Page 107 of The Ladies Least Likely

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

E veryone in the courtroom surged to their feet. Amaranthe stood, too, so she could see over their heads. She strained to hear over the blood pounding in her head. Sybil was the first to find her voice.

“He’s a bastard! He’s lying!” she shrieked.

“Your Honor.” Froggart recovered himself from this facer and scrambled to think of an intervention. “This documentation was not properly submitted during the pleadings and has not been entered into the rolls. It cannot be admitted.”

“You are not in a court of common law,” Oliver answered sharply.

He reached down from his bench to indicate he should be given the document Mal’s barrister was perusing.

Once he had it in hand, the judge stared sternly at Mal.

“This evidence has not been submitted during the pleadings, nor entered into the rolls.”

“Your Honor, we could all withdraw back to the plea stage, and continue with deposition,” Mal’s barrister said.

Amaranthe liked him; he was slender, his manner unassuming, but he had a richly timbred voice larger than his frame and a gleam of intelligence in his eyes.

“Or,” Rosenfeld went on, “Your Honor could consider the new evidence and make a judgment now, as it is within your power as a Master in Chancery to do.”

“That document is counterfeit.” Sybil’s voice carried across the room. “My husband never married that commoner. His father, the second duke, rescued him from her clutches and brought him to his senses.”

“My grandfather, the second duke, separated my father and mother as soon as he learned of their union,” Mal answered. “But they were married in a church with a special license, with the blessing of a priest and the signature of witnesses. That makes their marriage valid in any court.”

“It was after you were born,” Sybil said swiftly. “So you’re still a bastard.”

“We can consult my baptismal record if the court has a doubt,” Mal said. “It resides in the parish of St. Phillip and St. James in Bristol.”

Amaranthe kicked herself that she had not thought to hunt up a copy of Mal’s records while she was in Bristol as well.

Would Marguerite have entered her married name, Lady Vernay, as the mother?

Would she have properly named his father?

It could take any length of time to produce this record, thus delaying the case further.

What would Mal do while they waited, his fate in limbo?

This was what he had feared: that he could produce Marguerite’s marriage lines and he would still not be believed, just as Marguerite had not been believed.

She hugged her Book of Hours closer to her chest, protecting the document within it.

“I happen to have recently reviewed the record begun on Mr. Grey when he entered the Middle Temple,” Oliver said. “His birth year was given as 1748. This marriage record is dated 1747.”

Sybil’s mouth worked soundlessly. Even in her distress, she looked fetching.

The barrister representing her, on the other hand, looked like he’d swallowed a toad.

And the nondescript, gaudily dressed man sitting next to Sybil, who must be the steward Popplewell, looked about to faint.

Sybil snapped open a box of smelling salts and impatiently thrust it at him.

The large blond man in the witness box, who’d identified himself as Mr. Thorkelson, watched Amaranthe.

“The document could have been forged, as Her Grace suggests,” Thorkelson said. “By someone experienced in such things. Someone who perhaps took an interest in advancing Mr. Grey’s position.”

Here it was: what she’d feared most. Mal wouldn’t be believed because of his association with her. Amaranthe willed herself to stay silent though everything in her wanted to cry out.

“It would take someone very expert to produce something this authentic looking,” Mal’s barrister said. “I find that accusation unlikely.”

“And yet,” Mr. Thorkelson mused, “the very person with whom Mr. Grey has taken up is known to be an extremely skilled copyist. I understand she can reproduce any hand and make it appear convincing. She has developed quite a reputation among the booksellers and book binders about town. If you ask anywhere for the best person to make a fair, true copy of an antique manuscript, they will direct you to one Miss Illingworth.”

Amaranthe hadn’t known she was so well regarded. She wished she could take pride in Thorkelson’s words, instead of finding them damning. Oliver looked at her with speculation. The barristers, forbidding in their black silk robes and wigs of office, watched her as well.

“Forged?” Sybil sniffed. “Of course it’s forged. But by her ?” She swiveled to stare at Amaranthe and, like a pale shadow, the steward beside her did also.

Everyone stared at Amaranthe.

Mal looked resigned. He hadn’t any other proof. All his life, since birth, he had been regarded as less than, insufficient. He didn’t expect anything to change about that now.

And despite public opinion, he’d done his best to forge a life for himself.

