The Devil She Knows - By Diane Whiteside Page 0,23
wolves guarding their littermate. Uncle Hal Lindsay, big and bold with Aunt Rosalind by his side, assessed the lawyers down below like hyenas to be carved up as quickly and neatly as possible. Grandfather Richard Lindsay sat still and erect like the naval officer he’d been, intensely aware of the judge’s least flicker. Her Lindsay cousins occupied the seats beyond him, more menacing in their silent watchfulness than the courtroom’s guards’ twitching wariness beside the doors.
As for Uncle William and Aunt Viola, they sat at the edge of the gallery closest to her, ostensibly the best behaved of all her family. Yet the guards gave the big Irishman with his California accent and London-made clothes the widest berth of any Lindsay family member. And Aunt Viola—dear, dear Aunt Viola—was pale and slow-moving, due to her third bout of pneumonia in the two years since the twins had been born. Yet she still stared at the bailiff as if she wanted to dowse him in the foulest animal matter possible.
Portia longed to yell at her to rest, almost more than she wanted to make the bailiff fall silent. Yet she was caged, able to see but not touch or call out to her family. They might as well have been on another continent.
Gluttonous stares swept over her from the other onlookers, like locusts hunting for tidbits. United in black and white clothing, they swayed to and fro under the legalistic chant’s hypnotic sway. Their jaws were poised to clack rapidly, their elbows ready to jostle their neighbors’ ribs at the first hint of any weakness on her part.
Idiots. Flesh-eating beetles would have been more discreet, since they’d at least run back into dark corners if she stomped her feet.
Amabel Mayhew, St. Arles’ mistress, leaned forward from her seat in the far gallery, her close-set eyes avidly scrutinizing Portia. Was she staring at Portia’s attire, rather than her expression like everyone else? Didn’t the fool realize whose money paid for everything—and it wasn’t the earl’s?
The legal chain of words reached out for Portia again.
“On the grounds of having held criminal conversation…”
A cold draft stirred her hem and dragged it back toward the drop through the stairwell down to the prison.
Portia immediately twitched it away from the verge and settled the ruffled, whispering mass safely away from danger. Gareth had always said her liking for feminine frills would get her into trouble—but, please God, not here and now.
Why couldn’t the court’s servants be honest enough to simply say adultery? Surely criminal conversation could be interpreted as something else, just as infidelity required more than words.
“Five times…” the bailiff intoned with notable satisfaction.
Five times? The same number as his mistress had borne children to her late husband, thereby proving her worthiness to become the next Countess of St. Arles. Unlike Portia’s complete and utter failure as a breeder.
Only the past years’ bitter lessons in how to become an acceptable British countess kept Portia from shrieking a denial.
St. Arles had only discussed one count with her, not five. Why the devil should she heap even more opprobrium on her head by accepting—no, standing here in court and agreeing to—so many more occurrences of infidelity?
The infernal bastard who still styled himself as her husband leaned back in his chair and studied his fingernails.
Portia measured the distance to the nearest inkwell. Too far below her on that lawyer’s desk to grab, dammit, but perhaps she could hurl one of those appalling wigs instead?
No matter what words Shakespeare had placed in her name-sake’s mouth, she could not pray for mercy for St. Arles, only justice. If not from this court, then another.
The bailiff’s phrases continued to roll inexorably onward like a sorcerer’s incantation.
“With one Robert Brundage…”
A down-at-the-heels actor whose hair was so oily that it seemed to beg for the latest carbolic soap.
“How plead ye?” the bailiff thundered, cracking the question at her like a lion tamer’s whip.
She caught the statue of Justice’s unblinking gaze. Her mouth tightened and she quickly looked away.
But true justice would not be found between these four walls, only prearranged lies and half-truths. Gareth’s watch ticked steadily against her throat under her collar, in a silent reminder that like time and tides, some things were beyond the power of man to change.
Today was her battle to fight—and win.
She stared back at the bailiff impassively, her hands firmly folded in a lady’s formal public barricade. Now was the only time she controlled this public flogging. She’d do exactly what she wanted to with it,