The Duchess and the Highwayman (Hearts in Hiding 1)

“Oh, but you must go!” Ada cried. “It’s all anyone is talking about. I mean, a duchess murdering her own husband! She’ll be tried in the Lords, but I hear she has few friends of any importance who are likely to be sympathetic.” Ada sat down in a chair opposite and picked up her tatting. “Aren’t you interested just to see what Lady Cavanaugh looks like, knowing what kind of woman she is? I am. Beautiful and calculating, they say, and prepared to do anything to make a man bend to her will. She cuckolded her husband for years with an endless number of lovers. Will she play the injured wife whose hand was forced, or appear with more defiant countenance?”

Hugh sent his sister a shocked look. He was about to ask what she knew of such matters but thought better of it. Ada was far more worldly than she ought to be, but they themselves had a charade to maintain in order to preserve the pretense that she really was the unblemished virgin she must present to the world in order to marry well. Before he had a chance to interject, Ada sighed and said, “Of course, I wouldn’t have dreamed of showing my face where you know who would be strutting about, but without my even bringing up the subject, Mr Xavier said he believes it would not be a delicate thing for any lady to hear the particulars in view of the dastardliness of Lady Cavanaugh’s crime, and that he presumes I’d not even think of attending. Those were his words, more or less.” She dimpled. “If he’s afraid for my delicate sensibilities, then I’m not about to prove that they’re not very delicate at all.” She giggled. “You see how I’m made bold and able to talk about Mr Wentworth—there! I said his name—because I now have Mr Xavier.”

She sent her brother a look of entreaty. “Please go, Hugh. I’m dying to hear all the details.”

Hugh knew he’d have gone anyway. Anything that might possibly yield Phoebe was a chance he’d chase, but Ada’s insistence had him nodding his head, while his heart beat wildly at the thought of ever seeing Phoebe again.

18

So that’s how he found himself at a special court session on a chilly afternoon, shivering in his caped coat, though the temperature was rising rapidly with so many heated bodies packed in to see England’s most sensational f

emale criminal show her face.

Not that Hugh was especially interested in Lady Cavanaugh. The gossip surrounding her suggested a vain and self-centered woman who traded on her beauty to achieve her venal ends. Such women held no interest for Hugh. The possibility that Phoebe, however, might have slipped into the courtroom, disguised, to observe her beloved mistress, was his inducement for cancelling his other engagement; one of considerable potential importance too, since it involved discussion about a sinecure which, if awarded to him as had been hinted, he hoped would establish him on the political scene.

Yet he was not going to throw away his best chance of locating Phoebe; darling Phoebe whom he’d fondly accused of being venal in her attempts to cajole him into providing her with the clothing and other accounterments she required to better herself. But she had loved him. Certainly, she had for a while. It was impossible that she could have feigned such physical reactions toward him.

Hugh bowed his head. Why had she left him? Her timing could not have been more unexpected, though she had hinted at the possibility, telling him she would accept no man as her master.

He might not have liked what she’d said, but at least Phoebe was transparent, open, and honest. Unlike her mistress. Hugh could not imagine the horrors of being wed to a conniving, unfaithful wife like Lady Cavanaugh, who deceived and plotted murder.

A small group entered the courtroom, and surreptitiously, Hugh scanned each face. Both women were veiled, but the way they carried themselves was enough for Hugh to dismiss them in an instant. Phoebe had such a regal carriage.

The benches had quickly filled for the most notorious court case in years, and when no more people were allowed through the door, Hugh settled back in disappointment. Phoebe did not appear to be here, after all.

A sea of wigs belonging to the older gentlemen, and a sprinkling of bonnets on all sides of him; people chattering; all made him feel very alone, reinforcing how much he missed Phoebe’s bright and lively chatter.

And then a hush fell upon the assembly as the magistrate entered the courtroom, taking his seat and banging his gavel loudly for quiet before calling for the prisoner.