So what if there had been missteps along the way—what man did not have them in his past?

He was doing his best to establish himself in a career, and now that his siblings had been cast upon Sybil’s less than tender mercy, he was trying to do right by them as well. How she loved him for it.

He’d already done the worst thing he could do to her, casting her out and telling her not to seek out him or the children. He could wound her no worse. And he needed her. Amaranthe stood.

“Your Honor. I can prove the marriage lines are valid,” she said.

She was surprised that her voice carried across the room, with its high vaulted ceilings, when she felt so out of breath. Shakily she opened her book and withdrew a matching piece of parchment.

She tried her best to sound calm and authoritative, though her knees quaked.

“I have here the record of marriage entered into the parish register at St. Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. And a statement from the vicar of St. Mary Redcliffe, who conducted the marriage, attesting to its validity. If Your Honor will allow me.”

“The court acknowledges new evidence submitted by Miss Amaranthe Illingworth,” Oliver said. She was taken aback by what seemed to be a twinkle of amusement in his eye. “You may approach the bench.”

“This is preposterous!” The duchess’s barrister leapt forward as if he meant to bar her way. “You cannot produce more false information! This is entirely against procedure.”

“Froggart,” the judge said coolly, “you forget that you are in my courtroom, not yours. Miss Illingworth, proceed.”

“I visited the church while I was in Bristol,” Amaranthe explained to Mal as she surrendered the documents. He stepped close to peer over her shoulder at the record, and she thrilled to the sense of warmth at his nearness. He wasn’t angry. Astonished, but not angry.

“The vicar produced it when I told him the situation,” she went on.

“The page had been removed from the rest of the register, which is why your Aunt Beatrice couldn’t find it when she looked.

I gather your grandfather made the vicar understand that no one who came looking was to find this document.

As an enraged duke, he was extremely persuasive. ”

“But you found it.” Mal’s eyes glowed with admiration. Her sense of warmth increased.

Oliver put the two pages side by side. “These record a special license for the named parties and were properly witnessed as well as signed by the priest,” he said.

“Hugh Delaval and Marguerite Grey were by these lines married in the eyes of the Church, and therefore under the laws of Great Britain.”

“Forged!” Sybil said shrilly. “Lies.”

Mr. Thorkelson coughed into his hand. “I’m afraid the duchess may be correct, Your Honor. I have reason to know that Miss Illingworth has involved herself in forgery prior to this.”

Every particle of warmth that had filled Amaranthe turned to ice.

“I beg your pardon.” Mal’s barrister turned to the witness. “Was anyone talking to you?”

“I have proof,” Thorkelson said. “My firm conducted an inquiry into the Illingworth family when Mr. Illingworth was hired into the Hunsdon household. I have been a personal witness to her habit of forging rare medieval manuscripts and selling them to unsuspecting owners for a very high price.”

“What’s this?” Oliver turned his attention to the witness.

Sybil stepped forward. “You were the one wearing my gowns?” she demanded. “ You ?” Her contemptuous gaze raked Amaranthe from head to toe before she turned an icy stare on the blond Viking. “Thorkelson, tell them,” she commanded.

Mr. Thorkelson looked at the judge, avoiding Amaranthe’s pleading eyes.

“As I said, Miss Illingworth is a very skilled copyist,” he said.

“My office is aware of at least one manuscript she was commissioned to translate, an alchemical treatise dating to the thirteenth century, whose owner, an Oxford don, thought he was in possession of the single surviving copy. Imagine my surprise when I later discovered a copy of this alchemical treatise in the library of a different client, a scholar whose estate I was in charge of. It happens my client procured the manuscript through the bookshop of one Mr. Karim, commonly known as the Moor.”

Amaranthe sucked in her breath. How had he found out about her copy? That alone was enough to damn her, but Thorkelson’s manner indicated he had more weapons in his arsenal.

“It then came to the attention of our office that Mr. Karim also sold, some years ago, a manuscript that bears a very close resemblance to a bestiary held in the college library of St. John’s at Oxford University.

And just lately Mr. Karim conducted the sale of yet another valuable manuscript, also virtually identical to a holding in St. John’s College library.

All of these manuscripts, he will swear under oath, he acquired from Miss Illingworth.

” Thorkelson’s cold blue eyes bored into her.