“You think I cannot appear in court because I don’t want to make the effort?” he asked.
“I think you cannot appear because you are too afraid to make the effort. You won’t allow yourself to be less than perfect. It’s a silly fear, really, and I won’t allow it. Not from you. Only someone as blessed as you . . . with your myriad other dashing skills . . . would even consider it. Did you know most poor souls struggle with everything they do? We cannot all be perfect, can we? Not all the time. Sometimes we have to settling for being adequate at one or two endeavors. Sometimes we have to simply stay the course despite our inadequacies and simply say that we’ve turned up to give it a go.”
When he had no answer for this, she went on. “You won’t be surprised to learn that the very skills that aren’t second nature frequently turn out to be the most worth your while. Like finding the courage to marry your wife, perhaps. And protecting your brother-in-law. And defeating the pompous Duke of Ticking at his own game.”
“But how can you know?” asked Beau. “What if I cannot do it?”
“Don’t be absurd. Of course you can do it. I’ve just said you could, and I’m never wrong. It’s another of my gifts. Have you not heard a word? It takes effort. So give it the effort it deserves and then do the best you can. Perhaps you will win, perhaps you will not, but at least you have not run away.”
Beau laughed bitterly. “But this is what I’m trying. I’ve . . . I’ve written this testimony, but what I really want to do is bolt. I am afraid. What if my failure costs me Emma or harms her brother? I cannot eat for this fear. I cannot sleep. I’m only in the street now going over and over the remarks in my head.”
“Oh, lovely! A rehearsal.” The marchioness clapped her hands together. “See, you’re doing the hard work already. But you must allow me to hear these remarks. I am an incredibly diligent critic, and, believe it or not, I have one or two insights about the Duke of Ticking and his family that might prove useful. You’ll have to leave your mangy animal outside, of course. But it shall be worth it. I knew the elder duke—what a lecherous toad of a man he was. I’m so glad you’ve risen to the occasion. After marriage to him, your poor wife has suffered enough.”
Your poor wife has suffered enough.
Beau watched the marchioness’s small, oval profile limp through the fog to her front door, confident that he would follow her.
Your poor wife has suffered enough.
This was certainly true, he realized. Perhaps everything she had said was true. Testifying for her brother suddenly seemed less about Beau’s fear, and Beau’s failure, and Beau’s virulent resentment of the men who would judge him, and entirely about the woman he now realized he loved with all of his heart.
If there was suffering to be done, it was his turn to do it.
The marchioness had just heaved open her own heavy door when Beau admitted himself to her garden and clipped up the steps behind her.
“I must ask, my lady, given the many gifts that come easy in life to us both: what is one of the challenges that you face?”
“Oh,” sighed the marchioness, stumping into her house, “what a silly question, and I cannot believe you cannot see it for yourself. But not everyone notices, I dare say. For better or for worse, I . . . am not tall.”
CHAPTER FORTY
At nine o’clock in the morning of the next day, standing just outside the courtroom that would hear their fate, Emmaline learned that the tribunal of judges would not have time to hear the remarks she had prepared to plead her case for her brother’s freedom. The court docket lagged woefully behind, Mr. Wick told her, a carry-over from an extensive trial the week before. Emmaline and Miss Breedlowe would only speak as part of their expected testimony as witnesses—simple answers to the lawyers’ questions. This, Mr. Wick said, was customary procedure and all the court could permit. There would be no allowance for the additional personal appeal that Emmaline had prepared.
Emmaline had been warned by Mr. Wick to expect this, but tears still clogged her throat when he knelt beside her chair in the hallway and delivered this news. What a bloody waste. She had painstakingly written three heartfelt pages of memorized remarks—barely a quarter hour of the judges’ time—and she was convinced that, despite whatever lie or surprise attack the duke might hurl, this personal appeal would have an impact on their decision. And now they would not hear her.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” said Mr. Wick. “We discussed the probability of this, you’ll remember. It was certainly worth a try, but they were not likely to hear more from any woman than her expected testimony on the stand.”
