Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

Kate and Ned made certain that Harcroft was not lurking nearby, then they started off. Kate splashed across a cold stream, holding on to her husband’s arm. They crept across fields, avoiding country roads. They didn’t dare be spotted on their way to the cottage where Louisa was staying.

When they were ushered inside, Kate explained the problem. “Louisa, your husband believes I had something to do with your disappearance.”

“So what does that mean?” Louisa shook her head. “I’m not going back. I’m not letting him have his son, either.”

“No. Of course not,” Ned said.

“But it does mean that this situation is no longer tenable,” Kate finished. “It never has been. You have to either decide to leave England, or you must confront your husband and find a way to wrest your freedom—and your son’s—from his grasp.”

Louisa simply looked at Kate before shaking her head. “Unlikely. I’m his. I married him. He controls my funds. And besides…” She sighed. “If he looks at me that way, I might just crawl back to him. I did it once before.” There was a grim edge to her speech.

Kate set her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I know it’s not easy. But you’re going to have to do something.”

“I can shoot him,” Louisa offered hopefully. “Isn’t that ridiculous?” Her voice shook. “I can’t imagine looking him in the eyes and telling him no, but I can see myself shooting him.” Her voice dropped. “I can see myself shooting him very easily.”

“Perhaps we might consider solutions that do not lead to your subsequent hanging,” Kate suggested.

Ned flicked a glance at Kate. She had no notion what he intended. The hardest part of her hobby had always been convincing the women in question to act. She didn’t understand why it was so hard to make the decision to leave a violent husband. A man who was willing to break bones didn’t deserve much consideration, in Kate’s opinion. And yet there was this vacillation. She tried not to let it irritate her.

Sometimes it still did.

Louisa pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them to her, as if making herself smaller would shrink her problems. “It’s easy for you to tell me to make a choice,” she said. “But when I try to think of the future, my head just hurts. I can’t face it.”

Kate exhaled in exasperation. “But you shall have to do so.”

Louisa set her fingers to her temples and didn’t respond.

“You know what?” Ned’s voice rang out, doubling Kate’s annoyance. “Did I ever tell you about my experience with Captain Adams in China?”

At those words, Louisa looked up, and Kate pressed her lips together. This hardly seemed the place to exchange anecdotes. They needed to plan, to think, to charge forward. They had little enough time as it was. Kate turned toward her husband, and her brows drew down.

But at least Louisa had uncurled from her little ball, as if once the tension was released, she could sit straight again.

“No,” she said softly. “You didn’t. I’ve heard almost nothing about your journey. What was China like? Was it foreign? Exotic?”

Ned rested one hand easily on his knee and leaned back. He looked toward Louisa, as if she were the only person in the room, and Kate felt her annoyance grow.

“It was frustrating,” he replied. “Very frustrating. I arrived, thinking my mission would take me maybe a month or two. But when I first got to the Eastern hemisphere, hostilities had broken out. The ship I was on rerouted, so as to find a safe place to land. It took me months just to make my way to Hong Kong. But I’d promised Gareth I would investigate the opium situation in China. And I was bound and determined to go forward, war or no war, hostilities or no hostilities. After all, I hadn’t traveled halfway round the globe, just to be fobbed off with secondhand accounts. I wanted to see the British action in China, and I wanted to see it personally.”

Kate tapped her foot, one hand on her hip.

Ned put his hands behind his head and looked up. “The man I needed to talk to was Captain Adams. He’d been appointed as a liaison to all the silly, foolish second sons and aimless aristocrats who’d been shipped out East for no reason other than that nobody wanted us back in England. I suspect he despised us all. He took one look at me and knew precisely what to make of me.”

“He thought you were someone he had to respect, as the heir to a marquess?” Kate asked. “The sort of person who could solve problems decisively?”

Ned cast a glance at her, that smile on his face, but ignored her. “Absolutely not. He thought I was useless, and that I would prove to be a headache.”

“Well. I hope he learned his lesson, judging you so quickly,” Kate said. “But back to Louisa…”

Ned shrugged. “He was right. I went to his office day after day, requesting that he allow me aboard one of the ships they were sending down to the mouth of the Pearl River, to observe what was happening. At first, he said no. Then I began to wear into the thin veneer of his patience, at which point he said, ‘Definitely not.’ After about three weeks of my constant badgering, it turned into, ‘My God, man, don’t you frivolous idiots have the brains to see I have real work to do? Stop pestering me.’”

