Читать книгу The Determined Lord Hadleigh - Virginia Heath - Страница 10

She had attended every single day of the trial. Alone in the gallery, her face pale, sitting erect, her slim shoulders pulled back as she stared straight ahead. Her hands were hidden among the folds of her skirt. It had taken Hadleigh almost a week to realise that she hid her hands because they provided the only clue to the way she was truly feeling as they twisted a ruined handkerchief into tight, agitated spirals which she kept proudly from view.

She had a child, he knew. A son who was a little over a year old. Yet she never brought the babe to the court as some did in a bid to elicit sympathy. Nor did she give any indication she noticed the hordes who had come to gloat at her tragedy. The blatant pointing and unsubtle whispering; the shameless newspaper artist who frequently perched himself directly in front of her and sketched her expression incorrectly for the breakfast entertainment of the masses—such was the gravitas of this case that everyone wanted to know about it. And about her.

The traitor’s wife.

That quiet dignity had both impressed him and humbled him because it was eerily familiar. Her honesty, yesterday, had shaken him to his core. In a last-ditch attempt to save her husband and prove his good character, the defence had called her as a witness at the last minute. Unexpectedly. They asked leading questions, to which she could answer only yes or no, then stepped aside so that he could cross-examine her.

‘Was he a good husband?’

She had looked him dead in the eye. ‘No.’ He had expected her to lie, but gave no indication of his surprise. Her gaze moved tentatively to the furious man in the dock. ‘No. He wasn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘He wasn’t at all who I had hoped he was.’

‘This court requires more explanation, Lady Penhurst. In what ways was the accused a bad husband?’ He’d had an inkling. More than an inkling, if he was honest, especially as he had lived in a house where a marriage had become a legal prison, but as the Crown Prosecutor his job was to present the government’s case as best he could. The jury deserved the whole truth about the man in the dock, no matter how unpalatable it was. Or how intrusive.

‘He was violent, Lord Hadleigh.’ His friend Leatham had said as much. Violent and depraved and his heart wept for her suffering. She reminded him of another woman in another time. One who had also endured stoically because she had had no option to do otherwise and had not wanted to burden him with her troubles. The bitter taste of bile stung his throat at the awful memory so long buried.

‘He beat you?’

Her eyes nervously flicked to her husband’s again because she knew that if he was acquitted, she would pay for her disloyalty today and there was nothing in law to stop that happening. But her spine stiffened again with resolve and she slowly inhaled as if to calm herself and find inner strength. He knew how much that small act of defiance cost her. ‘If I was lucky, only weekly.’ Her gloved index finger touched the bridge of her nose where the bone slightly protruded. ‘He broke my nose. Cracked a rib—’

‘Objection!’ The defence lawyer shot to his feet. ‘My learned friend knows what happens between a husband and a wife in the privacy of his house is not pertinent to this case.’

Hadleigh addressed the judge. ‘I believe it is pertinent m’lud. It gives the jury an insight into Viscount Penhurst’s character.’ Because a man who used his wife as a battering ram was rarely a good man, as his own mother had learned to her cost.

‘We have debated this many times before, Lord Hadleigh, therefore I know you are well aware the law clearly has no objections to a husband disciplining his wife.’ The judge had the temerity to look affronted that it had been brought up in the first place, seemingly perfectly happy that a husband had the right to beat his wife senseless and the courts who supposedly stood for justice would do nothing. ‘You will desist this line of questioning immediately and the witness’s answers will be struck from the proceedings.’

Hadleigh nodded, his teeth practically gnashing, consoling himself that while the law was an ass as far as the rights of married women were concerned, at least the seeds had been sown. You could strike words from the record, but once said, they took root in the mind. A few of the jurors had looked appalled. That would have to do. ‘My apologies.’ Hadleigh made no attempt to sound sincere before he turned back to her and the job in hand. ‘Lady Penhurst—you lived predominantly in Penhurst Hall in Sussex during your marriage, did you not?’

‘I did.’

‘Then do you expect this court to believe that you lived in that house and never suspected what was going on in the cellars right beneath your feet?’ Her husband had run part of a vast smuggling operation, utilising his estate’s close proximity to the sea to receive and sell on thousands of gallons of brandy in exchange for guns. Guns destined for France, and more specifically to the supporters of the imprisoned Napoleon who were desperate to see their great leader restored to power.

‘I have eyes, Lord Hadleigh. And ears. Therefore, I knew he was up to something but, to my shame, I had no idea what and nor did I truly attempt to find out.’