Emmaline had nodded and wiped away her tears, not wanting Teddy or Jocelyn or Mr. Broom to see her and lose heart. Mr. Wick had worked endless hours to build their defense, and she was confident that he would do everything in his power to serve her brother. Even if he did look nearly as young as Teddy in his white wig and black robe.
“They will be ready for us in about five minutes’ time, my lady,” Mr. Wick went on. “Do you have everything you need? Are you ready?”
Like a fool, Emmaline looked at the doorway to the street once more, checking for Beau. She saw only clerks and parliamentary regulars coming and going. Even if he came, she reminded herself, what good could he possibly do now? He had not practiced the answers to Mr. Wick’s examination. He had not been coached on what to expect from the examination of Ticking’s lawyers. He would not even be here to stand beside her when the verdict was read. She’d awakened to find him gone, with no word. That was proof enough. He’d delivered her brother and vanished. She was on her own with Jocelyn and Mr. Broom. Even Teddy’s old doctor from Liverpool had declined to appear, citing fear of opposing the Duke of Ticking in a court of law. He’d supplied a copy of Teddy’s medical records, which showed no history of violence, but that was all. The few other old friends from Liverpool to whom she reached out refused to come for the same reasons. At least Beau was not alone in his unwillingness to cross a bloody duke, she thought. It would seem that everyone in England was afraid of Ticking but her and Mr. Wick.
At nine thirty, they were ushered inside the small courtroom, a chamber upholstered so thickly with crimson velvet it reminded Emmaline of the inside of a butchered animal. The Duke of Ticking, accompanied by a knot of solicitors, the doctor Jocelyn had seen in the park, and the alleged victim, young Lord Orin, were already seated proudly on the opposite side of the aisle. Behind him sat a row of blue-coated officers from Bow Street. The duke glanced scornfully at Emma when she entered, and then away. Less regard, she thought, than he would pay a servant.
Before the tribunal of judges entered the chamber, Emmaline leaned to Mr. Wick and whispered, “How long has the duke been in the courtroom? I did not see him arrive.”
“Oh, he’s only just come,” said Mr. Wick. “Because he’s a member of the House of Lords, he and his party may come and go by way of a private door”—he pointed to a small door at the side of the room—“without using the public hallway.”
Emmaline absorbed this, allowing herself the tiniest bit of early panic. What a buffoon Ticking had seemed to her until now. He’d been oblivious, all those months, to the elaborate plans she had concocted, with very little effort, from her father’s old dream. But also, he’d been effectively penniless, as had been his father before him. Meanwhile, Emmaline had sailed into the ducal household with finer clothes and jewelry, with better-dressed servants, and a generally grander way of life. Her dowry had paid their debts and restored their property and bought beef for supper. She’d actually felt a little sorry for them before she had known better.
But not now.
Now she knew the duke’s influence bought so much more than her father’s money ever had. Emmaline looked around. Now all she had was an untried lawyer, a female caretaker, and an old valet. And the side of right.
With only these and a quick prayer, Emmaline followed the bailiff’s call to order and took up Teddy’s hand, trying to keep calm and positive for his sake.
The court proceedings went along much as Mr. Wick had explained to her. The duke’s solicitors made their case by calling witnesses, including young Lord Orin, whose claim was that Teddy had chased him around the room with the fireplace poker and then tackled him, hauled him to the kitchen, and shoved him, bodily, into the cold oven and threatened to cook him. In doing so, he had gouged his right eye.
When Emmaline thought of the hours that she and Mr. Wick had devoted to speculation about what, exactly, the details of the attack might be, she wanted to laugh. Never in a million years could they have dreamed up this. She had trouble schooling the expression on her face to hide how incredibly bizarre—and false—the notion sounded.
