“You probably never noticed, but I have never served as a prosecutor.”
“Then this will be your chance to better yourself. Do it well, and you could be on your way to becoming a judge.”
“You misunderstand. I have been asked before. I refused.”
The implications were lost on the earl. “Well, you can’t refuse this time. You are needed. It is that Finley fellow. It must be handled right and everyone says you are the man to do it.”
John Finley was one of the criminal lords who held court in London’s rookeries. Nathaniel was aware he had been caught, but aside from deciding at the outset he would not defend if asked, he had not paid much attention to the case.
“He is a thief and murderer, and anyone can prosecute if the evidence is there.”
“He is also a blackmailer. It is how they caught him, when he went to get the blunt. A man of importance will be laying down information against him.” The earl paused for effect and added a meaningful stare for emphasis. “This Finley can’t be allowed to speak his lies in the court. He cannot be permitted to sully a good man’s name in revenge.”
“The judge will see he does not.”
“That can’t be counted on. If the judge permits a defense counsel, which the likes of you have made almost certain, Finley may show up with one of those lawyers like you who uses tricks and innuendo to obscure things.”
One of those lawyers like you. Nathaniel had to admit his father was right. If he thought Finley was innocent, and he was defending him, he would not hesitate to use the potential embarrassment of a witness to his benefit.
“Who is the good man who will be testifying?”
“Mardenford.”
Nathaniel’s interest immediately sharpened. The Baron Mardenford was Charlotte’s brother-in-law. He had inherited the title six years ago upon her late husband’s death.
The earl sighed. “It will be all around town in a day or so, I expect. Damned shame. You know how people talk. This Finley approached Mardenford demanding payment to keep quiet about family secrets. Knowing there are none, Mardenford went straight to the police and helped them set a trap. You can see the danger, however. Finley can spin any tale he wants in court and the whole world will hear it.” He shook his head. “Damned brave of Mardenford to come forward. Surprises me, truth be told. I would not have guessed he had it in him.”
Nathaniel debated the matter. He did not spend all his time in the Old Bailey. He defended only a few people a month, and he chose them carefully and always out of duty to justice. The accused had so few rights in trials that he did not feel any compulsion to accept the role of prosecutor, however. Any fool could obtain convictions.
He felt some obligations in this case, however. Not to the baron, but to his family. Should Finley be allowed to impugn Mardenford, it would taint everyone connected to the name, including Charlotte.
After this afternoon, he probably owed her some token of apology besides words.
“What is known about this Finley?”
His father shrugged. “I wasn’t told much. He recruits children, it seems. The police say he has a whole family, so to speak. Sends them out as pickpockets and whatnot. This town is dangerous enough and does not need men who run schools for criminals.”
Nathaniel rose and paced to the broken window. The cold air flowing through the ragged shards of one pane helped crystallize his thinking. With his father’s last words, the events of the day all twined together into one braid.
Harry Binchley had been trained in crime by a man like this Finley. He had been taught to steal as a child. By the time he reached fifteen, his life’s path had been long set.
That path had led to the gallows today.
For once he agreed with his father. This town did not need men who ran schools for criminals and exploited children for their own gain.
He returned to the earl. “I will give you an answer tomorrow, when I am securely sober. However, if asked to prosecute, I will most likely accept.”
“You appear melancholic, James,” Charlotte said. “Very quiet. I hope that bringing Ambrose here to visit was not an inconvenience.”
“My apologies. I am distracted by a message I received before we came. It is never an inconvenience to spend time with you and my son. Hours like this are always a pleasure.”
Her brother-in-law spoke from his chair by the fire in the library. A book lay open on his lap, but she had noticed no pages had been turned.
She sat on the floor nearby, sorting blocks with Ambrose. All of her attention was not on their play, however. The back of her mind sorted other things, those having to do with her visit to Mr. Knightridge that afternoon.
The baron and his son helped her almost ignore those embarrassing memories, but they clamored for attention and decisions.
The blond child’s face glowed with delight as he impishly knocked down a stack of blocks they had built.
“You are very good with him. Very good to him,” Mardenford said, watching now. “I thank God you offered him your love after my Beatrice passed.”
“It is I who am grateful. I did not think it was possible to love another person like this.”
She watched little Ambrose make another stack. She snuck a tap against one block to push it over so it would not unbalance the tower.
Ambrose had still been an infant when his mother died two years earlier, and so helpless that her heart had been touched. She had never guessed, however, that as he grew, her love would too. In the last year it had invaded new corners of her heart, and blossomed with a sweetness that just deepened and spread.
Her role as surrogate mother had given birth to precious emotions denied her through her marriage. Because of her husband’s poor health, the world did not assume she was barren. She did not either, in her mind. Her heart, however, secretly believed the problem had not been Philip’s health but her own inability to conceive. She knew that she might never bear a child of her own, and not only because she lacked an interest in marrying again.
She did not mind that so much anymore. Loving Ambrose had revealed that one need not give birth to a child to see him as one’s son. However, she suspected her devotion to the child had created a situation that her brother-in-law found too comfortable.
