Betina Krahn (7 page)

“But, Your Honor, Miss Duncan already
has
trustees—my clients!” Farnsworth was already lodging a vehement protest. “It is
their
task to watch over her expenditures and keep her from reckless—”

“My ruling requires no amendment, Fartsworth,” Sir William snapped, snatching up his gavel and holding it threateningly, ready to censure Farnsworth’s next word. “Your clients are openly hostile to the entire notion of Miss Duncan’s enterprise. They could no more be objective about it than the queen is about Albert’s passing. It is the court’s intention to give Miss Duncan a reasonable chance while at the same time guarding her interests.”

He lifted his bewigged head and scanned the courtroom thoughtfully. “What is needed here is someone familiar with
the law and with financial dealings. Someone who is not easily swayed by idealistic emotional pleas … a disinterested party … one with his feet firmly on the ground and no illusions about the grandeur of the human race. In short, what Miss Duncan needs to oversee her experiment is a bit of a cynic.”

An enigmatic smile appeared on his face as he fastened his gaze on someone in the gallery.

“By happenstance, there is just such a man in court today. The court appoints Lord Cole Mandeville as its representative and overseer of the development of Miss Duncan’s Ideal Garment Company. It is the court’s direction that Lord Mandeville travel to the village of St. Crispin on Crewes, for a period of three months, to observe firsthand the progress toward Miss Duncan’s goals, and that he present a report of his findings in writing to the court on Monday of each week. At the end of said three months, we shall reconvene here. The progress of the venture—or lack thereof—will determine the final disposition of Miss Duncan’s fortune.”

While all in the court were grappling to comprehend Sir William’s decision, he banged his gavel, sealing the order, and it was done. Madeline steadied herself on the table, blinking.

She was to have a Lord Somebody-or-other as an overseer … regulating her spending … scrutinizing her every decision … dictating her dreams. She didn’t have a father or a husband to control her, so the court had graciously appointed a man of her own to— The rest of Sir William’s words stopped spinning in her head long enough for her to understand: It wasn’t just any man. It was …

A cynic
. She was being saddled with a heartless, pinch-penny male for three interminable months!

Through the red haze rising in her vision she was vaguely aware of Sir William quitting the courtroom, of Sir Richard’s confusion, and of her erstwhile solicitors’ fury in the face of what they considered judicial caprice. From the gallery came a muttered oath, the sound of feet hitting steps, and reverberations
from the slamming of the doors at the rear of the gallery.

She stood a moment with her fists clenched and her cheeks on fire, trying to plot a rational course. She would talk to Sir William, convince him that she needed no supervision. Let him give
her
the money and the three months. Then let him take her to task for what she
did,
not for what they were all afraid she
might do
!

Without a thought for courtroom proprieties, she skirted the opposition’s barristers and headed straight for the door Sir William had used at the front of the court. She was halted there by a formidable bailiff, who informed her that none but the justice was permitted to come and go through that entrance. Arguing and even pleading were of no avail. She headed for the doors at the rear of the court, determined to be heard.

Finding the way to one of the chief justices’ chambers took a bit of doing; the directions seemed to be as closely guarded as the entrance to a pharaoh’s tomb. In desperation, she crafted a story that she was Sir William’s niece by marriage, late for an appointment with the old fellow, and a knowledgeable clerk took pity on her. She arrived at the door of Sir William’s chambers overheated and out of breath and just in time to hear her name being taken in vain.

“The minute I saw Farnsworth, I knew you had called me down here to meddle in my life,” a deep male voice was declaring. “But you’ve exceeded even my most jaded expectations—saddling me with some damned-fool female out to save the world. This Duncan woman is nothing short of a lunatic—a full-bore, bleeding-heart, go-down-with-the-ship martyr. Did you plan this all along, Uncle, or was my being pressed into your service just an impromptu bit of manipulation?”

Madeline halted just inside the door, her face as scarlet as her tunic. Sir William, still in his robes and wig, was ensconced behind a large desk with his bound leg propped on
an ottoman, being read the riot act by a tall, dark figure looming over the desk.

“A
lunatic
?” she said. Sir William looked up, his accuser started and wheeled, and both men looked at her as if she had two heads.

“Good Lord. There she is now,” the man said, tugging both his ire and his vest down and into place. “Madwoman Duncan.”

