by Jenny Brown
“She’s gone, Your Lordship. You’re too late. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I am only the constable and it’s not my place to tell His Honor how to conduct his business.”
His blood ran cold. “What are you talking about, man?”
“His Honor’s servant came and took the woman away with him for questioning.”
“Now? But it’s almost night!”
The man shifted from foot to foot. “Such is the custom when they have a woman accused of that kind of crime,” he muttered. “The magistrate likes to question them in private. In the nighttime, if you get my meaning.”
So Mrs. Atwater’s suspicion had been true! He tried not to let his panic show.
“But where does he take them? I have just come from the magistrate’s house. I had an order for the woman’s release, but they told me he was not there!”
“Aye. They wouldn’t be at his house,” Cuthbertson said with a meaningful look. “But I don’t know as that I can tell you where it is they go.”
Edward pulled out a fistful of golden coins and held it out to him, saying, “Don’t waste my time, man. I know you can be bought. Tell me where she is. If you won’t tell me, I’ll shake it out of you.”
Cowed by his fury, the man made no effort to negotiate but merely said, “Calm yourself, Your Lordship, calm yourself. I always like to help a gent in trouble. They are most likely in a little room at the back of the old town hall. That’s where he goes when there’s a woman to be examined.”
“How long ago did they take her?”
“It could not be more than half an hour.”
Thank God it was not longer than that. Perhaps there was still time to save her. He tossed a sovereign toward the man contemptuously, letting it fall onto the street, and then turned away from him without another word.
It was almost dark by the time he reached the market square. The rambling half-timbered town hall stretched along one side of the cobblestoned marketplace. He looked up at the windows looking for a sign that someone was there, but they were all dark. He tried the door, found it locked, and pounded on the heavy oak timbers, but no one came to open it.
Perhaps the constable was wrong? Perhaps this was not where Eliza had been taken? The light was tricky as the long summer twilight still lingered. It would be hard to see the flicker of a dim candle shining from inside. He went around to the side of the building where the shadows might make it easier to detect light coming from inside.
Yes. There was a flicker in an upstairs window. Someone was there. The man had told him the truth.
He ran back to the front of the building and pounded on the door again, but again no one answered. It was hardly likely they would interrupt themselves if they were up to the kind of mischief the constable had suggested.
If he could just somehow get in and speak to the magistrate. The man would be forced to release Eliza once presented with the paper his mother had signed. He could hardly ignore it. But if the magistrate had taken Eliza for illicit purposes of his own, he would not wish to be detected.
Edward pounded on the door again, though by now he expected no answer. He thought of smashing in a window but dismissed the idea. He would hardly do Eliza’s cause any good by breaking the law himself. And if he were to burst in on the magistrate and find him in a compromising situation—he forced his thoughts away from the image; it was too painful to think of Eliza that way.
There must be some way to rescue her. Something that wasn’t illegal. He had military training. Surely there must be some strategy he’d learned that would solve this problem.
Think, Edward, he told himself, think! He went deep within himself, forcing his mind to become calm, cleared of everything except the need to come up with a solution, just as he had done during the war when he and his men had been lost in the Spanish swamp. He remembered feeling the same stillness, as if time slowed down, and the sudden clarity that had shown him the way out. He focused on Eliza, opening himself to her and feeling her love, until, it was as if he could hear her voice within him, calling out to him, telling him that the answer lay in himself, in being true to his own Uranian nature.
Despite his distress, he almost laughed, realizing that the way Eliza used that astrological imagery of hers was such a part of her nature that even in a crisis he could not imagine her without it. His Uranian nature indeed! He could barely even remember what she had meant by “Uranian.” What was it? Something to do with surprises. That was part of it. And new things. He tried to remember what else she had said to him, and recalled her laughing at what she called his explosive Uranian nature—
And with that thought he realized that he had found his answer.
It was so very simple. It would have to work. He turned away and rushed back toward his mother’s house. He had no time to lose, but if he could act quickly Eliza could still be saved.
Chapter 21
The prisoner will answer the questions put JL to her by the court!” The voice was harsh and the words slurred.
Eliza stood in the center of the room, in front of a plain oak table, her hands bound together by a rope. A man wearing a solicitor’s wig and robe sat on a bench before her, clearly much gone in his cups, while the magistrate, who was dressed in a long black gown and barrister’s wig, stood before her demanding that she answer his questions.
But the questions were obscene.
Eliza stood silent, unwilling to show the fear that the men had aroused in her, unable to understand how they could act this way. She was afraid to guess where their drunken interrogation was going and more afraid that she already knew.
It had all started earlier, just as night had begun to fall. She had been resting in her cell, unable to get Edward’s offer of marriage out of her mind, fighting against the treacherous urges that made her regret having to refuse it, and loving him all the more for having made it to her—as impossible as it must be for her to accept it—when she had heard her gaoler and another man joking rudely in the hallway. The two of them had laughed raucously at something and then unlatched her door. Once it was open, the new man, a well-muscled brute who smelled of onions and weeks without a washing, had smiled suggestively and said that he hoped she was not tired as she’d have a busy night ahead of her, his arms making a vulgar gesture as he spoke.
