Trial by Desire

by Courtney Milan

  “Then I looked in his eyes, just like this.” He fixed Louisa with a look. “I smiled, just like this. And I leaned forward and I said, ‘Captain Adams, I believe I’ll be on the next boat to the river.’”

  Kate watched him in breathless agony.

  Ned straightened. “He looked at me. He looked at that damned bell. And then he looked back at me. It was as if he’d bullied me as far as he could. Once he realized I could outlast him, that was that. From there on out, he actually proved quite helpful.”

  At those last words, Louisa looked away. “Oh, Ned. I know what you’re trying to say. But I can’t. I can’t testify in court. I can’t petition for a divorce. I can’t even imagine looking Harcroft in the eyes.”

  “You can’t right now. I needed that time on the boat, Louisa. I burned my skin crimson that day, sitting on that boat and thinking. I needed that time, because if I’d seen him right after coming from the privy, I would have flinched from him, and that would have been the end of it all. I needed to know what I wanted.” He flashed Louisa a grin. “You can’t know what to do, until you know what you want. What do you want?”

  “I want my baby to be safe.” Louisa’s arms curled about her, and Kate bit her lip. “I want him to take his father’s place as earl one day. I want him to believe that love and affection are typical, and violence a mere aberration.”

  Ned tapped his lips. “So, for instance, escaping to America and obscuring your identity might cloud his chances at taking his seat.”

  Louisa nodded. “I want to stay here with my family.” She glanced at Kate. “And my friends. And I don’t want my husband to ever, ever threaten me again.”

  “There,” Ned said. “Was that so hard, then? To want?”

  “But I don’t dare want all of that, Mr. Carhart. It’s impossible.”

  Ned glanced at his nails, as if in boredom. “A minor detail,” he announced airily. “My wife has been performing the impossible for years, and this time around, she has me to help her. We’ll find out how to get you much of that. It might take some time, but we’ll manage it.”

  Oh, he was impossible himself. Impossibly attractive—and impossibly heartwarming, to say such things of her.

  “The first step,” she said, “is to keep you safe. And to that end, we need to distract Harcroft. We’ll need to direct his attention elsewhere.”

  Ned nodded. “We should let him think we’re desperate. That we’ll make mistakes. That we’re running off somewhere—perhaps rushing to your side.” He looked over at Kate. “What say you to going to London? I have some unfinished business there in any event.”

  “And what am I to do there?” Kate asked.

  Ned gave her a slow grin. “We,” he said with emphasis, “are going to drive Harcroft mad.”

  AS THEY WALKED BACK to the house, Ned felt Kate’s eyes on him. His little story had undoubtedly piqued her curiosity. Unfortunately. She’d not been distracted by her own worries the way Louisa had, and no doubt she’d noticed that there were holes in his tale.

  “That,” she finally said, “was very brave of you. To take your embarrassment and use it to make Louisa feel comfortable.”

  “Hmm,” Ned said, looking away. “More like foolhardiness.”

  “You told us that story with such a smile on your face, as if it were all some sort of joke. But I get the impression there was more to it than you disclosed. What really happened?”

  “It was basically as I laid it out.” Precisely as he’d said, except so much more.

  By the small puff of air she expelled, she knew it, too.

  “Oh, very well. If you must know.” He rubbed one hand against his wrist. “I left out this—they didn’t just throw me in the sump. They bound me, wrists and ankles, and blindfolded me. I didn’t know where we were going, what they had planned. When they threw me into what was essentially a lake of human waste, I had no notion what was coming. The liquid closed over my head, and trussed up as I was, I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t do much more than wriggle futilely.” He’d woken up for months afterward, with that memory of bonds cutting his flesh. Thankfully, his mind seemed to have expelled the worst of the memory.

  “How did they dare?” She looked at him in shock. “How did you escape?”

