Unraveled (42 page)

Smite reached the carriage first, just as Mark was stepping down.

“Mark.” His pause was perceptible to her eyes only; he caught his brother in a hug after only that one bare second of hesitation.

“Where’s Ash?” Mark said. “Not hanging back, I hope.”

“Oh no,” Smite said slyly. “He has other plans.”

Mark frowned. “Other plans?” He peered around dubiously. “I can’t bring myself to believe that, on Christmas Eve of all times. After all, I—”

He was cut off by a snowball thudding into his chest.

“Guess again,” Ash called out cheerfully. “I’m fortified.”

“You distracted me.” Mark stared at Smite. “You distracted me
intentionally
so that Ash could get me.”

Smite laughed and ran away, just as his younger brother ducked behind the wheel of the carriage and scooped up snow. Robbie tumbled out of the conveyance. But instead of going to greet Miranda—he’d been visiting Mark for the duration of their honeymoon—he exclaimed, “Brilliant!” and joined the battle.

The war was fierce but short; it ended when Lady Turner sneaked up behind Ash and dumped a bucket of slush down his neck.

She was declared the victor.

Miranda was picking snow out of her husband’s collar—and wishing she’d joined Lady Turner’s initiative—when a second carriage topped the rise.

“I thought everyone was here,” she said.

“Did you?” Smite’s answer was a little too nonchalant. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten someone.”

Everyone else was waiting with avid interest. A cousin, perhaps? The duchess’s other brother?

As the carriage pulled around the drive, Smite found his way to her side. He slid his arm about her and then leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“I’ve owed you a wedding present all these weeks,” he said. “This is it.”

She had one moment to wonder what he could possibly mean when the door opened. It had been years since she last saw them, but she could never have forgotten. She started forward. “Jasper?”

The man who stepped out saw her, and a brilliant grin lit his face. She ran across the snow, skidding into his arms. Jonas was next out.

“Look at you,” Jasper said. “You’re all grown.” He held her close, and then murmured into her hair, “You’d best tell us what the jig is quickly, so we don’t put the lie to anything you’ve said.”

“No lies,” Miranda retorted happily. “He knows everything.”

“And he invited us anyway?” Jonas came up behind them, enveloping her in a hug.

Smite was already coming forward. “Smite Turner.” He held out his hand. “It’s good to have the two of you here. Standish, I hear you’ve got a translation of
Antigone
. My brother Mark and I would love to hear what you’ve got.”

“Oh, no,” said Jonas. “I must hear this story first. Miranda, how in God’s name did you end up
here?”

“Well,” Miranda said. “It’s a sweet tale, about kittens and puppies and rainbows and love.”

Smite gave her that low, private smile again, and she warmed even in the cold air and bit her lip.

“Especially love,” she said, linking her arm with Jonas’s. “Now shall we all go in?”

Thank you!

Thanks so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed
Unraveled
. If you did, I hope that you:

Lend the book.
This book is lendable, so please share it with a friend.

Check out the rest of the series.
Unraveled
is the last book in the Turner series. The other books are
Unlocked,
Unveiled,
and
Unclaimed.
You can find out more about the series at
http://www.courtneymilan.com/turner/
.

Check out my other books.
A full list of my available titles, sorted by series order, is at
http://www.courtneymilan.com/byseries.php
.

What’s next?
If you want to know when my next book is out, you can sign up for my new releases e-mail at
http://www.courtneymilan.com
.

Author’s Note

T
HREE YEARS AGO,
I wanted to write a series about an insane mother who had a powerful effect on all three of her children—but a different effect on each one. I got the first hint of where Smite had come from when I read
Asylum Denied
by David Ngaruri Kenney. In that book, Kenney describes some of his experiences in his home country of Kenya. A particularly vivid image was his description of standing in solitary confinement in water. When I read that, I set the book down and said aloud, “That’s Smite.”

The rest of the Turner series formed itself around that moment. I had known that I wanted Smite to be a magistrate in Bristol; he must therefore have grown up in Somerset. I found Shepton Mallet by searching for floods in Somerset, and Mark’s book was born from that. Ash became the brother who escaped the worst of the torment and who felt the weight of survivor’s guilt.

But Bristol lent a dimension to this book that it would not have had in the abstract.

