A Breach of Promise

by Anne Perry

  “I should, sir! I should …” Hillman was shaking, his voice thick with emotion.

  “Extremely repugnant?” Rathbone nodded.

  Hillman was tight-lipped. “Extremely.”

  Sacheverall was leaning across his table, listening with a half smile on his face.

  The jurors were watching Rathbone intently.

  Melville had his head down, refusing to look at anyone.

  “Quite so,” Rathbone agreed. “You are not alone, Major Hillman. Most of us do not care to think or imagine the intimate details of other people’s lives. We consider it intrusive at best, at worst a form of emotional illness.”

  Sacheverall started to his feet.

  McKeever gestured him to silence, but his glance at Rathbone warned him that he would not indulge him much longer.

  “But before coming here today, Major Hillman,” Rathbone said with a smile, “you had not entertained such thoughts? You did not speak pleasantly while at the same time believing him to be practicing the acts Mr. Sacheverall has hinted at?”

  “Certainly not, sir!” Hillman said sharply. “I believed him to be a normal man—indeed, a gentleman.”

  “So it is Mr. Sacheverall who has changed your mind?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Rathbone smiled. “And here were we supposing it was your testimony which had changed his. Thank you for correcting our errors, sir. I am obliged to you. That is all I have to trouble you with.”

  There was a ripple of laughter around the room. But it was a short-lived victory, as Rathbone had known it would be. Hard on the major’s heels was a man of much less repute, a grubby-minded idler with nothing better to do than to watch and imagine. His evidence was as well embroidered. The jury’s contempt for his testimony was marked plainly in their faces, but they had to listen to his leering account, and however hard they might have wished to expunge it from their minds, it was not possible. One cannot willfully forget in an instant. And they were sworn to weigh the evidence, all of it, regardless of their own personal feelings, as Sacheverall reminded them more than once.

  Rathbone could discredit the man, but it was hardly worth the effort. He had discredited himself. There was no point in trying to shake his actual testimony. To draw attention to it at all, whether to rebut, argue, or deny, was only to fix it more firmly in the jurors’ minds.

  “No thank you, my lord,” Rathbone said when offered his chance to examine the witness. “I cannot think of anything useful to say to such a man.”

  The luncheon adjournment was brief, only sufficient to eat the hastiest meal, and then they returned to court. An occupant of the building where Melville lived swore unhappily that he had seen Isaac Wolff visit Melville’s rooms and remain for some time. No matter how Sacheverall pressed, he would not put an hour to it. Perversely, his very honesty and reluctance made his evidence the more powerful. It was apparent he both liked Melville personally and regarded this proceeding as an intrusion into those areas of a man’s life which should remain private.

  It was clear in the jurors’ expressions that they attached great weight to his word. He refused point-blank, and with some show of temper, to speculate.

  Sacheverall dismissed him with almost palpable satisfaction.

  Glancing at Barton Lambert, and at Zillah sitting beside him, so stricken with misery and dismay she looked almost numbed, Rathbone had only one more card to play, and it was a desperate one, with only a shred of hope.

  He asked for a fifteen-minute adjournment to consult with Sacheverall.

  McKeever granted it, perhaps with more pity than legal reason.

  Outside in the hall, Rathbone saw Monk and spoke with him momentarily, but he had nothing to offer, and two minutes later Rathbone strode after Sacheverall, leaving Melville standing alone.

  “Well?” Sacheverall asked with a grin. “What now?”

  “Ask Lambert if he wants to pursue this,” Rathbone demanded. He loathed appealing to Sacheverall, of all people, for mercy, but he had nothing else left.

  Sacheverall’s fair eyebrows rose in amazement. “For God’s sake, what for? He can’t lose!”

  “He can’t lose the case,” Rathbone agreed. “He can lose his daughter’s happiness and peace of conscience. Have you looked at her face? Do you think this is giving her pleasure? She has her vindication; she does not want or need to ruin Melville as well. Ask Lambert if he needs to go any further.”