  “They’d tied a rope to my feet. After about a minute, they just dragged me out, and I came, flopping like a fish. They intended to humiliate me, not hurt me. I have never felt so helpless in my life.”

  She was looking at him with something akin to pity. Christ. He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” The words came out rather more sharply than he’d intended. “It was quite possibly the best thing that could have happened to me. I spent a great deal of time out on the ocean, in that boat. Under that sun. It didn’t just burn away my skin. It burned away my most timid parts. I needed to look that part of myself in the eye and reject it. The experience built substance.”

  More than he would ever tell her. She didn’t need to know precisely how weak he’d been at the time—and how close he’d come to crumpling. All she needed to know was that he’d survived.

  “What sort of substance?” she asked.

  “The sort that brought me home to you,” he replied shortly. “The sort that made me brave enough to venture into naval battles and opium dens alike.”

  “The kind that made you sleep in bitter cold?” she asked.

  He nodded, jerkily, and she subsided into a frown.

  He had no wish to tell her the entirety of what had transpired out there on the lake. She didn’t need to know how close he’d come, how dark that final darkness had truly been. She’d seen enough for her to understand what had happened to him without understanding precisely what sort of person it had happened to.

  He’d tamed his dragon. He wouldn’t leave Kate. And that was all she needed to know.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SOME THINGS truly hadn’t changed in the years since Ned had left London. One of those things was the dimly lit gaming hall that stood in a disreputable portion of town. From the doorway, Ned could hear the crack of dice bouncing on green baize. Smoke permeated the air of the room, so thick he could imagine it spilling out into the night air and meeting the fog bank in a swirl of cloud.

  He’d spent much of the day traveling back to town, but this particular encounter with the gaming tables could not be put off.

  His quarry—five fellows who no doubt called themselves gentlemen—sat in a corner, clutching cards. They might well have been playing loo again. The only thing that had changed in the intervening years was that while Ned had been growing muscle, his erstwhile friends had gone to fat.

  Any other man in his position might have challenged them to a duel. But there was little honor in slaying a quintet of oversize drunkards, and besides, Ned’s method of dealing with the problem promised to be more amusing. Real heroes, after all, tamed their dragons.

  Ned stepped into the room. As he made his way around tables littered with jugs of cheap wine, he fingered the silky bit of fabric he’d purloined earlier. They didn’t see him approach, so caught up were they in their game. They didn’t even catch his shadow—multifaceted, from the many lamps—falling across their table. It was loo, and by the pile of papers on the table, play was deep.

  Once, Ned had been as oblivious as these men. He had been so desperate to drown his past in spirits that he had tried to wager away his future on the deal of a card. Thank God he had stopped.

  Lord Ellison—a onetime friend of his—crowed in triumph as he laid his final card. “I win!” he gloated. The others murmured congratulations. Another man shook his head in disgust—and then stopped, seeing Ned. He peered at him through eyes made bleary with spirits.

  “Carhart?” Alfred Dennis asked slowly. “Is that you? I heard you had returned.” He blinked a few times, as if trying to make sense of Ned’s appearance. One rusty mental process must not have been entirely dissolved in alcohol, because he brightened. “I
say, are you joining us?”

  He reached for a chair and made an attempt to pull it up to the table.

  “Come on, Carhart!” Ellison said. “It’s been ages since we last had a good time together. You’re feeling up for a little wager, aren’t you?”

  Neither seemed to have the tiniest inkling that they might have done something wrong. Another reason Ned couldn’t duel them: It would be like slaying pond slime. Algae never understood when it gave offense.

  Ned straddled the chair. “Actually,” he said, “I’m here to collect on a wager.”

  “Which one?” Ellison asked. “Dennis—no, Port-Morton, you can still stand. Fetch the book.”

  One of the men from the back began to heave to his feet on wavering legs.

  “No need,” Ned said. “This wager is quite famous.” Ned set the fabric he’d been carrying on the table. It was a fine specimen of work—roses embroidered on pink silk with satin ties.

