Betina Krahn (3 page)

“Those won’t be necessary, gentlemen, I assure you.” She waved away the pillow and water and shrugged out of her thick woolen cloak. “I have never swooned in my life.”

Their expressions were suddenly aghast, and it took a moment for her to realize that their dismay was caused by the sight of her scarlet jacket banded with black velvet. She glanced down.

“I suppose you may wonder about this.” She smoothed her fitted bodice, which skimmed her waist and ended just past her hips. It was layered over a tailored black skirt that ended abruptly, shockingly, at her knees. “Scarlet was Aunt Olivia’s favorite color, and I promised I would wear it for her in mourning. Suitably banded, of course. It may seem unusual, but I believe it is far more sensible to dress in a way that honors the one who died than some dreary and restrictive social custom.”

“O-of course,” Dunwoody said, looking at the others with dawning alarm.

“Now, gentlemen …” She slid back into her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “I shall need a complete inventory of the estate’s assets: the properties, investments, business concerns, and accounts. And I should like to see the most recent accounting of each asset’s condition and worth.” She smiled
encouragingly at them. “From the smallest to the largest … please, leave nothing out.”

The gentlemen solicitors missed the twinkle of excitement in her eyes. They were busy staring at her ankles, which were plainly visible beneath fine white stockings and below a pair of gathered trousers. Turkish trousers.
Bloomers
.

Townshend fanned himself with the pillow.

Ecklesbery drank the entire glass of water himself.

“Miss Duncan!” The words were forced from Dunwoody as he sat down in his chair with a plop. “Really!” Gentlemanly shock coupled with professional indignation momentarily robbed him of further speech. It fell to Townshend to express their common distress.

“Obviously you do not understand what you are asking, young lady. A list of assets and a full accounting of every bit of property, every enterprise, will take days—weeks!” He gripped his vest and looked disapprovingly down his nose at her. “What could you—a mere wisp of a girl—possibly do with such a bewildering mountain of facts and figures?”

Madeline folded her arms. She hadn’t been “a mere wisp of a girl” since she was six. She sighed quietly. It was probably going to take them some time to get used to her.

“I shall do precisely what my aunt Olivia intended—use my fortune to ‘improve the lives of my fellow human beings.’ ” She glanced at her slack-jawed cousin, then back at the trio of disapproving solicitors, and broke into a beaming smile. “And I intend to start by ridding the world of women’s corsets.”

Dunwoody stared at her in horror.

Ecklesbery made a graceless strangling sound.

Townshend clapped a hand to his head and spoke for them all.

“Dear God.”

May 1882

The city of London awoke in layers. Each morning, at the break of dawn, scullery maids, printer’s devils, boiler tenders, produce peddlers, and milkmen were the first to set about their daily tasks. By seven o’clock, shop stewards, senior clerks, and ladies’ maids were bustling. Half past seven was the hour for merchants, mill supervisors, bankers, solicitors, department store managers, and undersecretaries of bureaus to greet the day. The luxury of eight o’clock was reserved for members of Parliament, mill owners, ministers of government, bishops of the church, and women entitled to be called “your ladyship.” A select few, indeed, were entitled to the extravagance of half past eight—dukes, archbishops, and the justices of her majesty’s royal bench—which explained in large part the fact that the courts of law never commenced session before half past ten.

It was precisely half past ten that gray, moisture-laden morning when Cole Mandeville was
admitted through a side door to the Law Courts of Justice in the Strand. He had been standing at the entrance to the honorable justices’ chambers for five full minutes, feeling his collar tightening, his hatband constricting, and his severely starched shirt chafing tender elbows—annoying reminders of how he had passed the previous night. He was on the verge of heeling off, when an aged bailiff appeared. The bailiff examined the note he held, and led him down a labyrinthine set of passages which—like the law itself—doubled and redoubled bewilderingly and had to be traversed with great care.

