by Juliana Gray
He lifted his hand and caressed her cheek.
“You’ll stay with me. You’ll let me love you.” She closed her eyes and leaned into his hand, and the immaculate curve of her cheek fitted his palm like the softest peach.
Hatherfield leaned down and kissed her.
“I will build you a throne next to the sun,” he said.
He waited until she was falling asleep, curled up on the bench in the wheelhouse, while the pilot maneuvered the boat through the tidal eddies toward the Solent. “Just wait until you have your first sip of hefeweizen, Hatherfield,” she murmured. “It will change your life.”
“I know it will.” He smoothed the hair from her forehead.
Her eyes drifted shut. “Oh. The baby’s moving. Little chap seems to delight in fluttering about when I’m trying to . . . to rest . . .”
He laid his hand over her shirt, just above the waist of her trousers. The round bump was about the size of his spread fingers, firm and smooth.
A smile brushed across her lips. “You’ll make a wonderful . . . father . . .”
Father.
He crouched there a minute or two, while her breathing stretched out to a steady rhythm. The baby seemed to have gone quiet, or perhaps it was still too small to be felt from the outside. His son. His daughter.
He leaned over to kiss the gentle salient of Stefanie’s belly, and just as he lifted his hand away, he felt it: a flutter, a shift, like the beating of a butterfly’s wings.
He placed his lips against the soft white linen.
“I’ll keep watch,” he whispered. “You’ll never be alone.”
Without another glance, he rose and slipped out of the wheelhouse.
He found Gunther and Miss Dingleby standing near the bow. Gunther’s arms were crossed, and his face was earnest in the moonlight. As Hatherfield approached, he laid one powerful hand on the rail and flexed his fingers.
“Is there anything we can do to get rid of the murdering English bastard?” he said to Miss Dingleby, in German.
“You won’t need to,” said Hatherfield. He held out his hand. “Take good care of them both, Hassendorf, or I shall haunt you the rest of your miserable days.”
Gunther had the grace to blush. He shook Hatherfield’s hand once, and let it drop.
Hatherfield turned to Miss Dingleby. She was watching him closely, as if he were a previously undiscovered species of animal she could not quite place in order.
“Give Olympia my thanks,” he said.
She tilted her head. “I will.”
He turned, paused, and looked over his shoulder. “And best of luck with that shoulder.”
“Lord Hatherfield . . .”
He dove cleanly into the water.
The guard’s face turned white as Hatherfield approached his cell.
“You never saw a thing,” said Hatherfield.
Inside, the prison chaplain was sitting in the chair by the table, next to a bottle of fine French brandy, and Wright was sliding about awkwardly on the rowing apparatus. He looked up at Hatherfield’s entrance. “I can’t make heads or tails of this machine,” he said.
Hatherfield tossed the hat on the table. “It’s all in the rhythm, old boy. Keep it, if you like. Reverend?”
Wright stood up. “I called him in. I thought perhaps you might want to make use of that special license, before tomorrow. Having had some experience myself with the life of an illegitimate child.”
Hatherfield unbuttoned his jacket. This time, he accepted the anvil of grief as it pressed on his chest. “It won’t be necessary. For either of us. She’s gone back to Germany, in good hands. But perhaps . . .” He looked at the chaplain.
“Sir?”
“Perhaps if you’ve got one of those handy bits of verse lying about, the sort to buck up a chap’s spirits, when he’s a trifle low.”
Wright handed him back his own jacket, and Hatherfield buttoned it slowly, concentrated on each shining weight beneath his fingers.
The chaplain cleared his throat. “Do you mean a psalm, sir?”
“A psalm. That’s it exactly.” He looked at Wright. “Any preference, Mr. Wright?”
Wright straightened his collar and shook out his cuffs. “Afraid you’re asking the wrong man. The one with the shepherd and the valley of death and whatnot?”
“Oh yes. Rather. My own mother used to read me that one, in my impressionable childhood. There’s comfort, for you.”
