Seduced

by Pamela Britton

“Indeed, sir. Most thoroughly.”

  More chuckles. The Attorney General never cracked a smile. “And would you describe your husband’s behavior that night as honorable?”

  “That night, no. His marriage to me, yes.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  “No? I suppose what you want me to say is that my husband behaved anything but honorably that eve, and that is true, but in my eyes and the eyes of society, he redeemed himself.”

  “Redeemed himself, you say? Why, my lady, I’m surprised. I myself know of the difficult position you hold amongst society. The daughter of a nobleman, and yet not really noble.”

  Her cheeks reddened. Vile man.

  “I know that you’ve worked hard to give yourself the best of reputations. You’ve been out now for what? Two seasons? And yet in one night this man”—he pointed at Lucien—“the man you claimed redeemed himself in your eyes, undid all your hard work. Is that the behavior of an honorable man, would you say?”

  She lifted her head, thanking the heavens above for the training she’d received that allowed her to smile civilly. “No, it was not honorable, sir. However, given my questionable position amongst society—a position you yourself just alluded to—how easy it would have been for my husband to turn his back on me. He is a duke. And I, as you say, all but a commoner. He did not have to marry me. And yet he did.”

  The Attorney General stared. It was as if by not commenting he tried to make a point of some sort, though what it could be, Elizabeth was too anxious to note. “And has the duke treated you well since your marriage?”

  “Like a queen.”

  He lifted a brow, and something in the way his eyes glittered alerted her to the coming question. “Your grace,” the man said calmly. “Have you ever heard of a ship called the Revenger?”

  Elizabeth felt her cheeks grow numb. “I have.”

  “And what kind of ship is it?”

  “A big one,” she stalled.

  The Attorney General’s eyes narrowed. “Let me rephrase that. Was the Revenger a pirate ship?”

  She sat up as tall as she could. “It was.”

  “And can you tell me who captained this ship?”

  “A man called Jolly.”

  “Was Jolly a pirate?”

  “He was.”

  “And was your husband on good terms with this man?”

  Elizabeth didn’t want to answer. Lord, she would have given anything not to, but she knew the Attorney General had her in a corner. He knew it, too. “He was.”

  “And did your husband participate in the sinking of a ship called the Swan while friends with this man?” He curled his lip. “This pirate called Jolly?”

  Who had told him?

  “Lady Ravenwood?” he prompted.

  She swallowed, knowing to lie would be futile. Like as not, the prosecution had learned of the incident, how was anyone’s guess. “He did,” she admitted.

  “He did?” The Attorney General affected surprise. Keats would have been proud of his playacting. “But you claim his lordship is honorable.”

  “He is,” she said.

  “A man who sinks a merchant ship honorable?”

  “He was different back then.”

  “Different enough to kill his brother in a duel?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I mean, yes.”

  “Which is it, Your Grace?”

  “No, he was not capable of killing his brother.”

  “You knew him well enough to judge that?”

  “I did.”

  “And that would be why you called him a …” He walked slowly to his desk, moved a piece of parchment around so that he could read it. “What was it … ah, here it is, a ‘murdering whoremonger’ when he asked you to dance at a ball.”

  Those words. Those awful words.

  The Attorney General looked up at her. “Did you call him that?”

  She looked away.

  “Did you?”

  She shook her head.

  “You didn’t?” the man asked.

  She looked up, met his gaze scathingly. “It would seem, sir, that you know I did. But I never meant it literally.”

  His eyebrows lifted again. “Ah,” he drawled mockingly. “I see. You call all men who ask you to dance a murdering whoremonger, do you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  Damn the man. Damn them all. They would twist her words and Lucien’s until they had the slant they wanted.

  “Well, Your Grace?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “So it would be fair to say that before you married your husband, you believed him guilty of murder?”

  Her mind spun with a possible response that would change the slant of his words, but none was forthcoming.

