by Anna Bradley
Nausea clawed at Sophia’s throat, and she was obliged to reach out a shaking hand and brace it on the column beside her to keep from staggering. She hadn’t expected he’d look well, but this…she felt as if she’d been plunged into one of her most frightening nightmares.
They had to do something, help him somehow. In another week there’d be nothing left of her precious boy to save. He’d be lost to them forever.
The trial began. Sophia tried to listen, to concentrate on the evidence, but everything spun in a confusing blur around her until Peter Sharpe rose and stepped into the witness box. The hiss of the spectators in the gallery and the drone of voices in the courtroom below all ground to a halt when he gave his testimony.
Gave his testimony, and lied. Glibly, and without a shred of remorse.
With every word out of the man’s mouth Sophia’s anguish and fury grew, until her hands were fisted at her sides and it was all she could do not to leap from the gallery into the witness box below.
“Never saw the like of it in my life, my lord. That poor man, the Bow Street Runner what was, lying on the ground with ’is blood all over, like, and that one there,” Sharpe pointed an accusing finger at Jeremy. “Like to ’ave cut ’is head off!”
Sharpe preened as a shocked gasp rose from the gallery.
“Please be so good as to refrain from embellishment, Mr. Sharpe.” Mr. Beddows, the thin, soft-spoken gentleman Lady Clifford had hired as Jeremy’s lawyer interrupted him. “Simply tell the court what occurred on the night in question.”
Sharpe blinked. “Aw right, then. It’s like this. I were at St. Clement Dane’s Church, not bothering no one, when all of a sudden this one,” jerking his chin at Jeremy, “comes out of nowhere down the Strand, and attacks me!”
Another gasp arose, and Sharpe nodded importantly.
“You mean to say he came out of nowhere, and attacked you for no reason?” Mr. Beddows prompted.
“He had a reason, right enough. He were after my purse! Thieves are the scourge of London, sir, and make no mistake. But ’e didn’t get it, ye see, because along comes the other gentleman—the Bow Street bloke, as he were. What were his name again?”
“Mr. Henry Gerrard.”
“Right. Him. Along comes Mr. Gerrard, and ’e’s going on about gangs of thieves or some such, and he must ’ave frightened that one.” Sharpe jerked his chin toward Jeremy again. “’Cause next thing I know poor Mr. Gerrard’s on the ground, sliced to ribbons like a Christmas goose!”
“Your testimony, Mr. Sharpe, is that Mr. Ives stabbed Mr. Gerrard in the course of a robbery. Is that correct?”
“That’s what I said, innit?”
Mr. Beddows gave Sharpe a thin smile. “Yes, very good, Mr. Sharpe. What happened then?”
“Well, I…I couldna just let that big bloke—Ives—get away with murder, could I? So ye see I-I…well, I bashed ’im over the head with my cane, once or maybe twice, until ’is brains were like to be splattered all over the churchyard.”
“And then?”
“Well, I weren’t sure what to do, but then I think to myself, Bow Street ain’t but a few streets over, so I run there and tell them there’s a thief and a murderer in the churchyard, and one man dead, and t’other leaking brains, and Mr. Willis comes running, as ye do when there’s a murderer about, and ’e took ’im up—Ives, I mean, sir—and tossed ’im into Newgate where ’e belongs.”
“I see. Is that your complete testimony, Mr. Sharpe, or do you have anything to add?”
Peter Sharpe, who didn’t appear to be in any hurry to leave the witness box, drew himself up with a sniff. “I’ve got plenty to say about murderers wandering the streets of London with us virtuous folks—”
Mr. Beddows cleared his throat. “Anything factual relating to the crime, I mean?”
Sharpe deflated. “Nay.”
Mr. Beddows did what he could to call Sharpe’s testimony into question, but Sophia could see it was hopeless. Peter Sharpe was the trustworthy servant of a well-respected peer. As far as anyone knew, he didn’t stand to gain a thing from accusing Jeremy of murder, and Sampson Willis, the Bow Street magistrate, corroborated every word of Sharpe’s testimony.
There was little Sophia could now do but wait, her heart in her throat, for Jeremy to be pronounced guilty. As for what she might do later, once she left the courtroom, well…that was a different matter entirely.