The woman on his right whispered loudly that she’d never seen a real live murderess before. It didn’t strike Hugh as odd that Lady Cavanaugh had already been convicted in the court of public opinion. All he’d ever heard of the woman were vile insinuations about the lovers she’d had behind her husband’s back. That was something the common folk did not forgive.

He wondered if Lady Cavanaugh’s cold, defiant gaze raking the spectators would flare with recognition if she happened to catch sight of Phoebe. He hoped so. Sadly, though, it seemed that Phoebe was the duchess’s only supporter.

Footsteps echoed in the silence. Everyone in the courtroom turned, Hugh included, as a woman in a black cloak was led from a holding room. She clasped her hands together and her head was bowed, but her carriage was straight and proud as a court official led her to the stand.

Not until the defendant actually appeared before the courtroom assembly, her large blue eyes staring out at the crowd with a mixture of defiance and apprehension, her demure manner of dress so at odds with her reputation, did Hugh convulse with shock at the light of recognition that tore through him.

Dear Lord, my eyes are deceiving me. He blinked, but when he refocused his gaze, he was close enough to the front to see her clearly. Every last fine line about her eyes, the curve of her lips, the graceful sweep of her throat, the purity of her gaze, were images he’d carried with him since she’d disappeared. Seeing her in the flesh sent a shudder through him of the greatest ecstasy mixed with the deepest dread, the utmost dismay. Here was the notorious Lady Cavanaugh, whom everyone was convinced had murdered her ailing husband to secure her comfort. And Lady Cavanaugh was none other than his own darling Phoebe.

Except that he wasn’t sure if he could call her that any longer. Darling was a term of endearment reserved for someone who was forthcoming in their dealings, honest and true. Not someone who claimed to be an ill-used underling dependent on her rescuer’s mercy, while all the while pulling the wool over her latest protector’s eyes.

He continued to stare at her, willing her to meet his gaze. Her face was without expression, staring stonily into the judgmental crowd. She hadn’t picked Hugh out in the sea of faces. Her line of vision was somewhere over the tops of people’s heads, and only the tapping of her right forefinger upon her forearm as she hugged herself gave any indication of her agitation.

The magistrate identified her, and she nodded her head as she accepted that she was indeed Lady Cavanaugh, Duchess of Blinley.

A list of charges against her was then read out. Hugh could not drag his devastated gaze from her face, white and frightened, but still the beautiful compilation of features he’d contoured during the lazy, sensual sessions which had bound them together.

The crackle of alertness in the room seemed to pulse around all but him. His was the only interest that was not prurient. None of these people had ever met Lady Cavanaugh, but for a small section of the courtroom set aside for the aristocrats. Hugh was not one of them. Though he could claim lineage on both sides to the aristocracy, he was merely third in line to a baronetcy; a gentleman but not a noble. Not like Lady Cavanaugh, though he wondered briefly at her status prior to her marriage, and then realized with a stab of shame that, in truth, he knew nothing about her. Nothing about the woman to whom he’d lost his heart, and whom he’d wooed with a roughness and lack of respect that now horrified him. As horrifying was that he’d taken her at her word, not questioning her when she’d declared herself Lady Cavanaugh’s servant, and consequently regarding her airs and graces with amusement, if not mild contempt.

Yet shouldn’t he be more horrified that she was to all those in the room today, a sensational murderess?

Could she truly be guilty of a crime so foul and premeditated as the one of which she was charged? It went against the grain of everything he knew her to be.

He gave himself a mental shake. Phoebe had lied to him from the start. Everything she’d ever told him must have been a lie. The fact she’d not trusted him with the truth lay heavy and bitter on him now. She’d disappeared, obviously because she’d been apprehended, but she’d not even spirited a message to him. Because she didn’t believe he could help her? Because he could no longer be of use to her?

His disordered feelings were not soothed when the night he’d first met Phoebe became the focus of questioning.

The late Lord Cavanaugh’s manservant was called as a witness and asked about the series of events leading up to the murder.