by Baird Wells
A smug smile. “I am always digging, Reed. Always digging.”
Exasperated, Spencer leaned against the seat-back. “Then why not just say so?”
“Because I was curious to see how doggedly you'd guard her secret.”
“To my grave,” he ground out. “If Lawrence or the jury discovers the truth, they'll throw the whole case out on principle. Who’s going to defend a scandalous American light skirt?”
Ethan patted his shoulder and stood up. “Good man. Be certain you keep that locked in the vault,” he said, turning to leave.
“Ethan.”
He turned. “Yes, Spencer?”
Ethan’s steadfast, sleepless assistance had a been a bulwark against a storm. “Thank you. For everything you’ve done,” he said, looking up at Ethan. “I felt so confident, when I came to testify. Since, matters have been … Your help, your friendship, will not be forgotten.”
Ethan smiled. “I have been told that my interference is sometimes a two-edged sword. By the by, your lady has sent a letter. Arrived by courier late this morning.”
Spencer stood and grabbed his hat. “How do you know that I received a letter from Alexandra?”
“I am always digging, Reed.” Ethan grinned and swept a hand toward the doors. “Always digging.”
* * *
Bennet greeted him at the door, Alexandra’s letter in hand. “You’re earlier than I expected; has something been decided?”
Spencer passed his coat off to the butler and wished again that he had at least brought Huston down from Oakvale. The man had been a keen reader of his moods and wishes for nearly two decades, unlike the stiff help he’d found in town. “No. In fact, things are looking rather grim. Paulina’s counsel has pulled such sleight of hand that I’m not certain the judge knows where to look half of the time.”
Bennet snorted. “Bunch of powdered prigs.”
He claimed the letter and ducked into a room on their right, a study he shared with his brother while they were in London. A fire had been lit, and the card table was made up with scotch and glasses. Bennet claimed the right hand chair, as usual, and Spencer fell with him in unison to the other, tearing open Alexandra’s letter.
My Darling Reed,
I have received encouragement from Laurel to write you regarding your letter of the twenty-sixth, which I did not see, but in which she was good enough to say that you had asked after me.
You alone have brought me through my darkness; let me now bring you through yours. However matters are settled in London (John says the case against P. is not so simple), you have won. By fighting for me, you have already won. Come to me at the first moment you are able; my life cannot begin until you are here.
Yours,
Alexandra
Ps. Give my affection to Bennet, and no teasing. Don’t be cruel and tell him I did not think of him.
Spencer skimmed the few beautiful lines and committed every word to memory.
Bennet poured, then craned his neck, first over the top of the page and then left to right while Spencer held the it away.
“What does it say?” demanded Bennet, still leaning for a glimpse and managing his drink.
“Nothing for your eyes, whelp. Keep at bay.”
“Did she mention me?”
“No.” He sighed. “Yes.”
He braced for Bennet’s inevitable jest, but received a thoughtful nod instead. “There’s nothing I can do for Grayfield, now. Or you. I’m thinking of going up tomorrow, to be with her until you’ve settled things here,” said Bennet.
Spencer was surprised and touched. Not that he would share that information; he’d never hear the end of it. “You? Give up town for the hinterlands?”
Bennet crossed his arms. “For you, for Alexandra, is it even a question?”
Spencer tousled his brother’s hair, then pulled him in and pecked his forehead. “You’ve come out all right, you sodding brat.”
That won a smug smile. “So I have, mostly.”
Something occurred to Spencer. “What do you mean, nothing you can do for Grayfield?”
Bennet got up, shaking his head. “Can’t discuss it.”
“What is it?”
“Can’t discuss it,” he repeated, leaning in to fill his glass one last time with a wink. “Grayfield’s orders.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Broadmoore -- October 1st, 1814
“I'm all right!” Alix shouted again, kicking the chamber pot farther behind her dressing screen. She threw open the casement as she passed, praying crisp October air would hide the smell.
Laurel's winged brows were pulled into a deep vee when Alix opened the door, fixing herself in the middle of the frame while Laurel raised on tip toes, dodging left and right to see past her.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Resting,” she lied. “Just resting.”
