Trial by Desire

by Courtney Milan

  Harcroft froze, his arms still above his head. “I cannot afford to discount any possibility.”

  “But why might she have done that?”

  “Why does any woman do anything?” He shrugged, as if all feminine foibles could be reduced to whim. “Honestly, I simply cannot comprehend those women who claim that they should be granted the right to vote or own property. If they could vote, they would choose the fellow with the prettiest moustache. Or the one who promised to usher in a new fashion.”

  “That’s a rather harsh assessment.”

  “Hardly. In my experience, if a woman thinks she is capable of deciding an issue of importance, it should be taken as presumptive evidence of her incapacity. Too foolish to know what she cannot do.”

  Ned shut his mouth. Harcroft was overset. Unhappy. It was inevitable that he feel a bit embittered toward womankind, under the circumstances.

  But Harcroft was looking at him with a disbelieving glower. “Surely you don’t believe that women deserve more rights? That they are competent to handle men’s affairs?”

  Ned’s father had died in a hunting accident. His mother had raised him practically on her own—choosing his tutors, making sure that he learned the fundamentals of hunting and boxing from uncles and cousins, and the principles of estate management from his grandfather. In his later youth, he’d watched Jenny, the marchioness, handle situations that would have brought lesser men to their knees. Ned knew the prevailing sentiment was that women needed to be protected from the world, but in his personal life, the women he’d known most closely hadn’t had much male protection. They’d still triumphed.

  Perhaps that was why he found it difficult to become exercised, as many of his compatriots did, at the thought of women gaining traditionally male prerogatives. In his life, women had always had those prerogatives.

  “If you’re worried about how Lady Harcroft will fare on her own,” he suggested gently, “it’s been my experience that women are capable of more than we give them credit for. I am sure she might surprise you with what she has done.”

  But Harcroft appeared not to hear what Ned said. Instead, he smacked his fist into his hand. “In fact,” he said, “we should just declare them incompetent as a rule—incompetent to own property, to divest themselves of it, to testify in court against the men who protect them, to avail themselves of any sort of divorce.”

  “Married women already can’t own property at law,” Ned said. “They already can’t testify in court against their husbands. And divorce is available to married women only in extreme cases of spousal cruelty.”

  Harcroft coughed gently. “Listen to yourself. Don’t tell me you’re a follower of Bentham. How is it that you can recite that pale litany of female complaints?”

  Those same points had all been listed in the newspapers, the subject of a handful of political discussions. Ned shook his head wearily.

  “Yes,” Harcroft said bitterly. “I should like to see all women declared feeble-minded, as a matter of principle. Then they wouldn’t even be able to dispose of property. They wouldn’t be able to threaten to testify in court at all. They wouldn’t ever leave their husbands, because there would be no recourse for them if they did.”

  Ned couldn’t take the sentiment seriously. That spiteful mouthful was just bitter emotion. Harcroft would have warmer feelings, no doubt, once he’d recovered his wife.

  He’d met Lady Harcroft shortly after her marriage. She’d been married on the young side of things—at fifteen, if he recalled correctly. She had always seemed a small, timid soul—ready to jump at a single word uttered by her husband, devoted to his comfort—except for the days when she took to her bed with whatever illness afflicted her.

  She had often been ill.

  But when she had been well, she had fawned over her husband. Harcroft had only to think of crooking his finger, and she would respond. Once her husband had her safely back, he would remember how well his wife looked after his comfort.

  But looking at the man—sitting in a chair, staring at the map as if he could flush his wife from her hiding spot with the intensity of his gaze—Ned couldn’t quite make himself believe it. No, he was missing something. He felt as if he’d added columns and columns of numbers, and come up with an answer that he knew must be incorrect.

  If only he could ferret out the error.

  “Have you had the honor of meeting my mother?” Ned asked gently. “Or the Marchioness of Blakely?” Ned would have added his own wife, if he hadn’t already known that Harcroft was set against the woman. “Neither of them are precisely examples of feeble-mindedness.”

