The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery, L.C. Sharp [beach books .TXT] 📗

Juliana used what power she had, and stood rigidly, refusing to answer. Only she and Godfrey knew for sure, and he was dead. Any information she had that they did not was to her advantage; anything she could do to save herself, she would. In time, she’d tell them, but she needed someone who knew more than she did about the law to advise her. When her father arrived, if he did, she’d ask him. Whatever his opinions about her failure as a daughter, he’d want her alive.

The remnants of her wedding gown littered the floor. Godfrey had taken a knife and sliced it off her, laughing all the while, especially when she whimpered in fear. She’d stopped whimpering after that and started screaming. Godfrey’s robe remained on the chair where he’d tossed it.

A decanter of wine remained on the small table with the brandy decanter, two used glasses set by it. She could do with a glassful now. Perhaps it would jolt the spirit back into her, so she could feel again.

The tang of freshly spilled blood settled at the back of her throat. The bed was ruined, stiff with brownish red stains, the lifeblood of her husband of a day. No, not even that. They had married at eleven o’clock yesterday, and the elaborately gilded clock on the mantel told her that the time was barely nine.

The gloomy, formal furnishings gave physical form to her mood when she had first entered it, a lamb to the slaughter. At the time, she had thought of the room as a funeral parlor rather than a place to celebrate a wedding, not knowing how appropriate that would become.

“I want you out of my house,” the marquess said. “Gone, do you hear me? I will harbor no murderess here.” He kept his back to her.

Juliana’s body, still naked under the silk robe, was stiff with blood. She had acted as a dam, stopping the stuff pooling on her side. A line of blood had run down the mattress, down the mahogany bedstead and on to the floor. That Persian rug would have to be burned. They would never get the stains out.

Since this would probably be the last time she saw her husband, she gazed on his face. He was handsome in a fleshy way, his lips thick, his eyes pale, his natural fair hair thick and short. No animation remained in his blank stare. He was a husk, a remnant of what once had lived within.

If Godfrey were not born so high, he could have made a living as a bully in an inn, or a wrestler, or a boxer. His chest was broad, his shoulders wide. Stocky, she’d thought on their first meeting.

Godfrey was not marked except for the one, deep wound over his heart. The dagger stuck grotesquely up. A military dagger. She recognized the style and the gilded twine wound around the hilt. He’d been killed with his own dagger, the one he’d used to slice her clothes off.

Godfrey had served in the army, but his role had been one of ceremony; he had never left London. The dagger was part of the trappings of his rank: Captain Lord Godfrey Uppingham. When he was speaking with her during what she could laughably refer to as their courtship, he’d told her of his military years, his uniforms and the glittering diamond orders he possessed. None of which he had earned. Juliana had remained unimpressed.

A flat mahogany box lay on the table under the window, near where she stood. It looked like a gun box, the kind that held dueling pistols. So whoever had killed him had not used those. Perhaps the murderer had needed silence.

His father crossed the room, gazed down and closed his son’s eyes.

Emotion had not yet returned to Juliana, so she could think clearly. While her mother-in-law ranted and raved, wringing her hands, Juliana put her mind to the problem.

She knew she had not killed Godfrey, even though she could not imagine how else it could have happened. Unless he’d killed himself. She dismissed that thought as fast as it had come. He’d had nothing to kill himself for.

Now Godfrey lay there, his spirit completely gone.

She would soon be the same, but only after the silken rope had been tightened around her neck. She could feel it now, inexorably pulling her toward death.

But she would fight that. Although it seemed inevitable, she would not go to the gallows without protesting her innocence at every step.

Chapter Three

At the marquess’s nod, her maid led Juliana to another room, similar to the chamber of death but with no dead man in it.

Silently, Wood stripped Juliana and washed her with cold water, getting rid of every trace of blood. Juliana welcomed the shivering misery. At least she could feel something.

The chant ran through her mind. I did not kill him, I did not kill him, I did not kill him.

Wood brought out her mistress’s usual trappings: the wide hooped petticoat, the elaborate gowns, the hair powder. Juliana said no to it all. “Bring me something simpler.”

Whatever awaited her, she would meet it head-on, with no masks, no subterfuge. Instinctively she understood that she had to show her innocence, demonstrate it with a clear face. She would leave her father and the others supporting her to show all their pomp and power to overawe the authorities.

Only peers of the realm could be tried in the House of Lords, and she was not a peer. She would be tried at the Old Bailey. The man who currently held the seat of magistrate at Bow Street was not awed by anything and he was incorruptible. Henry Fielding, the novelist, and his blind brother John made a formidable, if unexpected bastion against corruption and crime. They had declared as such and were making themselves influential in the law and in the country. She had never met them, though she would certainly have that privilege soon