In an uncharacteristic move for a woman so petite and pregnant, Laurel threw her weight forward, bumped Alix out of her way and strode in. “Ugh!” A handkerchief was scrambled to her face. “Alix, you're ill!”
“Bad food, a fall cold. It's nothing. It will pass,” she murmured, humiliated.
Laurel's narrow eyes said she didn’t believe a word of it. “You come up to your room countless times a day.”
“Because I like to be alone! I live for the moments when boredom and mindlessness overtake me to the point my body will do nothing but sleep.” Now that she was started, she couldn’t stop, the words pouring out in a torrent of bottled anger and pain. “The moments that let me forget that my brother's wife did worse than try to murder me, while he stood idly by.” She inhaled, opened her mouth again. Before she could continue, her guts lurched out a warning, sending her dashing behind the screen.
When the wave finally passed, Alix fell onto her backside and leaned her head against the wall. With no small amount of effort, Laurel sat next to her and smoothed a cool hand over her forehead. “How many days?”
“Not the first day that I remember coming to, but every day since. My stomach hurts all the time. I tolerate food one meal, and then I don't the next. Tea tastes like poison, bitter metal. Maybe that is how Paulina fed it to me.”
Laurel looked stricken, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. “I think we should send for Doctor Ashby. Perhaps whatever Paulina gave you is still affecting your body. There might be something he can do, recommend.”
Alix tried breathing through her panic, refusing to accept that things were so dire, needing to believe that she was getting better. At least, she’d tried to, up to this point. But as the sickness continued, her will had worn down. In the face of everything Paulina had used to drug her, who was to say there weren't poisons in the mix? Not accepting did not make it go away.
Another cramp gripped her belly, and she nodded at Laurel's anxious stare.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Old Bailey, London -- October 3rd, 1814
Spencer sat alone among the others in the gallery, Bennet having gone to Broadmoore and Ethan moving from tardy to absent with each passing minute. He jerked out his watch and checked it again, not encouraged by its answer.
His eyes fell again and again in the dim light to Paulina, standing with other prisoners in the dock and conspicuous by her well-kempt hair and clean clothes. Prisoners with money were afforded better accommodations within Newgate’s cells than their destitute counterparts. But she had come in by the same door as the toothless pickpocket beside her, and when her trial was over, he hoped to see her leave by the same way.
Now and then one lawyer traded places with another. The jury grumbled and tipped their powdered heads to one another; a clerk flitted from a podium to the bench and back. A gavel banged, a sentence was bellowed out, and without fail the next prisoner along the line buried her face in her hands.
Judge Symonds was not swayed by any of their pleas; false accusations, children, a promise to change. Not even claims of pregnancy spared the women who pleaded the fullness o
f their bellies; it only delayed the inevitable.
And then there was Paulina. Symonds had been conspicuously hesitant where Mrs. Paton was concerned, which was strange for a man who had sent a twelve-year-old girl to the gallows for thieving. Watching Symonds and Paulina now, Spencer’s confidence reached an all-time low. Symonds looked bored, and Paulina unconcerned.
When it was her turn, Lawrence stepped in front of the bench, swishing his black frock and preening, patting his wig and engineering the moment for maximum tension. He hung his narrow head, an already small frame dwarfed by the courtroom’s towering architecture. Then he swept an arm at Paulina in a crescendo of silence. “Your honor…” he drawled, words pulled long by a weariness that, his tone asserted, must be felt by His Honor, too. “We have explored the case against Mrs. Paton to an exhausting degree and –”
A bang like a pistol shot echoed through the room, cutting his words off. Spencer ducked, and raised a hand to shield his face in reflex.
Lawrence flinched too, and ducked where he stood. A woman screamed in the gallery above.
A murmur spread through the gallery like wildfire. Spencer traced its origin, and turned to find both of the courtroom’s high, narrow panel doors standing open, having been thrown wide with such violence that they’d crashed against the wall.
