The Counterfeit Gentleman

by Charlotte Louise Dolan

  No sooner was Youngblood finished shaving and dressing Digory, than Lord Cavenaugh appeared, delicately waving his scented handkerchief under his nose until the turnkey departed, at which time Cavenaugh abandoned his role of dandy and began explaining the rudiments of the plan he and Lord Edington were already devising to free him from jail.

  Before Digory could point out the shortcomings in their scheme, Lady Letitia arrived with her butler, who was carrying a basket filled with enough provisions to feed half the prisoners in the jail. “Dear boy, you look worse than you did our last morning in Marseilles,” she said with a laugh, “and you cannot possibly be that hung over this morning.”

  To his surprise, she appeared to be in remarkable spirits—all the more astounding since she had looked every year of her age the previous day at the inquest.

  Townsley came in next. He said nothing beyond a terse greeting. Remembering the months that the younger man had spent in a French prison, it did not surprise Digory that the younger man’s restlessness was even more pronounced than usual.

  Then Fitzhugh wandered in as casually as if he made a daily habit of strolling through jails. “Nyesmith is down at the docks, checking out the possibilities for ships,” he explained. “What is your pleasure, Rendel? I suppose the colonies would be the safest, although a bit dull. On the other hand, from what I’ve heard, if one goes far enough west—into Kentucky or Ohio—there is still plenty of excitement to be found.”

  “There is quicker profit to be made in the Far East,” Townsley said, “and I’m not talking about India. China cannot forever keep her doors all but shut to western traders, and there’s a fortune waiting to be made in the silk and tea trade.”

  “Rendel already has a large enough fortune,” Cavenaugh pointed out.

  “And I am too old to deliberately wish for any more adventures,” Digory added.

  Lady Letitia took umbrage at that remark, but before she could finish scolding him for his lack of gumption, an elegantly dressed stranger was admitted by the turnkey.

  The newcomer’s reception bordered on the hostile until Lady Letitia introduced him. “This is Sir William Lyttcott, K.C. I have arranged for him to defend you in court.”

  “If it comes to that,” someone muttered, but Digory could not tell who had spoken so indiscreetly.

  The barrister was slender and scarcely taller than Lady Letitia, but he spoke with all the assurance of a much larger man. “I have already met with Mr. Kidby this morning. He has briefed me quite thoroughly about your case. Still and all, if you have a few moments free in the next day or so, it might not be a bad idea to go over some of the points of our defense with you before the actual trial.”

  “And when is the trial?” Lord Cavenaugh asked with a hard edge on his voice.

  Sir William ignored Cavenaugh even while he answered the question. “Despite my every effort to have it postponed, Mr. Rendel, your trial has been scheduled for a week from today at ten o’clock.”

  “In truth, I would as soon have it over and done with,” Digory said, not looking directly at any of his friends.

  “Tut, tut,” the barrister said. “Let us not welcome defeat before it actually stares us in the face. While I am well aware that I do not cut an imposing figure, my record before the bar is quite impressive. I have secured freedom for the majority of my clients, a vast number of whom were more than likely guilty.”

  “But I am innocent,” Digory replied, “which will doubtless make your task more difficult.”

  “Well spoken,” Mr. Lyttcott said, clapping him on the back. “I like a client with a bit of wit. Remember, you must look confident when you are in the defendant’s box. Under no circumstances give any sign that you are unsure what the outcome of the trial will be.”

  “Oh, I shall have no trouble with that. I have every confidence that I shall be found guilty and sentenced to hang.”

  “Balderdash!” Sir William said, his cheerful demeanor not wavering in the slightest. “I have had years of experience at the Old Bailey, and even I would not wager a farthing on the outcome of any trial, no matter how obvious the case might appear to be. Too much hinges on the judge, don’t you see, and even they are unpredictable. The most lenient can be harsh because his morning tea happened to be brewed not to his liking, and the strictest stickler for proper procedure can ignore every objection from the prosecutor because the day is fine and he wishes to shed his wig and robe and escape for a drive in the country with his mistress. No, no, my dear fellow, the law is indeed capricious, and Lady Luck can easily smile on us.”