As they passed through the corridor, Cole heard what he could have sworn was monkey chatter coming from one of the justices’ chambers. Bizarre counterpoint was provided by parrot screeches from a half-open door across the way. In close succession, they encountered a cloud of camphor vapor, the musty smell of old books, the mingled aroma of day-old sausages and stale cigars, and the stomach-turning sound of someone either gargling or singing a Welsh folk tune. Steeling himself, Cole resisted peering through those open doors. He already knew more than he cared to about the British legal system and the men who ran it. Those peculiar sounds and smells only made him more determined to make this interview with his uncle as short as humanly possible.

The senior justices were housed in the chambers nearest the courtrooms, at the heart of the building, and Sir William Rayburn, Cole’s maternal uncle, was as senior as it was possible to be on the queen’s Chancery bench. He had been a justice for twenty-five years, the last twenty here in the civil branch dealing with contract and testamentary matters. Through a canny combination of legal acumen, family connections, and raw ambition, he had carved a reputation for himself in the world of British jurisprudence. There was scarcely a barrister in London who didn’t know and dread appearing before “William the Conqueror.”

A bellow issued from a door ahead, and the old bailiff waved Cole onward. Just then, a man rushed out of the doorway,
grabbed a hat from the rack on the wall, and dashed apologetically down the hall around them. It took a moment for Cole to recognize his uncle’s beleaguered clerk, Foglethorpe. As the bellow faded, Cole took a deep breath and strode through the closetlike antechamber, where Foglethorpe usually sat in danger of being crushed by toppling stacks of documents and banded legal folios.

Every available inch of Sir William’s spacious office was lined with shelves crammed with leather-bound volumes that overflowed into stacks on the worn carpet. In the center of the room a massive oak desk was littered with papers and books. Around it was a motley assortment of chairs. Behind the desk hung the portrait of a veritable bulldog of a man dressed in a periwig and legal robes. And sitting at the desk, thrust back in his chair, was the living—and considerably aged—subject of that portrait. One of his legs, heavily bandaged, was propped up on the desk.

“Damned well about time you arrived!” The old man shot up as straight as his raised foot would allow and fixed Cole with an irritable stare. “Almost gave up on you, boy—I’m overdue for opening session.” His regard became razor-edged. “Some of us do still
work,
you know.”

Cole’s face heated, but the rest of him remained stubbornly cool. “Sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you, Uncle. I had a rather”—he raised the back of a gloved hand to stifle a forced yawn—“late night of it.” His smile grew as pointed as the old man’s glare. “But I’m sure you’ve had a late night or two …”

“Not in decades—
centuries.
” Sir William leaned forward, winced, and gingerly lifted his foot down to a pillow atop an ottoman. “I can’t remember what it’s like to go to bed past ten o’clock, much less wake up in a strange set of sheets. Hell—I can’t even remember what a decent glass of port tastes like!” He shook a fist at his bloated and bandaged leg. “Damnable gout. Nibbles away at a man inch by inch, robbing him
of every pleasure in life, making each day a wretched trial to be wrestled and overcome!”

The old man’s dark eyes burned as hot and imperious as ever, but beneath them were dark crescents of strain and around them were lines etched by age and physical suffering. The wrestling had obviously taken a toll. The realization struck Cole in an unexpectedly vulnerable place. Sir William had always seemed indestructible, one of those rare creatures, born under a turbulent moon, who blew through life with the force of a typhoon run aground. He certainly had cut a wide swath through Cole’s adolescent life some years back.

“Your florid past catching up with you,” Cole declared lightly, standing straighter to compensate for the sinking sensation in his chest. “No doubt there are a number of wretches in Newgate and country poorhouses who would give a year off their lives to see you thus.”

“No bloody doubt of it.” Sir William heaved a disgusted breath and dismissed the topic of his condition with an impatient wave of a hand. The gaze he turned on Cole penetrated his gentlemanly attire and impeccable grooming and laid naked the man beneath—mind, body, and soul. It caught Cole off guard. He felt an absurd adolescent impulse to hide, followed by chagrin at having let the old man’s suffering disarm him.

Sir William had a disconcerting talent for cutting through the usual social and emotional defenses to poke about in the inner composition of his fellow humans. Cole had learned long before that one’s only hope under one of Sir William’s inquisitions was brutal honesty.