  “Your Grace?” he sang, clearly at a loss for patience at her reticence.

  “I did.”

  “What was that?” he asked, cupping his ear. “I didn’t hear you.”

  She lifted her chin. “I did,” she repeated.

  The man turned away from her, facing the Lord High Steward. “No more questions.”

  But she wasn’t finished. She wanted to tell them about Lucien protecting her. About why he’d taken up with pirates as revenge against the evil countess of Selborn. But, she realized she wouldn’t be given the chance.

  “Lord Ravenwood, do you have any questions?” the Steward asked.

  But Elizabeth knew he didn’t. Frustration made her stand abruptly “Don’t do this to him, my lords—”

  “Lady Ravenwood—” the High Steward cried, turning to her, aghast.

  Elizabeth ignored him. “Don’t convict a man for murder because of an accident.”

  “Lady Ravenwood,” the Steward tried again.

  “I might be of common stock, but at least I treat a fellow human being with respect until there is just cause for me not to do so.”

  “That is enough,” the Steward said.

  “Let her speak.”

  All eyes turned to Lucien, whose face had gone tight as he eyed the assemblage, his body half out of his chair. He kept his gaze firmly averted from hers. “Let her speak her piece. Trust me, gentleman, the lady will speak her mind with or without your permission.”

  She waited for Lucien to look at her, but he didn’t, merely nodded as he sat down. Some of her triumph faded, but she forced herself to stay erect, forced herself to act as if Lucien had just asked her to speak on his behalf.

  “My husband did not kill his brother for the title,” she began, looking around her. “He told me the truth of what happened that day and, I might add, he had no reason to do so. In fact, he had much to lose, for who was to say I would not go to the authorities with all that I learned?” She felt tears rise, cursed herself for being such a watering pot when she had need to appear in control. “Before you is a man who has lived with the horror of his brother’s death for years. Alone. For whom could he talk to about the events?”

  She clenched her hands upon the bar, straightening to her full height as she willed her words to be believed. Damn Lucien’s reticence. “That day, when he told me what had happened, my husband’s countenance was that of a man who had been witness to a horrible accident, one that had claimed a family member’s life.” She searched the room, her eyes picking out one man in particular. “He acted the way you must have acted, Lord Stanton, when the carriage you drove overturned and took your tiger’s life. Do you remember the horror and anguish you felt upon realizing that you’d inadvertently killed a man? For those were the emotions on my husband’s face when he relayed the story of his brother’s death.”

  She leaned forward, her hands clutching the edge of the bar. “Henry St. Aubyn’s death was not an act of murder. I would stake my life upon it.”

  Silence followed her words, a silence that was so complete, one could hear the shifting of bodies in their seat.

  “But you have it easy, my lords,” she said. “Because for some reason my h
usband has decided to put up half a fight.”

  “Elizabeth,” Lucien growled.

  “I believe he is tired of the guilt. And I believe he wants to pay for that guilt with his life.”

  “Elizabeth,” Lucien half stood again.

  “It’s true,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  Tell them, her eyes implored.

  I will not, he answered back.

  She gave up then, wilted back upon the bar. What was the point in saying anything further when he refused to fight? Tears rose again in her eyes. She closed them to keep them at bay.

  “Are you through?” the Steward asked.

  And Elizabeth knew she’d lost. She hadn’t gotten through to him. Or the peers. She opened her eyes, wiped at a tear that flowed before anyone noticed. “Aye,” she murmured.

  “Redirect?” the Lord Steward asked the Attorney General.

  But apparently the Attorney General deemed he had enough. “No further questions.”

  “You may leave the bar, Lady Ravenwood,” the Steward said.

  Her legs felt like pudding as she stood, turned away, too disappointed to risk another glance at Lucien. Likely he wouldn’t be looking at her anyway.