  “I don’t need to,” Sacheverall said with a broad smile.

  “Yes, you do!” Rathbone was furious, but he tried to conceal it for his own dignity. “In case you have temporarily forgotten it, you are acting for the Lambert family, not for yourself!”

  Sacheverall flushed. “I’ll ask him,” he agreed gracelessly. “But I shall also advise him. Now, if that was all you had to say, then we should not delay the court any longer.” And without waiting for Rathbone to reply, he turned on his heel and marched back to the courtroom, leaving Rathbone to follow.

  Sacheverall produced his final witness, and she was damning. She might have called herself an adventuress, but she was little more than an unpleasantly ambitious prostitute, both experienced and astute as to the appetites of men and women. She had no doubt whatever that Wolff and Melville were lovers. She had seen them embracing and her evidence was possibly the more unpleasant because her entire manner showed that she saw nothing wrong in it. She did not imply it was casual or the satisfaction of a physical appetite alone, but she used the word lovers because she meant the fullness of that emotion.

  There was nothing for Rathbone to do. He was completely beaten. It was not merely in Sacheverall’s jubilant face but in the grim disgust of the majority of the jurors as well. Even those few who might have felt either pity or a sense that it was a private matter and not a public concern could not argue the issue that Killian Melville had broken his promise to marry Zillah Lambert because of a fault that lay within himself. He had deceived her as to his nature and his intentions and she had every right to demand and to receive reparation from him for the slight to her honor and her reputation.

  Rathbone looked across to where she sat beside her father. Her expression was completely unguarded. Disbelief and confusion were so naked those next to her were for once ashamed to stare. She barely understood what had been suggested. Rathbone doubted she was familiar with much of the intimacy of normal love, let alone that between man and man. Most girls of her age and station learned little before their wedding nights. He felt profoundly sorry for her. She sat rigid, staring straight ahead as if at some disaster she could not tear herself from. He had seen such wide, fixed eyes and unmoving lips when he had had to tell people of unexpected deaths, or that a case was lost and they would face a fearful sentence. In that moment he had no doubt at all that Zillah had truly loved Melville, whether he was aware of it or not. However blindly, for whatever reason, it was a terrible wrong he had done her.

  He looked at Barton Lambert beside her. His expression was completely different. His skin was red with anger and frustration. He turned one way then another, ignoring his wife, who was speaking quietly to him, her cheeks also flushed. Had either of them any idea what they had done to their daughter? Had they allowed their anger, their ambition, their intellectual understanding of the injury Melville had inflicted upon her to obscure any sensitivity or imagination to her inner world? She might have to live with the turmoil of thought and the pain of loss, of having been deceived and misled, of wondering what she had done to produce the wrong, or why she had failed to see it.

  He wondered briefly, and pointlessly, if Sacheverall had actually spoken to Lambert as he had asked. He thought not. Sacheverall was still relishing his victory, standing, smiling very slightly, surveying the jury, avoiding the judge’s eye.

  McKeever adjourned the court, announcing that they would resume again the following morning, when Rathbone could put forward the case for the defense.

  There was a scramble to leave the public gallery. No doubt journalists
would be weighing what they would say and composing it in their minds as they snatched cabs back to Fleet Street. Rathbone could imagine, but nothing that came to his mind would show a shred of compassion and very little reticence. Killian Melville was a well-known figure; so was Barton Lambert. Zillah was young and pretty. There would be plenty of interest.

  Rathbone looked at Melville, who straightened his back slowly and lifted his face. He looked appalling, as if he felt so ill he might faint. It was impossible to begin to imagine what he must be feeling.

  “I think we should leave,” Rathbone said to him quietly. “We cannot speak here.”

  Melville swallowed with difficulty. “There’s nothing to say,” he answered between dry lips. “I never meant to hurt Zillah … or Isaac. And I seem to have done both. Zillah will recover. She will be all right.” He screwed up his face as if feeling a physical pain deep inside his body. “What will happen to Isaac? Will he be ruined? Will they try to send him to jail?”

