“You questioned him in his home?” Ben asked. “What date was that?”
Blatchford paled again. Ben glanced at Mayerick, who read his mind and leaned over the desk to add another inch to Blatchford’s glass. Blatchford gulped it down thankfully.
“Was it the fifth of February?” Ben asked.
Blatchford nodded, his expression miserable.
“Burscough went straight upstairs and tore her room apart to find the diary,” Dane murmured.
Blatchford’s misery increased. “Then I hear Burscough is suing his wife for divorce. I felt sick about it. What sort of man would drag his wife through a divorce? I never, in a hundred years, would have gone near Burscough if I’d thought he’d react that way, but how could I know that? It’s not a sensible reaction. It’s not the normal one. I heard one of the senior writers at the Times got the information from the court filing, which makes it indisputable and they ran the story. Since then…well…”
“Since then, Tim has been polishing the top of the stool at the Lamb & Lion, where I found him,” Daniel finished.
Dane blew out a breath and sat back. “Now a little more of the full picture is coming into view,” he said to Ben.
Ben shook his head. “It still doesn’t make complete sense. He didn’t marry her for love or devotion or anything but a cold equation that told him no one else would have him. Why was he upset when he found out about a possible affair? Nothing Jenny told us says Burscough’s pride is fragile at all.”
“Very little has made sense in all this,” Dane explained, looking at Daniel.
Daniel shrugged. “If it doesn’t make sense, then you don’t have all the information yet. No one ever acts for anything but good reason, even if the reason only makes sense in their own heads. Find the missing information, and you’ll have your answers.” He patted Blatchford’s shoulder once more. “Come along, lad. I’ll take you home.”
Blatchford got to his feet.
“This will help, yes?” Daniel asked Ben.
“I’m not sure how, although if information is truly what we need now, then I am grateful. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you, Blatchford. By the way…”
Blatchford lowered his hat again. “Yes?” There was still no color in his cheeks, despite the brandy.
“I don’t think you should give up on journalism,” Ben told him. “You made a mistake. Your conscience will make sure you never make it again. You have the instincts for the work, it appears.”
Blatchford’s eyes widened. “I will…think upon that.”
Daniel took him away.
Dane settled on the chair Blatchford had vacated, which put him eye to eye with Ben. “There’s still more we need to know about Burscough.”
“Clearly.” Ben turned the pile of papers face-up once more. “Only, the trial starts on Thursday and I have a defense to prepare and honestly, I don’t know how to even begin.”
Dane glanced at the papers. “Burscough is in the right,” he said. “As much as we don’t like it.”
Ben grimaced. “Three days from now, I suspect I will look as ill as Blatchford.”
* * * * *
Present day: The Wardell house, Grosvenor Square, London. March 1867. At the same time…
Jack could hear that there were a number of people downstairs from the volume of the conversation drifting up the stairs. That was a good thing. It would keep Paulson and his staff hovering at the front of the house, their attention fixed on the public rooms.
Jack eased out of his room and down the back stairs to the domestic rooms. There was a snarl of cellars and pantries and cupboards there, that had been built haphazardly over the years. It was possible, if one knew their way about, to reach the staff entrance at the back of the house without going through the kitchen, where Cook and her kitchen hands would spot all comings and goings.
The stout bar that was placed over the door at night was standing against the doorframe, for the door saw a lot of traffic during the day, with servants and suppliers coming and going.
He waited inside the door, as Sharla had instructed him. It was close to the hour she had dictated. Her letter had directed he meet her at the back door of the house at ten o’clock, with no explanation for why he must do so, yet Jack found a kernel of hope building in his chest.
Let Sharla’s plan be what he wished with all his heart it might be.
There was no clock in the back hall. He had nothing but the beat of his heart to measure passing time. The longer he lingered here, the greater the chance one of the staff would come through and see him.
He heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel outside and grew still, waiting.