“I had dinner with Van Druesen a few days ago,” Sir William declared, watching Cole’s reaction—or lack of one. Cole drew a slow breath, knowing instantly what this summons was about.

“My condolences. I daresay, he bored your socks off with that story about his prize kumquat … or whatever the hell it is he grows on his farm in Lower Dingleberry.”

“Lower Darlington.” Sir William’s mouth quirked up on one side. “An Australian kiwi fruit.” The half-smile faded. “As Head of Chambers he is rather worried. Says you haven’t taken a case in six months or even set foot in the offices in three.”

Cole stuck out his chin. “So, that is it. I’ve been hauled into your lair for an avuncular dressing-down, have I?”

“Your mother also paid me a call. She is concerned.”

“Is she now? About my abandoning what she has always considered a tawdry and distasteful occupation? How very peculiar. If I remember correctly, it was she who spoke so fervently against a career in the law, wept copiously, suffered vapors at the mere mention of ‘that horrid, grubby little trade.’ ”

“Van Druesen says you were on the verge of litigatory brilliance. Had a partnership in the vest pocket, so to speak.”

“Van Druesen is a self-absorbed, ineffectual wheeze.”

“I myself have heard your name bandied about in connection with a plummy London assize. The judiciary before thirty-five would be quite an achievement.”

“Achievement?” Cole strolled to a well-padded chair and sank down in it, propping one long leg casually over the arm. “Sounds more like a life sentence to me. A premature burial in the catacombs of the law.” He doffed his hat, tossed it carelessly onto a nearby chair, and began to remove his gloves with exaggerated motions. His actions and appearance were the epitome of the indolent young aristocrat. But he sensed that his pose was not having the desired effect on Sir William, who had been his mentor at law.

Silence settled between them, laden with memories and expectations. After all he had done to encourage Cole in the profession, the old man probably deserved an explanation. Cole lowered his leg and sat up straight, looking in his uncle’s direction while avoiding those probing eyes.

“The truth? I left because I was bored witless. Endless details … absurd, insipid clients and even stupider colleagues
 … endless incompetence.… I was strangling, drowning in it all. I awoke one morning—after God knows how many sleepless nights—facedown in a pile of papers on my desk.” He smiled with purposefully dissolute charm. “Since that day I have made it my sole occupation to wake up each morning facedown in a comfortable bed and—whenever possible—next to an accommodating female.”

Sir William studied him carefully for a moment, then pronounced his opinion.

“Horse manure.”

Sir William’s clerk, Foglethorpe, rushed into the chamber just then, wheezing and red-faced from running. He had a blue apothecary bottle in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Beg pardon, I didn’t realize … Your medicine, Sir William. And the court has been standing ready for some time now.”

Grimacing, Sir William waved the clerk closer and took the bottle. After dosing himself with two spoonfuls of pungent brown liquid, he shuddered. “Damnable stuff—if it weren’t for the work, I’d say to hell with it and bite a leather strap instead.”

He turned to Cole. “I’ve not done with you, boy. There’s more here than meets the eye, and I mean to have the entire truth and nothing but the truth from you. Just now I have this damnable case—” Glancing at his pocket watch, he frowned, then decided the problem in characteristic fashion. “Wait for me,” he ordered, punching a finger at Cole. “Better yet, sit in on the session.”

“Sit in on a session? In
Chancery
?” Cole snorted. “I never realized you harbored me such ill will, Uncle.”

“Don’t be an ass, boy. This is my life’s work.” Sir William struggled up, leaning heavily upon a gnarled walking stick. Foglethorpe scurried forward to settle his long white wig and help him into his robes. When properly gowned, the old man leaned on the side of the desk with a pained laugh that once again caught Cole in a vulnerable place. “Life’s work—hell—this is my
life.
” He leveled a look at Cole that
was part command, part challenge. “I’ll have your opinion on the proceedings afterward. No sense letting your mind go to rot just because your soul has. Interesting case. I vow you’ll not see another like it in a lifetime. Female plaintive.”