Eliza could not help but shudder at such crudeness, but their crudeness was only a dim foretaste of what awaited her when the brute delivered her to the back room in the town hall.
She had recognized the magistrate immediately. He was the man who had presided over her arrest—the man who had sat beside Lady Hartwood at her dinner party. At first she’d felt relief when she recognized him. Surely his presence meant she had indeed been called in for more interrogation and nothing worse. But then his companion had come over to inspect her, his wig askew, his breath heavy with the smell of alcohol.
“I say, Brillingsworth, you’ve outdone yourself this time, by Gad! You’ve brought us Hartwood’s fancy piece. It will be a treat to examine such a specimen. The man is famed as a connoisseur of the frailer sex.” The man’s eyes raked over her body, making her feel as if she had already been stripped. “I say, let us proceed at once to the examination of the physical evidence.” The man was slavering in anticipation.
“Control yourself, Stenbury,” the magistrate admonished. “We’ll get to that in good time. But we must follow the proper protocols. Procedure must be followed in all things, as surely a judge like yourself should know. First we must have the questioning of the prisoner. Then we may move on to the examination of the physical evidence.”
She had never imagined that respectable men could do such a thing. What little she knew of depravity, she knew from the novels she had read. But the novelists who wrote the books she had read were writing for polite readers and their imaginations had not been equal to a scene like this. And of course, in books, the heroine was protected. There was always some rescue. The hero would burst in and save the girl. But this was real. And real
life, she’d learned, was where rescue did not come. Real life was her father losing every penny she’d given him and then demanding more. Real life was Edward regretting the mischief he had done her, declaring his love, and leaving her behind in the cell unprotected. And real life, too, was what she saw lending an anticipatory sparkle to the bleary eyes of the drunken men before her. And knowing that, she felt sheer, unalloyed terror. She was alone and helpless. Nothing could save her but her wits. And at the moment her wits were completely addled.
“Objection sustained, Y’r Ludship,” the other man replied with a drunken smirk. “Let us move without delay to the questioning.”
“Eliza Farrell,” the man intoned, “you are here on a charge of lewdness. You must answer all questions to the best of your ability, being completely truthful in all things. If you lie, it will go hard with you.” The man coughed and then continued. “You are known to have associated with Edward Neville, Lord Hartwood, a man known for his lascivious life. Is that not true?”
Eliza said nothing.
“What kind of a cocksman is Lord Hartwood?” the magistrate interrupted. “Is it true as I have heard, that the women like him because he has a rod of prodigious length?”
Eliza again was rendered speechless, but the way that the man referred to Edward infuriated her. “Lord Hartwood is a decent man. Unlike you,” she said through clenched teeth. “And his sexual abilities can be of no interest to the law.”
“The prisoner will answer the questions!” the magistrate snapped. “How old were you when first you had sexual congress with a man?”
Eliza said nothing.
The other man made some adjustment to his pants, loosening them and sliding a hand inside. “How many men have you had in one night?” he asked.
“How many men have you served at a single time?” cried the magistrate.
“Have you ever taken on two men at once?” the other man demanded. His eyes glittered with anticipation. “There is no point in playing the innocent with us. We know what you are and are well able to appreciate your talents. Surely you won’t begrudge us our bit of fun when you’ve given plenty of it to other men! Or do you like to have the truth tormented out of you? That could be interesting, too, though I had not thought that such was Hartwood’s taste.”
Eliza stared at them. This was true corruption and profligacy. Yet it was Edward who had earned the reputation as a rake, not these men who held respected offices. She felt a pang as she remembered Edward’s kindness, the care he had taken to lead her to pleasure on that one night they had shared together. The world called him a libertine—a world that ignored the hidden perversity of the men who held her here, pillars of the community, entrusted with the administration of the law. No wonder Edward was filled with rage at the world’s hypocrisy.
A wave of tenderness swept over her as she recalled the warmth Edward had kept so well hidden from everyone but herself. But she must not waste her energy on futile longings. She must think of some way to save herself. But her mind was frozen, and when she tried to silence it and sink deep down to the place where answers came from, all she saw was Edward Neville’s face. All she heard was his voice, begging her to trust him, promising her everything would be all right.
As if Edward Neville could save her! As if anyone could.
“We shall have no sport at this rate,” the other man complained. “The woman acts like a mute and will tell us nothing.”
“Nay, there is sport still to be had of her,” said the magistrate. “Proceed to the physical examination of the evidence.” The other man murmured his agreement, and the magistrate lunged toward her, lifting her up and pushing her down on the table. She struggled fiercely despite the ropes that bound her hands but she could do nothing.
“Hear, hear,” the other man agreed. “We must do something about those legs, the woman kicks!” Her skirt was pushed aside and she felt a rope wrapped around her left ankle and then pulled tight as it was secured to one leg of the table beneath her. The magistrate grabbed at her right ankle and arms and repeated the procedure.