She showed Ambrose how to build a wall around their tower. As the child worked it out, she gave his father her attention.
“He needs love like this all the time,” she said.
“His nurse is very affectionate.”
“You know what I mean, James.”
His expression showed that he did. Pale, long, and soft beneath his brown hair, his face reflected mild chagrin.
“I know I must remarry, Charl, for the boy and for the title. I will eventually. However, right now I cannot reconcile with the idea.”
She said no more. She understood all too well.
James and Beatrice had enjoyed a good marriage. Since James was a little dull, and Beatrice a little dim, they had suited each other. It had not been a grand, dramatic passion, but perhaps that was for the better. After all, she and Philip had not dwelled in drama either, but she had missed him badly when he died.
She gave James a sympathetic smile. She would like to explain things to him, things that would help him perhaps.
She would like to say that she understood the ennui of the spirit that he was experiencing, because she had felt it too. She wanted to warn that it could last forever if he was not careful, because it almost had for her. There was comfort in those dulled emotions. Even a type of peace. One could drift there for a long time and then suddenly blink and realize years had passed.
She gazed down at the blocks. It was like living in a tower, watching the world but not participating in life. The safety became seductive. Eventually its appeal had nothing to do with the mourning that started it all.
She did not explain it. While she and James had a close friendship, this was too personal. She might serve as mother to his son and as hostess at his dinners
, but she could never confide to him how her tower had recently crumbled.
She could never admit that in a fit of desperate fear of being imprisoned forever in that place of safety, she had set fire to its foundations.
“Have you received word from Laclere Park?” he asked.
“Fleur writes that she is uncomfortable and ready. Dante writes letters that make no sense. The child will come soon and they will send for me at the first sign.” Her brother had taken his wife to the family estate in Sussex to await the birth of their first child. She glanced down at little Ambrose’s soft, tiny hands and wondered if she would soon have another child to love.
“Have you been receiving responses to the invitations?” James asked. She could tell he was trying to be companionable despite whatever preoccupied him.
The query made her memories of the afternoon loom. She had just received one response before James and Ambrose arrived. Nathaniel Knightridge had sent a note indicating he would attend.
That promised to be a little awkward now.
“They have been arriving,” she said. “The usual acceptances, and the predictable rejections. Now I wait for answers from those who should accept but perhaps will not.”
“Do not hope for too much.”
“If my efforts begin discussions, that will be a victory in itself. Parliament will be on notice that people care about this. This first step will be followed by a second and a third. I will see this reform before I die. It is past time.”
James did not respond. He did not entirely approve of her cause, although he had agreed to present those petitions to Parliament despite his misgivings. Her brother Vergil, the Viscount Laclere, would have done it. However, since their sister had been involved in a recent scandal regarding her marriage, everyone agreed it would be best to have it done by someone without connection to such things.
Ambrose was almost finished with his castle. He reached for a final block, and his little elbow hit the tower. It tumbled and his face folded into the misery that heralded tears.
She gathered him up and held him while he cried. She looked over to find James watching. He appeared sad, and she worried that he was picturing the woman who should be holding the child on this rug in this library instead.
It was his home, after all. When he inherited the title on the death of his brother, he had not demanded she leave the family mansion. Instead he had bought another grand house for his bride, so that Charlotte would not be displaced. It had been a generous gesture that spoke of a sensitivity rarely found in men.
The sobs subsided. Ambrose fell asleep in her arms. She pressed her lips to his downy hair and kept him in her embrace. Loving this child had been the first spark that led to the fire that reignited her vitality.
She dwelled in the sweet emotion, but the sorting was still taking place at the back of her mind. By the time James took the child and left the library, she had made a decision.
Before she saw Nathaniel Knightridge again, she needed to discover if he knew all that she feared.
“I appreciate your company, Lyndale,” Charlotte said as she strolled through Belgrave Square the next afternoon. “I have not had the opportunity to congratulate you on your wedding, aside from my note upon seeing the announcement the other day.”
The Earl of Lyndale kicked a stone nonchalantly. The wind tossed his dark hair because he carried his hat. “The need for speed was the usual reason, as I am sure you surmised. I regret your aid in planning the more sumptuous ceremony was in vain, but I do not regret that we married sooner rather than later. I would have eloped the day after she accepted my proposal if given the choice.”
Charlotte had to laugh. “Oh, how the mighty fall. It is delicious to see you laid low by love. If the reason for haste is the usual one, more congratulations are due.”
He beamed delight. Just like Ewan McLean, the Earl of Lyndale, to be indifferent to whispers about that quick marriage. But then, any marriage for this man had been so unlikely that there were bound to be whispers no matter what.
Prior to inheriting the title last autumn, he had achieved a notorious reputation. His bachelor parties would be long remembered. He had a swing hanging in his second drawing room, and displayed an astonishing collection of erotic art there as well. For many he still was a lord of sin, and his sudden marriage to a woman of neither fortune nor good family only seemed the latest of his outrages.