“That is
Madeline
Duncan, thank you,” she said sharply. “You, I take it, are my proposed keeper.”

“Not if I can bloody well help it,” he declared. “I have better things to do with my time than prevent some idiot female from spending herself into oblivion.” He glanced at Sir William, then turned a glare on her that would have sent a lesser woman into vapors. “If I could tolerate such duty, Uncle, I’d have taken a wife by now.”

Madeline drew up her chin, studying him with the same fierce regard he aimed at her. He was an intimidating figure—tall, dark in coloring, and dressed in a charcoal-gray suit that bespoke both money and the leisure to submit to a tailor’s ministrations. Out of pure habit she took in the details of his garments—the broad padded shoulders of his coat, the close-cut waist, the tight standing collar, and the tuck-front shirt that was so overstarched, it looked like paint on clapboard siding. He wore a black silk cravat with a diamond stickpin instead of a tie, his shoes were covered by dove-gray spats, and precisely one inch of Chinese silk showed above the breast pocket of his coat.

She groaned mentally. If Sir William had combed the city, he couldn’t have found her an overseer less sympathetic to her cause—
a fashion-conscious cynic
. Pulling her gaze from him, she advanced on the desk, determined to hold her own.

“As you can see for yourself, Your Honor, this ‘arrangement’ you have proposed—”

“Ordered,” Sir William corrected her.

“—
ordered
—is unworkable. Can you in any way call this
man objective? or reasonable? He’s already named me a lunatic, an incompetent, a wastrel, a bleeding heart, and a martyr.”

“Ahhh”—Sir William raised an excepting finger—“but those are merely
personal
opinions. I have every confidence that his
professional
assessments will be considerably more objective.”

“The hell they will,” her overseer declared, folding his arms.

“The hell they
won’t,
” Sir William said with sudden furious calm. “You are a member of the bar, Lord Mandeville, and in court you are subject to my authority.” His volume rose with each precisely chosen word. “You will indeed serve the court as overseer in this case … unless you would prefer to continue in your contempt and find yourself sitting in a cell in Scotland Yard.”

“A cell does have a certain appeal, considering …” Lord Mandeville looked Madeline over with an expression men usually reserve for something they’ve stepped in while crossing a street. Then he turned to Sir William, meeting him eye to eye, glaring, testing the old justice’s resolve and finding it as firm as Gibraltar. After a long, tense moment he struck his colors and surrendered. “Damned if you wouldn’t do it.”

“I most certainly would. And so, Lord Mandeville, shall you, since you seem to have nothing better to do with yourself” That settled, Sir William’s mood brightened as he looked up at Madeline. “I am certain, Miss Duncan, that Lord Mandeville will exercise every bit of objectivity and restraint he possesses in overseeing your enterprise.”

“What he will exercise, Your Honor, is his prejudice. To put him over my Ideal Garment Company is to condemn me to failure!”

“And to condemn me to three long, suffocating months of having to nursemaid a pigheaded female who insists on stirring up the social order and meddling in other people’s
lives,” Mandeville said testily. “All because she has nothing worthwhile to do with herself.”

“Nothing worthwhile?” She turned to face him and realized that stretching to her full height and rocking up onto her toes could not compensate for the difference in their sizes. She struck back with the only weapons at her command: words. “You don’t see the value of freeing women’s bodies from the tyranny of cruel fashions? You find nothing worthwhile in helping the working poor make a better life? You cannot appreciate the benefit of a workplace that enhances human dignity and fosters creativity?”

He paused a moment, staring down into her face, examining the stubborn set of her jaw and the determination blazing in her eyes.

“None whatsoever,” he declared tautly. “Leave the poor alone, Miss Duncan. They suffer enough misery without having to put up with reformers and idealists. If females want to squeeze themselves in two with corsets and flaunt their bosoms in public, I can’t see that it’s any business of yours. In fact, the world could do with a bit
more
bosom and a good bit
less
high-minded moralizing. It’s the idealists of this world who get mankind into trouble. Leading people to believe they are entitled to a better lot … promising impossible solutions—”

“Impossible solutions?” she demanded, swallowing hard. “There is no help for humankind? Just gloom and despair and hopelessness all around?”

“I’d say that rather sums it up.”