Grayfield’s long figure, from polished hat to boots, cut the opening in two. Ethan didn’t enjoy orchestration, and as a matter of course he did not enjoy attention, Spencer knew as a fact.
However, he very much enjoyed making a point. Spencer recognized, by a lift of Ethan’s chin and an unconcerned set to his shoulders, that he was doing just that.
“Really!” shouted Lawrence, still half-crouched and rightly looking intimidated. “Who allowed this interruption? This affront to justice?”
“Lord Grayfield,” boomed Symonds from on high, “I must agree with the honorable Mister Lawrence. Even a man so venerable as yourself cannot be allowed such theatrics, not in my courtroom.”
Ethan removed his hat, bowed, and took four lazy strides into the courtroom, each movement an obscene reply to Symond’s objection. He took his time, reaching into his coat for papers which might have been in his hand all the while, then dusted his lapel and indulged a few more steps.
The murmuring around Spencer had quieted to whispers which now spread wildly in every direction. He craned his neck, along with everyone else, to get a good look at what Ethan was about, the clever bastard.
“I come,” Ethan paused and raised his papers, “on Crown authority, and under the auspices of the Whitehall office.”
Lawrence held frozen near the dock, and Symonds shifted his corpulent frame against his high back chair. “To what end?”
Ethan paused just long enough for the tension to build to a palpable level. “Your honor has been the victim of a scheme.”
Excited whispers. A woman behind Spencer gasped.
“And the defendant Mrs. Paton has perpetrated it cleverly,” he continued, turning to address all assembled. “So cleverly that I say with absolute confidence that your honor has been living in fear for some days now.”
The look on Symonds face assured that no such thing had been occurring, but his silence told Spencer that Ethan knew as much, and that he was on to something more.
“Mrs. Paton has blackmailed you, and perhaps even Mister Lawrence here, as both of you are shareholders in her father’s shipping company. No doubt these are the means by which she has manipulated you.”
Understanding dawned in him cold and sudden like a douse of water. Symonds and Lawrence owned stock in Van der Verre, but they were not victims. They had made an arrangement with Paulina, and perhaps Silas himself, to pad their pockets and allow Paulina to go free.
Ethan strode toward the bench now with purpose, waving his perfectly creased packet of documents. “What she did not share with you is that the shares she’s offered in order to buy your silence are not hers to give away. They were purchased months ago by an A. Rowan.” He held the papers out for Symonds to inspect, and the man’s face blanched more and more with each turn of the page.
Knowing Ethan as he did, and now appreciating Bennet’s remark about aiding him, Spencer guessed there was more in the packet than a simple matter of shares.
“No,” murmured Paulina, stiff save for a shaking head. “No, no. This cannot be.”
Ethan rocked up onto his toes, pointing out one of the pages for Symonds. “Pardons for you both have been secured. Your good names will not be tarnished by this unfortunate scheme.”
Symonds wrestled his weight up from the chair, hand pressed to his ample chest. He sagged with enough relief that he might have been on stage, and then raised a hand to the heavens.
“I have lived as a prisoner, lo these many days, suffering as much under the machinations of that woman,” he wagged a trembling finger at Paulina, whose throat worked like a piston, “as those whose suffering brought her unto Newgate. To be unburdened at last…” He clutched a meaty fist at Ethan, and then dabbed his eyes, “I cannot express to you, Lord Grayfield, my unabating gratitude.”
“Oh,” drawled Ethan, turning away from the bench, “It was my pleasure.” Ethan held for maximum effect and made a bow to each juror and counselor in turn. He raised his hat to Paulina in passing and planted it atop his head.
Spencer caught a wink thrown his way and then, as Ethan passed beyond the courtroom doors, pandemonium erupted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Newgate Prison, Old Bailey Street -- Evening, October 3rd, 1814
Bit by rain falling outside the protection of the Newgate Prison’s high stone arch, Spencer stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Ethan at the crest of a surging crowd. The shouts at their backs were deafening, men and women crying out in condemnation or simply making noises of contempt. Old and new sweat, stale booze, and tobacco wafted up in an invisible haze, adding to the general seediness.