The three men arranged themselves in the proper attitudes, the chaplain on the chair and Wright and Hatherfield on the cot, while the chaplain’s low voice murmured the twenty-third psalm above their bowed heads, into the warm August darkness.
THIRTY
In his first year at Eton, the Marquess of Hatherfield had been called into the headmaster’s office for the unpardonable crime of having shaved a certain vulgar physical representation into the well-groomed coat of the headmaster’s wife’s French poodle.
Actually, he had not committed the crime in question—he harbored an affection for dogs, even ornamental ones—but the single unbreakable code of Eton was that you didn’t snitch on another boy. So there he stood, one slender lad against a phalanx of outraged adults in grizzled gray whiskers, awaiting his sentence with his hands crossed contritely behind his back. He had never been more frightened in his life. And after the sentence had come down, and he had borne his twenty-five switches without a single sound, and his abused skin had finally healed, he knew that the worst part of all was the anticipation. The knowledge of impending harm.
The wanting it over with.
Funny, that he should think of that long-ago Eton day, as he stood in the sweltering midday courtroom, hands to rail, sweat percolating steadily down his spine, listening to the monotone recital of official procedure. He had been innocent on that occasion, too, and it hadn’t mattered. Not even to him. A crime had been committed, and someone must pay. The pound of flesh must be exacted from humanity. And perhaps it was true, that in suffering for another’s sake you achieved some sort of absolution for your own sins, uncounted and unpunished. You discovered some glimpse of your better nature, of the person you might have been, if this or that hadn’t gone wrong, or you had taken another path at one of life’s crossings.
Hatherfield watched the judge’s lips move, watched the jowly folds swing back and forth, the grizzled gray whiskers shiver in the faintest of drafts, and he thought, I love you, you scrap of humanity, you. You living relic of this world I am leaving. I love your whiskers and your jowly folds. I love each darkened grain of the wooden chair you sit on, and this unmistakably British courtroom with its columns and plasterwork and allegories. I love the sun that burns today like a white coal in the blue English sky, I love every cobble and drain in the London street outside. I love that hat one of the damsels is wearing, with its silly long ostrich feather quivering in fear.
I love my princess.
I love my child.
His eyes stung at that, so he looked down at the defense table, where Mr. Fairchurch was scribbling frantically next to Stefanie’s empty chair. Where the devil is my clerk? he’d asked that morning, during their conference, and Hatherfield had shrugged and said he hadn’t the faintest idea.
Fairchurch had gone on about appeals and precedent, and Hatherfield hadn’t paid much attention. What was the use? The outcome would be the same, he would be hanged.
Get it over with.
Mr. Duckworth was standing up and straightening his necktie, preparing to inform the court what a soulless scoundrel Hatherfield was, the depraved murderer of his own innocent stepmother, who only wanted the best for him, to marry him off to a lovely young lady with two hundred thousand useful British pounds sterling. And so on. Hatherfield assumed his most earnest expression, and allowed his eyes to travel among the spectators.
His father was absent, of course. The Duke of Southam, overcome by grief for his wife and disgust for his son, had only darkened the Old Bailey doorstep in order to testify against him
. But there was Sir John, eyes still more red rimmed than the night before, and his clothing uncharacteristically rumpled
His sister Eleanor and her husband, Robert. Brilliant Robert, already a junior Cabinet minister. Great things were expected of young Lord Chesterton, and he looked it. Already his cheeks bristled with the beginnings of an ambitious set of whiskers; already his forehead had taken on a wise and serious pair of lines. Well, best of luck to you, Robert. Knock them dead on the floor of the Lords. Keep Eleanor happy for me. That little spark of light that comes into her eyes when she sees you—don’t let it fade.
Next to Robert sat Mr. Nathaniel Wright, inscrutable as always, impeccably tailored. Wright, now. There was no telling where Wright might end up. Perhaps if . . .
A rustle was passing among the benches.
Mr. Duckworth shot an accusatory glance to the doorway, pushed up his spectacles, and continued. “The peculiarly savage nature of the attack, moreover . . .”
