* * *
Despite the obvious success of Mr. Bellamy’s defense that day, Laura scarcely slept that night. The rest of the family displayed cautious optimism that her husband would soon be cleared of the charges against him. Even Geoffrey himself seemed more at ease and hopeful than he had since before his arrest.
Easy for them. Mr. Bellamy’s impressive performance notwithstanding, if the panel of judges didn’t believe Geoffrey’s version of events, her husband would at the very least be convicted of desertion. And there was nothing she could do to help him.
If only the letter from Macomb would arrive. But alas, when they had returned from court, Walter let her know with a nearly imperceptible shake of his head that no such missive had arrived. Nor was it in the post the following morning.
Everything, it seemed, would rest upon Geoffrey’s testimony.
Tish had selected the gown and accessories Laura was to wear for that day’s court appearance weeks earlier. The dress, made of a red India cotton printed with tiny navy-blue crests, had long sleeves and a demure, high-cut bodice. Her dark hair had been styled into a simple chignon and covered with a white lace cap. She wore a wrist-length gloves with mother-of-pearl buttons and no jewelry of any kind, save her wedding ring, the outline of which was just visible beneath the lightweight fabric of the gloves.
“You will look every inch the respectable wife of a British officer,” Tish had assured her, but as Laura examined her reflection in the mirror one last time, she wondered if that was not, in itself, a mistake. Perhaps pretending to be someone she was not would do Geoffrey more harm than good. Everyone in the courtroom knew it was a fiction, anyway.
But there was no time to change their strategy now.
She walked downstairs to the carriage that would take them to the court and slid in beside her husband, who looked every inch the British officer in his red coat with its gold buttons and gold-tasseled epaulets.
Taking her hand, he threaded their fingers together. “I love you,” he said as the driver set the carriage in motion. “And I am sorry.”
She blinked. “Whatever for?”
“For putting you through all of this.” He grimaced and shook his head. “If I’d done what I ought and turned myself over to the American army after the harvest, none of this would be happening.”
His reasons had been good, though. Noble, even. Unfortunately, there was no way to prove any of that. Aside from that, it was clear Shelley held a grudge against her husband. He might well be the traitor, but he had pointed the finger at Geoffrey as much to settle some sort of imaginary score with his former commander as to direct suspicion away from himself.
“I am not sure it would have made a difference if you had,” she said, giving voice to the thought that had just entered her mind. “Instead of arguing that you deserted after committing treason, the prosecution would simply argue that the U.S. military was pretending to keep you prisoner so you could return after the war ended and sell your commission. In fact,” she mused, “that might be an even more convincing narrative, since it really is hard to explain why you’d willingly give up the opportunity to make yourself a wealthy man for the sake of one relatively poor American woman.”
Acknowledgement of her point flickered in his eyes. “From the beginning, it’s been damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. But I will say I am not sorry that what I did gave me these months with you. And I want you to know that no matter what happens today, I will always love you.”
Her eyes prickled. “And I you,” she whispered.
Leaning closer, he sealed her lips with a kiss. He’d meant, she supposed, for the kiss to be quick and gentle. Reassuring. But the instant their mouths touched, something fierce and desperate flared inside her.
She needed more. Much more.
Parting her lips, she sought his tongue with her own. He reacted immediately, slanting his mouth greedily across hers. All of her anxiety and fear melted in the face of the frantic onslaught, in which she was as much the instigator as the recipient. Her hands coasted down his torso to his waist and then lower. His cock pressed against the fall of his dress trousers, thick and hard as the barrel of a gun.
When she ran her fingers up and down along the shaft, he let out a quiet groan. “We shouldn’t.”
Shouldn’t was not the same as can’t or won’t, she thought. Desire pooled, hot and liquid, between her thighs.
The carriage jolted to a halt. Based on previous experience, Laura knew they would not arrive at the court for at least another fifteen minutes. Traffic in the streets of London was heavy this time of day.
It would have to be fast, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be good.
“Why not?” she countered, reaching up to pull the curtain over the nearest window.
His lips feathered across her cheek to the sensitive hollow beneath her ear. “Not enough time.” He nipped her earlobe. “Not enough space.” His tongue traced the outer rim of her ear. “Too many clothes.” Grabbing a fistful of her skirt, he dragged the fabric up toward her thigh. “But God help me, I don’t think I care.” With the flick of his free hand, he drew the curtain on his side of carriage shut.
“Good.” Despite the excitement and anticipation racing through her veins, her fingers were remarkably steady as she worked open the buttons on the fall of his trousers. Once she had freed his erection, she helped him to bunch her skirts up to her hips so she could straddle his lap.
Just as she was attempting this feat in the narrow space, the carriage lurched forward again, and her forehead came within a hair’s breadth of making violent contact with his nose. Their eyes met, each of them thinking how narrowly they’d avoided the disaster of Geoffrey arriving in court with a bloodied or possibly even broken nose, they both started laughing. Then she was astride him, the slit in her drawers aligned with the head of his cock, and they were kissing again as she lowered herself until their bodies joined effortlessly together.
