How to Master Your Marquis by Juliana Gray

Author:Juliana Gray [Gray, Juliana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780425265673
Amazon: 0425265676
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2014-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Old Bailey, London

Early August 1890

Even in mourning, Lady Charlotte Harlowe maintained her impeccable sense of drama. She waited until she had settled herself in the witness box before lifting her elegant black veil, and her beauty—pale, fragile, almost skeletal—caused an audible gasp to suck the air from the courtroom, a whoosh of veneration that she acknowledged with the merest tilt of her pointed chin.

Stefanie had not been the one to suggest calling Lady Charlotte to the stand. If she had been in charge of the case, instead of merely acting as Mr. Fairchurch’s clerk, she would have banished her ladyship from Old Bailey and its surrounding streets for a solid five-mile radius.

But Fairchurch had been charmed into abject worship during his interview with Lady Charlotte a few months previous—God save the world from the charms of women like her ladyship—and so there she sat in the witness box, awaiting her questioning with the alert elegance and secretive smug smile of a self-satisfied house cat.

“Lady Charlotte,” said Mr. Fairchurch, as he might say Your Majesty. “This court is deeply honored by your presence here this morning. I hope we find you well.”

“As well as can be expected, thank you. The Duchess of Southam was like a second mother to me.”

“We share your grief, of course. How long had you been acquainted with the family?”

“I met them in the house of my uncle, Sir John Worthington, several years ago. A natural extension of his friendship with their son, the Marquess of Hatherfield.”

“And would you say you knew Lord Hatherfield well?”

She cast a brief and meaningful look in Hatherfield’s direction. The smug little smile returned at the corner of her mouth. “I knew him very well indeed.”

Stefanie fisted her hand in her lap, fighting the urge to slap that smile off Lady Charlotte’s face.

Mr. Duckworth smiled. All this had been discussed in her interview: the friendship between the families, her admiration for Hatherfield’s character, her certainty that he could not possibly have murdered the Duchess of Southam. He went on, confident of her response. “I am loath to ask an indelicate question of a lady, but the circumstances of the prosecution’s case against the accused require it. Would you say there was any particular sort of affection between you and Lord Hatherfield?”

Lady Charlotte’s eyes remained tuned in the direction of Hatherfield’s golden head. “Yes, I would.”

“A fraternal sort of affection?”

She was supposed to reply, Yes, exactly. That was what she had told Mr. Fairchurch in the interview, after all: She looked upon Hatherfield as a brother. Stefanie, afterward, had warned Fairchurch that this was not the case, that she was certain—quite certain—that Lady Charlotte bore a passion for the Marquess of Hatherfield that had nothing at all to do with sisters or brothers. But Fairchurch had looked at her with an amazed disgust. “That dear and innocent girl? I wonder at you, Mr. Thomas.”

But here, now, in the stifling summer courtroom in Old Bailey, she gazed rapturously at Hatherfield, blushed, looked at her hands, and said, “I can’t say, Mr.

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