  “Perhaps.” Harcroft waved this attempt at reason away. “Perhaps. Well. I’m to bed.”

  Ned waved him off and studied the map in front of him. That sense of unease remained even after Harcroft had taken himself off. In the dim light, the pencil marks seemed child’s sketches, failing to capture some basic truth of reality. The numbers still didn’t cast up into a proper sum in his head. Two and two came together, but they only managed to whisper dark intimations amongst themselves, hinting at the possibility of a distant four.

  He gave up trying to make sense of it all when his head began to ache.

  NED HAD GONE PAST the small shepherd’s cottage on the ridge—a tidy construction of stone and mortar—a thousand times without ever attaching any particular significance to it. There had never been any reason to do so, after all. Sometimes shepherds were in residence. Often they were not. When he was twelve, he’d once crept inside on a wager and found himself disappointed by the tidy, prosaic interior. He’d had no reason to think about the structure since.

  Now he eyed the thing warily. His gray mare sensed his unease and shifted beneath him. This visit should have required a matter-of-fact glance inside, prerequisite to ticking an item off of Harcroft’s list. The hut itself looked preposterously harmless in the morning light. Picturesque vines crept halfway up the doorframe, and a tiny wisp of smoke slipped out the chimney, before being smudged by the wind into insubstantiality. The cottage seemed small, cozy and eminently unworthy of his attention.

  Except for one small thing. The place was supposed to be unoccupied, and someone had lit a fire. That, coupled with Kate’s behavior last afternoon, Harcroft’s strangeness in the evening…

  Well. He dismounted and looped his mare’s reins on a post near the entry. It was inconceivable that Harcroft’s fancies might have come true, that his wife might be here, on Ned’s property. But there was that smudge of smoke. Maybe it had been taken over by ruffians, after all.

  In the cold light of an autumn day, last night’s fears seemed truly ridiculous.

  Ned shook his head. His imagination, always fertile, had a tendency to run amok, if he let it. There were a few points to keep in mind. One, it was a drafty shepherd’s cottage; ruffians generally preferred easy access to ale. And women. And future victims. Two, it was on Ned’s property. Ned was not precisely an expert on the subject, but he suspected madwomen were more likely to wander the moors, tearing their hair out, than they were to build boring little fires in tiny buildings.

  It was probably just one of the shepherds, come to inspect the land in preparation for winter. No doubt they intended to do some final cleaning before winter set in. To patch the roof. There was undoubtedly a simple explanation. Anything was more likely than the possibility that he would encounter a band of unknown brigands stealing Harcroft’s wife and secreting themselves in a shepherd’s hut on Harcroft’s friend’s property.

  He strode to the door and knocked loudly.

  Inside he heard nothing. No footsteps. No hasty, frightened shouts. No bugle, sounding a piratical call to arms.

  Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

  He glanced up, to make sure he hadn’t imagined that sign of habitation. That stream of smoke still purled from the chimney; waves of heat distorted the air above the capstones. There had to be someone inside; no shepherd would leave a fire alone and untended, not during these
dry days of autumn.

  “Draven?” he tried.

  No answer.

  “Stevens? Darrow?” He cudgeled his brain, trying to remember more of the shepherds who worked this land. “Dobbin?” he tried at last. Desperation, that; Dobbin was a sheep dog. Still no answer, neither from canine nor human compatriot. Whoever had once been inside had undoubtedly wandered off for a few minutes. Ned would have sharp words for the fellow, leaving a fire burning with the fields so dry.

  But there was no reason not to have fun until the man returned.

  Ned set his fingers on the handle of the door.

  “Well, then, Lady Harcroft.” He spoke loudly, pitching his voice to deepness, a grin on his face. It helped to mock his own fancies, to show how ridiculous they were. “You are exposed. I have found you all. Ruffians, prepare to be brought to justice! Ha!”

  If this had been a story, and Ned a Bow Street Runner—or a knight of old—he would have kicked the door in dramatically. Of course, that would have necessitated an embarrassing explanation, when he shamefacedly asked his estate manager to repair the damage. Ned settled for swinging the door inward.