Waving fists behind him toppled his hat to the scaffold's base for a third time, and Spencer ducked to claim it. When he stood, Ethan was blandly sweeping cabbage from the sleeve of his navy greatcoat. “Like Prussian artillery,” he muttered beneath the roar, raising a brow meaningfully at Spencer. They had already been pelted countless times by produce and worse under the frenzied aim of a bloodthirsty mob.
“Why?” Spencer jammed an elbow behind him, knocking back a toothless loudmouth he had practically worn for the last quarter hour.
“Why what?”
“Why would you wear a Weston to the Newgate gallows?” Spencer narrowed his eyes. “Is this Major Burrell's doing?”
“Major Burrell cuts a smart figure as far as the ladies are concerned. I don't know that I'd mock him so freely. Besides,” Ethan patted down his double row of silver buttons, “my wife likes me in this coat. A great deal, as it happens.”
Spencer opened his mouth for a retort, but stopped as he caught a hush falling over the crowd.
The Bailey's iron gate swung open. Two blue-uniformed constables filed out ahead of a gaunt, wild eyed minister who was bald in a patchy way that made Spencer wonder if the man had plucked his hair from nerves just before making his exit.
He was right to look afraid. Spencer estimated a good wind would snap the man in half inside his dumpy black cassock, which was half what the crowd would do if a riot ensued. It was a real possibility tonight, judging by a thrum of hysteria that pulsed from over his shoulder.
Despite a damp sting of a stormy October night, hundreds had turned out for the hanging. Three at once, that was something by itself, but a woman, too? No wag-tongue fishwife would miss such a rare spectacle. Yet, despite showing up for the event, a good many were missing it. The crowd stretched as far as the eye could see down both sides of Old Bailey, filling a wide cobblestone square at one corner, where it met with Newgate Prison. Wet stone walls boxed them in on every side of the square. Poor rowhouses across from the massive institution were used for coin and entertainment. Families hung from windows and clever la
ndlords had let their roofs for a modest fee, but not every spectator who wanted a closer look was going to get it.
This had traditionally led to arguing, and more than a few colorful insults scented with beer. Onlookers took sides, even when they were strangers to the fighting parties. Someone threw a rock, another a fist, and then a brawl would spread like a barn fire all the way to Ludgate Hill.
Spencer braced at the idea, eyeing a thin number of constables present to address such a riot, and raised his hat to the passing minister who managed a weak nod. Poor bastard.
The two men shuffled out next, arms bound by thick ropes behind their backs. Adams was the tall, greasy-haired one, his horse face as marked by the pox as an 'R' branding his left and right cheeks. Two rapes in Spencer's estimation was two too many, and still there were more he claimed as victims. He had heard the accusations against Adams in the dock, waiting for Paulina to be brought out the first time. Faceless voices in the crowd around him now shouted names of other women. Two men waved kitchen knives calling eagerly for the man's bollocks. Spencer wished them success; Adams’ final victim had been a child.
The second man Spencer knew nothing about, except that he was leering, portly, and in a few minutes he would be half an inch longer than he was now. That was all he cared to know.
Beside him Ethan tensed and braced him with a shoulder. Now it was Paulina's turn. The crowd behind them positively crackled with tension.
In different circumstances, he would have laughed when she stepped out into the street. Her ruff-necked brown satin dress was the height of fashion, and her matching cap pinned to a mound of gold curls that would have done for a ball.
“Long live the queen!” someone shouted. It echoed through the crowd, followed by cheering and guffaws as she was marched along. She stabbed them all with haughty glances, pausing when she passed him. “How does it feel to hang a woman?” she hissed.
“No less satisfying than if you were a man.” No pleasure or joy, nothing more than a settling of accounts. Paulina was here to pay as owed, and he would bear witness to see that it occurred. Together with Ethan they tipped their hats in unison. There was more to say on her twisted lips, but before she could open her mouth a guard prodded her, sputtering, on towards the steps.