Page 105 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
T uesday promised to be a warm late spring day.
In his small rooms on the Strand, Mal freshened his periwig with white powder and selected a suit that was elegant and subdued, somber enough to be in line with the barristers and judges of the court in their wigs and the black robes of office.
He might be called as a witness, but he might have to rely entirely on his barrister, Rosenfeld, to make his case before the presiding judge.
Whatever went forward this day was out of his hands, and Mal didn’t like surrendering control to others.
He paused at his regular coffee shop to imbibe a black, bitter cup and asked the serving boy if he’d seen Viktor Vierling of late.
“Said ’e was off to Scotland to visit relatives, a few days past,” the boy replied, placing a cup before Mal that steamed with heat. “What’s a Hessian got Scottish relatives for, I wants to know?”
So Viktor had something up his bright red sleeve all along, Mal thought as he strolled down the Strand, hearing the lions roar from their cage in the Exchange.
Mal had supposed them friends, and yet Viktor hadn’t seen fit to tell him he had any interest in Miss Pettigrew, nor any intention to turn Illingworth’s expectations on their head.
Still, Joseph should take the rejection in a more manful style. No more drowning his sorrows in drink and starting mills at the pub. Take it on the chin that his lady was false. Mal had.
He couldn’t think about Amaranthe or her betrayal. It felt like a bright, hot blade had sunk into his chest and lodged there.
Chancery proceedings took place in the great hall of Westminster, long the seat of British political power.
As Mal strolled through White Hall and down Parliament Street, he watched the ships’ masts moving along the river and the traffic roving back and forth on Westminster Bridge.
This part of London, closest to the river, reminded him most of Bristol.
When he stayed at Hunsdon House he felt in another world entirely, far away from his roots and what he knew.
As the tall spires of Westminster Abbey came into view, he thought of how much Amaranthe would appreciate the Gothic design and the soaring stained-glass windows reaching toward heaven.
No, he must stop thinking about Amaranthe.
That way lay madness and bitter regret. He’d best make a clean break, strike her entirely from his mind.
He tried to do just that as he entered the long hall of Westminster with its vast interior space and hammer-beam ceiling, a marvel of medieval architecture. Stalls selling trinkets and other goods lined the interior, and he headed for the screened-off courtroom where his case was to be heard.
“So the wastrel makes his appearance.”
Sybil sat in one of the pews, advantageously close to the judge’s chair and with a view of the room in whole.
Popplewell perched beside her, wigged and nervous.
The light filtering through the windows did not fall kindly upon the duchess.
Her face was pale with lead paint, her cheeks unnaturally red, her powdered white hair piled high.
She wore a flamboyant robe à la Turque in red silk.
As Mal watched she held up an enameled snuffbox, opened it, raised a pinch to each nostril and sniffed dramatically, then flourished a handkerchief and dabbed at her nose and lip.
Her dainty theatrics drew every male eye in the room and made sure her insult lingered in the air.
“Sybil,” Mal said, foregoing all courtesy. She was technically his stepmother, so he could claim familiarity, if not affection. “I’d heard you took flight to the Continent with a lover far beneath you in quality. What a surprise to find you here, with Popplewell in your train.”
The steward shifted in his seat. His eyes, made overlarge by his spectacles, held alarm, and he clutched his walking stick as if it would provide defense.
“I’d heard you left town in the company of someone far beneath you,” Sybil shot back. “I see the little mouse followed you here. She must be a very desperate spinster to toss her scarf at a bastard like you.”
Mal turned and spotted Amaranthe in the very back pew. Her hair was unpowdered and with her simple straw bonnet and grey pelisse she did indeed look unassuming. But no one with eyes could call her a mouse.
His heart rose and slammed against his ribs in a whirl of conflicting emotions: gratitude that she was here, indignation that she was intruding on his thoughts and his life when he was determined to forget about her, and outrage that she was alone.
But then he recalled a man he’d thought was Davey strolling about the booths in the hall.
Why had she come? To witness his possible downfall and defeat?