‘Why to your shame?’

‘Because my life was easier if I asked no questions. It is hard being married to a man who answers them with his fists.’ Another thing he had learned through bitter experience. ‘But with hindsight, I wish I had confided in someone.’

Then, unprompted and in a tumbled rush, she had begun to reel off what she had seen and heard which she had thought suspicious. Things she had neglected to mention the first time he had interrogated her fresh from her husband’s arrest, doubtless because she didn’t dare say a word against him then in fear of his retribution. Hadleigh had had no intention of calling her to the stand for precisely that reason—wives, even grossly abused ones, rarely turned against their husbands or even testified at all—so her sudden extensive and embellished testimony surprised him.

The guards in the cellars, the menacing servants who watched her every move and reported it back to her spouse, the odd messages which arrived at the house at odder hours which Penhurst always burned after reading, the new and endless supply of money that he spent like water. Most significant were the dates she freely shared. Dates when her husband had been home which coincided with the same dates the Excise Men had recorded sightings of smuggling ships on the Sussex coastline. Dates Hadleigh had already appraised the court of during this significant and well-discussed trial. All in all, it had been a damning testimony, an incredibly detailed and courageous one, and one he was of the opinion she had come to the court room determined to share despite being a named from the outset as a witness for the defence.

Lady Penhurst was a very brave woman.

As a reward, she was subjected to the most spiteful rebuttal from both her vile husband and the defence that Hadleigh had ever heard in all his years in the courtroom. Horrendous mudslinging which highlighted the gross disparity between the law for men and the law for women. He had been reprimanded by the judge for bringing up the way she was beaten by her husband, but that same judge had blithely ignored all Hadleigh’s objections to her haranguing because the court deserved to know what sort of a woman the witness was before they chose to believe her.

She was a liar. Who had lain with a succession of men for money. Deranged. Cold and frigid. A drunkard. Unfit to be a mother. Throughout the litany, she had stood proudly, her clasped hands shaking slightly, her expression pained but defiant. Grace in the face of the contemptible. He admired that, too.

By the end, Hadleigh hated his profession and himself more for not adequately defending her, even though it was neither his place nor his job to do so. But as it had been his intrusive questions she had answered with more detail than he could have possibly dreamed of, he knew she was suffering this contemptible onslaught thanks to him. Knew, too, that she had helped him by hammering the last few nails into Penhurst’s already rotten coffin regardless of the inevitable cost to herself.

As she left the witness box, she held her head high, but her eyes had dimmed. He knew it wasn’t the first time she had been whittled down and belittled by his sex. He’d seen that same expression many times and, while he could never ignore it, he had played along with his mother and pretended he hadn’t seen it. That nothing was amiss. That all would be well. A flimsy lie that had never come to fruition. Oh! To be able to turn back time and do things differently...

Hadleigh couldn’t shift his immense sense of guilt and shame throughout his closing arguments, although bizarrely that painful, niggling, unprofessional emotion made them sound stronger than any closing speech he had ever made before. Perhaps because he had argued for her. Used his voice in an arena where she had none. Treason aside, more than anything he now wanted Penhurst to pay for what he had done to the quietly proud and stoic woman sat all alone in the gallery.

Then the jury were sent to huddle in a private room to discuss their verdict, away from the circus in the gallery. They came back unanimous in less than ten short minutes.

Guilty.

Of high treason.

Her face had blanched then. Her blue eyes filling with tears and for the first time she stared down at her lap as her husband was dragged screaming from the court. He had hoped she didn’t regret her part in the verdict. It had been small, but largely insignificant, because Hadleigh had done his job well. But then he had no emotional attachment to Penhurst, so could regard the man’s inevitable demise through a detached and pragmatic lens. For her, there would be complicated ramifications as well as the release from her suffering. Penhurst had fathered her child and been her husband. There were many in society who would judge her unfairly and she was unlikely to ever be welcomed within its hypocritical ranks again thanks to the sins she had not committed but which branded her nevertheless.

While the judge retired for the night to consider the punishment, she had left the court alone as always and gone who knew where, not realising that more machinations far out of his sphere of control would occur before morning which would make her future life undeservedly more impossible than it already was.