  “Carhart,” Dennis said, “is that a garter you laid on the table?”

  The five men stared at him, lips pursed together in identical expressions of dismay. No, not identical; they turned different colors, ranging from a pale green—that was Port-Morton—to Ellison’s bright red.

  “That’s the wager,” Ned said equably. “Any man who seduces Lady Kathleen Carhart and delivers an undergarment as proof collects five thousand pounds.”

  Dennis stared at the embroidered cloth. He stared at it for ten full seconds, in dull incomprehension. Finally, he looked up, his eyebrows a mass of confusion. “Carhart,” the man finally said, “you can’t seduce your own wife.”

  Ned raised one eyebrow. “Oh? I’m dreadfully sorry to hear that, Dennis. How difficult that must be for you. I would say it was not very hard…but then, given your admission, perhaps that’s the problem, eh?” Ned shrugged apologetically. “You might be doing it wrong. There are physicians who can help with that, you realize.”

  Even pond scum recognized when its masculinity was challenged. In fact, it was probably the only thing pond scum recognized. Dennis flushed and shook his head. “I have no notion what you’re talking about. No need for physicians here.” The man hunched, though, as if to protect his groin. “I suppose a man could seduce anyone’s wife. Including his own. All I meant was, it’s no fun if you do it.”

  “No fun?” Ned shook his head ruefully. “You are definitely doing it wrong.”

  Catcalls rose up at that, and Dennis turned an even brighter red.

  “You don’t need five thousand pounds, Carhart,” Port-Morton put in. “What are you going to do with it, anyway?”

  Ned shrugged. “I don’t know. Likely I’ll buy my wife something pretty.”

  “Jewels?” Ellison asked. “As if she were a mistress? Good God, Carhart. What a waste. What a phenomenal waste.”

  “Ellison,” Ned said, “I hate to repeat myself—but you are probably doing it wrong, too. And that, gentlemen, is why you all lost. And why, after three years away, I still won. Close the book on this one. The wager’s over and done.”

  They stared up at him still, their eyes wide and unbelieving.

  Ned let the smile on his face widen, and he leaned in. “Close the books, or next time it will cost you all a great deal more than money.”

  Ellison shook his head, stupid to the end, and gestured next to him. “At least play a hand, give us a chance to win it back.”

  Ned shook his head. “I have my wife to get home to.”

  LONDON HAD BEEN a dizzying mixture of good and bad and confusing for Kate. The gossip about she and her husband had run high the first few days they had arrived, in no small part due to some stunt Ned had pulled at a gaming hell. But the discussion had been romantic—and it had served only to carry tales of how they spent their time to Harcroft’s ears. And oh, how those tales must have confused him. All of society was talking about how the couple had inquired into passage to France, particularly departing from Dover. Mr. Carhart had then shown a less than subtle interest in minute happenings in Ipswich.

  There had been a hundred misdirections.

  After the third day of it, Kate’s head pounded. After the fourth day, her entire body ached. Today, a week after they had begun their campaign of confusion, she had seen Harcroft for the first time. He had been in attendance at a party last evening. He’d seen Kate—and had glowered at her across the crowded room before turning away with a smirk.

  Smirks, of course, were Harcroft’s peculiar speciality. If self-satisfied expressions had been coins, Harcroft would have generated enough currency to personally sustain the commerce of the entirety of the kingdom of Sardinia. One more shouldn’t have mattered. But this one had got under Kate’s skin. It stayed there, after she and Ned had left the glittering lights of the party behind them. She felt that unease even more now, the back-and-forth swaying of the carriage buffeting her to the point of nausea.

  “He’s planning something,” she said aloud.

  She didn’t need to say who he was. Next to her, Ned was a warm, solid mass. Their carriage rounded a corner and she lurched against him. He didn’t move, as if he were somehow strong enough to be immune to the effects of inertia.

