by Diana Davis
The magistrate frowned at Owen, Cooper and the other lawyer, rapping his gavel. “Court is in recess for fifteen minutes.” The judge exited through his designated door.
That wasn’t hopeless, but it obviously wasn’t the instant verdict Owen had hoped for. If only he’d been on time, on task, on top of this. This should have been well and over, a handy win.
But no, he’d spent too much time working on all his other cases. And now he wasn’t the one who’d pay the consequences.
Owen reassured Cooper and sank into his chair at the lawyers’ table. He had taken on far too much. He almost wanted to blame Temperance for his taking on these high-paying clients that were taking up all his time, but the truth was, he would have to find paying clients if he wanted to keep his family fed, Temperance or no Temperance.
He glanced at Cooper, who was staring at his manacles. Just like his sisters, that man had depended on him, and Owen had disappointed him.
He was going to have to do a much better job of this — of everything. And he had not the faintest idea how.
Owen stared up at the coat of arms that hung behind the bench. The king’s standard. On the shield in the center were the symbols of all of George the Third’s realms: England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the king’s German principalities.
All the realms except the Americas.
Owen’s mind was still spinning when the magistrate finally returned. Owen stood and forced himself to meet the magistrate’s gaze.
“The court finds in favor of the Crown. The defendant will pay a fine of five pounds or be branded on the cheek in one week’s time.”
Cooper gasped, and the bailiff stepped up to take him away. Owen watched the fear dawn in the old man’s face. He had truly failed him.
Owen called for an appeal, but he had no idea how he’d manage to find the time within the next week. He couldn’t even hope to raise five pounds for the man unless his mother had money left from Sibbald.
What other option did he have? He’d have to find some way to make up for falling short. He could sleep less. He could commandeer one of Hayes’s clerks. He could see if Hayes could take the appeal in his already packed docket. He could — he could — he could —
He couldn’t.
Owen pulled on his great coat over his bulky court robes and maneuvered back out of the courtroom. He’d worked as hard as he could and then some, and that was precisely the problem. He trudged back home, as if finding the statement now could help.
“Oh, Owen! What are you doing at home?” his mother greeted him.
“Forgot something.” He took off his great coat and put away his court robes and wig, then sank down in the rickety chair by the fire.
What was he to do?
“Owen?” his mother said gently.
He was so tired of being treated as if he were made of glass. He was already broken, why bother? “Yes, Mother?”
She walked over to peer into his eyes. “Court didn’t go well this morning, did it?”
He shook his head, relating the entire cascade of failures. By the time he reached the sentence, his mother was covering her mouth with her hands.
This was where she should tell him she’d been right all along, he’d been working too hard. Instead, she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Dear boy.” She cupped his cheek with her other hand. “Why are you working like the devil himself is after ye lately?”
Owen took both her hands. “To take care of you and the girls.”
“Aye, but we don’t need thirty-pound purses every month.”
Owen looked over the two rooms he’d lived in all his life, the floor where his three youngest sisters still slept. He didn’t care if they were rich; he only wanted beds for all of them. A bedroom for his sisters would seem like a luxury, but they would never leave this place if he couldn’t do at least this well.
His mother bent slightly to meet his eyes, though she didn’t have to go far. “You’re reminding me of your father lately. Not in a good way.”
Father had been a good man, and Owen would have been proud to remind her of him. “Why, what do you mean?”
“At the end.”
Owen paused a moment to remember the last few months of his father’s life. He’d not yet turned eleven when he’d passed, but at the end, they’d seen him less and less as he picked up a second shift, took on an extra job, worked for some small extra pittance.
Watching his father work himself straight to death had been one of the biggest reasons Owen had leapt at this opportunity when Hayes presented it: the college, then the apprenticeship. Without that, he would have followed the same path as his parents, stooped and bent under the weight of their work — or into an early grave.
But while his work wasn’t the physical labor Father had endured, he couldn’t claim he was working any less than Father had toward the end. This was merely a different drudgery, and if he wasn’t more careful, it wouldn’t be Owen in an early grave. It would be one of his clients.
Owen rubbed his face and slumped back in the chair. What else was he supposed to do? Not help people? Only cater to Beaufort’s rich and powerful friends?
All he’d wanted was for his family to be secure. He didn’t have to be rich. He just wanted to provide for his family. Surely there had to be a way to do that without bending under serfdom.
He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of their home for the moment. He wanted to be free.
That was it. That was all he wanted. He enjoyed the law, but he couldn’t be a vassal to his work. That was no better.
But for all his efforts, he was no closer to freedom.
Suddenly he remembered what Beaufort had said last week. They will whittle away at us as long as we let them. They will not stop until we are in our graves. I’m ready to fight for that freedom.
Perhaps he could understand the man’s patriotic streak a little better. Like Cooper, the colony’s only hope would lie in an appeal to a higher power.
The snow had continued all through the night and the next day, and Temperance paced in front of the drawing room window, waiting for a break in the weather.
She needed to see Owen. To sort this out. To make sense of her feelings.