  He expected to see the tiny front room of the cottage—barely large enough to contain a trestle table and the fireplace. He was a little taken aback to find the floor of the room piled with lumpy sacks that might have been potatoes or turnips, and another smaller sack of flour. The only reason he knew he wasn’t dreaming was the rope, strung from one side of the room to another. A multitude of damp cloths had been strung to dry. He never would have dreamed of anything so prosaic.

  And when he moved his eyes from that curiosity, he was astonished to see Lady Harcroft herself, standing as far from the door as she could. Her auburn hair was braided and pinned to her head; she wore a deep brown gown, bereft of embellishment. He was so surprised to see her, after all his self-mockery, that it took him a moment to comprehend what she held in her hands.

  It was a silver-tooled pistol. The stuff of his nightmares. And she was aiming it at Ned’s midsection with hands that seemed surprisingly steady.

  His good humor evaporated. That sense of unease he’d entertained last night returned, this time in full-blown panic.

  “Damn me.” His lips seemed to move of their own accord. He let go of the door handle.

  Lady Harcroft didn’t respond. Her lips pressed together.

  “Of all the—Lady Harcroft, you’re the gang of ruffians?”

  She didn’t seem to be hearing what he said, which was just as well, because his world had narrowed to the ice-cold beat of his pulse. Her shoulders squared, and she brought the barrel up to point directly at Ned’s chest.

  “You realize that was a joke. About bringing you to justice.” It didn’t seem funny anymore. It didn’t even seem embarrassing. It was just absurdly frightening.

  “Mr. Carhart.” Lady Harcroft’s voice trembled, where her hands had not. “I am sorry. Truly.”

  “Wait. No.”

  But she’d already squeezed her eyes shut, and before Ned could throw himself out of the way, she pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HAMMER HIT THE PISTOL with a metallic, percussive click. The sound echoed about Ned—but it was quieter than the explosion of black powder he’d expected.

  She stared at him down the barrel of the firearm, her eyes widening. “Damn you, Kate.” Her voice was low. “Don’t come any closer, Mr. Carhart. Or I’ll—” She grimaced. “I have a knife.” Her voice quavered up on the final syllable, as if she were on the brink of asking a question.

  Ned was not so distracted by his unexpected survival as to overlook the singular fact that Lady Harcroft had cursed his wife.

  “This is not what it seems,” he said.

  She glanced across the room—no doubt searching out a grubby knife she could use on him.

  “I’m here to help,” Ned continued. He stepped into the room, brushing aside the cloths that hung from the line. They were an infant’s napkins, he realized. By the state of their dampness, they’d no doubt been cleaned down at the stream a half mile away in the early morning.

  “Did Kate send you? She promised not to tell.”

  “Kate…” Ned glanced at the firearm she clutched. Come to think of it, that was his pistol. He’d brought it back with him from China and had tossed it in a cabinet. He’d hoped never to see it again.

  “Kate,” Ned continued dryly, “has been sending you assistance, courtesy of me, for a very long while.”

  Lady Harcroft met his eyes. “Tell your wife that next time, she needs to load the gun.”

  Ned stepped forward. He’d only seen Lady Harcroft before in her husband’s company. This woman—short but stately—did not seem anything like the pale, sickly shadow he’d met at Harcroft’s side.

  Now, as he walked toward her, her knuckles whitened on the pistol. She hadn’t lowered it yet. Instead, she clutched it wildly, as if she might wring some use out of it, even after she’d fired.

  “Are you planning to bludgeon me with that?” He smiled to show he was joking.

  She hesitated, which meant that she might have been.

  Ned shook his head and reached to pluck the weapon from her hands before she embarrassed them both. He’d meant to make a joke about her shoulders becoming weary. But as he extended his hand, she flinched backward, her arm flying between them. He froze, midreach; she looked up into his eyes in horror.

  She must have seen the shock in his own eyes.