Hadleigh learned it had been a reporter for one of the scandal sheets who had blithely informed her that her husband’s title and estate had been transferred back to the Crown, his ill-gotten fortune and all his assets seized. It was a petty act of revenge as far as Hadleigh was concerned, designed to put the fear of God into his yet unknown co-conspirators. A stark reminder of what a traitor could expect for his crimes against England and its King even in this enlightened day and age. But Penhurst’s infant son was no traitor and nor was the child’s abused mother, yet now both of them would also pay for his crimes and for much longer than the crooked Viscount would. Their entire lives had been ruined with one vengeful stroke of a pen.

That was not his concern.

Or at least it shouldn’t be. But looking at her now, sat all alone in the gallery waiting to hear her violent and odious husband’s fate, he found he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her or not feel partly responsible for all she was about to suffer. Not a single family member had accompanied her on her daily trips to the court. Nor had a single family member leapt to her defence in any of the hundreds of newspaper stories that made outrageous and wild accusations. Was that because they had disowned her or because she had wanted to do this alone? Or perhaps she was alone? And why the blazes should he care about this woman when he had brought many a criminal to justice and not given two figs about any of their family, when the family were ultimately irrelevant when justice needed to be done?

While pretending to study a document in front of him, he found his gaze wandering back to her hands. As usual, they were buried in her dull skirt, out of sight. Her outfit today was austere, as they all had been this last week, but he noticed that, even though she was seated, the brown spencer hung from her frame. She had lost weight. Rapidly, if he was any judge, and the dark circles beneath her eyes were testament to the insomnia she had clearly suffered in the few scant weeks since her husband’s arrest. How would she sleep after today? Would she ever sleep again?

That was not his concern!

She wasn’t his responsibility and neither was her child. Doubtless someone would crawl out of the woodwork and take them in. If she had any sense, she would move to the opposite end of the country and change her name. Perhaps he should tell her as much once this was all over?

He sensed her looking at him and realised he had been openly staring. He schooled his features into the bland, emotionless mask he always wore and allowed his eyes to meet hers unrepentant. There was something about Lady Penhurst’s eyes which disarmed him and called to him in equal measure. He found he wanted to keep looking at them, as if within their sapphire-blue depths was something he needed, except the inexplicable guilt which had sat heavily on his shoulders for days got the better of him and he hastily looked away.

Not that he had anything in this instance to be guilty about. Penhurst was a traitor. He had robbed the Crown of taxes, as a minion of the infamous and still-unidentified mastermind known only as The Boss, he had willingly consorted with England’s worst enemies and had blood on his hands. Lots of blood. Too many innocent men had died thanks to that smuggling ring and it was hardly his fault the evidence had been so plentiful and compelling the man had got his rightful comeuppance. Hadleigh had no earthly reason to feel guilty at doing his job well. None whatsoever.

So why did he? Those eyes perhaps?

‘All rise.’

Putting his misplaced guilt and odd mood aside, he stood with the rest of the chamber and forced his gaze to remain fixed on the judge as he entered. The judge sat and so did the rest of the chamber, while Penhurst was brought in to hear the sentence. He appeared terrified and rightly so, his eyes darting around the room nervously while the whole indictment was read. Then, as Hadleigh and most of the baying crowd had expected, the clerk placed the black-silk square atop his wig as an eerie hush settled over the room.

Hadleigh’s gaze flicked to her and she was ashen, those lovely eyes swirling with emotion, his heart lurching painfully at the sight. All he could think of was what she might be thinking and what in God’s name was to become of her. No husband. No home. No money. None of it her fault.

Professional detachment be damned! Once the judge was done he would offer some help. He wouldn’t leave her all alone to be fed to the wolves today. He would escort her home. Give her money. A chance to start afresh. Something—anything—to make his misguided conscience feel better.

‘William Henry Ashley, formally the Viscount Penhurst and the Baron of Scarsdale, the court doth order you to be taken from hence to the place from whence you came, and thence to the place of execution, and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and that your body be afterward buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall be confined after your conviction. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.’

‘No!’ Penhurst broke free of his guards, scrambled over the dock and lunged at the bench. Instinctively, Hadleigh stepped forward to stop him and the Viscount’s fingers gripped his robe with all his might. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything!’ The genuine fear in the man’s expression was visceral. ‘You have the power to appeal! To respite my sentence! Transport me. Imprison me. Flog me. Do whatever you see fit, but surely I am more use to you alive than I am dead?’

Around them, the gallery had jumped to their feet and surged forward to get a better view. It took two clerks and four men to restrain the panicked Penhurst and several minutes to drag him kicking and howling from the melee of the court room before order was resumed. By the time it was, her chair was empty. The ruined, twisted handkerchief lying crumpled on the floor, still damp from her tears.