  “Or just as easily turn her face away,” Digory pointed out.

  “Too true,” the barrister said, “but you will find that in judicial matters I am luckier than most.”

  His words provided little comfort, and once the barrister departed, Digory exerted every effort to send his other visitors on their way also.

  Unfortunately, he had not had five minutes alone before he heard the sound of the key again turning in the lock. Feeling quite put upon, he shouted angrily, “No more visitors!”

  But the door opened anyway, and his half-sister, Lady Cassie, entered. “Really, Digory, it is too bad what you have done.”

  At least she was accompanied by her husband, which did little to improve Digory’s mood. “It needed only this,” he said, feeling a strong urge to pound his fists against the stone walls surrounding him.

  “You did not even let us know that you were coming to London,” Cassie said indignantly, “and then, as if that were not bad enough, we were obliged to read in the paper that you were in jail, awaiting trial on a charge of murder! Why in heaven’s name did you not send for us at once?”

  “I did not send for you because I did not wish to have your reputation ruined by association with a condemned murderer,” he said, “as you could have easily figured out for yourself before you came on this fool’s errand.”

  But Cassie was not willing to listen to reason. “It is all quite ridiculous—” her voice broke, and before he could stop her, she threw herself weeping into his arms. “You could never shoot a man down in cold blood—never! They are fools to listen to Geoffrey. He is out-and-out evil.”

  “Really, Cassie, if you must soak someone’s shirt, let it be your husband’s.” Digory tried to detach her, but she clung like a limpet. “You should have kept her at home,” he told his brother-in-law. “She does not belong here.”

  Richard Hawke smiled and shrugged. “She would have come with or without me. And in any event, I had a mind to find out how you managed to get yourself into such a mess.”

  “I was fool enough to ape my ‘betters,’ ” Digory said. “The rest followed as night follows day.”

  Again he heard the jangle of keys in the corridor, and a moment later his wife stepped into the cell.

  For what seemed like an eternity she just stared at him. Then she said in a voice that betrayed no emotion, “I had not realized what comforts were provided for prisoners.”

  With a strange noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob, Cassie pulled free of his arms and wiped her eyes with the handkerchief her husband held out to her. “You must be my sister-in-law,” she said. “I shall never forgive Digory for not inviting us to the wedding. You would think he was ashamed of me.”

  Digory did not bother trying to deny the accusation, but Cassie and Bethia now ignored him,, chattering away as if they were bosom bows.

  He was, in fact, more than a little astonished. Not that the two women were getting along so well—he had thought they would like each other. No, what was puzzling him was that his wife looked as if she had not a care in the world.

  “I returned a pair of books to Hookham’s on my way over here,” he heard her say, “and it was vastly amusing. You would have thought I was that monster Napoleon, so fast did everyone flee the premises.”

  Her words touched off his temper, which he had thought was well under control. “What the deuce do you mean, you went to Hookham’s? Are you
entirely witless? You could have sent Little Davey—you could have sent a maid—you should have known what kind of a reception you would get—”

  “Indeed I did know,” she said, staring at him with a rather cool expression on her face, “for you have certainly warned me often enough. If they discover you are not a gentleman, they will ostracize me, you said, and they have certainly done just that. If they know you are a bastard, they will taunt me and call me names, you said, and indeed, have heard any number of epithets this morning, half of which I have not even understood. But you neglected to mention the caricatures. I received this in the morning post, and there are more in all the shop windows.”

  Reaching into her reticule, Bethia pulled out a folded piece of foolscap and handed it to him.

  He unfolded it and stared down at the drawing, angry at himself that he had failed to protect her from such things.

  Removing it from his grasp, she held it out to Cassie. “Rather droll, do you not agree?”