So good. So perfect. Nothing but pure sensation, pure joy. The rocking of the carriage. The sweet, drugging press of lips and tongues. The repeated thrust and drag of his cock, pushing her swiftly, inexorably toward release.
She cried out when she came, and Geoffrey shouted when his orgasm overtook him a few scant seconds later, and she didn’t care if the driver or the footman heard them. Didn’t care who heard them. He was her husband, her heart, her everything. It made no difference to her if everyone knew it, if everyone in London knew they were fucking inside this carriage on the way to a court where they were trying to take him from her. But they wouldn’t succeed. Somehow, she and Geoffrey were going to win.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bellamy opened his defense by reading a letter from Earl Cathcart—who, being stationed in St. Petersburg, could hardly be expected to attend the trial in person—that praised Geoffrey’s service under his command in such lavishly glowing terms that Geoffrey was hard-pressed not to squirm and blush. When he’d finished that exercise, he called Jack Prescott to the stand. It came as somewhat of a surprise to Geoffrey that Prescott was in England at all, given the size of the force currently being amassed against Bonaparte, but the reason became apparent when Bellamy began his questioning.
“How is that you are able to attend these proceedings today? Your battalion is in Belgium with Wellington, is it not?”
Prescott flashed a rueful grin. “Yes, they are, and I will be leaving to join them as soon as I am finished here today. But when I heard of the charges against my former commander, I begged leave to travel to England to offer my testimony in his defense. I arrived last Friday, and I shall leave this Friday.”
Damn. Geoffrey’s throat grew tight. For Prescott—whose devotion to his men was perhaps even more fanatical than Geoffrey’s—to request leave on the eve of what was likely to be one of the most consequential battles in English history was an indication of just how deeply he valued their friendship.
Bellamy’s nod was grave. “And why did you believe your testim
ony would be valuable to this panel? You cannot, after all, testify to any of the events that led to the charges against Lieutenant Colonel Langston.”
Prescott turned his steely gray eyes toward the panel and said, “I can tell these gentlemen there is no possibility whatsoever that the man I served under for five years would ever do anything to put the safety of his men at risk. After what he did at Burgos—putting his own life in danger to protect the lives of those under his command—I would sooner believe Lieutenant Colonel Langston had walked on water than that he’d turn traitor.”
“Thank you. And can you confirm for us that it was the lieutenant colonel’s practice to go on rounds to check his men’s well-being each night?”
“Yes, I can. He never deviated from the practice in the years I served with him.”
“So it does not seem in any way odd or suspicious to you that Major Shelley might have encountered Langston when he was also prowling around the encampment at night?”
Hickinbottom leapt to his feet. “Objection! Defense counsel is attempting to cast Major Shelley’s actions in an unfavorable light.”
Bellamy’s mouth curled into a sly smile, but he quickly said, “I’ll rephrase. Does it seem odd or suspicious, to you, Lieutenant Colonel Prescott, that Major Shelley encountered Langston when he was ‘having a look across the river’?” Here, the solicitor put a slight emphasis on the final words, marking them as a direct quotation of Shelley’s testimony.
“Not at all. In fact, if it had been Major Shelley’s habit to do his own nightly inspections, I would find it implausible that they had not run into one another on numerous occasions before that.”
Bellamy thanked Prescott again and turned him over to Hickinbottom for cross-examination, but the prosecutor declined the invitation. There really hadn’t been much in Prescott’s testimony for Hickinbottom to challenge, but that had no doubt been Bellamy’s intention. He was warming the panel up to sympathy for his primary witness.
Unfortunately, sympathy could not entirely make up for the gaps in Geoffrey’s memory. When he described his injuries, his surprise at waking in the home of an American woman instead of in a military hospital, and his creeping realization that he had been left for dead by his comrades, he saw compassion on the faces of several of the panelists, but not enough to offset their suspicions. Just because he didn’t remember turning his coat was not evidence he hadn’t done so. And just because he claimed not to remember did not prove he did not.
He was more successful, he thought, when it came to pointing out that whoever had betrayed the British plans would have had to make overtures to the Americans prior to the ninth of September. What were the chances, after all, that a British officer could simply stroll across the Saranac and approach the commanding officer without having made contact beforehand? And one thing he could state with certainty was that he had never contacted anyone on the American side before the night of the ninth. Of course, the judges on the panel had only his word for this, but they only had Shelley’s word for everything he had testified to.
The desertion charge, however, would be more difficult to overcome.
“Would you tell the court why didn’t you turn yourself over to the American army once you were sufficiently recovered?” Bellamy asked when they reached this point in Geoffrey’s testimony.
“Because by then, I knew there was a traitor among the British officers, and if I were held as a prisoner of war, there would be no way for me to alert my superiors to this fact until after the conflict had ended.”
“How did you imagine you would convey that warning any sooner if you did not surrender to the Americans?”