But Ticking’s legal team sallied forth with officers who testified to signs of struggle near the oven, to gashes in the wall from fireplace poker blows that landed in the plaster instead of on Orin’s entirely unharmed body. Dr. Vickery spoke at length about the lifetime he had studied ailments such as Teddy’s, wherein madness lurked, inert, inside the unpredictably placid brain of a simpleton, only to erupt without warning and pose grave danger to unsuspecting family members and an able-minded general public.
After that, it was Mr. Wick’s turn, and he called Emmaline, Jocelyn, and Mr. Broom before the judges. Although she would not be allowed to appeal to the tribunal with her memorized remarks, they would hear her answers to Mr. Wick’s examination and the cross-examination of the duke’s lawyers. She was determined to convey as much conviction and truth into her answers as possible.
Despite his inexperience, Mr. Wick skillfully established the timeline of her and Teddy’s departure from the Duke of Ticking’s house for good, which left no window of opportunity for this fire poker and oven assault. He further described Teddy’s calm and nonviolent general nature, his history of good health, and glaring lack of previous conflict.
Teddy took the stand for Mr. Wick a mere five minutes. And when the duke’s solicitors cross-examined him, he sat silently in his chair and did not speak. But he was not violent, and he was not aggressive, and he looked rather pitiful, in fact, slumped in the seat, hammered by questions that he did not understand. Throughout it all, he looked at Emmaline, and she smiled and nodded back encouragingly with tears in her eyes.
After the expected questions from cross-examinations and a closing argument by both sides, Emmaline studied the faces of the judges, trying to guess how they might rule. Before they could adjourn, one of the duke’s solicitors stood up across the aisle.
“I beg your pardon, my lords,” said the man. “If it pleases your lordships and this court, His Grace the Duke of Ticking would like to impart a brief personal account of his experience with the accused and his history with the boy’s family, including his former stepmother, Emmaline Courtland, nee Crumbley, nee Holt.” This progression of names, blatantly devoid of Emmaline’s two titles, was said with equal notes of tedium and accusation.
Emmaline spun in her seat, looking at Mr. Wick. The young solicitor leapt up to object, citing the judge’s denial of Emmaline’s request for the same opportunity.
But Mr. Wick was overruled with no explanation, and the Duke of Ticking was invited to take the stand.
The diatribe that followed was almost too much for Emmaline to bear. Indeed, Jocelyn extended a cool hand and laid it gently on Emmaline’s wrist to keep her from leaping up and shouting, liar! Beside her, Mr. Wick scribbled furious notes, hoping for a rebuttal, but Emmaline knew that no such fairness would come. This was Ticking’s parting shot, designed to overshadow all of the fictional (and, in fact, outrageous) evidence, the vague testimonies, and the odious doctor. It was a show of his most princely, most erudite, most arrogant-yet-gracious self; an effort to demonstrate a distinct line between them—meaning her merchant family, her father’s salacious books, and her brother’s propensity for unaccountable violence and her mercenary marriages—and us. The dukes. Their fragile ducal sons. The ancient families. The established. The moral. The educated. The reasonable. The good.
When he was finished, he thanked the judges, he thanked the Commission for Lunacy Care, he thanked the brave Runners of Bow Street, and he thanked God. And then he sat proudly down and closed his eyes as if in prayer.
Emmaline watched this performance, blinked twice, and then drew breath to say something . . . anything . . . to counter the slander and injustice of it all. Jocelyn’s hand on her wrist increased in pressure. Mr. Wick snapped his head to her, his pleading eyes wide—do not say a word—but she did not care. Some fair and equal opposition must be said.
“I beg your pardon, my lords,” said a voice from the doorway. The secret, special doorway, just for peers of the realm.
Emmaline closed her mouth. She went completely still in her velvety red seat. Her heart, formerly beating like a wild, maddened thing, missed two beats and hung, suspended in her chest.
Emmaline knew that voice.
Emmaline loved that voice.
She spun in her chair, staring, mouth agape, at her husband.
“Many apologies for my tardiness,” said Beau Courtland from the private door. “I was detained by matter of national commerce. I’m in the process of exporting a shipment of English literature to America, and this trade embargo with President Jefferson has me running half-mad.”
