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

She would have to stand before one of them and hear their condemnation, watch Mr. Fielding put the black cap over his wig and condemn her to death.

She would do it all bare faced. They would know who they were killing. And she would protest her innocence to the end. That might not save her from the gallows, but at least she would die with her pride and honor intact.

Memories of last night jumbled in her brain. Pain and humiliation, strange new scents and tastes, and the echo of something else, but she could not put her finger on it, however hard she tried.

Standing like a marble statue, she let Wood dress her. The maid accomplished her task in tight-lipped silence. She found a blue petticoat and a darker blue gown, finely embroidered, made of the best silk lustring. She consented to a hip pad underneath, to give her a semblance of respectability. Her black mourning gown was at her parents’ house. Who knew she would need that?

Plain stockings, not the elaborate ones with embroidered clocks running up each side, and a modest, though rich, lace cap over her natural dark red hair completed her outfit.

Beneath her still surface, she expected the tears to come, waited for them, but she felt nothing. She steeled herself for the time when they would arrive, and determined to show no one. She had been trained by the best—her mother—and she knew how to still her thoughts, to school her face into impassivity. This she would do until she could do it no more, although at present she did not have any difficulty doing so.

Wood left the room, and came back with a cloak. “You are to come with me, my lady,” she said.

She followed, vaguely considering running and never coming back. But she had never been comfortable with running away from her problems. Until she knew more, she would stand her ground. Wood took her downstairs and out the front door, to where a carriage waited. Not a vehicle with a coat of arms emblazoned on the door, or with elaborate upholstery and fittings. No, murderesses traveled in plain hackney cabs.

Juliana climbed up without the help of a footman, or even her maid. The interior stank of piss and puke, and the leather seats were cracked and black with age. Straw was strewn on the floor. She took note, but cared little, certainly not as much as Wood, who climbed up after her, nose wrinkled in distaste.

Would they fling her into Newgate Prison? The building loomed ominously over everyone passing by. Even the carriages preferred to use the other side of the road, and it wasn’t only gaol fever that repelled them.

She expected to be flung into a cell within the hour. She would be a public spectacle, the murderess who had killed her husband on her wedding night.

Except she had not killed him.

She expected the carriage to swing left and head for the City, that dichotomy of poor and prosperous that some said was the wealthiest square mile in the world. Instead, the carriage took her down Hanover Street and across the square at the end, around the green area in the center, reserved for the use of residents only.

In the opposite direction to the City.

The carriage deposited her at the front door of her family house in London, like a parcel that had been delivered to the wrong address. A footman waited to usher her into the house. Not by the lifting of an eyebrow did he indicate that today was any different than any other. He snapped off his usual bow as she walked in, head held high.

Maybe twenty people clustered around the iron railings protecting the unsuspecting pedestrian from the area below, where coal and kitchen produce was delivered. She would rather have been the poorest, most harassed kitchen maid than herself today.

They were not there to sell produce, or repair chairs. They were here to watch. Word had escaped already, and the crows were gathering over the corpse.

They murmured as she entered, but nobody shouted. Not yet. Tension lay in the air, harshly bright.

A single shout of “There she is!” went up, together with “Murderess!” and “Vixen!”

Soon they would act, Juliana was sure of it.

The door opened as she approached, and closed behind her, the sound like the clang of a prison door.

Chapter Four

Ash knew better than to ask politely if anyone wanted the last slice of toast. He lunged for the rack, only winning it by a whisker. His sister Amelia barely missed the prize. He waved it triumphantly at her before he took his seat again. “Call Cook for more,” he said, pulling the butter dish across to his place without taking his hand off the slice of bread. “I’m expected at Bow Street in half an hour, so I need this. You have more time than I do.”

“What happened to being a gentleman?” Amelia demanded indignantly.

He picked up the bread and waved it at her. “First to touch wins. Stop changing the rules, sister dear.” Amelia shot him a poisonous look out of the corner of her eye. She was good at that. Their youngest brother sniggered.

Amelia grumbled under her breath at his winning the prize, but she shot him a good-natured grin and got to her feet to go to the dining room door. After bellowing, “Can we have some more toast, please?” she returned to her place.

Ash loved the normal chaos of family breakfasts, even though four of their number were missing—two for the excellent reason that they had lives of their own. Prudence looked after the house in the country, and William was at sea with the Navy. The others—they rarely talked about their dead brother, next in age to Ash, and the reason he had changed the direction of his career from the lucrative business of property law to criminal law. They rarely talked about their sister Silence, either, who had left her husband and now led her own life,