“But then he gave in,” Kate predicted. “As for Louisa…”

Ned smiled more broadly. “No. He didn’t. It took another week to turn into ‘Mr. Carhart, as God is my witness, if you set foot in my office one more time, you will regret it for the rest of your life.’”

At this point, Kate noticed that Louisa had begun to lean forward, her eyes alight. And when Ned paused contemplatively, she let out a little gasp. “Oh, don’t stop there. Did you? Set foot in his office, I mean.”

“Of course I did. I was scared out of my wits, too. I had promised Gareth I’d not leave until I had personally seen what was happening. And so the next morning, I presented myself once more. By that time, I wasn’t really sure why I continued to march into his office. I surely did not expect to meet with success. I had all the feeling of throwing myself against a brick wall, violently, repeatedly, for no other reason than there were no other brick walls available. It was pure foolishness. Only idiots and madmen continue to better themselves in the face of persistent failure, and by that time, I was certain I was both.”

There was a certain gentle humor in his retelling, a glint in his eye, and out of the corner of her eye, Kate could see Louisa smile. Ned had always had this skill, even when she’d first met him—this ability to say something funny and unassuming, to set someone at ease, to bring out the light in shadowed eyes.

He’d been sweet. Over the years of his marriage, that sweetness had been given more substance than she’d guessed.

“So? What happened?” Louisa asked.

“He clapped eyes on me. And this time, he didn’t say one word. Instead, he rang a little bell on his desk.”

Kate was leaning forward as much as Louisa, now. “And then?”

“And then, eight soldiers marched in. They must have been lying in wait for the moment. They grabbed me by the arms and legs.”

“Didn’t you fight?”

“I tried. But there were eight of them and one of me. If I’d had as many arms as a squid, I’d still have been at a distinct disadvantage. Especially at close quarters. In any event, they lifted me off the ground and carried me like a sack of potatoes. And the only thing the captain said was this—‘Dunk him.’”

“Oh, no.” Louisa covere

d her mouth in sympathy. “Did they toss you in a lake?”

“I can tell you’ve spent no time around soldiers, if a lake is the worst you can imagine. That would have been very kind, in comparison with what actually happened. You see, the garrison had built these privies. And it was so wet there, that… Well, in any event, the waste eventually collected in these massive holes in the ground. They were foul, disgusting swamps.”

“Oh, dear God.” The words escaped Kate’s mouth.

Ned smiled at her, his cheerful tone at odds with the filthy scene he set. “So in I went. It was quite possibly the most humiliating moment of my life. It was disgusting and degrading, and I do not have the words to describe how impossibly awful it was. I couldn’t even scream in protest, because that would have required me to open my mouth. I have never felt quite so helpless in my life as I did at that moment.”

The two women stared at him in shock.

“You realize,” Ned said in a low voice, “that if this story ever gets out, I will be a laughingstock. I am trusting you ladies with my deepest, most shameful secret. You must never tell another soul. I know I can count on you.”

Louisa nodded, and in that instant, Kate’s breath stopped wildly. Somehow he’d managed to calm her friend’s fears. He’d managed to make her smile. And now he was subtly making her feel that she was important, trustworthy. Somehow he’d known that she’d had so much taken from her that she couldn’t possibly give anything back. Her husband didn’t need to beat his chest or roar. He didn’t need to make arrogant demands. He just needed to smile and make Louisa laugh. Now Kate’s heart stung just a bit.

“So,” Louisa asked, “what did you do?”

“What would you have done? I took a bath.” He grinned. “A long bath. Then I got in a little boat and I tooled around and I thought. There’s something extraordinarily valuable about having someone do their worst. If you survive it, they can’t truly touch you again. There’s nothing they can do to bring you down. And Adams—well, he’d done his worst. He couldn’t kill me. My cousin would investigate my death and make his life miserable if he did. He’d had me thrown in the privy on the assumption that I’d be too humiliated to admit it to anyone once I got home. He believed I would simply make up some rubbish for a report and leave him alone.” Ned leaned back in his chair. “He believed wrong. The next morning I got dressed. I went down to his office one last time. And then…” Ned smiled, stood. He walked over to Louisa and bent down, so that he was level with her.