A Breach of Promise (12 page)

“I understand.” Delphine nodded, the light going from her face, her body seeming almost to shrink as she dismissed past happiness and faced the present icy disillusion. “Do what is necessary, Mr. Sacheverall.”

“You have just told me how publicly and how obviously Mr. Melville courted your daughter. It must have been common knowledge among all your acquaintances, indeed in all society, that they were to be married?”

“Of course.” She raised her beautiful eyebrows. “She did not hide her joy. What young girl does?”

“Exactly.” Sacheverall took several paces to one side, then to the other. He moved elegantly, and he was aware of it. He stopped and faced her again. “When Mr. Melville suddenly, and for no reason that we may observe, broke off the engagement and refused to go through with the ceremony, what effect did this have upon Miss Lambert’s reputation, the way in which she is regarded by society, and her hopes for any future marriage?”

“Of course it will ruin her!” The panic rose in Delphine’s voice. “How could it possibly do anything else? People will ask why, and when there is no answer, they will assume the worst. Everyone does, don’t they?”

“Yes, Mrs. Lambert, I am afraid it is one of the less attractive characteristics of human nature,” Sacheverall said with
ardent sympathy. “Even when it is unjustified.” He smiled ruefully. “And beauty has its disadvantages in that it increases envy among those less fortunate.”

Delphine looked on the verge of tears. “And she is innocent of everything!” she said desperately. “It is so unfair!” Her eyes swept across the jury and then back to Sacheverall. “How could he do this to her—to anyone? It is wicked beyond belief! I can hear them already, beginning to ask each other what can be wrong with her. What does he know about her that he is not saying?” She looked at him defiantly. “And there is nothing! Nothing at all! She is modest; clever enough, but not too clever; lovely but not too proud or self-obsessed; and as honorable as it is possible to be.” She gulped, and her voice dropped huskily. “And she was so in love with him. It is so wicked I just cannot imagine why he is doing it! You have to find out! You have to prove it is Killian Melville, not Zillah, who is evil and perverse.”

“We shall do, Mrs. Lambert,” Sacheverall said gently. “We will prove to the court, and to society, that Miss Lambert has been wronged without cause. Her reputation shall be restored. It would be monstrous that she should have her entire future ruined because of one young man’s irresponsibility at best, dishonesty or immorality at worst. Will you be so good as to remain there in case Sir Oliver wishes to ask you anything? Thank you, Mrs. Lambert.” He turned to Rathbone invitingly.

The expression of confidence in his face was sufficient warning. Rathbone knew he would get nothing from Delphine Lambert. Almost alone she had built the case. And she had done it without exaggeration. Such breaking of a betrothal after what seemed to everyone a natural love affair would suggest to even the well disposed that there was something profoundly wrong with Zillah Lambert but that Melville was too much of a gentleman to expose her.

Rathbone rose to his feet. He dare not fail to speak to her. That would be an open admission of defeat.

There was a rustle of anticipation in the room. The jurors were watching him.

“We sympathize with you in your concern, Mrs. Lambert,” he said courteously, his mind racing for anything whatsoever to mitigate her testimony. “Perhaps you will tell me something more about these wedding arrangements that you mentioned …”

“All made!” Her voice rose again. “Of course, the official invitations had not gone out, but everyone knew who was invited, so it comes to virtually the same thing! I have never been so mortified in my life. You cannot imagine the humiliation of having to tell people!” She flung her arms out, hands graceful even in her extreme emotion. “How do I explain? What is there anyone can possibly say? Poor Zillah.” She turned to the judge. “Can you begin to imagine how she feels? Every time anyone laughs, if we didn’t hear the reason, we think it is at our misfortune.”