  “He’s started a proceeding in Chancery,” Ned said. “He has been quite secretive about it, of course. But I’ve managed to dredge up a few pieces of information. That, coupled with some comments he made to me when he believed I was in sympathy with him…” Ned sighed; she felt it in the movement of his chest against her shoulder, and she stared ahead into the darkness.

  “Well, what does he intend?”

  “This is speculation, mind. These sorts of proceedings are usually kept in the strictest of confidence. For reasons that will soon be obvious.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I believe he’s filed a petition in Chancery to have Louisa declared a lunatic.” Kate gasped. “He said something about this to me before. At the time, I dismissed it as a token of his emotional overset. If his petition is successful, she won’t be able to testify—not for a divorce, nor in a criminal suit for spousal cruelty.”

  Kate felt a chill creep into her, something colder even than the oncoming winter. “He means to flush her out, like a partridge. She’ll have to come to Chancery just to testify on her own behalf. If she doesn’t…”

  “She’ll be held incompetent.” Ned set his hand on her knee. “Incompetents have no freedom. He’ll be able to lock her up. Any measures he takes after that, however stringent, will be seen as attempts to cure—or at least subdue—her mental infirmity. If he is made a trustee over her in lunacy, he’ll have even more control over her than a husband has over a wife.”

  Kate put her fingers to her temples. “He’s tired of chasing down our little leads, and so he’s begun to attack instead. Well. That makes our course of action clear.”

  “We need to communicate with Lady Harcroft, and ascertain her wishes,” Ned said.

  “That.” Kate tapped her fingers to her temples. “And we might consider a little bit of an attack ourselves. I think we should talk to Chancery about his claim of lunacy.” She smiled, tightly. “Testify on Louisa’s behalf. And perhaps, I think, we should give the Chancellor some other petitions to consider.”

  “Harcroft has some other plan, too,” Ned said. “I haven’t determined what it is yet, but don’t you worry. I’ll keep you safe—you and Lady Harcroft both.”

  She nodded solemnly. “And who shall look out for you?”

  He snorted, half amusement, half appalled consternation. “I didn’t realize I needed someone to look out for me.”

  The Earl of Harcroft had proved vengeful, spiteful and not above using violence to get his way. Kate didn’t imagine the man spared much love for Ned—not after Ned had hurled him bodily across the hall.

  “Of course you do.” Her hand slipped to his knee.

  She had not realized that the knee could tense so. Yet his did, lifting underneath her hand as if he were unconsciously flexing his feet at her words. His bre
athing stopped.

  “I’m not going to be a burden to you,” he growled out.

  “A burden? Who said you would be a burden? I just want to help you.”

  “I don’t want to be helped. I don’t need to be helped.” She could imagine the stubborn set of his chin as he spoke.

  Slowly Kate pulled her hand away. She swallowed back the hurt that encompassed her. She’d thought he was different—that he saw beyond the delicacy of her appearance. That he saw her as strong enough to be trusted.

  But of course. He’d taken her a week before, but since that first evening, he’d not spent the night with her again. Instead, he’d made his bed alone in that murderous cold. It was a silent way of pushing her away. He liked her well enough for a few hours, but not enough to trust with his secrets. Not even with something so simple as his sleep.

  He took her hand. “No. This is not about you. You have to understand.”

  But rather than explaining, he stopped again. Kate waited, wishing for patience.

  He let out a breath. “You’re so strong. You can’t imagine.”

  She wanted to pull away from him, wanted to curl about the hurt in herself. Instead, she drew in another measured breath. “I can try.”

  He blew out a breath and shifted uncomfortably. “Sometimes—this thing happens to me.” He seemed to think that description adequate, because he sat slouched in the carriage next to her.

  Heaven save her from uncommunicative men. “Thing is not a very specific word,” she prodded.

  “It’s not a very specific…thing, you understand. I’ve never found words for it. It’s not exactly like madness, you see.”