Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

“Oh, come,” 12-Q was saying. “Fine lady like you doesn’t want to resist the metropolitan police. As for when—right now. Why do you suppose I was sent to fetch you? Justice waits for no man. Or woman. Particularly not when justice is administered by Magistrate Fang. He doesn’t like staying after his time.”

“But I have an appointment to take tea.” Kate set one foot in the carriage, and her footman backed away from her slightly. Her voice was significantly steadier than her nerves. “Are you intimating that instead, I must undertake a tedious journey to—to—”

“The police court at Queen Square, ma’am.” He fingered his collar. “It’s what the Q stands for.”

“So I must travel to Queen Square, hear a set of trumped-up charges and stand trial? But I shall be quite late. I pride myself on my punctuality.”

Officer 12-Q shrugged and reached for her arm. “If you plead guilty first, there’s no need to stand for trial. Trial’s only if you wish to establish your innocence.” His hand closed around her elbow—firm, but not harsh.

Kate glared at him. “Thank you. That is most helpful.”

“Of course,” he continued, “six months in gaol will likely delay your arrival, as well.”

“Six months!” Kate was no longer even able to pretend at equanimity. “You must be joking. What on earth are they charging me with?”

A ghost of a smile played across 12-Q’s face. “Fang tends toward lenience with women, he does. Six months is if he’s feeling kind—and given the lord who brought the charge, he’s unlike to do so.”

Of course it was Harcroft. She had guessed it from the first. But what would he claim she had done? It could have been anything from theft to murder. At the least, she had the luxury of knowing that whatever it was he claimed she did, she was innocent. Now all she had to do was prove it.

She turned to the footman, who gave her a pained shake of the head, one she translated as I like my wages very well, but not enough to leap upon an officer of the police force. Please do not expect it. She sighed.

“You need to fetch my husband,” she said. “He’s off at Chancery. Tell him I’ve been brought to Queen Square. And that I need him. Now.”

The officer yawned at this interplay and shrugged as the footman turned and dashed away. “Will you come now, or must I bind you and carry you down the street?”

Kate raised her chin and went.

NED CHARGED INTO THE STUFFY ROOM where the police court was held.

He’d convinced himself, on the mad dash over to Queen Square, that the footman’s garbled tale held little relation to the truth. If Kate had been required to make her way into the somber, grubby office lodged in Westminster, surely it was because she had been set upon by some cutpurse. She was there to testify, and nothing more—

But no. As he entered, a sergeant of the police stretched his arm out and grabbed Ned’s wrist. He gave a little twist as he did so—some police trick—and Ned stumbled, one knee stiking the ground, his arm wrenching.

The officer was one of only a few occupants—a red-faced drunkard lay snoring across one bench, a woman and her children, all clad in matching shades of brown, took up another. A handful of officers, all in uniform blue, waited. If Ned had wanted, he might have picked out individual scents: five different bouquets of unwashed-ness. He didn’t want, and so he held his breath and looked forward.

Kate stood at the front of the room, beautiful, her hair slightly disheveled. She held her head high. He couldn’t see her face; instead, she was looking at the magistrate. The man sat—if you could call that disreputable slouch “sitting”—in a rumpled coat and trousers, his sole nod to respectability being a white powdered wig that lay somewhat askew on his head.

Directly across from her, standing just before the bench, was the Earl of Harcroft.

Harcroft had engineered this, then. Ned had known he had some other plan. He just hadn’t expected to find his wife charged with some crime before a magistrate.

Kate tossed her head, and something about that ungraceful movement drew Ned’s eyes to her hands. Her wrists were bound.

“What have you to say to the charges?” the magistrate asked. By his tone of voice, he was bored with the proceedings already.

“I can have little to say, Your Worship, seeing as how I haven’t heard them.” Kate’s voice was strong—as always, she betrayed no weakness.

“Haven’t heard them?” The magistrate looked puzzled. “But how can that be?”

“You haven’t read them to me, Your Worship.”

The magistrate cast Kate a baleful look, as if it were somehow her fault that his court had to pause for such futile things as the reading of charges. In an elaborate gesture, the man swooped a pair of spectacles off the bench and balanced them on his nose. He held a piece of paper in front of him at arm’s length. “There,” he said. “Abduction.”

He ripped the glasses off and peered at Kate again. “Now what have you to say to the charges?”

“Abduction of whom, Your Worship?”

A longer pause, and the magistrate’s lips thinned. “I am accustomed,” he said in a commanding voice, “to people knowing with whom they have absconded.” He glared at Kate.

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

Slowly, he picked up his spectacles, and once again set them on the bridge of his nose. He read the paper more carefully. “Ah, yes. I recall now. Abduction of this fine lord’s wife.” Off came the glasses again. But instead of glaring at Kate, he glanced at Harcroft.

“How odd,” he said. “Abduction of a wife? By another woman? I have only ever seen the case brought against other men.” He glanced back at Kate.

“But there is nothing in the law preventing its application to a woman, is there?” Harcroft spoke for the first time, his voice soothing. “You heard the evidence for the warrant, Your Worship. Must I repeat it all now, or can we dispense with the formalities?”

“He claimed to have evidence that I forcibly abducted his wife?” Kate said. “He’s lying.”

“Abduction by persuasion, at a minimum.” Harcroft didn’t look at Kate as he spoke. “A wife, of course, has no power to consent to leave her husband without his permission.”

Ned looked down at the hand still restraining him, and then slowly, gingerly, he pulled his sleeve from the sergeant’s grasp. He’d never given it much thought, but what Harcroft said was likely true. And if that was the case…Harcroft might in fact have hit on a crime Kate had actually committed.

“Wait!” Ned called from the back. “I’m her husband!”

The magistrate took Ned in. He gave him one long, pitying look, and then shook his head in dismissal. He turned back to Kate. “Well? Did you do it?”

“How can you even charge her?” Ned demanded. “She’s my wife. Whatever she’s done—whatever you think she’s done—should I not be charged with responsibility for it, as her husband?”

The judge fixed Ned with a pointed stare.

“That is, I should be charged with responsibility, Your Worship,” Ned appended belatedly.

“Mr. Carhart, I presume,” the magistrate said. “This is not the proper way to present an argument to the bench.” He looked around the room. “Having heard the evidence in this case, I hereby find that—”

“Your Worship,” Ned said, “which of these individuals—” he spread his arm to encompass the courtroom stuffed with sorry specimens of humanity “—is sitting on the jury?”

“Jury?” The magistrate frowned. “Jury? There isn’t time this afternoon for a trial by jury.” He glared at Kate. “You didn’t say you wanted a jury. In fact, you can’t have one. Not unless the amount involved is over forty shillings.”

“The Countess of Harcroft is likely worth more,” Ned said. “Your Worship.”

Harcroft glanced at him through slitted eyes, but did not contradict.

The magistrate sighed and set his glasses back on his nose, looking at Ned in the back of the room. “You appear to be a gentlem

an.”