To tell him?
Of course she had to tell him. Temperance Hayes knew a little something about playing on men’s emotions, and she couldn’t deny the emotion she’d seen all over Owen’s face. She’d tried to for months, and now, every memory she had of him all sent the same message: he loved her.
Finally, toward evening of the second day, the snow stopped. She barely waited to get her cloak before she hurried out into the street.
She had no idea where Owen might live, and she didn’t dare ask Papa. The office would be the best place to find him if he were still working. She checked the darkening sky. He’d still be there, wouldn’t he?
She reached the office and let herself in, but no one sat at the tables. She snuffed the lamp still burning — the clerk that left that should be fired.
Was Papa still here? That was the only reason someone might have left a lamp lit. She checked his study, but it was empty, too.
A heavy door closed upstairs, and she was jolted backwards in her memory. That sound was the back door — the servants’ door. Wasn’t Owen’s sister working for the Beauforts now?
Temperance let herself out the back door downstairs and spotted a girl who seemed about the right age walking away down the shadowed alley where the snow lay in drifts against the brick walls. Her memory filled in a little more: that was the direction Owen had lived.
Away from the lantern-lit streets, the alleys were dark, but Temperance found herself remembering more and more as she followed the girl from a distance. Temperance would have called to her, but she couldn’t be sure whether this really was Rose. She hadn’t even been born when Temperance moved away.
Yet at every corner, just as Temperance remembered her bearings, Rose turned in the direction o
f Owen’s old home. Surely they couldn’t still live in that same little blind alley, the same little house, the same little flat?
The walk wasn’t nearly as long as it had felt when she was little. Temperance recognized the building right away, a shabby rowhouse huddled between its neighbors. Rose ducked inside.
Surely this was a mistake, a coincidence. Surely Owen and his four sisters didn’t jam together in those tiny rooms? Even at five she’d found the space cramped, and she’d shared a bed with two sisters at home. Owen’s youngest sisters weren’t even born at the time. Where did they sleep now?
Hoofbeats approached on the quiet street, and Temperance drew back into the shadows of an alcove. She wasn’t sure what she meant to do now that she’d found Owen’s home, but she didn’t mean to be seen loitering about outside.
Owen walked down the narrow alley, leading a horse and wagon through the slush. He directed the wagon in a circle to face the opposite direction in front of his house, a tight fit in the narrow close. Once the wagon was situated, Owen stroked the horse’s muzzle a moment, then hurried inside.
What was he doing? Temperance craned her neck to see into the cart. Before she could move closer, Owen returned and fed the horse something, stroking her neck with his other hand. He patted her shoulder and moved to the wagon.
The door to his tiny building opened, and half a dozen people walked out. Owen greeted them, shedding his great coat, his new blue coat, and its matching waistcoat. He vaulted into the wagon and began passing out its contents to his neighbors.
Firewood. He was giving out a load of firewood.
Temperance wanted to tell herself that he had come here to help his old neighbors, that this was generosity he’d bought with his successful, rich clients’ pay, but she had lied to herself about Owen long enough.
Owen still lived here, in a tiny tenement.
She watched him give away what felt like half the firewood, alternating between filling his neighbors’ arms or aprons and his sisters’, ruffling their hair as he went. Once the neighbors stopped coming, he jumped out of the back of the wagon and brought in armloads himself.
She couldn’t imagine where they could store that firewood. There was barely room to walk.
Owen returned to the wagon and fetched his great coat, leaving his other clothes. He slung the heavy outer coat over his shoulders and leaned against the wagon to rest. And now Temperance couldn’t hold herself back any longer, crossing the narrow street, walking straight up to him.
He looked up. In the moonlight, his face didn’t light up. He simply seemed stunned. “Temperance.”
“Do you remember Nan?”
“What?” He cocked his head, still not understanding. “Yes, why?”
“What do you remember?”
Owen slid into his sleeves and folded them across his chest. “I remember she used to torment you.”
Temperance dipped her chin one time and waited for him to continue.
“One day, she found a stick, and she hit you with it. I stopped her.”
“With your arm.”
He almost seemed to be cradling that limb now. Temperance let him end the story there, but they both had to be remembering. Nan was an enormous child, nearly the size of an adult. This was no small stick, either. One swift crack and she’d left a welt on Temperance’s leg that she still had a scar from. Then Owen ran in, holding her close, shielding her the same way he had at that first party only two months ago. Nan shoved them both to the ground, but he held tight onto Temperance. He raised his arm to stop the blow.
Temperance had known the moment the stick connected that his bone was broken. It wasn’t Owen’s cry of pain but Temperance’s howl of anger that had sent Nan running. Temperance had chased her until she was sure the urchin wouldn’t turn on them again. Then she helped Owen back to his cramped flat, helped his mother tie the splint around his arm. After the blow, he never cried again, though she knew it hurt him for weeks.
“I was just happy I could help you,” Owen murmured.
Temperance realized she’d placed her hand on his arm, right where Nan had broken it.