  He’d not wanted to think of it. In the frozen aftermath of nearly being shot, he’d not sorted out the implications of her presence. Lady Harcroft wasn’t insane. She hadn’t been abducted. But she was frightened. And when he’d reached for her, she had brought up her hand to protect her face.

  Kate was involved. Kate had separated Mrs. Alcot from her husband. Lady Harcroft was here, on Ned’s property—on Kate’s property—flinching from him as if she expected a blow.

  Oh.

  God.

  It made an awful, horrific sense out of everything—Harcroft’s comments last night, Kate’s reaction at meeting Ned last afternoon.

  Lady Harcroft’s flinch betrayed more than a thousand bruises. Someone had hit her, and often enough that even friendly gestures now seemed menacing. Ned moved back, giving her room.

  “God,” Louisa choked, letting the firearm finally fall. “I am so stupid.” And she burst into tears.

  Ned had no idea what to say in response. He didn’t dare come forward and comfort her, not when a mere reach toward her gave her such a start. Instead, he could do nothing but slip a handkerchief from his pocket and slide it down the table toward her. She sat down and cried in the most ladylike manner, choking back her obvious sobs, dabbing at her eyes with the cloth he’d given her. Ned waited in uncomfortable silence.

  “If I weren’t such a wretch, I would not be here. If only I hadn’t let it come to this. If I’d had the strength to…to…” She gave a quiet hiccough and winced again.

  “To what?” Ned enquired mildly.

  “To stop this whole thing, before it even started.” She set her jaw. “If I were not such a weakling, none of this would ever have happened. You knew me. I was such a timid, foolish—”

  Ned held up one hand, interrupting the flow of self-berating before it could get started. “You’ve used the word this a great deal here. By this, are you referring to Harcroft’s treatment of you?”

  She sniffed once, and nodded. “That would be it.”

  “And by it, you mean…” The world slowed, and Ned swallowed. It didn’t clear the damnable dryness in his throat. “You mean the fact that he hit you.”

  It was not a question, but she nodded anyway.

  “How long?”

  “Never more than fifteen minutes at any one time,” she replied earnestly. “I know. It could have been much worse.”

  Ned met her gaze, unable to look away. “That wasn’t what I meant. Has this been going on since I first met you?”

 
“Oh. It started after our first year of marriage. It wouldn’t have if I had been a better wife. You see, there was a gentleman—a friend, only, but…”

  She trailed off, and Ned shook his head. She’d been sixteen then, for God’s sake, and newly married. Harcroft had shaped her entire adult existence. He must have tried to do so forcibly.

  He would have flinched himself. He understood all too well how her thinking went.

  How many times had he wondered that about himself? What if he had been different? If he had been better? If he hadn’t been betrayed by his own weaknesses? Those doubts would debilitate him if he ever gave them full sway. It had taken him years to learn to discard them, to keep going in the face of his own fears. He could imagine all too well how Lady Harcroft must have felt.

  Her husband had been Ned’s friend—and it was unsurprising how quickly that sentence properly became phrased in the past tense. But Harcroft could not have understood the degree to which Ned would find himself in sympathy with his wife.

  He knew what it was like to feel powerless, at the mercy of others. And he didn’t like seeing it in anyone else.

  It was a sentiment as idiotic as kicking her door down would have been. After all that, he still saw himself as some sort of a hero—a strange and useless one, no doubt. He was no Bow Street Runner, no knight in shining armor. If he’d had chain mail, it would all have rusted at sea. But Ned wasn’t the sort of knight who perished in glorious battle for the sake of a poetic ending.

  He had prevailed. He’d beaten back those doubts. He’d found his place and he’d learned to stand on his own two feet, free from that cloying hint of bitter dependence.

  It looked as if Lady Harcroft—and by extension, Ned’s own wife—needed a hero. If he could bring Lady Harcroft the kind of peace he’d found, it would prove once and for all that his victory had not been temporary. It would be proof that he’d truly won, that he’d tamed his own response. It would be like a medieval tourney, his very own trial.