeting a friend, Smith,” she said. “It’s quite all right. And there’s plenty of moon, at least.” Thank God it was August; no cold miasma of fog and coal smoke. Only a clear night, a three-quarters moon, a few clouds drifting in a silver daze across the warm, dark sky.
“I don’t like it.” He slowed the horse to a walk.
Stefanie stood up on the floorboards and craned her neck. “Do you see anyone, Smith?”
“No one, sir.”
“Keep going, then.”
Her heart crashed in her ears. This couldn’t be some sort of deception, could it? She knew Miss Dingleby’s handwriting like she knew her own, and the passcode had been written at the top, exactly as they’d been instructed. No, it was Dingleby, all right.
It had to be.
Her palms were growing damp, making her hands slip against the black paint of the hansom doors. A movement caught her eye, a short figure in a bowler hat, weaving his way along the railing. He looked up as they passed him. “You’re a fine lad!” he shouted. “Don’t let them bugger you, them fine gentlemen what . . .” The rest was lost.
A cold shudder passed through her body, a vague presentiment. As if the bowler-hatted man had been a warning of some kind.
The horse walked briskly on. Another hansom passed them at a smart trot, and just as the driver’s tall hat whisked out of sight, Stefanie spotted the familiar dark silhouette near the railing.
She thumped the roof. “Stop!”
Instantly, the horse wheeled to a halt.
“Let me out!” she said, and the doors sprang open.
“Wait, sir!” called the driver, but she was already jumping down to the pavement and running across the road to the railing, to the shape of Miss Dingleby against the rippling moonlit riverscape of the Thames.
The figure spread out its arms. “Stefanie, my dear!” called Miss Dingleby’s well-remembered voice.
In the tumultuous course of Stefanie’s adolescence, she and Miss Dingleby had not always been the best of friends. An incident rose to mind, even as she rushed to throw herself in those dark outstretched arms: Stefanie, forced on a dulcet summer’s day to copy out all ninety-five of Martin Luther’s theses, in the original Latin, while her sisters enjoyed a picnic expedition on the banks of the Holsteinsee, all because of some innocent prank involving a jar of paste, a pet ferret, and the visiting Prime Minister of Bohemia.
But all that was forgotten in the instant of Miss Dingleby’s wiry arms closing about her back.
“You came back!” she said. “You came back.”
“Of course I came back.” Miss Dingleby put her hands to Stefanie’s arms and set her away. “Of course I came back, my dear. How could you doubt me?”
“I didn’t hear a word from you. Not a word.”
“I was rather busy, investigating this matter of the anarchists.”
Stefanie’s eyes began to fill. “And all this time, the most terrible thing . . .”
“Yes, yes. This marquis of yours, getting himself in a dreadful pickle. I do hope it’s all sorted out.”
&nbs
p; “It’s not, I’m afraid. It’s as bad as it could be. Today the court, the jury found him guilty of murdering his stepmother. Guilty! They’ll hang him, and he’s innocent, he’s innocent, and we’ve got to save him . . .”
Miss Dingleby’s hands gripped her arms with renewed strength. “What in heaven’s name is all this? These tears, Stefanie! What’s the matter with you?”
“They’ll hang him, Miss Dingleby! You’ve got to save him!”
“By heaven, you’re as flighty as a . . .” Miss Dingleby stopped. Her gaze moved downward. “Oh, by my old aunt Matilda. Not you, too.”
“You have to help me, Dingleby,” Stefanie whispered.
Dingleby rolled her eyes heavenward. “You, Stefanie? Even you? What the devil’s in the English air? All of you, falling in love, getting yourselves with child at the first opportunity. I taught you better than this, by God!”
Stefanie straightened her back proudly. “You taught us to pursue our convictions with energy, and so I have. I have defended him in a court of law. You’d be proud of me, Dingleby. Every day, I’ve devoted myself to his case, I’ve studied and analyzed every aspect of the law as it relates to . . .”
“And for what? For love?” As she might say, For raspberry trifle?
“To save him. To save an innocent man from punishment, a good man, the best of men . . .”
Even in the haze of moonlight, Miss Dingleby’s face of disapproval could melt iron. “This is not why I brought you to England, Stefanie. This is not what you were put on this earth to do.”
For the first time, Stefanie heard the voices on the other side of the railing. The slap of water against surface.
“But you’ll help me, won’t you?” she asked.
Dingleby forced her face into sympathy. “My dear, of course I should very much like to help, but I’m afraid we haven’t time.”
“Haven’t time? But what’s going on?” Stefanie’s gaze shifted to the railing, where a figure was drawing up from the riverside, a large male figure, placing his hands on adjoining cast-iron posts in preparation to vault himself over. “Look out!” She lurched forward and shoved Miss Dingleby out of the way.
