The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  “Which is?” the prosecutor demanded, following the line of Everstone’s gaze to the gallery. The sight of Margaret’s face, filled with heartfelt emotion, infuriated him.

  “The profit is … all a woman has inside her. As the good book says: ‘Who can put a price on a virtuous woman? Her price is far above rubies.’ And my Margaret is the pearl without price.” His stern expression melted into a tentative smile as he saw Margaret smile lovingly at him. “Told Landon all that when he asked. I said a man is meant to give his wife worldly goods, to share all he has with her. Teaches a fellow generosity and largeness of heart. It’s easy to give to a woman like my Margaret … who gives a lot back.”

  Recognizing the futility of his efforts, the prosecutor yielded to the defense, who had no questions. The justices dismissed Everstone, and the prosecutor asked for a moment to confer with his associates. While they were in conference, Everstone walked up the side aisle to the row where Margaret sat, and extended his hand.

  Margaret rose with tears in her eyes and joined him, placing her hand in his and proudly walking out with him.

  Antonia watched in confusion. Good Lord—the things they were saying! They had taught Remington about cleaving to their wives and sharing their worldly possessions? It was absurd … preposterous …

  She turned to stare at Remington and found him looking at her with a subtle twinkle in his eye. That knowing glint said that he was somehow responsible for their unexpected testimony—if it could rightly be called “testimony.” It was more like a shameless and irresistible bit of wooing, done at great risk, in front of an entire courtroom. By testifying as they had, Woolworth and Everstone had both proclaimed their own willingness to change and addressed openly the problems that lay at the heart of their marriages. And in so doing they had reclaimed their wives.

  She let the surprised pleasure in her heart rise into her eyes as she looked back at Remington. What a deliciously devious man he was. By testifying as they had, they had also reduced the government’s case against Remington. When Remington looked away, she realized the prosecutor was addressing the bench, and came alert.

  “Your honors, we must ask the court’s indulgence to add one more witness to the list. He has not yet been found, but we hope to locate him shortly. There is considerable discrepancy in testimony here, and this witness should help us get to the bottom of it.”

  The justices conferred, then announced they would allow it, providing it did not result in undue delay. “And the name of this witness is?” the chief justice demanded.

  “Rupert Fitch, your honor. He is a news writer for Gaflinger’s Gazette.”

  Antonia froze, thinking of the little wretch lying ill, abed, asleep, on the uppermost floor of her house. What would they do if they couldn’t find him? Would she be breaking the law by not coming forward with him? He was certainly in no condition to testify …

  “Meanwhile, your honors, the Crown calls to witness Mr. Basil Trueblood.”

  With dread settling over her shoulders, she watched Trueblood fend off the prosecutor’s bullying questions about his “ruined” marriage to declare that he, too, had been reluctant to wed, but was now the most content of married men. In marriage, he declared, he had learned a great deal. In spite of the florid-faced prosecutor’s insistence that it was not necessary to tutor the court, Basil forged ahead to enlighten the Queen’s Bench, just as he had his friend, the Earl of Landon. But in truth, his eyes directed every word he spoke, not to the justices but to the pale, slender beauty who sat anxiously in the first row of the gallery, watching with her heart in her eyes.

  “Marriage, you see, is a union, a partnership of two woefully imperfect creatures. But, according to the wisdom of the Divine Plan, when these two flawed and incomplete beings join, a wondrous thing happens … and that thing is called love. And that love grows to cover and then to change those imperfections. And in the course of loving, even the faults, blemishes, and defects of our beloved become dear and precious to us. None of us is perfect, fortunately. For if we were, we would have no need of each other.” His lanky face brightened with a smile formed just for Alice. “And if I have learned anything in my short marriage, it is that my dear wife, Alice, however imperfect, is still perfect for me.”

  Antonia watched Basil claim his weepy bride and escort her out the door. She blinked back the mist in her own eyes and sent Remington a wondering smile.

  The agitated prosecutor, sensing the futility of calling his final two witnesses, rested—with the stipulation that he could reopen his case for the testimony of Rupert Fitch, as soon as the news writer was found.

  The justices, taking note that it was nearly five o’clock, bound over all witnesses and recessed until the following morning. As the spectators filed out of the court, news writers descended upon Antonia and Remington, who had no opportunity to speak to each other. Antonia gave him a last, longing look as she watched him being inundated by ravenous newshounds. Then she went home with her ladies and spent the evening writing Rupert Fitch’s account of the trial.

  The gauntlet outside the Central Criminal Court was even more formidable the next morning. The crowd was larger and included a number of rowdy elements that hadn’t been there the day before: Fabian reformers, trade unionists distributing leaflets, ladies’ temperance-committee members, patent-medicine salesmen hawking their wares, and adolescent boys with leftover Christmas crackers. The air was filled with the clamor of the crowd and the calls of newsboys passing among the crowd with their morning editions.

  TESTIMONY TURNS IN LANDON’S FAVOR!

  That Gaflinger’s headline, written by the incomparable Rupert Fitch, was followed by a subheader reading: “Kingston Gray Brilliant!” The Telegraph’s headline assigned the credit elsewhere:

  ST. PAUL TESTIFIES FOR THE DEFENSE!