They had come virtually nose to nose, each refusing to give an inch in this ideological battle of wills. Her heart was pounding and blood was roaring in her head. But through that inner tempest she could feel heat radiating from him, engulfing her senses. Her head filled with the scents of starch, soap, and sandalwood carried on a distinctive current of musk that was foreign to her but that she sensed had to do with “male.” His face was suddenly all she could see—an intriguing
blend of planes and angles too sharp and bold to be merely handsome. His eyes were a striking hazel-green, a snatch of autumn forest—jade and amber—changeable. Her gaze fled down the curve of his cheek to his mouth. She’d never seen lips like his—broadly curved … sensuality inscribed in every contour.…

Startling new sensations washed through her, heat as palpable as physical contact. She’d never imagined it was possible to feel a person without touching. But then, she’d never been this close to a man befo—

That thought booted her sharply back to reality. Color flooded her face as she scrambled to retrieve her self-possession. Wretched man, intimidating her with his size and upper-crust disdain. She couldn’t let him get away with it.

“Spoken like a overindulged upper-class male who has never had to strive for anything,” she declared, answering his condescension with a bit of her own. “How sad to have been handed everything from the moment you were born. Nothing to dream. Nothing to hope for. No ideals to struggle toward.” She shook her head with suddenly genuine sympathy. “No wonder you see everything in shades of gloom.”

Her words sank unexpectedly into the dark centers of those jaded autumn eyes, but she turned to Sir William before she could discern their full impact. “It would appear that Lord Mandeville, like my noble-spirited trustees, has a thing or two to learn about ideals. Well, where better to learn such lessons than at the Ideal Garment Company?” She leaned over the desk and lowered her voice. “I will open my factory and produce my garments and sell them at a profit, no matter what obstacles my trustees and my court-appointed ‘nanny’ erect in my path.”

She caught a glimpse of Lord Mandeville’s face as she turned to go. It was red and set, filled with patrician outrage. Her first impulse was a shameful surge of triumph. But by the time she reached the door, it struck her that she had just goaded the very man who held her fate in his hands.

Perhaps Lord Mandeville was right, she thought as she charged down one hallway after another, searching for the blessed exit. Perhaps she was Madwoman Duncan after all.

As Cole Mandeville stormed out of the gallery, slamming the doors back against the walls, a shabby, unshaven man in a brown checkered coat popped up out of the last row of benches. “Wha-at the—” The fellow blinked, rubbed his reddened eyes with ink-stained fingers, and glared at the figures making noise below on the courtroom floor.

“How dare you inconsiderate clods raise such a ruckus when a bloke is tryin’ to catch a few winks up here in the pews?” he grumbled. “This is Chancery, after all.”

A moment later that fact brought him fully awake. A ruckus in
Chancery
? He shot to his feet and intercepted a dapper young gentleman on his way out the doors.

“Say, guv, what’s got the wigs all in a dither down there?”

“Out of my way.” The fellow tried to shove him aside, but Rupert Fitch, one of London’s most tenacious penny-press news writers, was not easily dissuaded when he was hot on the trail of a bit of news.

“See here, guv, I’m a journalist with
Gaflinger’s Gazette.
” He grabbed the man’s sleeve, sensing in the fellow’s agitation a tale just waiting to be told. “It’s my job to report on the dread workin’s of Her Majesty’s Law Courts, especially if there’s a foul miscarriage of justice afoot.” The young gentleman winced as he peeled Fitch’s stubby fingers from his sleeve, but then seemed to have second thoughts. Pausing, he glanced over his shoulder at the chaotic scene below.

“There has been a miscarriage of justice, right enough.” The fashionable gent scanned the courtroom, his mind working visibly behind his boyish features.

“Good-fer-nothin’ lawyers.” Fitch snorted sympathetically.

“Oh, no, my friend, not the solicitors and barristers.” The young gentleman smiled. “They are the most earnest of fellows. It was the lord justice who perpetrated the outrage here, a buffoon and an incompetent if ever there was one. He’s just handed over a small fortune to an ignorant slip of a girl who intends to throw it away.” In anger, his face lost much of its charm. “She has vowed to invest a quarter of a million pounds in developing an enterprise aimed at ridding women of the bondage of corsetry and petticoats. It’s positively”—he caught the gleam in Fitch’s eye and reined in his tongue—“heartbreaking. If it is allowed to go forward, I fear for the poor girl’s reputation, if not her sanity.”