The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery L.C. Sharp (i read books .TXT) 📖

“What happens if I send you away?”

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “You are perfectly within your rights to do so. But you asked if.” He took a second to watch her. She was not moving, but he regarded her closely, as if she were doing something that fascinated him. He took a deep breath, like a man who had come to a decision. “Very well. You will be arrested by someone else and taken to Newgate Gaol. That is, if you survive the mob outside, of course. When I arrived, about fifty people had gathered outside, but that was before I spoke with your father. There will be more by now. They are calling for your blood. Screaming for it.”

She swallowed and forced herself to keep her voice steady. He was testing her. That perceptive gaze was taking in every second of her response to his frank speaking, making her feel unshielded before him.

She lifted her chin defiantly. “Perhaps I would prefer to be torn to pieces by an angry mob than go through the process and die at Tyburn next week.”

A cool nod. “Perhaps. You will appear before the magistrate, the evidence will be heard, and as matters stand, you will be condemned.”

“Will I stay in Newgate Prison?” As shock wore off, the full horror of her dilemma drove a knife into her soul. If she had a pistol handy, she might have clapped it to her temple and finished everything. Overdramatic for her taste, but an answer to her dilemma.

“Unlikely, although there are half-decent cells to house people who can afford it. You are a lady. You would stay with Mr. Fielding and his wife in their house in Bow Street. Or somewhere else. On your cognizance, of course.”

“Here?”

“If you wish.” He raised a brow. “So will you tell me your story, or am I wasting my time?”

He straightened in the chair as if planning to rise and leave.

She did not want him to leave. He had given her the stark truth. She respected him for that.

Juliana folded her hands in her lap, like a child preparing to recite her lesson. Flashes of last night kept returning unbidden, bringing back the horror and despair, plunging her into darkness. Perhaps she should have arrayed herself in her usual armor of hoops and face paint after all.

“As you no doubt know, last night was my first in my husband’s bed. And my last. I awoke to find him dead. Surely I would have remembered doing that?”

He nodded, but his eyes showed the compassion she had seen in no one else since her marriage. Since before then. “How can that be? You spent the night in his bed, you say. He was dead in the morning. So what happened?”

“I do not know.”

“My lady, I hate to ask you this, but I need to know more details of the evening.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, as if weary. “Would you like me to ask your maid to come in? I understand your mother is on her way to a country house, so that I’m afraid your maid is the only alternative.”

She shook her head, a little too vigorously. “No, that is the last thing I want. Wood is my father’s spy.” There, she’d said it. “She works for him rather than for me.”

“Is there nobody you can trust as your friend?”

She didn’t need to think about her answer. “No. I am alone.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “I see. Then tell me everything, starting with your wedding. Every detail, however trivial it might seem.”

“If I employ you as my lawyer, you cannot tell anyone else anything I tell you, is that right?”

“If I agree to take your case, yes. But I am at present undecided, and I am currently here on behalf of the magistrate at Bow Street. Tell me the truth and we will go from there.”

She had counted her life over already. Who in their right mind would believe her? And why should they care? This man could tell the gossip sheets, he could use her story, twist it to his own needs. After all, although she instinctively trusted him, she had no actual proof. She was unpracticed at trusting anyone.

But at least one person should hear her confession, and since she was not a Roman Catholic, this man was her only chance of that. For that reason alone, she would tell him.

Juliana settled herself as well as she could. “We had a special license, so we could be married privately. I was married in this house yesterday, and then we traveled to my husband’s parents’ house. The wedding breakfast took most of the afternoon, although I did not eat much.”

“Did your husband?” He watched her carefully.

She did not care. She was used to being watched. She had been watched since her birth, and even more since she became the sole heir to her father’s fortune. But this time was different. He wasn’t looking at her as a potential conquest or a walking fortune; he was scrutinizing her.

“My husband ate and drank copiously, joking that he must stoke the fires, and made other comments in the same vein.”

The two small lines above his brows deepened, but he only said, “Please go on.”

“Early in the evening at about seven o’clock, my husband took me upstairs to—that room.” She closed her eyes, her inner vision replaying the scene. She could recite it as if nobody was listening to her, as if recalling events for herself.

“I have seen it. Tell me everything, my lady,” he murmured, his voice like velvet. “I need to know it all.”

He’d seen the room where her husband had died? She opened her eyes. “Was he still there?”

He shook his head. “No, they moved him to another room. But I saw the room, and then I viewed your husband’s body.”

She caught her breath. That he could speak so dispassionately about a dead man! Was he like her father, then? A coldhearted person with no natural