Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (9 page)

“You may be sure I pondered that very question throughout the trial.” She straightened her spectacles,
using a forefinger to reverse their creeping down the slope of her nose. “And although you did win the prisoner her freedom, I cannot help observing that it was done primarily through encouraging the jurors’ predisposition to look with contempt upon a man of Mr. Cutler’s class, rather than by making a clear case for Miss Watson’s innocence. Not that you didn’t execute it all quite cleverly. But in a truly just system, regardless the sex of the jury, your tactic couldn’t succeed.”

“Viola!” Miss Westbrook colored. She brought her eyes, apparently with some effort, to him. “You argued very well, Mr. Blackshear. We’ve seen enough of Papa’s cases to know how barristers must attempt to influence a jury. We thought you gave your client a splendid defense.”

“Didn’t I just say so? I called him clever.” Miss Viola scowled at her sister, who was now glancing about as if to take a count of all the people who might possibly be witnessing this latest example of unseemly Westbrook outspokenness. “I only mean to say that I begin to think the inclusion of women is but one in a whole host of reforms that must be brought to our jury system. Why should people like Mr. Cutler and Miss Watson be subjected to the judgment of those who view them as inferior, perhaps even comical creatures, and who can be easily swayed by a barrister’s appeals to their sense of their own superiority?”

“I should say.” Kersey was more than ready to approve these opinions of a lady he’d just met. “That trick with the wedding ring was particularly disgraceful, wasn’t it?”

Westbrook the younger chimed in with an assertion that Mr. Cutler and Miss Watson were at least a
bit
comical, deserving of justice though they might be. Miss Viola accused him of missing the point, Kersey contributed such remarks as might best fan the flames of the
dispute, and Nick found himself suddenly superfluous to the conversation. He caught Miss Westbrook’s eye, through the vociferous knot of siblings and colleague, and shrugged one shoulder, smiling in what he hoped was a friendly but not overfamiliar manner.

She smiled back, with a long-suffering shake of her head, and the smile warmed him like a good swallow of brandy. Beneath the injudicious words and his doubts over what she knew of his circumstances, they did have a foundation of friendship that had persisted some years now. His earlier thoughts, as to her deliberate posing on the staircase, and her inflated opinion of her rightful station, felt more than ever unworthy of him.

And more unworthy yet, when, with an abruptness suggestive of hastily gathered courage, she wove around Miss Viola to stand at his side. “We thoroughly enjoyed watching you at trial. We thought you played your part impeccably.” Color still sat high in her cheeks. “Viola forgets herself sometimes, but she means no offense.”

“And I take none. I’ve been known to forget myself on occasion as well.” He kept his voice light, and smiled as he said the words, but left a long enough pause that she could not miss his meaning.
Perhaps we can both simply forget the things we said last night, and be at ease with each other again?
“I’m honored the three of you should have come to observe, and I know how to value your praise. If you’ve seen your father try cases, you know the standard against which I must measure myself.”

“My father will be pleased, I’m sure, to hear of the trial and all the various tactics you employed.” Her head suddenly tilted a fraction, as if a new idea had occurred. “If you’re at liberty Saturday, you might come to dinner and give your own account.”

He bowed. Not for anything would he let her see he knew this was no spontaneous idea. The certainty that she’d come to the Old Bailey expressly to extend this
peace offering, in its guise of casual invitation, rather woke every sympathy and protective instinct in regard to her pride. “I’m sure that would be everything delightful,” he began, but her attention flicked elsewhere as he spoke. To his left and past him. A brief widening of her eyes, a flash of what looked like distaste, and then she was all polite composure once more.

He knew even before turning what he would see. Whom, rather. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, with a client of Stubbs’s.

Miss Mary Watson, freed woman, hovered uncertainly several feet away. On perceiving she’d caught his notice, she made a show of her teeth and looked as if she meant to approach him.