Rathbone forced himself to remain friendly. “I am sure that is natural. We have all experienced such fears when we are aware of some …” What word could he use without seeming critical? He had given himself an impossible sentence to finish. She was looking at him again. “Self-consciousness is to be expected,” he said instead. “But to these arrangements, Mrs. Lambert …”

“The dressmaker, the wedding attendants, the church, of course, the flowers in season,” she listed them off. “I spent hours seeing that everything should be perfect. It is the most important, the most exquisitely beautiful day of a woman’s life. I would have given anything I had to ensure that nothing whatever went wrong for her. No time, trouble or expense was to be spared. Not that it was the money. Never think for an instant that it was that.” She dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

Curiously, he believed her. It was honor which concerned her. What should have been entirely happiness and beauty instead had become a source of embarrassment and cruel jests, the golden future tarnished beyond repair. She had not
mentioned it, maybe she had not even thought of it yet, but it was not impossible that the sense of rejection which Zillah felt would make it hard for her to believe the next man who claimed to love her. No one could say what seeds of future misery had been sown.

“I am sure that is so, Mrs. Lambert,” he agreed soothingly. “I do not doubt it. But my question is, how much did Mr. Melville participate in all these plans and decisions?”

She looked blank. “Mr. Melville? It is the bride’s parents who make these arrangements, Sir Oliver. It was nothing to do with him.”

“My point precisely.” He was careful not to show any feeling of victory, however slight. It would offend the jury. He stood in the center of the open space, aware of everyone’s eyes on him. “He did not agree to the style of the wedding gown, the amount or kind of flowers, or even the church….”

She looked completely bemused.

“My lord.” Sacheverall rose to his feet with a gesture of disbelief. “Is my learned friend suggesting that Mr. Melville broke the engagement to marry in a fit of pique because he was not consulted on these matters? And further, that such absurd behavior is somehow justified? If that were so, my lord, no man would ever marry!” He laughed as he said it, turning towards the jury.

Rathbone kept his temper only through great practice.

“No, my lord, I am not suggesting anything of the kind, as my learned friend would have known had he waited a moment or two. What I am suggesting is that these arrangements, excellent as they no doubt were, were made without Mr. Melville’s knowledge. He did not ask for Miss Lambert’s hand in marriage, nor did he intend to. The matter was anticipated and, in all good faith, acted upon without his participation. He did not break his agreement, because he did not make one. It was assumed—perhaps with good cause, but nonetheless it was an assumption.”

“Sir Oliver is making a clumsy argument!” Sacheverall
protested. He stared at Rathbone. “Are you finished? Have you no better case than that to offer?”

Rathbone had not, but this was certainly not the time to say so.

“Not at all,” he denied blandly. “I am explaining what I intended by the question, since you misinterpreted it.”

“You are saying Mrs. Lambert organized a wedding without any assurance that there was a bridegroom?” Sacheverall challenged, the laughter of derision all but bubbling through his words.

“I am suggesting it was a misunderstanding, not villainy,” Rathbone answered, aware how lame the argument was, in spite of its probable truth. Except that he was convinced Melville was holding something back so important it amounted to a lie. There was something elusive about the man, and he had no idea what it was. He had taken his case on impulse, and he regretted it.

Sacheverall dismissed the idea and returned to his seat, with his back half towards Rathbone.

“Sir Oliver?” the judge enquired.

There was nothing more to say. He would only make it even worse.

“No, thank you, my lord. Thank you, Mrs. Lambert.”

Sacheverall had nothing more to add. He was wise enough not to press the issue. He was winning without having to try.

It was already late for luncheon. The court adjourned.

Rathbone walked out with Melville. The crowd stared at them. There were several ugly words said quite clearly enough to hear. Melville kept his eyes straight ahead, his face down, his cheeks flushed. He must have been as aware of them as Rathbone was.

“I didn’t know about the wedding until it was all planned!” he said desperately. “I heard, of course, bits and pieces. I didn’t even realize it was supposed to be me!” They were passing through the entrance hall of the courthouse. Rathbone held open the doors.

“I know that sounds ridiculous,” Melville went on. “But I didn’t listen. My mind was on my own ideas: arches and
lintels, colonnades, rows of windows, depths of foundations, front elevations, angles of roofs. Women are often talking about fashion and who is going to marry whom. Half the time it is only gossip and speculation.”

“How can you have been so stupid?” Rathbone snapped, losing his temper at the idiocy of it, all the unnecessary embarrassment.