She waited at the back of the gallery, as unmoving as the column beside her. No one paid her any attention. If they had—if they’d happened to catch a glimpse under the wide brim of her hat—the cold malevolence with which she gazed at Peter Sharpe would have turned their blood to ice.
* * * *
The back row of the gallery smelled like flowers.
It was faint, just a hint of the sweet, honeyed scent wafting in the stale air. At any other time, Tristan wouldn’t have noticed it, but given the circumstances in which he’d first inhaled that scent, it was imprinted on his senses.
She was here.
Sophia Monmouth, the dark-haired, green-eyed ghost who’d led him on a merry chase through every alleyway in Westminster, was in the gallery. He’d found out her name easily enough, but surprisingly, he hadn’t been able to discover much else about her.
Lady Clifford’s students enjoyed a certain notoriety among a select group of people in London, but none of them seemed to know anything about Sophia Monmouth’s past, other than she’d become the Clifford School’s first pupil a few months after Lady Clifford had secured the building at No. 26 Maddox Street. Miss Monmouth had been a child then, not more than six or seven years old, and she’d been with Lady Clifford ever since.
It wasn’t much to go on, but Tristan had only just begun to dig into the mystery that was Sophia Monmouth, who’d sacrificed any claim she had to privacy when she climbed onto Lord Everly’s pediment.
She hadn’t been back to Great Marlborough Street since, nor had he caught her out in any other suspicious behavior in the week he’d been following her. No, since then Miss Monmouth had been a model of good citizenry, a veritable paragon of exemplary behavior. He might have grown bored of following her if he hadn’t known it was only a matter of time before she slipped. No woman who’d gone to the trouble of scaling the front of a townhouse would give up so easily, especially not one of Lady Clifford’s students.
Tenacity was their distinguishing characteristic.
Still, he hadn’t expected he’d find her here. Criminals tended to avoid courthouses in general, but then Lady Clifford had likely directed Miss Monmouth to discover what fate awaited Jeremy Ives. Not that the outcome of the trial was much of a mystery. Ives was going to be found guilty, and he’d be sentenced to swing.
Simple enough.
Tristan cast a subtle glance over the spectators in the gallery. There weren’t many ladies here, and none with the dainty features Tristan remembered so well, but then she was skilled at disguising herself—
Ah. There.
A few paces to his left was a lady with a bowed head. Her face was hidden under the wide brim of the ugliest hat he’d ever seen, but he could just make out a curl of dark hair at her nape, the tip of a pointed chin. She was partially concealed behind one of the gallery’s columns—Miss Monmouth seemed to be fond of columns—but as luck would have it, he wasn’t more than five or six paces away from her.
Slippery as she was, there was no way she could sneak from the courtroom without him seeing her, but Tristan suspected Sophia Monmouth would remain right where she was until Ives’s trial concluded.
As it happened, Jeremy Ives was the first to come before the bench.
Tristan kept an eye on Sophia Monmouth as Ives was brought into the courtroom. She didn’t move or make a sound, but her entire body went rigid as Ives was dragged, blinking, to stand at the bar before the court.
Ives was a big man with
broad shoulders, and hands so massive he could snap a man’s neck as easily as snapping a twig, but aside from his intimidating size, there wasn’t much about him that spoke of violence. Tristan couldn’t see him well, but from here Ives didn’t look to be more than nineteen or twenty years old, and there was a soft, slack quality to his face that made him look even younger, almost childlike.
He was filthy, his ragged clothing hanging on his emaciated frame. Prisoners condemned to await trial at Newgate did tend to lose weight, even as much as a stone or two, but Ives’s extraordinary height exaggerated the effect. He was gaunt, reduced to nothing more than a pale, wasted pile of flesh and bone, like a cock plucked of its feathers.
Ives had been accused of an unusually brutal crime, but he wasn’t at all the hardened criminal Tristan had expected. He gaped at the assembly before him, bafflement mixed with abject terror on his face. He didn’t seem to understand how he came to be there, or for what reason.