“The way you looked up at me that day.” Owen shook his head. “It’s the way Antony Cooper looks at me. Or he did until I lost his trial this morning.”
“What?”
“Never mind that. At least Nan never bothered you again.”
Temperance focused on her hand on his arm. She had come here to tell Owen she loved him, not this. And yet these were the only words left for her to say. “Do you remember when you found a ha’penny, and I found a farthing, and you wanted to trade?”
“That was the same week, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “After we splinted your arm, I went to Nan’s house. I said I would pay her if she’d just leave us alone. And I gave her the ha’penny.”
She felt the breath rush out of him under his folded arms. She finally dared to look at his face. He had to understand: she couldn’t do this. She’d lived in poverty once, and she would never, ever go back.
She’d watched poverty break the people she loved once. Never again.
Temperance reached for his cheek. “You understand, don’t you?”
Owen caught her wrist before she touched him. “Do you?”
“What?”
He gave her a long, hard stare. “I know you. You always know how to get what you want. And if this is what you really want, you’ll get just what you deserve.”
He wasn’t making any sense. He had to understand. She loved him, but she couldn’t do this — to either of them. “Owen, please.”
He released her wrist. “Goodbye, Temperance.”
Owen collected the horse’s reins and walked away from her. She watched him go until the night’s shadows swallowed him, until the hoofbeats faded. And then she walked home. Alone.
After four weeks, Owen managed to almost never think of Temperance. Not when her father came into work every day, not when her cousin — in-law — took him hunting, not when he declined invitations to join Sibbald or Goodwin or anyone else at their parties. Owen and Temperance finally understood one another, and that chapter was closed.
He was finishing up his arguments in the Schmidt case — the final charity case he’d taken on at the end of last year — when a knock came at the door. Owen gestured for one of the clerks to get it, and he showed a very sad old woman in. “I’m looking for Mr. Owen Randolph?”
“Yes?” Owen stood and crossed to her. “May I be of service?”
“I hope so. I — my son —” Her voice cracked with tears, and he waited for her to collect herself. “My son has been arrested for murder, but I know he’s innocent. I can’t see him hanged!”
Owen took in the whole picture. From her threadbare cap to the cracked leather of her shoes, it was obvious this poor old woman would be another charity case.
He couldn’t just dismiss her, could he? “Do you have evidence or witnesses that prove he couldn’t have done it?”
Her gaze fell. “No.”
Owen took her on his arm. Was it his imagination or did some of her words carry a hint of the same broad Cornish accent his mother had? Or would every poor old woman remind him of his mother?
“I’m afraid the cost of a defense that would take that much work might be very dear,” he said, trying to make the news as gentle as possible.
The woman nodded without looking up.
“Has your son pled in forma pauperis yet?”
“What’s that?”
“That he can’t afford a lawyer. The court will find him one.” With Owen’s luck, he’d end up forced to defend the case anyway, but at least he would have tried.
Tried to what? Turn away a poor old woman from the only recourse she might have? Or offer her the choice of going into debt?
No, he was the one without a choice. His appeal had merely stalled Cooper’s branding, and he still needed two of the five pounds to help his client avoid
that unfair judgment. He could only take paying cases. “I’m very sorry I can’t be of more help,” Owen said. “Try Cyrus Heaney?”
The woman met his eyes, begging him to reconsider. “I’ve seen Mr. Heaney. I’ve seen Mr. Greaves. I’ve seen Mr. Saxon. I’ve seen eight different lawyers, and they all said the same thing. Two of them said you’d be able to help me.”
It was Owen’s turn to regard the floor. “I’m so sorry to disappoint you. I can’t take cases on charity anymore. I have to feed my family.”
“Well, then.” The woman huffed. “I hope you buy your wife a very fine gown off your next murder case.”
Owen said nothing, but opened the door for her.
“Come here, mother,” Josiah Hayes called from his study doorway. The old woman approached him, but Hayes’s gaze clapped on Owen. His expression spoke an entire discourse on disappointment.
Well, so could Owen! But he couldn’t afford to take a charity case when he needed to come up with two extra pounds by week’s end. Owen moved back to his table and gathered up the Schmidt papers. Mordecai’s contract was nearly done again, after the third time renegotiating. The law could certainly be complex, but it was little wonder the man had had such trouble. If he could only get this blasted contract finished, he could press for payment and possibly have enough to spare to help Cooper.
Before he could pull the contract out, the front door flew open again. Mrs. Beaufort rushed in clutching a newspaper. Owen had hardly seen her in the last month, and she looked quite peaked, but then she usually did when she returned from an early morning delivery. On the other hand, her husband had been even more solicitous than usual these last few weeks.
“David!” she called, running up the stairs. “Have you seen the news?”
It was probably not his place, but the concern in her voice drew Owen after her. The front door of their apartment still stood open behind her, and Rose was whisking little Elizabeth off to the back of the flat. Owen found the Beauforts in their drawing room, Beaufort reading the paper she’d brought. Shock overtook his features. “This — no. This can’t be right. Westing!”