  “I find nothing amusing about it,” Digory said.

  “But you see,” Bethia said, a rather smug smile on her face, “they forgot one thing, namely that the barbarians succeeded in storming the gates.” Coming over to him, she slid her arms around his waist and looked up into his eyes. “Do you seriously believe that we shall let them hang you?”

  “We?” he said, fear roughening his voice. Surely Cavenaugh and the others had enough sense not to involve her in their plotting.

  “We,” Bethia said. “Those of us who love you and those of us who call you friend. Am I not right?” she said, turning to Richard Hawke. “Will you allow them to hang him?”

  “No,” Richard said, “you need have no worries on that score. If Digory is found guilty, we will contrive to smuggle him out of jail and then out of England. I have two ships in port at the moment, so it will not be hard to arrange.”

  “There, you see,” Bethia said. “This is all for the best. Now that the worst has happened, just as you predicted, you will have to accept what I have been telling you all along.”

  “And what is that?” he said, stroking her hair.

  “That I care not a fig what any of them think or say or do. The ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ of the haut ton have no power to hurt me because their opinions do not matter to me.”

  He started to point out that she could not leave England with him because she was afraid of the sea, but almost as if she could read his mind, she said, “When you are beside me, I am not afraid of anything—not the deepest ocean, not the densest fog. You must accept that I am going with you, for if you try to slink away without me, I shall simply follow you. And I shall find you, even at the ends of the earth.”

  Bethia had never before had occasion to be inside the Old Bailey, and she found it was far smaller than she had imagined. The spectator’s gallery was packed, and the only empty seats were the ones around her and Adeline and Little Davey. As far as she could tell, that was the only positive benefit of the ton's desire to ostracize her and anyone else connected with her or her husband, who was even more thoroughly isolated in the defendant’s box.

  “Look there,” Adeline said, speaking directly into Bethia’s ear and pointing at someone below them. “Is that not odd?”

  At first Bethia thought her friend was directing her attention to Lord Blackstone, who with his cohorts around him was sitting behind the prosecutor, but then Adeline said, “I was wondering why Lady Letitia did not join us today.” Shifting her glance, Bethia saw that Digory’s barrister had been joined by Mr. Kidby and Lady Letitia. The solicitor was handing over some papers to Mr. Lyttcott and the two of them began an intense conversation. A few minutes later, Mr. Kidby and Lady Letitia took seats directly behind the barrister.

  “Whatever do you suppose is going on?” Adeline asked. “And what on earth could those papers be?”

  Bethia could not answer, but in her heart she prayed for a miracle, which no longer seemed totally impossible because Lady Letitia was smiling quite smugly.

  A few minutes later, everyone rose to their feet and the judge entered and took his place behind the bench. The last murmurs died down, and everyone listened intently when he asked the question, “How do you plead?”

  Before Digory could reply, Mr. Lyttcott rose to his feet and said, “With all due respect, my lord, I must point out that my client, Digory Anderby, Lord Blackstone, alias Digory Rendel, cannot be tried by this court since he is a peer of the realm and thus can only be tried before the House of Lords.”

  For a moment there was stunned silence, then the courtroom erupted with noise as everyone tried to talk at once. The judge banged his gavel repeatedly but to little avail. Only his threat to have the room cleared of spectators succeeded in quieting the mob.

  Through it all, Mr. Lyttcott stood quietly, a faint smile on his face. When he could finally be heard, he said merely, “If I might approach the bench, my lord?”

  The judge nodded, and the barrister took the papers Mr. Kidby had brought and handed them over to the judge, who started reading them.

  It seemed a lifetime of unbearable suspense to Bethia, but it was probably only ten minutes before the judge raised his head and said, “As this court has no jurisdiction to try Digory Anderby, Lord Blackstone, this case is dismissed.” The judge rose to his feet, but before he could take a step, a voice rang out. “You lie! He is nothing but a bastard! I am the rightful Earl of Blackstone!”