Charlotte broached the subject for which she had sought out this man. They had an old friendship and she hoped he would not interrogate her too closely. She also counted on him to show his usual lack of propriety when she steered the conversation toward indelicate matters.
“I imagine your parties are over now. The special ones, that is.”
“Yes, they are a thing of the past. All of my orgies will be private now, with a guest list of two.”
“I hear the last one was quite impressive. A Roman theme, the whispers say.”
“It was a fitting grand finale, although I never intended it as such at the time. In truth, it did not impress me much, but perhaps I had already outgrown such things.”
“I will confess I was always curious about them, and what really transpired.”
“If so, you should have attended one. You were always invited. Now your chance has passed. I am thoroughly domesticated and only the normal, furtive affairs will occur in my house among guests in the future.”
She prodded him to reminisce more. “It was said that ladies of good birth would attend wearing masks.”
“That was common, yes.”
“I have always wondered if that was effective. Could a mask obscure an identity sufficiently? For example, were you always fooled?”
He cast her a roguish glance. “I am not sure this conversation is proper, Lady M. What a relief that my marriage has not made you treat me like a dullard, however. Now, as to the parties and your belated fascination, since the lighting was very low, and the masks covered all but mouths and chins, they could be effective.”
Thank goodness.
“Assuming the woman did not speak,” he continued. “There was one lady of very high standing who only whispered. Her laugh, however, was most distinctive and always gave her away. Everyone pretended it did not, of course.”
Charlotte had surmised that a voice could identify a woman. When she attended Lyndale’s grand finale she had barely spoken at all, and then only in the lowest whisper.
I do not need words to know everything about you.
“How interesting. So a man could be very . . . familiar with a woman and never know who she was. They could meet the next day with him totally unaware of their prior . . . meeting.”
“Certainly. With only a few candles lighting the chamber, others would remain ignorant as well.”
She barely stifled a deep exhale of relief.
“Unless, of course . . .” Lyndale shrugged and gave her a confidential look.
“Unless what?”
“Well, she would remain unknown to the man unless they shared intimacies again, is all I was indicating. Unless he was the sort to only notice his own pleasure, he would probably recognize the similarities.”
Oh dear.
Lyndale tipped his head close to hers. “Is there some reason you are quizzing me on this, madam?” he asked in a teasing tone. “Some reason you sought me out on this cold winter day to stroll and chat about bygone orgies? Do you have a friend who attended my party and now fears for her reputation?”
She felt her face getting warm. “As it happens, yes. Please do not inquire further. She is most distraught. It was not like her at all. She succumbed to curiosity and now regrets it. She confided in me and I offered to find out how dangerous her situation is. I would have asked my brother Dante, but he has taken Fleur down to Laclere Park.”
“Have no fear. Discretion is my second name.”
Actually, it was not. Lyndale was infamous for being tactless and for blurting things he should not. And Nathaniel Knightridge was one of h
is friends.
“Truly, sir, you must promise to tell no one of this conversation.” She spoke emphatically so he would know it was important.
He paused in his steps. She stopped and faced him. He looked her over with a speculative gaze in which suspicion began growing.
“Lady M., I am not celebrated for being astute, but I find myself wondering if there is a friend at all. By chance was it you who—”
“What a preposterous suggestion. If you recall, I was not even in town that week.”
“You announced you were leaving. That is not the same as actually being gone.”
He kept peering at her. She tried to appear indignant, but she felt her face getting hotter.
His eyes twinkled. “Considering your dismay, I do not think I am wrong, let alone preposterous. My word, this is rich. Now I am dying to know just how naughty you were.”
“Your assumptions are unwarranted. I will not tolerate your scandalous speculation.”
His brow furrowed. His eyes reflected a searching memory. She realized with horror that he was seeing his party again, and examining its various participants.
His face fell, stunned. “Good heavens, you were the woman with Knightridge. I am right, aren’t I? Really, madam, you were very naughty indeed. Does he know? Has he guessed?”
She wanted to die. She began to refute him but he held up a hand, silencing her.
“Do not distress yourself. My lips are sealed. I will admit that I am truly shocked for once in my life, but in the least judgmental way. Actually, I am inclined to congratulate you.”
“Congrat—! You are still an insufferable rogue, McLean.”
“And you are a more interesting woman than I realized, Lady M.”
His eyes twinkled again. He bit back a laugh.
She smacked him with her parasol and hurried away.
CHAPTER
THREE
She was transported?”
“That was her reprieve after we appealed to the King’s Bench.”
“Better than hanging, I suppose.”
“Yes, better than hanging.”
Nathaniel did his best to charm Mrs. Strickland into opening her mind. Her attendance at Charlotte’s meeting indicated the mind might already be slightly ajar, although Nathaniel suspected this was one of the ladies who had come to gawk at the dancing dog. As a woman with influence over a certain judge, she carried more power than her diminutive stature and childlike face implied, however, so it behooved him to do his best jig.
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