The Devil She Knows - By Diane Whiteside Page 0,22

ragged wooden edge.

A splinter cracked and broke off underneath. A chill breeze teased her skirts and petticoats then tried to slither up her wobbling ankles to terrorize her legs and her heart. Twenty feet below, a pair of gaslights buzzed before the door to one of London’s most notorious prisons.

But she wasn’t a criminal and her freedom lay ahead, no matter how high the price. Besides, she was damned—what an appropriate word—if she’d let Saint Arles win everything.

Portia tightened her grasp on the far-too-large handrail and hauled herself into London’s finest courtroom before her guard noticed anything had gone awry. An instant later, she was firmly penned in a large wooden box, forced to view the world over a stockade of varnished oak planks.

“Ice Princess! Countess St. Arles!” The crowd’s clamor swelled around her, more raucous than anything she’d endured to arrive at this hellish place. How many hours had her lawyer—no, barrister—said she’d have to survive the torment?

Portia firmed her stance and wrapped herself in an attitude of arctic politeness, based on the one her mother-in-law had always shown her. If nothing else, it should fend off the rabble rousers and let her assess her true tribunal.

Winter’s cold brilliance spilled into the great courtroom from the skylight and windows, remorselessly exposing every tiny detail to the judge’s pitiless scrutiny. It drowned out the wall sconces’ feeble yellow glow as easily as the crowd outside ignored the police’s attempts to keep the surrounding streets clear. It honed its blades upon the great mirror then dived upon its prey.

Portia tilted her head slightly, using her hat’s lace trim to deflect the worst glare. She hadn’t been permitted to wear a veil, a decent woman’s standard protection from prying eyes. Even so, she didn’t have to display every thought that passed through her mind, even if she was the accused.

The bailiff’s deep voice rang through the big room, like a horn summoning hunters to follow their master. Heavy oak paneling marched around the walls behind him, locking in potential malefactors as completely as a stockade. “Edward Henry Vanneck, Earl of St. Arles, Viscount Erddig, hereinafter known as the Petitioner…”

Portia’s husband smoothly shook out his cuffs, as calculatedly dispassionate as if he were negotiating an arms treaty. The movement had the additional advantage of distracting onlookers from his narrow shoulders and viper-thin face. His black frockcoat and white linen were perfectly tailored and quite pristine, making them permissible to be worn by the fruit of centuries of England’s finest breeding. Dark eyebrows curved over his heavy-lidded eyes, framing a high-born predator’s watchful gaze.

He focused all his attention on the bailiff and the judge, of course—never the crowd, with their sharp, ill-bred whispers and stares.

All around him, clerks and barristers took their places in a final blur of black robes, rustling papers, and heavy seats slamming down like a fort’s gate ramming shut.

Portia instinctively, unwillingly flinched. The bitter taste of failure—of being forced back into St. Arles life again—surged into her throat.

She swallowed hard and reached for logic, whose cool shelter had protected her so well for so long. For five years, she’d tolerated St. Arles in her bed. But not anymore, thank God. Besides, if she acted with all the speed her ancestors had shown against the Barbary pirates, she might yet salvage something for herself.

She might be damaged but she was not yet utterly defeated. She was, after all, a golden Lindsay, at least on her mother’s side.

“For divorce…”

Pencils stormed across pads while newspaper artists feverishly recorded the day’s events. All those years of doing her best for the people on St. Arles’ estate—building schools, starting new businesses, repairing roofs and replacing others for tenants, and other deeds, all of which St. Arles had derided or fought as a waste of her money, which should have been spent on his brilliant ambitions…All that work was now eclipsed by blocks of black ink screaming her name across every newspaper in Britain.

The words’ stain seemed to have sunk through her clothing and into her skin, no matter how conservatively she dressed or how often she washed. Her carriage had been blocked this morning by newsboys shoving copies of the latest lies into a thousand grasping hands outside the courthouse.

“From Portia Anne Townsend Vanneck, hereinafter known as the Respondent…” The bailiff’s head reared back and he glared at her, determined as any buffalo hunter unleashing a loaded Winchester rifle.

Her mother’s family was here to fill the near gallery’s first row, dangerous as a pack of