Hatherfield looked up at the soot-stained ceiling. The words droned in his ears. He wanted this over with. He wanted to go back to his cell to finish his letter to Stefanie. He wanted to do a bit of thinking, to sit and drink more of that excellent French brandy with the chaplain—a fine chap, that chaplain, it turned out—and make sure his affairs were in perfect order. He wanted to . . .
The judge banged his gavel. “I say, Mr. Fairchurch. Is that your missing clerk?”
Hatherfield’s head snapped to the doorway, where the ripple of commotion had taken place, and as if by magic, the crowd parted to reveal an auburn-haired woman in a splendid silver ball gown and a bristling mustache.
With all eyes upon her, she lifted her hand and tore away the mustache in a single swift rip.
An instant’s profound silence, and then the courtroom erupted into pandemonium.
Hatherfield couldn’t hear the frantic banging of the judge’s gavel; he could only feel it in his bones, a distant drumbeat, while Stefanie walked—no, strode—no, made her regal procession down the side of the courtroom, toward the defense table.
“No!” he shouted. “No, my lord! This is absolutely not Mr. Fairchurch’s clerk! I have never seen this woman in my life!”
By God, she was smiling.
She turned, and her swollen silhouette made him dizzy.
This was not possible. This was not possible.
Bang bang bang went the gavel.
Stefanie approached the table. Mr. Fairchurch, stunned, rose and pulled out the chair for her. In times of crisis, the British male always reverted to habit.
Her lips moved. Thank you.
She sank into her seat and stared serenely forward.
The judge went on banging his gavel. “You are out of order, Mr. Thomas! I WILL HAVE ORDER!”
The noise began to simmer into a delighted expectancy. Hatherfield gripped the rails as if to split them with his bare hands.
“Mr. Thomas!” thundered the judge. “Rise and explain yourself, or I will hold you in contempt! If I don’t already!” A few passionate droplets of spittle flew from his mouth.
Even blooming with pregnancy, Stefanie was still a princess, and Hatherfield was never more proud of her than when she rose to her feet before the judge in the most graceful movement he had ever witnessed. A smile hovered on her lips.
“My name is Stefanie Victoria Augusta, Princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof,” she said, “and I am the lady who danced with Lord Hatherfield on the night of February the twenty-first of this year. I have worn the very same gown to this courtroom, to corroborate my testimony. And I can assure the court that while his lordship was indeed engaged most agreeably and single-mindedly in the library that evening, the silver letter opener remained on the desk when he left the room.”
Mr. Fairchurch made a strangled noise and slithered to the floor.
“Good God!” said Sir John Worthington, who never spoke out of turn in a court of law.
A gasp came from the direction of the damsels, and another gasp, followed by a pair of swoons. Eleanor leapt to her feet. “It’s true! That’s the same dress. The same lady, I’ll vow to it!”
Bang bang bang went the gavel. “Madam! Mr. Thomas! This is most irregular. The trial has already finished. This court has neither the time nor the procedure to listen to additional testimony, from an evident lunatic . . .”
“I am not a lunatic. I am a princess. Hatherfield?”
All heads turned in his direction. Stefanie looked at him triumphantly, smiling with victory, her blue eyes bright in her beautiful face.
He cleared his throat. “The judge is correct. This lady is a lunatic.”
An outraged gasp from Stefanie, drowned out immediately by the roar of the crowd and the bang bang bang of the gavel.
He held up his hand, and the courtroom went still.
He stared at Nathaniel Wright. “She is, however, the princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, and I humbly suggest that Her Highness be removed from the courtroom immediately for her own protection, and with the respect and veneration that is her due.”
Wright rose smoothly to his feet and walked toward the defense table.
Bang bang bang. “I am the one who gives orders in this courtroom,” said the judge, purple-faced, clutching his wig with one hand and his gavel with the other. “This lady will be removed from the courtroom immediately for her own protection, and . . . I say, sir!”
Mr. Wright was reaching for Stefanie’s arm.
“Look here, I will be heard!” Stefanie said.
“You are in contempt, madam!”
“I am a princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, my lord, and I demand that that man be released . . .”