The courtroom stilled as Peter Sharpe, the only witness to the crime, stepped into the witness box to give his testimony. His mouth was pulled into a stern line, as befitted the solemnity of the occasion. He was seated in full view of the accused in the dock, but if Jeremy Ives remembered Sharpe, he gave no indication of it. He stared dumbly at him, mouth agape, as if he didn’t recognize Sharpe at all.
As for Sharpe, he seemed to relish having the attention of everyone in the courthouse fixed on him, and delivered his testimony in a tone of self-righteous defiance.
It was one of the quickest trials Tristan had ever seen. Sharpe gave his account of the crime committed against him, then Willis briefly took the stand and testified that yes, Sharpe had come to No. 4 Bow Street that night in a panic, shrieking about leaking brains and murder. All the Runners being out at the time, Willis himself had followed Sharpe to St. Clement Dane’s Church, where he’d found Jeremy Ives lying unconscious next to Henry Gerrard’s body, his hands dripping with Henry’s blood.
And finally, they heard from the accused, who professed himself innocent with tears running down his cheeks. When the judge demanded he explain the evidence against him, he could offer nothing but a fumbling account of having come across Sharpe in front of St. Clement Dane’s Church, along with a somewhat incoherent insistence that he “’adn’t hurt or stolen nothing from no one, if it please yer lordships.”
The verdict was swift, and the sentence harsh.
Jeremy Ives was found guilty of the crimes of theft with violence and murder, and sentenced to hang. A hush fell over the courtroom as the punishment was handed down, but if the crowd wanted tears and wailing and pleas for mercy, they were disappointed. Ives didn’t appear to understand any of what had transpired. He stared blankly at the judge as the sentence was read, and then he was dragged from the courtroom, his head bowed.
Tristan watched him go with an uneasy sensation in his stomach. He’d seen too many innocent people hurt by criminals in London to feel any sympathy for those who were convicted, but there’d been something off about the proceeding he’d just seen. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt none of the fierce satisfaction he’d anticipated at seeing Henry’s murderer brought to justice.
Sophia Monmouth didn’t appear any more satisfied with the verdict than Tristan was. She followed the prisoner’s progress from the courtroom, her gaze lingering on the doorway through which he’d been taken long after he disappeared. Tristan caught a glimpse of her face when her head was turned, and his chest tightened at her expression.
She couldn’t have expected Ives’s fate to be anything other than what it was, yet for all the grim resignation on that exquisite face, she looked…devastated.
Tristan moved away from the edge of the balcony and further into the shadows, poised to follow her from the courtroom now Ives’s trial was over, but to his surprise, she didn’t move. She remained where she was throughout the next trial, then the next. The day wore on into the late afternoon, and still she stayed in her place at the edge of the column, her slender form unnaturally still, as if she’d been frozen there.
She didn’t move until the last trial concluded, then she left in such haste Tristan found himself having to chase her once again as she exited the courtroom and made her way into the yard. Most of the crowd had dispersed after Ives’s trial, but there were still a few stragglers hanging about. She stationed herself to one side of the door where a small knot of people had gathered and lingered there, as if she were waiting for someone to emerge.
A few moments later, someone did emerge.
Peter Sharpe.
Tristan saw him before she did, and so he was able to witness Miss Monmouth’s reaction when Sharpe paused on the courthouse steps, a satisfied smirk on his lips. As soon as she saw him, she tensed. Her expression darkened, and her green eyes narrowed to slits, but she didn’t move toward him, or call attention to herself in any way. She simply stood there, her gaze never wavering, and waited.
She didn’t have to wait long. Sharpe trotted down the courthouse steps and ambled off down the street as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Miss Monmouth stayed where she was until he was a good block or two down Newgate Street before she darted after him.
Tristan went after her, a grudging sort of admiration in his chest. Sharpe hadn’t any more idea he was being followed now than he had the other night. She didn’t rush after him, or follow too closely. She was careful, but quick. Miss Monmouth knew how to keep her head, but as skilled as she was, she wasn’t flawless.
After all, she didn’t know she was being followed, either.
Just as he had the other night, Tristan found himself wondering what she intended to do once she caught up to Sharpe. Any sort of physical confrontation was out of the question. Sharpe was a pitiful enough specimen of masculinity, but he was bigger and heavier than Miss Monmouth was. At this point, Tristan couldn’t have said which of the two of them was the more ruthless.