Damnation
. With the hastiest of bows he pivoted away from Miss Westbrook, positioning himself to halt Miss Watson’s advance. He was perfectly pleased to represent such people in their pursuit of justice. They were no less deserving of advocacy than the higher born. But he’d be hanged if he’d subject the Westbrooks, who’d ventured in here as polite observers, to a meeting with a woman who entertained men for money.

“Miss Watson.” He put his hands behind his back lest she be tempted to seize one, as Stubbs’s last presumptuous client had done. “I congratulate you on your freedom.”

“It were owing to you, sir.” She kneaded her hands before her, as if she had indeed intended to grasp one of his, and now must find another outlet for that impulse.

“The better part of your thanks must go to Mr. Stubbs. He prepared an excellent brief.” The selfsame brief he now rolled up in his hands, to keep them busy behind his back.

“And picked an excellent man to argue for me. There’s many as would look down on an unfortunate girl who lives by what means she must.” Her eyes went past him,
doubtless to Kersey, who’d done his best, in the questioning, to make her look like a woman thoroughly unacquainted with morality of any kind.

Nick set his mouth in a line. He couldn’t join her in condemning Kersey, who’d pursued the obvious strategy for a barrister on the prosecution side. It must certainly have been unpleasant for her to hear, but Stubbs ought to have prepared her for that.

Dimly he registered that the conversation behind him had lapsed. Splendid. Kersey and the Westbrooks must be watching this exchange.

“He said you’d deal fairly with me, Mr. Stubbs did.” She wrung her hands again and tottered a half step nearer, a tremor in her voice and—God, was she crying?—all manner of unconstrained emotion in her eyes.

“I hope I do so with every client brought to me by him or anyone else.” A corresponding half step back would bring him nearer to the Westbrooks, whose proximity to this interview was already greater than he’d like. He put the distance in his voice instead. “I thank you for the compliment. Good luck to you.”

But she didn’t recognize the dismissal. “He said you were just the man to give me a fair defense, and not to judge me for a woman lost.” Yes, they’d covered this point already, hadn’t they? Nearer yet she edged, darting another glance beyond him to the others and dropping her voice to an ardent whisper. “Because of your own connections, I mean.”

A spasm shot down his arm to his hand, crushing the brief he still clutched. For an instant he felt as if he’d thrust his head into a roaring furnace. His eyes hurt. His lungs hurt. His cheeks blazed with fury and shame, and for all his repeated blinking, he couldn’t seem to see anything but hot light.

“I’m afraid your meaning is lost on me.” The words practically cracked in his dry mouth. Where the devil
was Stubbs, and why couldn’t he keep a leash on his clients? “I haven’t any but the most unremarkable connections.”

The malevolent light subsided enough to give him a glimpse of her malevolent face wrinkling up its malevolent brow. “Mr. Stubbs, he said you had a brother as married a—” but these words, and whatever word followed, were audible only to him. Because as Miss Watson spoke, so did Miss Westbrook, in a fine, ringing voice that drowned out all else in the vicinity.

“We really must go now. Mr. Blackshear, I hope we may see you at dinner Saturday. Mr. Kersey, will you be so good as to show us out?”

Turn. Bow. Accept the invitation. Thank them for coming, and wish them good day
. He couldn’t. And after all he didn’t have to, because even while speaking, Miss Westbrook was herding the others away. She must have perceived his mortification and come to his rescue.

He didn’t feel rescued. He felt all the more mortified. She must have had an idea of what Miss Watson had been about to say, and wanted to spare him having it heard by others. She must know, then, and had simply feigned ignorance with him for the sake of politeness.

For how long had she known? And would he ever again be able to speak to her without feeling a suspicion of her pity or distaste?

“Miss Watson.” The woman was perfectly visible now, the haze of shock and anger having dissipated. Her restless hands clasped and twisted as though she were scrubbing them under a pump. “I fear Mr. Stubbs has described my motivations inaccurately. I provide a petitioner with the best defense or prosecution I can because it is my job to do so. Any man who’d save his best efforts for the clients with whom he happened to feel some
affinity
has no place in the law.”