“She won’t fight us any longer,” he said, and it was true. She had fought all she could, but it had been useless. Now she numbed herself to endure what she must. The struggle was over.
Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of crackling explosions. A lurid glow lit the room. The light from the window flickered orange and gold.
“I say, Brillingsworth, what’s that?”
Eliza swam back into consciousness to realize that the men had rushed over to the window.
One of them pried a pane open and the room was filled with an acrid smell. Thick smoke billowed into the room.
“Gunpowder! There’s some disturbance in the square!”
There were more explosions.
“Gunshots!” the magistrate shouted. “Radicals! By God. We are under attack!”
“They’ve set the building on fire,” the other man exclaimed. Then a look of terror crossed his face. “There’s no time to spare. The militia stores its black powder in the basement. We must make haste before the fire gets to it or we shall all be blown sky-high.”
The men rushed to the door. She could hear their footsteps clattering on the stone stairs, then nothing. They were gone. But what little consolation that might give her was undone by the knowledge that they had not stopped to untie her before they left.
The smell of acrid smoke was getting stronger. She tugged against the ropes that held her hands and feet, but it was futile. She could not move. She could do nothing but lie tied to the table helplessly awaiting the final explosion.
How many seconds of life remained to her? Ten? Five? Soon she would know beyond a doubt what lay on the other side of death. She tried to pray in this, her last moment, but again she was tormented by the thought of Edward Neville. Instead of the peace she had hoped for, she gave herself up to the longing to see him one last time. There was no point in fighting it. She closed her eyes, letting her last moments be filled with the memory of the comfort she had felt in his arms. She imagined his lips on hers. She imagined him gently calming her and smoothing her hair with one hand. Edward, her love, whom she would never see again. Edward.
There was one last huge explosion. Then she thought she had died and was on her way to heaven, for when she opened her eyes she saw Edward, slashing through the ropes that bound her. Then his knife nicked her wrist, and the blade’s sharp sting told her that her body was still miraculously alive. It was Edward beside her, real and not imagined, and he was holding her tightly as she clung to him, unable to speak, wanting the moment to last forever—but it could not last, for now they were both in peril.
“We must flee,” she cried. “This building will explode!”
“No. We are safe. No harm will come to us here.”
“But the shots! Any one of them must have set the building aflame. There is black powder in the basement. We must get out now while we can!”
“The building is not on fire,” Edward said mildly with a hint of a smile. “There were no shots. You can trust me on this.”
Eliza pulled away from him, barely comprehending what he had told her. “But wasn’t the building under attack? What of the gunshots I heard?”
“You heard no gunshots, merely the sounds of a mischievous boy playing. With fireworks.”
He enfolded her in his arms, holding her as if he would pull her back from death itself. “You are safe, Eliza. The explosions were Chinese firecrackers and Roman candles, the work of a single troublesome boy, a boy who is overly fond of games, games for which you have many times reproved him.”
Her eyes widened. “The explosions were your fireworks? The ones you had in your trunk?” Amazement dawned on her. “Then you rescued me!”
“Of course. You didn’t think I would leave you at the mercy of swine like that?”
“I can scarcely believe it.”
“I rescued you, though I shall regret for the rest of my life that my stupidity led to your needing
to be rescued in the first place.”
“But we must still leave here quickly, before those men come back,” she said with a shudder. “Or they’ll arrest both of us.”
“For what? I am but a blameless spectator who happened to be walking through the square after some unknown boys got up to some mischief. The law can find no fault with that.”
“But I am under arrest for—” Eliza could not bring herself to name the charge, her memories of the past half hour were still too raw.
“You are under arrest for nothing,” Edward said fiercely. “I have obtained a letter from my mother withdrawing all her charges.”
So she was really safe. Incomprehensibly, safe. “But how?”
“I apologized to her for my ill treatment of her and convinced her to withdraw her charges.”
“You humbled yourself to your mother for me? You really let her win?”
“Eliza, you taxed me with being like your father, unable to cease playing. But I have never let the intoxication of play so dominate my life that I lost sight of what was important. You have been thoroughly rescued. You are a free woman. The charges against you have been dropped, and you are truly safe.”
She let herself go limp and nestled deeper into the shelter of his embracing arms. Nowhere else had ever felt so safe, so right for her. She drew the moment out as long as she could, luxuriating in the feel of his warm breath on her cheek, soaking in the perfection of the moment, fighting desperately to remember why it was she must not allow herself to love him though her soul cried out that she must.
And then she did remember. Slowly the flashes of self-awareness she had experienced in the gaol forced their way back into her consciousness and it came back to her why the game she had been playing with Lord Lightning now must end. As stern reason dragged her back to earth, the brightness fell from the air. She felt herself clear her throat as she struggled to reassume the air of nonchalance which was all she had ever had to protect her against Edward’s irresistible appeal.