  Lord Chalmers was called next, but all he did was explain the happenings on the day of the duel. Greshe, Lucien’s cousin, followed and ’twas he that gave the most damning piece of evidence, for he told the assemblage about a wager Lucien had placed, a wager wherein Lucien bet that his brother would be dead by the age of thirty.

  It was over. Elizabeth knew it the moment she heard those words. A look at the peers’ faces only confirmed her supposition.

  It took only an hour for the verdict to come in, an hour during which Elizabeth waited alone in an antechamber, Lucien having been dragged away by the sheriff to be given back to the keeper of Newgate. There was no fanfare, just the Lord High Steward asking, “How do you find, my lords?”

  “Guilty,” the Speaker announced.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They sentenced him to hang. Elizabeth felt like collapsing when she heard the news, for all that it was expected. Now as she looked out a second-floor window, she wondered how her life could change so irrevocably in so short a time. Ruined. Married. Widowed.

  The cousin of John’s she was staying with lived on the east side of London. As such the view was less than spectacular: muddy streets with cart tracks crisscrossing the road like snail trails on a dirty road. Clods of muck hung upon all nearby surfaces, including the brownstone facades of the homes and businesses that huddled next to each other like bedridden siblings. A steady stream of work carts, hired hacks, and the occasional gentleman’s coach passed beneath her window. She followed one of those carriages with her eyes now, noting the crest, wondering distantly if it was one of the lords who’d sentenced Lucien to hang. But of course it was.

  She turned away, a box atop a worn chest of drawers catching her attention. They were the dueling pistols, the Attorney General having given them to her after the trial. Unnecessary evidence, he’d said, referring to the fact they hadn’t needed them to convict Lucien. Elizabeth’s face stung with anger at the memory.

  Steeling herself, she crossed to them, lifting the oak lid and eyeing the pistols inside. They had a gold-gilt design around the end of the barrel, the rest of the pistol brushed with an ornate pattern. The stock was made of carved ivory, the handle etched with a crisscross design for better gripping. They’d never been used prior to the duel, or so Lucien had told her, but one could see that they’d been fired. The stain of powder dimmed the area around the flintlock. She brushed her finger against one, wondering which had killed Henry. Then the morbidity of her thoughts made her slam the lid closed.

  “Are you ready?”

  Elizabeth turned, meeting John’s concerned gaze. “Aye,” she said softly. She had cried the whole way home, John doing his best to console her. Lord, could she have muddled her testimony any more? Worse, she knew that testimony had been instrumental in sealing Lucien’s fate. Heaven help her, the Attorney General had gotten her to admit that she’d thought her husband a murderer.

  “Elizabeth, I cannot guarantee he will see you.”

  She lifted her chin. “I know.”

  John looked ready to argue with her about why she shouldn’t go, but in the end, he must have realized she meant to try with or without his support.

  And so once again they found themselves in a hired hack. Elizabeth pulled the heavy wool cloak she wore tight around her; the black fabric warm against London’s chill. Lately, she could never get warm, as if a permanent cold had entered her bones and her heart. She felt tears rise again, but firmly batted them away. She would not cry. She had words to say to her husband, words she would say without evidence of tears.

  All too soon they pulled up before Newgate’s colorless facade.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” John said.

  Would Lucien see her? Elizabeth wondered. He had no reason not to now that the trial was over. She could no longer shame him into defending himself. No longer hire a barrister and force him to use the man. The only reason he would not see her now was if he’d decided to wash his hands of her.

  One look at John’s face when he returned convinced her that he had. She jumped out of the carriage.

  “Elizabeth,” John called as she stormed past.

  “No, John,” she said, turning back to him. “I will not take no for an answer.”

  “He will not see you.”

  “Yes, he will,” she gritted out.

  She thought John might try and stop her. To her surprise, he didn’t. She crossed the muddy road to get to Newgate’s main entrance, dodging freight and hay carts as she did so. The stench was unimaginable. Not even the smell of the manure piles that lay in the street penetrated it. Inside was even more frightening, for at least from the outside the place had looked clean. Inside was a gritty, dank mess whose stench was the one she smelled outside, only more pronounced.

