The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,117

couldn’t quite feel it was real. For all the men she’d thought she’d loved, she’d never known anything like her feelings for Con. He took her many faults and tamed them. And for the few good qualities she did have, he made them better. Motherhood, for one. He took her lopsided little family and completed it.

Just hours ago, she’d thought he might die right beside her. Everything seemed to be happening at once, and to someone else. She couldn’t be this lucky. God hadn’t intended for her to be this happy.

But of course, there was something missing. As she looked on, feeling as though she were floating over the congratulatory scene of someone else’s wedding, she felt a hollowness only a mother could feel. It would have been the best day of her life, if only Oliver had been there, too.

Chapter Twenty-Two

CON’S TRIAL COMMENCED one week after his wedding day. The bruises that covered his face and body were only just healing. Being bedridden had put a damper on his plans to find a suitable townhouse to let, one he could use to present himself to the court as a responsible, settled family man ready to care for a wife and child. It also meant he’d been unable to get his affairs in order, or consummate his marriage.

He regretted that last the most.

As he was led by his brother to the bar where he would stand in silence for the duration of the trial, he barely heard the din of reporters and spectators crowded into the gallery in the hopes of witnessing the brother of a peer be sentenced to a grueling fate. A fate less than death, Bart had assured him, for child stealing alone wasn’t considered a hangable offense. But a fate he feared nonetheless.

Please, let him not be transported.

He didn’t recognize most of the people assembled to witness his fall from grace. Nevertheless, he wasn’t alone. With the exception of Bart, his brothers and mother were cloistered in one corner of the gallery. Elizabeth sat stoically with them.

He gazed at her, but her attention remained stubbornly fixed on the large windows over his head. His heart went to her. She’d always been so difficult to read. She’d hidden her true feelings for him from him and he’d had to move mountains to find them.

Not today. Today, she was terrified. Was it fear for his fate? Or her son’s? Both?

Another wave of panic crashed over him. He’d never told her he loved her. Not the right way, anyway. If he was to be transported, he would have to find time alone—

He tore his eyes from his wife. He wouldn’t think like that.

He forced himself to continue his assessment of the Central Criminal Court. Captain Finn sat at a semicircular table between a formidable man in a dark blue robe and the large, ruddy figure of Lord Wyndham. Wyndham’s side-whiskers quivered as he spoke to Finn. His brows crowded low over his eyes in a scowl.

The Recorder of London entered. Con caught Bart’s eye. His brother was his only defense counsel. He’d never relied on anyone else this much.

Seats scraped as the gathered rose in deference. The trial was called to order, and Con squinted against a bright light shining in his eyes as he tried to see into the jurors’ stalls. Squinting at them, with his face bashed to a pulp, likely wasn’t making him look any more trustworthy, however, and he soon turned to concentrating on smoothing the furrow between his eyes. Lord Wyndham continued to scowl.

“And now we shall proceed,” the Recorder said, leaning forward so that the gray curls of his wig brushed the table and his forearms bore the brunt of his weight.

Con’s blood ran cold. This was it, then.

The Recorder’s voice echoed through the Old Bailey. “Lord Constantine Alexander is indicted for that he, on the nineteenth of August, did by force take and carry away a certain male child of four months old, with intent to deprive Captain Nicholas Finn, the father of said child. Second count, for like offense, only stating the child to be taken by fraud.” He looked to Finn and his counsel. “You may call your first witness.”

“Thank you, my lord,” the man in the dark cloak replied. He turned to Finn. “Captain Finn himself will be our first witness.”

There was a pause as Finn moved to the witness box directly across from Con. His adversary looked on him with a mixture of pity and disgust, and just