  Other papers presented a somewhat more equivocal opinion of how the testimony was running, some quoting Remington, some St. Paul. But it all served to heighten interest in the trial and to make it just that much harder for Antonia and her ladies to fight their way through the crowd into the courthouse and the courtroom.

  Once seated, Antonia looked for Remington and finally spotted him entering through the prisoner’s door. He looked up at her with a warmer and more tactile smile than yesterday, and the sight of it set Antonia’s heart racing. She returned his daring visual caress, pouring all the love in her heart into a brief, dazzling smile.

  In an outlandish move Kingston Gray opened the defense by calling the prosecution’s two unused witnesses. Mr. Bertrand Howard took the stand to testify that Remington Carr had taken him aside after his recent nuptials to give him an excellent bit of advice. And when asked to relate that advice, he fixed his rather squinty gaze on his bride of three months, Camille, and declared: “Marriage is a partnership built upon companionship. It involves the blending of lives, of families, of friends, and of ideals. And such a blending can occur only by the spending of time and effort.” Here he softened remarkably in both voice and demeanor, gazing at his Camille. “But such sweet effort it is, such divine toil … to be ever in your beloved wife’s company, to hear her voice, to see her smile. It is the work of heaven here on earth.” He paused, then added, “The sharing of my hours with my dear wife is the crowning joy of my life.”

  The prosecutor glowered at him on cross-examination.

  “Do you mean to say that Remington Carr, the same man who wrote that marriage is ‘an onerous and inequitable union,’ advised you to view marriage as a partnership? A sharing? A joy?”

  “I meant to say exactly that,” Howard said, looking puzzled. “Did I not do so?”

  Lord Richard Searle took the stand next to testify that his marriage was not, as had been suggested, destroyed. He went on to say that Remington Carr had spoken to him on more than one occasion about the fact that marriage was “a safe haven from the storms and wintry blasts of life and fortune. And my dear wife, Daphne, is the very calm after the storm. She is the mate to my temperament,
an anchor in the gales of my own blustery nature. Marriage, at its best, leads us to grow, to become better men. We strive to improve ourselves”—he stared at his wife in the gallery, with undisguised adoration—“to make ourselves worthy of those to whom we owe our hearts.”

  The prosecutor was so insulted that he just kept his seat and with a furious hand waved away his right to question the witness.

  Antonia watched Howard and Searle reclaiming their wives and looked with pride at the empty seats on the bench. She knew full well who had done the tutoring and who had done the learning. And as she understood that the words came from Remington, she absorbed them into her heart. Marriage was cleaving to the beloved through good and bad times; it was a sharing and a giving that enlarged the heart; it was spending the days and nights of life together; it was changing to accommodate the beloved—growing past prejudices and imperfections.

  She was so filled with her own tumbling, reckless thoughts, that she scarcely heard the next witness being called. Hermione nudged her, and when she looked up, both her aunt and Sir Paddington were staring at her with widened eyes. She frowned, then looked around to find Eleanor, Prudence, Molly, and Gertrude all looking at her with something akin to alarm.

  And then she heard the crier’s voice: “Mrs. Antonia Paxton, present yourself to the court and be sworn in.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The crier called her name once more, before the summons and the shocked faces of her family and friends finally penetrated her disbelief. She was being called as a witness, to speak in Remington’s behalf! She stood up, hearing the clamor of the other spectators and the comments of “She’s the one!” and “They’ve called the widow!” that were flying through the crowd. With her face aflame she made her way down the steps at the side of the gallery.

  When she stepped into the witness box, her knees buckled. She was facing nearly a hundred people—solicitors, barristers, spectators, news writers, and curiosity seekers. And they would hear every word she was forced by her oath to say.

  “Explain to us, please, Mrs. Paxton, how you met the Earl of Landon,” Kingston Gray instructed her. “And what happened between you that night.”

  “We met at the home of a mutual friend,” she said, her voice dry and tight. Gray poured her a glass of water and she gratefully accepted it. Her heart was all but pounding out of her chest as she continued. “And I challenged him to a wager.”

  “Why did you do that, Mrs. Paxton?”

  “Because I believed he needed … a comeuppance.” A furor of excitement broke out at the rear of the gallery.

  This was what the spectators had come to hear: the story of the wicked earl and the virtuous widow!

  “And why did you believe that, Mrs. Paxton?” Gray continued.

  She swallowed hard. Why would he ask such a thing of her? She groaned silently, afraid to look at Remington. “Because I had read some of the things he wrote in magazines and newspapers, and I thought they were horrid.” There was such a reaction in the gallery that she thought it best to explain. “He didn’t seem to think much of marriage or women, and I thought it would be useful to … educate him.”

  “To change his mind about both women and marriage,” Gray clarified, and she nodded. “Tell us, Mrs. Paxton, what was your personal opinion of the earl when you issued that challenge?”