“Because I suppose I wanted to,” Melville answered with astounding honesty. “I didn’t want it to be true, so I ignored it. If you care about one thing enough, you can exclude other things.” Now they were outside in the sharp wind and sunlight. His eyes were the blue-green of seawater. “I care about buildings, about arches, and pillars and stone, and the way light falls, about color and strength and simplicity. I care about being able to design things that will long outlast me, or anyone I know, things that generations after us will look at and feel joy.”

He pushed his hands into his pockets hard and stared at Rathbone as they walked along the street towards the busy restaurant where they could purchase luncheon. They brushed past people barely noticing them.

“Have you ever been to Athens, Sir Oliver?” he asked. “Have you seen the Parthenon in the sunlight?” His eyes were alight with enthusiasm. “It is pure genius. All the measurements are slightly off the true, to give an optical illusion of perfect grace to the observer … and it succeeds brilliantly.” He flung his arms out, almost hitting a middle-aged man with a gray mustache. He apologized absently and continued to Rathbone. “Can you imagine the minds of the men who built that? And here we are two thousand years later struck silent with awe at its beauty.”

Unconsciously he was walking more rapidly than before, and Rathbone had to increase his pace to keep up with him.

“And Tuscany!” he went on, his face glowing. “All Italy, really—Venice, Pisa, Sienna; but the Tuscan Renaissance architecture has a sublime simplicity to it. Classical without being grandiose. A superb sense of color and proportion. One
could look at it forever. The arcades … the domes! Have you seen the round windows? It all seems part of nature, sprung from it, not vying against … there is a mellowness. Nothing jars. That is the secret. A unity with the land, never alien, never offending the vision or the mind. And they know how to use terraces, and trees, especially cypress. They lead the eye perfectly from one point to the next—”

“The restaurant,” Rathbone interrupted.

“What?”

“The restaurant,” the barrister repeated. “We must have luncheon before we return.”

“Oh. Yes … I suppose so.” Obviously it had slipped Melville’s mind. It was an irrelevance.

The first witness of the afternoon was Zillah Lambert herself. She took the oath with a grave, trembling voice and looked up to face Sacheverall. She was very pale, but so far composed. She wore cream trimmed with palest green and it complemented her perfectly. Her glorious hair was piled richly on her head rather than tied severely back, and she looked vulnerable and very young. Yet there was a brightness about her like the glancing sunlight of April, as if she brought a breath of the spring countryside with her.

Without realizing, the jurors smiled at her. She was utterly unaware of them, looking only at Sacheverall. Not once did her eyes stray to Melville, as if she could not bear to look at him. No one could have failed to be aware of it.

“I regret the necessity for this, Miss Lambert,” Sacheverall began, as Rathbone had known he would. “But it is absolutely unavoidable, otherwise I should not subject you to this embarrassment, and an ordeal which must be terribly distressing to you.”

“I understand,” she whispered. “Please do what you must.”

Sacheverall smiled warmly at her. “Miss Lambert, has Mr. Killian Melville been a constant visitor at your home over the last two years?”

“Yes sir.”

“To see only your father, or also your mother and yourself?”

“He spent a great deal of time with us too,” she replied. “He often dined with us and would stay afterwards late into the evening. He and I would talk of all manner of things, our hopes and beliefs, our experiences, whatever we found beautiful or interesting, funny or sad.” She blinked hard, trying to keep away the tears. She glanced momentarily at Melville, and then away again. “He was the best and gentlest companion I ever had. He was wise and honest and yet he could make me laugh more than anyone else I knew. He told me wonderful tales of some of the places he had visited, what he had seen and how he felt about them … and the things he planned to build. He knows a great deal about history, most particularly the history of art in Italy. I—I find it wonderful to listen to him, because he cares so much.”

A certain tightness pulled Sacheverall’s mouth and his eyes were sharp.

“Quite so,” he said tensely. “In short, Miss Lambert, one might say he courted you.” That was a conclusion, not a question. He went straight on. “He spoke of his feelings, he shared his hopes for the future, he showed an extraordinary trust in you that we may assume he did with no one else. Did he make it unmistakable that he cared for you deeply, whatever ways, or words, he chose to use?”

“Yes … I believed so.” She was obliged to reach into her reticule for a handkerchief with which to dab her eyes. “Excuse me.”