The latch lifted and the door opened. Sharla slid through the door, dressed in a dark worsted traveling suit. Behind her came a cloaked and hooded figure.
Jack’s heart leapt, as Sharla latched the door and the woman lowered her hood.
Jenny.
Never mind that their last words had been bitter and wounding. He did not care that they had said they would never see each other again, except as cousins of a common family, surrounded by other cousins.
He instead took in Jenny’s pale and thin face, at the signs of weariness and strain in her eyes and his heart ached. Without planning it, he found himself sweeping her up in his arms, and holding on to her as if she might slip away yet one more time and be lost to him.
“Oh, Jack…” she breathed.
He kissed her, intending merely to remove the sadness in her eyes. Only, the kiss lingered and grew deeper as all their kisses did. Only when he remembered Sharla’s presence did Jack make himself let Jenny go.
Sharla had turned her back, giving them the most privacy she could in this cold stone room.
“We shouldn’t linger here,” Jack breathed. He picked up Jenny’s hand. “Come through here,” he told both of them and slipped into the narrow corridor he’d used to get here.
They couldn’t go into any of the public rooms, or the front of the house. Reluctantly, Jack halted in the old, unused butlers’ pantry with its empty shelves and dust and turned to face Jenny once more. “I’m sorry. We must talk here. There is nowhere else.”
Sharla cleared her throat. “I will go to the kitchen and catch up with Mrs. Jenson.” She moved back to the door, then looked at Jack. “We can’t stay for long,” she warned. “Ben and Dane don’t know we’re here. They would be worried if they did. I want to return before they learn we’re gone.”
“Besides,” Jenny said, her voice small and strained, “Ben has so much work to do before…Thursday.”
Before the trial began. Jack sighed.
As soon as Sharla had gone, Jenny gripped his lapels and gave him a little shake. “Why are you still in London, Jack? Surely, someone—Father, or Uncle Rhys—someone must have told you to leave London, if not the country.”
“They have,” Jack admitted.
“Then you must go! Jack, if the law catches up with you—”
He laughed. It was a haggard sound. “Out of the question,” he said flatly. “You cannot coax me on this, Jenny. I will not leave you alone to face this.”
“What good will it do if you are in jail?” she cried. “I can’t stand it, Jack. I can’t stand the idea that you will be brought down with me in this. Your whole life will be utterly ruined.”
“And yours will not?” He touched her lips. “Shh, Jenny. Shh. Don’t you understand? Even if I am in a jail cell, I will be beside you. Here.” He touched her heart, his fingers warm and heavy. “If I leave, if I run away, then even if I returned and stood next to you, I would be there in your heart no longer.” He shook his head. “We did wrong. We must face the consequences. It will be just barely endurable if we do that together.”
Jenny’s eyes glittered with building tears. Then a single drop rolled down her cheek. “I’m scared, Jack. How can the family ever forgive us for putting them through this public disgrace?”
Jack could find no answer. Paulson had warned him this morning t
hat he had been named in the papers at last and he had yet to look at Mama Elisa’s face…let alone his own mother’s. His birth mother had refused to speak to him for days. This latest news would likely break that dam.
The two women would be a measure of the family’s reaction and he wasn’t sure he was ready yet to test them. Jenny’s despair over losing the family’s acceptance was as sharp as his own fear. The family was understanding about many sins, although public scandal was one for which they had no tolerance, for it impacted upon them all.
Instead Jack kissed Jenny, to drown his fears and to lose himself in her, for he had not thought this chance would ever come again.
The moment didn’t linger.
Paulson coughed loudly and Jack made himself let Jenny go. She immediately raised her hood and did not turn to look at the butler.
“Miss Jenny needs to take care to lift her hems when walking in dusty areas. The trail is wider than a river and easier to follow,” Paulson said.
Jenny sighed and turned to face him. “Hello, Paulson.”
“You came looking for Jenny?” Jack asked, puzzled.