This what with whom has him doing what? thought Emmaline.
Emmaline felt as if she’d been magically transported to another courtroom where someone else had prepared night and day for the hearing on which her brother’s very life hinged, and strangers that she did not know enacted all the parts.
The bailiff trotted over to Beau, they whispered an exchange, and then the bailiff intoned, “The Viscount Rainsleigh.”
The judges exchanged whispers and motioned him forth. Beau strode confidently to the desk behind which Emmaline and Teddy and Mr. Wick were seated, and he leaned down and whispered a few words to Mr. Wick.
The solicitor had the courtesy to cast an alarmed, defensive look to Emmaline, but then he cleared his throat and addressed the judges, asking if they might hear Lord Rainsleigh’s remarks in defense of his brother-in-law, Theodore Holt, in the same way they had entertained the Duke of Ticking’s.
Emmaline was so shocked by his very presence she forgot to be shocked that the judges allowed it.
She gaped at her husband, who looked so tall and impeccably dressed in a dark suit and gloves, with a proper hat tucked beneath his arm. She had never seen him so well turned out, even for their wedding. He was cleanly shaven, with his hair stylishly slicked back. A creamy cravat billowed almost to his jawline.
In the moment before he turned and took the stand, she stopped looking at his person and stared him in the eye. He paused, looking back, and she realized he was waiting for her to look at him.
He could not speak to her, of course, but she could discern the meaning with his eyes. She read contrition, and fear, and love, plain as day, in their blue depths.
She blinked twice, trying to understand the jumble of emotions so clearly identified in that look, and he raised one perfect eyebrow. She was suddenly shot through with the same damnable reaction she always had whenever he raised his eyebrow at her: hopefulness, and love, and toe-curling thrill.
But now he was taking his place before the judges, setting down his hat, pulling off his gloves. Emmaline watched him closely, and she wondered if anyone else could see his hands shake. Or the small muscle twitch in his jaw. But when she looked in his eyes, she saw only blue-eyed charm come to life.
No, she decided, no one knew. But she knew, and the bitterness and frustration that had banded around her heart these last two weeks began to loosen, thread by thread, as he surpassed his fear in front of all of these people.
“My lords,” Beau said, “I extend my gratitude to you for permission to testify out of turn. Your time, I know is, precious, and a young man’s life will be forever changed by the decisions you make here today.
“If you would indulge me, I should
like to begin by telling you the brief story of the way I came to know my lady wife and her brother. My own family, quite at their wit’s end, introduced us with the hope of my personal improvement. I had newly inherited, and, as a second son who never imagined he’d see the title or lands on his shoulders, I was in dire need of refinement. The mean habits on which I skated along as an officer in the Royal Navy would never do in London society, you see. And so my brother actually charged Lady Rainsleigh—then the Dowager Duchess of Ticking—with refining my pathetic manners. Lady Rainsleigh, who was raised the daughter of one of Liverpool’s finest families and herself a dowager duchess, was the perfect candidate to school me. She volunteered in the charity pursuits of my sister-in-law, you see, and under the hopeful eyes of my brother and his wife, Lady Rainsleigh rose to the challenge of taking me in hand.”
A ripple of laughter followed this statement. Emmaline looked around the room in disbelief.
“At the time, I was a confirmed bachelor, focused on renovating my boat and looking in on the viscountcy if I had the time. But Emmaline . . . Emmaline’s natural beauty and charm was difficult to resist. My interest in refinement began to rise with amazing speed.” Another chuckle. “Before long, we exhausted my ability to learn any more on the topic of good manners, and I was forced to show my hand. She was nearly two years gone in mourning her late husband by this time, and I began to court her. The courtship was not a long one, I’ll be the first to admit. When we realized the fervor of our attraction, I knew at once we must wed. I obtained a special license and married her earlier this month at a little church in Watford, with her brother and my family looking on. She is . . . ”
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