  She blanched. Did he really expect her to answer that? His steady regard said that he did. “I thought he was arrogant, prejudiced, unfair, and”—she swallowed and made herself say it—“callous, narrow-minded, and insufferable.” The reaction in the gallery was immediate, and the justices had to call the bailiffs to enforce order. She looked at Remington again and found his eyes glinting with amusement.

  “Yet this callous, arrogant, and narrow-minded earl accepted your wager, did he not?” Gray continued, when things had quieted. When she answered “Yes,” he looked pleased and continued. “Tell us … what did this wager require?”

  “He was to do an average woman’s work for a fortnight. And if, at the end of that time, he had changed his mind about women’s work and women, he would support the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill. If he had not, then I was to do an average man’s work for a fortnight.” Kingston Gray struck a pose below the witness box.

  “Who won this wager?” he asked.

  “I did. He ceded the wager to me before the two weeks were quite finished.”

  “He ceded the wager … in effect, admitting that he had changed his attitude toward women. And did you believe him?”

  Here at last was a chance to say something positive. “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had seen his work over the course of two weeks, and I believed he had learned a great deal.” She looked at Remington, met his eyes, and saw in them the depth and breadth of the man she had come to know.

  “I had seen him up to his elbows in dishwater. I saw him scrubbing and polishing floors until his knees and hands were raw, and I saw him struggling with a needle and thread, learning to mend linen. I saw him learning to purchase food on a budget, to beat rugs, and even to clean out the necessaries.” There was muffled laughter at that, and she blushed, but did not take her eyes from him. “And I saw him listening to the ladies of my household, learning that women were not dependent, clinging, contriving, or indolent, as he had been wont to perceive them. He learned that women can be trusted, can be resourceful, kind, compassionate, and generous.” She ground to a halt and looked down at her hands on the tall railing before her.

  “Interesting, indeed. Then it would be fair to say that your opinion of him changed also.”

  “I believe so,” she said.

  “Mrs. Paxton,” Kingston Gray said, smiling in such a disarming way that she was caught totally off guard by his next question, “has the Earl of Landon ever proposed marriage to you?”

  She gasped silently. If ever there was a time to faint, this was it. And yet there she stood—with her eyes wide, her knees turning to jelly, and her hands icy inside her gloves—without a vapor in sight!

  “Yes,” she managed to say.

  “How many times?” he said. She glanced at Remington and found him watching her with his eyes luminous and his frame tensed and focused on her. And she suddenly understood—this was to show Remington’s change of heart toward marriage. She took a deep breath and answered as best she could.

  “I haven’t … kept count,” she said.

  “More than once, then?” When she nodded, he continued counting. “More than three times? More than five times?”

  “Perhaps four or five times.” There was a clamor in the gallery and she clung to the railing for support, feeling a bit stunned by her own admission: Remington had proposed marriage to her at least four or five times. And every time he had meant it. Suddenly the questions came fast and furious.

  “And you refused him those four or five times. Why? Was it because you find him loathsome and personally repugnant?”

  “No.”

  “Is it because you find him callous, arrogant, prejudiced, and narrow-minded?”

  “No,” she said, glancing at Remington, wishing with all her heart she could take back those refusals.

  “Was it because you found him greedy or miserly or dishonorable?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Was it because you believed him insincere in his desire to marry you?”

  Her answer was so hushed that everyone in the courtroom leaned forward in their seats to hear. “No.”

  Gray nodded. “Would you please look at the defendant, Mrs. Paxton.” She stiffened and leaned heavily against the railing as she turned to Remington. His dark eyes reached out across the court to touch her and search her response, while his lawyer stopped her heart with a simple question:

  “If he proposed to you here and now, Mrs. Paxton, would you accept?”

  “I object!” The prosecutor was on his feet in a heartbeat, while the courtroom erupted around them. “Your honors—this is an outr
age! The Crown objects to these tawdry theatricals! None of this is relevant to the charges—”

  “But it is entirely relevant to the earl’s defense, your honors!” Kingston Gray intoned in a commanding voice, above the chaos he had unleashed. “The earl’s willingness to marry Mrs. Paxton is proof that he is not and never has been universally opposed to matrimony!”

  Conferring with his associates, the chief justice banged his gavel and declared, “Objection overruled!”

  But when some measure of order was restored, Gray glanced at Remington, then turned back to Antonia, who stood with her eyes lowered and her cheeks crimson and withdrew the question. He rested and took his seat, leaving Antonia in the hands of the hostile prosecutor.

  “Just one question, Mrs. Paxton,” the choleric prosecutor said, spitting out each word. “If you truly believed he had changed his opinions of women and that he was sincere in his proposal … why did you not marry him?”

  Antonia lifted her head and took a deep breath. “For the best reason in the world, sir: because I did not want to be married.”

  “You, a known advocate of marriage and women’s place in the home … did not wish to marry?” He faced the justices to pose his question to them, even as he posed it to Antonia. “Why did you not want to be married?”

  “I believe that is two questions, sir,” she said, thinking frantically for an answer that would not reflect on Remington. And she hit upon a surprising truth, albeit a half truth. “Because I had been a widow for some time and am used to managing my money, my time, and my household as I please. I found the idea of surrendering my considerable property and my right to direct my own affairs intolerable.”