He soon found out.
Her hat was the first thing to go. She swept it from her head, and with a quick, furtive flick of her wrist tossed it down a narrow alleyway without a second glance. Then she went to work on the white fichu tucked into the neckline of her gray dress. It was the sort of plain, bland dress a shop girl might wear, but with one sharp tug of her fichu the prim little garment went from dully respectable to downright scandalous, the low-cut bodice revealing a generous expanse of smooth, olive skin even the most principled of gentlemen couldn’t fail to notice.
She pulled some pins from her hair, letting a few long, dark locks fall loose, and just like that, she’d gone from a governess to a tempting siren.
Tristan came to a halt in the middle of the road, suddenly breathless. That was…well, that was one way to manage Sharpe. A rather ingenious way, really, with her curls brushing against the soft skin of her neck, and her…that is, the curves of her—
Damn it. She was a menace, a danger to society.
Tristan was torn between outrage and a very unwelcome surge of arousal, but this was no time to dawdle in the street with his mouth hanging open.
He went after her, biding his time as she drew closer and closer to Sharpe. She didn’t approach him until he’d turned right onto Hatton Street, toward Ely Court, where a small crowd of degenerates was gathered outside of Ye Olde Mitre Inn.
That was when she struck. Tristan had been expecting it, but it happened so quickly he nearly missed it.
Just before Sharpe melted into the crowd, she reached under the gaping neckline of her gray gown and drew out something shiny. She darted forward with it clutched between her fingers, and with a subtle pass of her hand…
What the devil?
Tristan was behind her, so he couldn’t see precisely what she’d done, but it looked as if she’d—
“Thief! Thief!” A high-pitched feminine shriek rent the air. Tristan froze, still a few paces behind her, unable to believe what was unfolding in front of his e
yes. She hadn’t…she couldn’t have—
“Thief!” Miss Monmouth was pointing one trembling finger at Sharpe, her cheeks scarlet with outrage. “Why, that villain there took my dear, sainted grandmother’s silver locket right off my neck, ’e did! He’s a thief!”
She had.
Sharpe was gaping at her with bulging eyes. “Wot? Ye’re mad, ye are! I never did no such thing! I never even touched ’er, much less took anything off ’er!”
Miss Monmouth stared at him, her lower lip wobbling, then without warning she burst into a deafening flood of tears. “What sort ’o scoundrel snatches a lady’s dead grandmother’s locket right off ’er neck, I ask you? Oh, my poor, sainted grandmother is like to be turning over in ’er grave, she is! Why, ye’re a blackguard sir, and make no mistake.”
Tristan tensed as Sharpe took a threatening step toward her, but he needn’t have worried. Miss Monmouth was more than capable of taking care of herself. “Search ’is pockets if ye don’t believe me!” she shrieked, turning her big, tear-stained green eyes on the crowd of men gathered around the entrance to the pub.
“Oi, Harry! Git on over ’ere and check ’is pockets, will ye?” Two of the men, both of them mean with drink, broke from the crowd and descended on Sharpe, grabbing his arms. “Give ’im a good shake, like,” one said, with a menacing look at Sharpe. “We don’t take kindly round ’ere to thieves.”
“’Specially those what steal from a ’elpless lady.” The other man wiped an arm across his mouth, leering at Miss Monmouth. “Not the pretty ones, leastways. Don’t care much ’bout the harpies, eh?”
Helpless? Tristan nearly laughed aloud at this description of his wily little rooftop thief, who was about as far from helpless as a rabid dog. He hadn’t the faintest doubt the men even now turning out Sharpe’s pockets would find the locket. She’d been so stealthy about it even Tristan hadn’t seen her do it, but there was no question she’d contrived to drop her locket somewhere on Sharpe’s person.
Good Lord, she was clever. With one twist of her wrist and flutter of her eyelashes she had Sharpe at her mercy. Tristan couldn’t prevent another reluctant twinge of admiration. He couldn’t let her get away with it, of course, but it was a neat trick, and an effective one. The two men who had hold of Sharpe were moments away from throwing him onto the ground and stomping him under their boot heels.