  This was no time for false hope for Wolff or for Melville himself. Sacheverall’s face should have swept any such delusions away.

  “They may. If it is prosecuted there is really very little defense. It is something people don’t usually bother with—if no one under the age of consent is involved and no nuisance is caused by acts in public.”

  Melville started to laugh, quietly, but with a wild desperation that warned it would turn to weeping any moment.

  For once Rathbone did not even consider propriety, or even what his professional reputation would suffer. He put his hand on Melville’s shoulder and gripped him hard, even prepared to support him physically if necessary.

  “Come,” he ordered. “The least we can do is offer you a little privacy. They’ve had their pound of flesh; let us deny them the pleasure of carving it off and watching the blood.” And he half hauled Melville to his feet, pulling him through the press of people, elbowing them out of his way with uncharacteristic roughness.

  Out in the hallway, Melville straightened up. “Thank you,” he said shakily. “But I am composed now. I shall be … all right.”

  He looked appalling. His skin was flushed and his lips dry. But his eyes were unflinching, and there was a kind of wild, black humor in them. He still knew something that Rathbone did not. Something that mattered.

  Rathbone drew in a breath to ask yet again, then knew it would be a waste of time.

  “Do you want me to settle?” he asked, searching Melville’s face, trying to see beyond the clear, aquamarine eyes into the man inside. What was there beyond brilliance of ideas, the mass of technical knowledge, the dreams in stone of a thousand generations of history stored and made new? What were the private dreams and emotions of the man himself, his likes and dislikes, the fears, the laughter, the memories? Or weren’t there any? Was he empty of everything else?

  “I won’t marry her,” Melville repeated softly. “I never asked her to marry me. If I settle now, say I was wrong when I wasn’t, what will happen to all the other men in the future, if I give in?”

  “You haven’t given in,” Rathbone answered. “You were beaten.”

  Melville turned and walked away, his shoulders hunched, his head down. He bumped into someone and did not notice.

  Aching for him, confused and angry, Rathbone hurried after him, determined at the least to find him a hansom and see that he was not harried or abused any further. He caught up with him and escorted him as far as the back entrance. He glared at a couple of men who would have approached Melville, and strode past them, knocking one aside roughly.

  At the curb he all but commandeered a hansom and half threw Melville up into it, giving the driver Melville’s address and passing him up a more than generous fare.

  When the cab was safely on its way, he went back into the courthouse having no idea what he was going to do the next day. When the case resumed he would have to try to find something to change the present opinion. What was there? The last witness had turned the balance beyond redeeming. His only hope was to attack, but what good could that do now? Melville was ruined whatever the result. The only possible advantage would be to save him something financially. And perhaps Barton Lambert, at least, might be willing to do that He had no need of money.

  Rathbone’s last hope of achieving that by force, if he could not by appeal to clemency, would be to know something about Lambert, or his family, which Lambert would very much prefer to have kept in silence.

  But if Monk could not find it within the next twelve hours, then there was nothing left.

  Personally, Rathbone would advise Melville to leave England and try to build his career in some other country where the scandal would not follow him or where they had a more liberal view towards men’s private lives. There certainly were such places, and his genius was international, unlike language. Thank God he was not a poet!

  Ahead of him, Zillah Lambert was standing next to her parents. He recognized her first, seeing her bright hair, its luxuriant waves catching the light from the lamps above her. She still looked bemused, uncertain about the bustle and clatter around her, like an animal caught in a strange place. He had seen people shocked like that many times. These halls had witnessed so much human agony too raw to be disguised by any dignity or self-protection, too new yet to have found a mask.

  Sacheverall walked up to them, still smiling.

  Delphine saw him and her expression immediately altered to one of charm and gratitude.