  “I’m here to see Lucien St. Aubyn,” she said to the Keeper, a man whose desk stood just inside the main door.

  “And you are?” the man asked, his elderly face colder than the stones beneath her feet.

  “His wife.”

  Brows lowered over impatient eyes. “He won’t see you.”

  In desperation Elizabeth threw down a bag of coins. It was the money she’d raised from selling the carriage and the horses, money she had held on to in the hope that Lucien might have a last-minute change of heart. She should have known better.

  “This bag is yours if you secure a private cell for my husband and myself.”

  The man stared at her for a while, but greed must have won out for he said, “Give me some time.”

  Elizabeth resolved to wait a lifetime if she had to.

  Lucien knew when he saw the turnkey outside that something strange was about to happen. He knew it by the way the man’s eyes scanned the interior of the cell, coming to rest on him before he lifted his keys to the door. For half a moment he wondered if they’d come to take him away. Perhaps they’d moved his execution to today instead of the day after next. Oddly enough, the thought frightened him not at all. Instead he felt … numb. A numbness that had settled over him as he’d watched Elizabeth ride away from the castle all those days ago.

  “ ’Ave ya come for me then?” asked one of his cellmates, a man with more hair above his eyes than he had on his head. “ ’As me miserable wife finally decided to fetch me outta ’ere?”

  The turnkey ignored him, pulling open the door and pointing to Lucien. “Yur ta come with me,” the man said.

  Lucien pushed away from the stone wall he’d been leaning against, his cellmates saying not a word. There was a strange pecking order amongst the men, and it seemed as if a murdering brother ranked quite high. They’d left him alone since his crime had become known.

  “I’ll leave your chains off, but if you make a move, I’ll clout you over the head,” the turnkey said.

  He must
say those words at least a hundred times a day, Lucien thought. He’d heard them himself a dozen times as he’d been taken to and fro. And so he meekly followed the gentleman, and by now he hardly noticed his surroundings: the other prisoners, the dark corridors, the smell. But the turnkey didn’t lead him to the prisoner’s door, as much as Lucien had suspected he might. Nor even to the chapel, a place they usually took condemned men in a final effort to save their souls. No. He led him up, to a tower room, opening a door to a reasonably clean and moderately bright cell. It didn’t have bars on the front; rather, it was a corner cell with stone walls and a single wood door with a small, barred portal in the top half of it.

  And suddenly, Lucien felt alarmed.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  The man ignored him, just opened the door. “Get inside.”

  For a moment he almost balked, but reason won out. What did he have to be afraid of? Perhaps the Regent was about to visit? Perhaps he was going to stay his execution after all?

  But it wasn’t the Prince that came into the cell a few moments later, it was his wife.

  Lucien stiffened.

  “Hello, Lucien.”

  He blinked, thinking surely her presence was an illusion. He’d given strict instructions that he didn’t want to see her. But, he supposed, anything could be had at Newgate. For a price.

  “Elizabeth,” he said, steeling himself as she came into the cell, the sweet smell of her nearly sending him to his knees.

  “Surprised to see me?” she asked with a tight smile.

  “No. Your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze me.” He looked her up and down, trying not to notice the sad tilt of her lips. The pained look in her gaze. The redness around her eyes that bespoke of tears. But he’d be blind not to notice those things, or the way the black cloak she wore turned her eyes almost silver. The way her hair smelled, the floral scent startling against Newgate’s stench.

  She stared at him, her upswept hair seeming to glisten. Moisture, he realized, noticing for the first time that the light shining down from the small window high above was muted. Mist. ’Twas foggy outside.

  “Why have you refused to see me?” she asked softly.

  “I’m sorry.” He feigned polite sorrow. “Didn’t my butler tell you? I was not receiving.”