To try to offer support though he’d banned her from the family?
She was the only other person here who knew the secret he needed to protect.
Would she expose him against his wishes, in retaliation for how he had caught her out in her ill deeds?
She met his eye with that dark, steady gaze of hers, and a rush of warmth filled him, deeper and more layered than the rush of attraction that always kindled when she was near.
He saw in her face that she had come to support him and she meant to fight for him.
She could be deposed as a witness for how Sybil had left the children, if need be.
And she could testify to the documentation that made his birth legal and gave him the status of the duke’s heir.
No. He refused to disinherit Hugh or the others. She was here in vain. He turned without acknowledging her and strolled to the other side of the room where the black-robed, white-wigged group of men stood conferring.
“Froggart!” he exclaimed. It was his old nemesis from the Middle Temple, a green-gilled, boot-licking cousin of a viscount who had been called to the bar before him. “You can’t be representing Sybil?”
“I have that honor,” Froggart said, wetting his lips in nervousness and watching Mal as if he were a snake that meant to swallow him in one gulp. But Mal was no toad-eater, which could not be said of Froggart.
His surprise was complete when he recognized the judge appointed to preside over the session. “Oliver! I’d heard you’d been made a Master in Chancery, but I didn’t know you had this case.”
“I took it over.” Oliver pulled the queue of his wig free from his robe and arranged it down the back of his neck. “Felt I was qualified to make a good decision, and the Lord Chancellor agreed.”
Mal wondered what this boded for his case. Oliver’s eyes flickered to the pew where Amaranthe sat, and a light of approval entered his eyes. “I see you’ve brought your lady.”
“She’s not my lady,” Mal said. Oliver’s look of inquiry made him add, unable to contain his bitterness, “She proved too clever for me.”
“Always a risk,” Oliver said. He proceeded to the dais to take his seat and called the court to order.
Sybil’s strategy emerged at once. She had decided to forego her initial line of attack, which concerned what she felt she was due her as the late duke’s duchess and wife.
Now she had decided to undermine Mal’s claim to the guardianship with a wholesale scuttling of his worth, his ability, and his character.
Froggart began entering into the rolls, by the tactic of reading aloud to the Court, long depositions from Sybil and other witnesses painting Mal as a wastrel of the first order.
Accounts were given of every time he had visited a club or private house and lost money gambling.
Friends who had encouraged his most reckless acts bragged of wagers on carriage races and cock fights.
Viktor Vierling, Captain in the Grenadier Horse Guards and a traitor twice over, hinted at a duel.
Mal smothered a groan. That affair had been settled at dawn without weapons on account that neither principal, nor their seconds, could recall, once sober, what the offense had been, but Froggart slanted the report to cast Mal as a ne’er-do-well.
None of these peccadilloes were more than the larks that most young gentlemen in London fell into from time to time, but Froggart depicted Mal as a menace to society.
His history of reprimands and infractions at Cambridge were recounted in detail.
A former schoolmaster at Winchester, the one who had liked him the least and disciplined him the most, gave an account of his character as being thoroughly irredeemable despite regular beatings.
A witness from Bristol—no less than his childhood enemy, Tew—claimed that in one fight, after he’d done no more than give an accurate account of Mal’s parentage, he’d feared Mal meant to kill him.
Mal, arms folded, sank lower in his seat as his failures at going to sea, apprenticing to a printer, and studying for the priesthood were explored in full.
Froggart reported with particular relish the disappointments of one Sally Bly, from a family of Irish lacemakers, who had been rudely jilted by Mr. Malden Grey, of whom she had expectations of marriage.
At this Mal felt the scowl freeze on his face.
Sweet Sally had flirted and led him on, all to fire the jealousy of the man whose affections she really wanted, but she told Froggart Mal made promises and broke them? He looked a blackguard indeed.
And Amaranthe was hearing every word of this. Every instance of bad luck, observed; every whim or inane occupation, itemized. Mal o’ Misfortune, his whole history laid miserably bare.