  It was Geoffrey, the erstwhile Lord Blackstone, and he was livid with rage.

  “I beg to correct you,” the judge said with a look of disgust on his face. “It would appear that you are nothing more than the illegitimate offspring of a bigamous marriage.”

  “You lie, you lie!” Geoffrey shrieked. Reaching under his jacket, he pulled out a gun and aimed it at the judge, who immediately ducked down behind the bench. “It is all a plot to deny me my heritage!”

  All Geoffrey’s supporters were now scrambling over each other in their attempt to get away from him as fast as possible, which made it impossible for the bailiffs to reach him—not that they were exerting any particular effort to apprehend the onetime earl, who now leveled his pistol at Digory.

  “You are the imposter, and I am the rightful earl,” Geoffrey cried out. “I will see you dead at my feet if I have to hang for it myself!”

  To Bethia it seemed as if nothing could save her husband, and she would have thrown herself from the balcony onto the madman below if Little Davey had not caught her arms and held her back.

  The shot and the scream were simultaneous, and Bethia felt her heart stop beating. But to her astonishment, her husband did not fall down nor did he seem to be the least bit discomposed.

  Indeed, it was Geoffrey who was now screaming and clutching his right arm to his chest. “You’ve broken my arm,” he wailed.

  “And I shall break your head if you don’t stop sniveling,” Lady Letitia said, holding her cane up ready to strike him a second time if that should prove necessary. “Bailiff, I suggest that you retrieve the pistol this scoundrel was attempting to use. I would not be at all surprised to discover it matches the one that was used to murder Mr. Harcourt.”

  Digory could not fault his friends for wanting to celebrate the splendid coup that Lady Letitia had engineered, but it was getting later and later, and the revelry showed no sign of abating. As much as he liked his friends, he could not help wishing that they would all go home and leave him alone with his wife, who had scarcely moved a step away from him since his release from custody.

  “Do you suppose they will notice our absence if we slip out?” he murmured now.

  “Do you suppose I care if they do notice?” Bethia replied, smiling up at him.

  “Then after you, m’lady,” he said, his heart nearly bursting with pride that she loved him above all others.

  “I suppose we shall have to give a ball,” Bethia said while he was brushing out her hair.

  “A ball?” Digory asked blankly, his mind on other, more deli
ghtful activities.

  “Well, we could, of course, have a Venetian breakfast first, but there will be so very many people who will be scrambling to secure an invitation—after all, you are now the darling of the ton—that I really think we should have the ball first, followed perhaps by a musical evening. Then perhaps a few dinner parties, opera parties, a breakfast or two—I must see what dates are still free.”

  He stopped her chatter by kissing her neck, “Do you know, my dearest love, I have no interest in such entertainments.”

  Turning around, she stared up at him, wide-eyed with astonishment. “But how can you not care about your standing in society? How is it possible for you not to care what other people think?”

  For a moment he thought she was serious, but then he saw the twinkle in her eyes. “Are you mocking me?” he asked with pretended gruffness.

  “Mocking you?” she said with a saccharine smile. “But my lord, ever since we met, you have not missed a chance to point out to me how important the opinion of the ton is, and how I must do nothing to jeopardize my reputation. Now that you are an earl and thus have unlimited entree into the highest levels of society, I made sure that you would—”

  His laughter interrupted her. “I admit I have been a fool.”

  “And do you acknowledge that you were wrong to squander even a moment of our time together?”

  He pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. “Kiss me, and you may have your ball and your Venetian breakfast and anything else your heart desires.”

  “All I want is to be with you in your little cottage in Cornwall.”

  “I am afraid there are two problems with that.”

  He could feel her stiffen in his arms, and her eyes were worried.

  “I see,” she said, trying unobtrusively—and unsuccessfully—to extract herself from his embrace.

  “The first problem is that I now am the owner of an estate in Cornwall, which has been shockingly run down by the previous owner. I cannot shirk my obligations to my tenants.”