“You are a lunatic!”
Mr. Wright folded his arms.
Hatherfield sighed. “I say, can’t a man simply be sentenced to death without bloody Bedlam breaking out?”
At which point, a voice screeched out above the pandemonium among the benches.
“Sir! My lord!”
Hatherfield threw up his hands.
The judge was on his feet, banging away. “Order! Order! What the devil is going on now? This is a British court of law! Remember yourselves!”
One by one, the spectators settled contritely into their seats.
“Now.” The judge glared at Stefanie. “You, young lady. Young man. Whoever the devil you are.”
“I am the princess of . . .”
“You are out of order. You will retire to . . .”
“My lord!” The voice broke out again, louder now and clearer.
The spectators turned to the aisle.
“And who the devil are you?” said the judge.
“Why, Mr. Turner!” exclaimed Stefanie.
Sir John, who had spent the last few minutes staring at Stefanie’s head with an expression of appalled shock, swiveled his gray head to the center of the commotion. “What’s this? My Mr. Turner? Interrupting the proceedings of a court of law?” His voice grew steadily more thunderous. “Explain yourself, Mr. Turner!”
The beetlelike Mr. Turner waved his exoskeletal arm. “News, sir! The gravest possible news!”
“Then it had better well have to do with the case before the court!”
Turner scuttled forward, his black jacket swinging with the force of his scuttle. “Oh, it does, sir! The message arrived express soon after you left, sir, and there were no hackneys to be had, so I took it upon myself to . . .”
Bang bang. “Silence! Bring your message to the bench, Mr. Turner.” The judge held out his hand.
Mr. Turner walked forward and held out the paper to the judge, as if it were a live explosive.
The judge snatched it away and opened the folds.
A heavy silence descended over the assembly, as several hundred throats held back breath. Someone stifled a sneeze back into the recesses of his nose at the last instant, and the sound ricocheted off the walls like a gunshot.
The judge looked at Hatherfield from over the tops of his reading glas
ses. “Your lordship, I must ask you to brace yourself. I regret to inform you that your father, the Duke of Southam, passed away at ten o’clock this morning, the result of a self-inflicted wound.”
The words struck Hatherfield such a sudden blow, he didn’t realize at first what had hit him, and how hard. He felt it from a distance. Saw himself recoil. Thought, By damn, that’s a nasty blow, a real shock, I wonder how he takes it.
“Jamie!” Stefanie cried, from an even farther distance, almost outside his hearing.
“I beg your pardon?” someone said. Himself, apparently.
The judge removed his glasses. “You are now the Duke of Southam. However . . .”
Mr. Fairchurch, who had since recovered his seat and his wits, rose instantly to his feet. “My lord, the defense moves that this case be thrown out entirely, as being beyond the jurisdiction of this court. The ninth Duke of Southam, as a peer of the realm, should and will be tried in the House of Lords.”
Mr. Duckworth, not to be outdone, leapt from his chair as well. “My learned colleague is misguided in both principle and practice. The crime was committed while the accused merely held the courtesy title of Marquess of Hatherfield, and was therefore tried properly as a commoner. Furthermore . . .”
The judge stood up. “This has all gone on long enough. Princesses, suicides, pandemonium in my courtroom. This court is adjourned until tomorrow morning. Each side will prepare a brief, making its case and stating the applicable law, to be delivered to my chambers by six o’clock this evening. In the meantime, I will expect every member of this court and the public to behave itself with utmost decorum, and there will be absolutely no further interruptions to the proceedings. Is that quite clear?”
A meek silence greeted his words.
And then a firm female voice rose from the rear of the courtroom.
“Not quite.”
A small black-veiled figure stepped into view.
Hatherfield—the brand-new ninth Duke of Southam—put his head in his hands and wished himself back at Eton.
Stefanie stared at the tiny figure of Lady Charlotte Harlowe as she made her way past the awestruck benches to the front of the courtroom. The rustle of her dress, the click of her heels on the marble floor expanded with unnatural strength to fill every nook and crevice of the electrified room.