“Initially, I hoped to make my way to Fort York.” Geoffrey turned to look at the panelists and rolled his eyes as his own naivete. “Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent to me that even if I succeeded in traveling hundreds of miles alone and sneaking across the border—which frankly seemed unlikely—I had nothing actionable to report. What good would it do to report the existence of a traitor when I had no idea who he might be? Especially when I might unwittingly make that report to the very person who had committed the crime.”
Bellamy nodded gravely. “So once you came to that conclusion, why not turn yourself over to the Americans?”
“Because I hoped my memory would return and once I knew who had attacked me and why, I might be able to put together the necessary pieces to determine the traitor’s identity, and then I could make the attempt to get to Fort York.”
“What made you believe recovering your memory might help you to identify the traitor?”
Geoffrey explained his suspicions about the manner and timing of his injury and described the discovery of the branch with which he’d likely been struck. “Once I had evidence proving I was attacked on the north side of the Saranac, the probability that the person responsible for betraying us to the Americans was also responsible for trying to kill me seemed quite high.”
“How did you know that branch you found was the one you were struck with?” Bellamy asked.
Ah, yes. Geoffrey had covered that when he’d answered this question during their rehearsals, but had forgotten to do so now. “It had both blood and hair on it, and the hair matched mine in both length and color.”
Out of the corner of his vision, he saw several of the panelists exchanging glances and felt a surge of relief. His answer might not have convinced them that he hadn’t broken the letter of the law regarding desertion, but at least his reasons made sense to them.
“So, you chose not to allow yourself to be held as a prisoner of war and remained in Plattsburgh because you hoped to learn the identity of the traitor and somehow convey this to your commanding officer before the end of the conflict. Is that an accurate assessment of your state of mind?”
“In the first few weeks, yes.”
“And then what happened?”
Geoffrey’s eyes sought Laura where she sat in the gallery, flanked by his brother and his friends. She was radiant. Not because of how she was dressed, but because of who she was: a ray of sunshine he’d somehow managed to capture and bring to shine on his own dark life. Looking back, he couldn’t fathom how he’d lived nearly forty-five years without her. Without light or warmth or joy. “I fell in love with the woman who saved my life and asked her to be my wife. She accepted.”
“And did your marriage change your plans to return to your regiment if your memory returned or you otherwise learned the identity of the traitor?”
Geoffrey gave an emphatic shake of his head. “Had I ever discovered anything that would have helped me determine who betrayed us, I would have moved heaven and earth to get that information back to my superiors. But my memory never returned, and I never found any evidence, aside from the branch I believe was used to strike me down.
“And after several months passed, I became convinced I would never remember. I also felt that returning to a brigade that might include a man who had tried to kill me could be hazardous to my health. After all, my attacker could have been anyone, from the lowest-ranking foot soldier to one of my fellow lieutenant colonels to my own commanding officer. And even if I professed not to know who the culprit was, how could I be sure he wouldn’t try to kill me again the second my back was turned, just to be on the safe side?”
At this observation, Acton and several other panelists exchanged nods and glances. Every soldier understood the importance of being able to trust one’s comrades at arms. They still might not feel they could absolve him outright of the desertion charge, but they might be willing to reduce the penalty for his transgression. That was, if they decided they believed him when he claimed to have lost his memory. If they did not, then his goose was cooked.
Bellamy smiled supportively, an expression that sat oddly on his pugnacious features. “Indeed, I would suggest that whoever tried to kill you would be well-advised to make sure he finished the job before you could point the finger at him.”
Hickinbottom made an irritated face. “Obj
ection. Speculation.”
“Agreed,” Acton said. “Have a care, Mr. Bellamy.” But the admonition carried no real teeth.
“Yes, my lord.” Looking down at the table, Bellamy made a show of shuffling some papers before returning his gaze to Geoffrey. “Now, in his testimony, Major Shelley suggested that you might have known Mrs. Langston, the former Mrs. Laura Farnsworth, before you were injured. Is there any truth to that allegation?”
Instinctively, Geoffrey sought his wife in the crowd again. Their eyes caught and held as he answered, “None whatsoever.”
“Next, did you ever know Major Shelley to make rounds of the encampment on a nightly basis?”
“No. In fact, he told me early in our acquaintance that he saw no reason for such an endeavor and had no intention of playing nursemaid to grown men.”
Bellamy nodded. “Finally, what is your assessment of Major Shelley’s performance as your second-in-command?”
In some ways, this was the hardest question for Geoffrey to answer unemotionally, but he absolutely had to keep his temper and not allow his anger with his former subordinate to leak into his words. Still, he could not prevent himself from looking directly at Shelley, who sat in the witness gallery, as he spoke. “I would describe his performance as adequate. He did exactly what was required of him. No more, no less. And while he did his duties to the minimum standard, I am sorry to say he was neither well-liked nor well-respected by most of the men in the battalion.”
Shelley’s face flushed, and his lips twisted into a snarl before he could cover his reaction to the unflattering but utterly accurate characterization of his work ethic and popularity. He was angry because he knew it was true. Geoffrey schooled his expression to bland indifference despite the flare of satisfaction in his chest.
Sleeping with the Enemy: Lords of Lancashire, Book 4 Page 21