  “Mr. Sacheverall,” she said earnestly. “I cannot tell you how grateful we are for your diligence in our cause, in Zillah’s cause. It has been a most distressing time for all of us, but for her especially.” She lowered her voice a little, but since she had moved closer to Rathbone without seeing him, and farther from Zillah, he could still hear her if he gave his attention. “Of course, it will take a little while for her to recover from the shock of all this. Such a revelation is fearful for a young girl to have to hear. She will need all our kindness and encouragement.”

  “I promise you she will receive it,” Sacheverall said warmly. “Her innocence in this matter is quite obvious to anyone. I have been very moved by her dignity throughout this whole ordeal. She is a remarkable person.”

  “Indeed she is,” Delphine agreed, smiling and looking downward hastily, not to seem too immodest. “I admit, Mr. Sacheverall, I am far prouder of her than perhaps some would approve. But how many girls of her age could have borne themselves under this pressure and kept out bitterness from their nature, or hysteria, or a note of self-pity? She has a great sweetness of character.”

  Rathbone looked past Delphine to Zillah, who must have overheard this exchange. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes blazed. He could only guess how mortified she felt, the acuteness of her embarrassment. She was still dazed by not only the loss but the utter and public disillusionment with the man she had loved for nearly three years, and here was her mother seizing the moment to praise her to another man, who was very obviously keenly interested.

  Sacheverall did not seem to be in the least aware of the clumsiness of it. He moved forward to speak directly to Zillah after the briefest lingering with Delphine, as if a tacit agreement had been understood.

  “I am so sorry,” he said earnestly to Zillah. “I wish more than you can know that this had not been necessary.”

  “Do you?” she said coldly. “I am glad you told me, Mr. Sacheverall, otherwise I should not have known. You are a superb actor, sir. I had the strongest impression you were savoring your victory.” She looked at him directly, her eyes filled with tears but unwavering.

  For the first time he was completely out of composure. It was the last response he had expected. He took a moment to collect his wits.

  “Of course you are distressed,” he said placatingly. “I cannot imagine how …” He was not sure what word he wished to use.

  “I can see that you cannot,” she agreed, now finding it increasingly difficult to stop herself from weeping. Her anger at him, at her mother, at the wh
ole terrible situation, was now at last releasing the emotion she had kept in check all through the endless and searing days of the trial. “But please do not apologize. It hardly matters. I am sure you have done extremely well the job you were engaged for. We are suitably obliged to you.”

  She could not have been more effective had she slapped his face.

  Rathbone’s estimation of her soared. It was more difficult than ever to understand why Melville did not wish to marry her—unless Sacheverall’s charge was true. It was the only explanation which made sense. But then, knowing his inclination, he was irresponsible at best for having wooed her, grossly cruel at worst, using her simply to gain her father’s patronage and possibly to mask his own affair with Wolff by seeming to have interests elsewhere.

  But he would not be the first man of genius to have a moral sense which was distorted by egocentricity into total selfishness. Rathbone should not have been disappointed; it was foolish, even naive. A man of his age and sophistication should have known better.

  But the pain of it was startlingly sharp. He wanted to admire Melville. He could not help liking him.

  Delphine was talking soothingly to Sacheverall, trying to repair the damage. From the look upon his face she was succeeding. Presumably with Melville excluded, he was an acceptable match. He was the right age, his family was excellent, his career prospects good, and he had more than enough money not to be courting her for merely financial reasons, although such a marriage would undoubtably improve his situation.

  Barton Lambert had taken little part in the exchange. He was standing with his hands pushed deep into his pockets, and two or three times he had looked towards Rathbone as if he wished to speak to him. But it was too late to make any difference now. His whole posture was one of deep unhappiness, and Rathbone guessed he regretted the whole affair. His affection for Melville had been real. It could not be swept away by any revelation, no matter how dark. Emotions do not often turn so entirely in so short a space. The wound was raw, and it showed. He was an unusual man in that he did not seek to alleviate it with anger.