“I came to find you, my Lord,” Paulson said. “Finding Lady Sharla in the kitchen told me Miss Jenny would not be far away and that you’d likely be with her.” He paused. His gaze slid to Jenny. “There are three men at the front door, asking for you,” he added, to Jack.
Jack’s gut tightened. “Who are they?”
Paulson’s expression didn’t change. “They didn’t announce themselves,” he said dryly. “However, I believe they are policemen.”
Jenny gave a soft cry and turned back to Jack. “They’re here! Jack, they’re going to arrest you!” She gripped his arm.
“Who else is here?” Jack asked Paulson. “There were a lot of voices coming from downstairs.”
“Everyone in the drawing room is family, my Lord,” Paulson said.
“Then there is a small blessing in this moment,” Jack said heavily. He made himself pull Jenny’s hand away from his arm yet couldn’t let it go altogether. Her eyes were very wide as she looked up at him from under the velvet hood. “Together, remember?” he said softly.
Her eyes took on a luminescent quality. “I will come with you.”
They turned to face Paulson.
“Only as far as the service door, Miss Jenny,” Paulson said, his voice deep and hoarse, for Jenny had always been a favorite of his. “Any farther and you’ll be seen by the police, which will only confirm what they’re arresting Lord Jack for.”
“You called me Jack,” Jack said, delighted.
Paulson turned to leave, his chin up. “A slip of the tongue, my Lord,” he said stiffly.
He led them back through the staff rooms, by the most direct route, which included traversing the kitchen. Jack didn’t let go of Jenny’s hand, even when the staff fell silent and turned to watch them move through the rooms. Sharla got to her feet as they passed, her face pale.
“Jack?” she asked, her voice wobbling.
He stopped. “You and Ben and Dane…watch Jenny for me, yes? I know you have already, although now I will be completely out of reach.”
Sharla’s chin crumpled. “Of course,” she said stiffly. “She is a sister to me…to us.”
Sharla followed them up the stairs to the top of the passage, then to the door into the public rooms. The door was closed and Paulson put his hand on it and looked back at Jack. “Ready, my Lord.”
Jack would never be ready for this. He drew a breath, willing himself to nod, to show Jenny he was not afraid.
Sharla put her hand on Jack’s arm. “Ben would tell you to say nothing. Every word you utter can be twisted. They will treat you like a gentleman, while they watch everything you say and do, just the same.”
Jack nodded. “Thank you.”
She pressed her lips together, into a fine white line, then nodded and stepped back.
Jenny lifted her arms up to him and Jack kissed her, pushed to the public display by the press of time. “Remember,” he breathed into her ear and let his fingers press against her heart once more.
She didn’t cry, and that made it worse. There was a bewildered look in her eyes, as if she couldn’t cope with the severity of the storm that had hit and it wrenched at him.
“I am ready,” he told Paulson, lying.
Paulson pushed the door open and strode out into the hallway, then down to the front of the house where three men in cheap suits stood waiting with their bowler hats in hand. All of them were large, wide-shouldered men.
Everyone, including Mama Elisa and his mother, stood in the drawing room doorway, watching. That made it worse and at the same time, Jack drew comfort from their presence. These people had supported him his whole life. They had nurtured and taught and soothed.
One of the three policemen stood slightly ahead of the other two. “Baron Guestwick?”
Jack nodded.
“I’m here to take you into custody, my Lord, to answer charges that have been raised.”
Jack nodded again. He wasn’t sure he could speak.
Mama Elisa made a soft sound and Vaughn held her up.
Paulson handed Jack his hat and coat and gloves. One of the two junior officers stepped forward, pulling a pair of manacles from his pocket.
“Is that really necessary?” Jack asked, surprised. “I’m coming along willingly.”
“They’re criminal charges, sir.”
“It’s ‘my Lord,’ to you,” Paulson snapped.
The man swallowed, lowering the manacles.
Jack looked the senior officer in the eye. “Use them later, if you must,” he said softly. “Just not here, in front of my family.”
