The Devil She Knows (7 page)

St. Arles House, London, October 1885

P
ortia stirred the jewelry strewn across her table one last time. Her sitting room's soft gaslight picked out the exquisite details uncannily well and identified them as extremely high quality, even if most were old-fashioned. She'd picked her American jewels up from the vault that morning: she would not leave her mother's possessions near any banker who might feel more loyalty to St. Arles than to her.

It was the last step before leaving this house.

Nobody had touched her mother's sapphires and pearls in more than a decade, since all of Juliet Townsend's jewelry and possessions went to her daughter. Even so, Portia's fingers lingered longest on the tiny cloisonné watch where the phoenix crouched, ready to spring into flight. She'd hoped so much more would follow when Gareth gave it to her.

So many memories were bound up on this table, as they were in the servants facing her from across it.

“Are you very sure you won't do this?” she asked again. “I'd understand perfectly if you agreed to testify.”

“It would be a lie, your ladyship.” Mrs. Russell, the housekeeper and designated spokeswoman, sniffed ferociously.

“People tell untruths frequently, especially for the family they've worked for throughout their careers,” Portia pointed out and ran her thumb across the watch's delicate gold threads. Gareth never seemed more alive than when she held his gift, even though she didn't know where he was.

“Besides”—Portia hesitated, unwilling to speak more frankly and make the situation worse.

“Servants generally provide complete details of lives in the households where they serve.” Years of dictating other people's behavior rang through the housekeeper's severe tones. “It is our duty, your ladyship, to answer all questions put to us. It is not our duty to make up statements from whole cloth.”

“Your absence from the proceedings will be noted,” Portia pointed out gently and started to wind the watch. “It will probably cause considerable gossip in his lordship's circles and may darken his lordship's mood, something I don't want you to suffer.”

“We all know you've taken the brunt of that upon yourself whenever possible, your ladyship!” little Maisie burst out, startling the entire group by a housemaid's temerity in interrupting such an august gathering.

“If you'll pardon me for speaking so frankly,” she added, dipping her head. Jenkins, the under-groom, gently nudged her and she grabbed his elbow like a lifebelt. “But you've always been kind to all of us, learned our names, made our schedules easy as pie whenever possible.” Maisie's eyes shone with tears and sincerity under her pleated cap. “It wouldn't be right to make you bear the full burden now.”

“His lordship has already made it clear he expects his staff to testify according to whatever script he writes, including the details of the adultery committed by any staff member with your ladyship.” Winfield's voice dripped poison for all its quiet, astonishing in a butler with thirty years service under the same family.

“There will be a divorce and St. Arles must have witnesses to my so-called adultery.” Portia forced her voice around the knot in her throat. Duty, honor—all virtue demanded a price. Hadn't Gareth taught her that? “If you do not speak, his lordship will be forced to hire a correspondent, paid to swear he'd committed adultery with me—”

“No true man—” Jenkins muttered under his breath but Maisie kicked him hard in the shins.

“Plus witnesses to this adultery,” Portia finished. “Spending money for what he must certainly consider disloyalty will anger him greatly. Are you and the other servants certain you wish to do this?”

“My lady, you have always been a most true and faithful mistress. We will keep faith with you by becoming very slow-witted when asked about you. And forgetful,” Mrs. Russell proclaimed firmly. “Certainly we would never speak a lie.”

“Even if that means being turned off and being sent to live with the lowest of the low in Spitalfields,” Winfield added.

“All of us who know you, both here in town and at St. Arles Castle, have sworn to it,” completed Maisie and Jenkins.

The four of them stood shoulder to shoulder facing her, like knights of old ready to ride into battle. Their plan might just work.

“Oh my dear friends, how much you've lifted my heart.” How few friends she had left, except for her family. Gareth was lost to her since her wedding, since nobody spoke to her of him.

She fastened the exquisite bit of jewelry around her neck.

“While I'm sure it would never come to Spitalfields for you, I'll always be willing to do anything I can for all of you.” It was the very least she could do for them.

London, November 1885

L
ight sliced across Portia's eyes, sharp and fast as an executioner's axe after the holding room's darkness. She flinched and her gloved hand lost its deathly tight grip on the banister. Her foot slipped on the narrow tread. An agonizingly long moment later, her heel finally thudded onto another stair's 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 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, not what the men decided.

If she denied committing adultery, the divorce would take longer but it would still go through. St. Arles had made that very clear and she believed him.

If she agreed, matters would move far faster and she'd still keep one priceless asset, an item that would infuriate him.

Her continued silence had drawn everyone's nervous attention, even St. Arles. Very good.

“How plead ye, my lady?” The judge reiterated the bailiff's question, sharpening the whip's edge in an implicit threat to hurl her back down into the pit if she didn't obey him quickly.

How much choice did she truly have, if she wanted to start afresh?

“Aye.” Her admission rang out through the room like a battlefield bugle call compelling attention and belief. After all, she would have done everything she was accused of, and more, with Gareth Lowell.

If she'd only had the chance.