What might be her response to this, he would never
know, because here, finally, came the architect of this embarrassment, hurrying down the gradually emptying hallway like a sheepdog after a runaway ewe. “My dear Miss Watson.” Stubbs threw an anxious smile at Nick. “I’m sure I’ve told you Mr. Blackshear is a terribly busy man. Like all barristers. Indeed that’s why clients must do their speaking to the solicitor, and trust him to pass any message along.” His every glance and gesture spelled out an apology. It wasn’t enough.

“A word, Mr. Stubbs.” Nick waited until Miss Watson had been dispatched some distance away. He set a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder and ushered him to the nearest wall, his other hand still tight about the crumpled up brief. When the solicitor raised his wary bespectacled eyes, Nick spoke. “You will please not to speak of my brother and his personal circumstances again. His marriage has been a cause of pain in our family. It’s not to be bandied about to every Mary Watson I happen to represent.”

Stubbs’s mouth twitched with what was almost certainly dismay at Nick’s tone; damn his naive, soft-hearted presumption. He inclined his head. “My humblest apologies. She was despondent when I visited her in prison, and fearful of being harshly judged by you—by any gentleman. I wished to reassure her. I didn’t expect she would presume to broach the topic with you.”

“I ask, Mr. Stubbs, that you refrain from sharing such details of my life story with
any
client, regardless your estimation of whether that person is likely to accost me in the hall.”

“Of course. Forgive me. I won’t so wrong you again.” The solicitor was retreating already, preparing to shepherd Miss Watson to some place, it was to be hoped, where she would find no legal professionals to harass. He twisted away with a bow, and in the last instant before
his back was turned, Nick would nearly swear a spark of pity had lit the man’s eyes.

He leaned a shoulder into the wall, to take part of the burden off his suddenly unsteady knees, and watched the two figures until they’d disappeared around a corner. In his left hand the rolled brief crackled; he loosened his fingers and unrolled the pages to see what damage he’d done to some hardworking clerk’s efforts.

Will toiled for money now, in an office on one of the docks. Speaking of clerks, and working. So Martha had informed them all, because she and her fool husband
would
insist on acknowledging the cast-off Blackshear brother and even invoking his name before those siblings who no longer saw him. According to her, he’d found employment in the timber trade, where apparently no one cared what sort of scandals you courted and married so long as you showed up at your desk at the appointed hour.

All down the left side of each page ran a chaos of puckers and furrows, mangling the clean, elegant letters Nick recognized as having come from the pen of Smithson. He set the pages to the wall and ran his free hand over them in a smoothing motion. Smithson took pride in his work—you could see it in the little loops and tails with which he embellished the first letter of each paragraph—and he deserved better than to have the product of his labor bear all the anger and frustration of a gentleman living out his own private nightmare of disgrace.

Heat rushed into his cheeks all over again at the memory. How much had the other Westbrooks overheard? Would he now have to contend with blunt questions from Miss Viola—who, for all he knew, might judge Will to be the wronged party in the whole affair—as well as a new awkwardness with Miss Westbrook? They’d invited
him to dine there on Saturday. He couldn’t imagine how he was to—

“Nicholas Blackshear?”

He twisted. An auburn-haired man of perhaps five and thirty stood a half-dozen feet away, eyebrows raised, head angled slightly forward, silk hat in one hand. Auburn-haired
gentleman
, rather. Five syllables, shaped into a polite inquiry, were enough to make the genteel accent clear, and, even with hat off and head bent, his air was one of consequence and command.

Nick’s stomach lurched. He’d completely forgotten the possibility of—

“I take the liberty of presenting myself, though I believe my name has already been made known to you.” The gentleman’s head inclined a graceful few degrees more. “James Barclay, until recently Lord James Barclay; now simply Lord Barclay. Baron.”