The Bristol Riots that Old Blazer describes in 1831 were the result of a large number of disenfranchised citizens who became very angry when a bill that would have increased the number of eligible voters was scotched in Parliament. The result of the riots, and similar unrest throughout Britain, was a series of changes affecting Britain’s government from the local to the national level. The Reform Bill passed Parliament the next year. Increased scrutiny into Bristol’s governance over the next years yielded some embarrassing results. For a lengthier account, including some indications that Bristol’s ruling class had been embezzling from charitable institutions prior to reform, Graham Bush’s
Bristol and its Municipal Government
is excellent.

Parliament passed the Municipal Corporations Act, which was supposed to be a major reform. In truth, however, many of the same people who had been running the show before were simply put in charge once more. The result was a ruling class who cared a great deal about the few enfranchised voters (still not a large proportion of the population) and not at all about the working poor.

At the beginning of this book, Miranda notes that in the years before Smite sat as magistrate, only one person had been found innocent in the petty sessions. I know this sounds unbelievable, but it’s exactly what I discovered when I visited the Bristol Records Office and examined the notes from the petty sessions from that time period. I saw conviction after conviction after conviction. The only people who weren’t convicted were those who had some strong indicia of wealth—for instance, a person could afford to hire a lawyer, or who owned substantial property. In all the records I examined, I found precisely one person who was not convicted and who appeared to be poor. In that case, the court reporter was so sure of a conviction that he had actually written down that he was convicted before the verdict was handed down—and had to cross off the erroneous result and write in the acquittal.

But I did take a bit of a liberty with regard to other actions by magistrates. In
Unraveled,
the other magistrates essentially rubber-stamp police requests for warrants and the like. In reality, my trip to the records office suggests that the magistrates did exert at least a modicum of real oversight on these questions.

The ending is a bit of a fairytale, I’m afraid; I’d love to fantasize about a version of Bristol where the constables served the entire population, not just the wealthy and middle-class citizens as early as the 1840s. But history suggests that just wasn’t so. I prefer my version.

Richard Dalrymple, in the first handful of chapters, gets the 1840s version of a parking ticket. Those really did exist; you can find a picture of an early-Victorian parking ticket on my website.

The
SS Great Britain
was one of the first iron steamships constructed. It really was docked for months after its launch in the Floating Harbour because its hull was unable to fit through the locks. Eventually, the harbormaster agreed to enlarge the locks and, almost a year after it was officially launched, the
Great Britain
finally sailed. The
Great Britain
has been restored to its original condition; if you visit Bristol, you can (and should!) visit it.

I took a few liberties with regards to the interior of the
Great Britain
; I invented an interior for Temple Church and another for the Royal Western Hotel and the theater. There is no opera house in Bristol. I suppose an opera could have played in the theater. Since the theater wouldn’t have been officially opened in November, in this book it could have been hired out for a short space of time.

Astute readers with legal backgrounds might wonder about two elements of law in this book. The first is this: would it not be a violation of principles of double jeopardy for Smite to charge Billy Croggins with arson after he had already been charged with another offense based on the same underlying conduct? The answer is that in England in that era, double jeopardy didn’t attach to non-felonies, and it didn’t attach preconviction.

Readers might also wonder about Smite’s refusal to hear cases in which he had an interest. The concept of recusal existed at the time period, but the principles that Smite applies to himself are substantially more strict than the historical norm. Justices were supposed to act impartially, but the procedure by which that impartiality was procured is described, for instance, in George Oke’s
The Magisterial Synopsis
: “Cases also frequently arise to which…local circumstances…attach a fictitious or imaginary importance, which renders them fit to be discussed in the presence of several magistrates, in order that their administration of justice may not only be impartial, but beyond suspicion.” In other words, if there was the possibility of a suspected interest, the solution was typically to have many magistrates decide together, not to have one magistrate walk away.
Blackstone
is even clearer on the question: “The law will not suppose a possibility of bias or favor in a judge, who is already sworn to administer impartial justice.”

The modern, more familiar, American standard, which says that judges should avoid even the appearance of impropriety is significantly stricter.

Nonetheless, recusal was not an impossibility. A judge’s statement that he could not administer impartial justice in a case would have been given extraordinary weight. Smite’s principles are without a doubt a great deal nicer than the British historical norm—but his objection was grounded in the oath of office that he swore, and while it was out of the ordinary, it was not unheard of. It doesn’t surprise me that on this point, as in all others, Smite holds himself to a higher standard than those around him.

The Patron is, of course, my own invention.

Acknowledgments

A
S
I
WRITE THIS
, the floor of the room where I am sitting is strewn several inches thick with the paper detritus from the last drafts of this book. I’m fairly certain that under some of those layers of paper, I will be able to find pens, clothing, and perhaps small cities.