The man’s face worked. His gaze slid toward the silent group gathered in the drawing room doorway, then over to the staff entrance. Sharla stood three paces in front of the door. Her red hair glowed in the morning light. Her chin was up and her shoulders were square. Just over her shoulder, Jack could see Jenny hovering behind the door frame, the corner of one eye watching.
The officer nodded. “We can do it without them,” he said gruffly. “If you’ll come with us, my Lord?”
“After you,” Jack told him. He followed him out the door and it was there his courage failed him. He couldn’t look back. He was afraid to. He let the door close with the knowledge that Jenny had seen it all.
Jenny…and his family.
For hours of that long, black day, Jack barely noticed what was happening to him. The cell they shut him in, though, with its cold, damp stone walls and the clanging iron door, brought him face to face with the fact that now, Jenny really was on her own and at the mercy of the law.
That night stretched blacker and darker than the day had been. It was the darkest night of his life.
Chapter Seventeen
Present day: The Court of Common Pleas, Westminster Hall, Palace of Westminster, London. March 1867. Thursday.
The two days after Jack’s arrest passed in a blur of numbness. Jenny let Sharla help her back out to the carriage, without any of the family suspecting she had been in the house at all.
She trod up to her borrowed room in the Wakefield house and stayed there, sitting in the chair and watching through the window, her mind working and her heart frozen.
Ben asked her to stop by the morning room after breakfast on Thursday, to discuss last-minute preparations for the trial. His papers were spread across every flat surface in the room, including Sharla’s closed sewing box, and the mantelshelf over the fire, where pages threatened to drop into the flames.
“There is a system to it,” Ben said apologetically, as she looked about the room in dull wonder.
“Is there any hope, Ben?”
Ben let out a heavy breath. “There is always hope. Trials have turned on the smallest of things. In this case, though…you should brace yourself, Jenny.”
Dane, who was reading a thick volume and frowning over it, did not appear to hear anything being said.
“I
s there any point in more research, then?” Jenny asked.
Ben glanced at Dane. “No man, not even the Stephen Crispin Spearings of the world, is familiar with every single case that has gone before. From those cases can come the hope you wish for.”
He had taken her through what to expect, running through it lightly, for he had already thoroughly prepared her. “There will be newspaper writers and artists there. There will be many members of the public, and they will be loud in their opinions about whatever is said. You must brace for that.”
“You said it was theater for the masses,” Jenny replied.
“I did, and it is. Trials must be held in public so that proper justice can be seen to be applied. They cannot bar anyone from attending. Your life will be examined and the public will be privy to it all.”
She shuddered.
Together. Jack’s voice whispered in her mind.
The four of them traveled to the Palace of Westminster in the big Wakefield coach. It was busy in front of the elegant building, with far more people traversing the footpaths than normal.
Dane frowned, looking out. “Perhaps the House of Lords entrance, Ben?”
Ben nodded and got out to speak to the driver and give him directions. He stayed with the driver on the bench and the coach jerked and swayed, moving around the building through the traffic. It pulled up in the old palace yard, next to a discreet entrance with a footman guarding it.
Dane got out before the driver could climb down and opened the door for Sharla and Jenny, while Ben went to the footman and murmured.
The footman nodded and opened the door for them. They moved into the palace and found themselves in a wide corridor, where men in gowns and wigs carrying great armfuls of scrolls and sheaths of paper hurried.
They were barristers going about their business, for not just the Court of Common Pleas was housed within the palace. The Court of King’s Bench and the Court of Chancery were also here.
One of the barristers came toward them, removing his wig as he walked. He carried no papers, while the man in normal clothes behind him did. The man stopped by the other wall, as the first approached. “Avoiding the public, I see,” the first man said. He had red hair and startling clear eyes, and a voice that was smooth and resonant. “A good idea, Davies. There are any number of newspaper reporters hanging about the entrance.”
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