Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(73)
“Yes or no will do, ma’am.”
Kate touched the pearls at her neck. “Yes, but I am La—”
He interrupted her again before she could finish.
“Well, then. I have a warrant sworn out for your arrest, and you’re to come with me.”
All those yards of lace stopped feeling like armor. Instead, she felt nakedly vulnerable. “My arrest?” No. She wasn’t going to flutter like a useless sparrow. She balled her fists. “See here, Officer.” She glanced at his jacket collar, where his designation was marked. “Officer 12-Q, what do you mean by ordering my arrest?”
Officer 12-Q took another step forward. “Didn’t,” he explained. “The warrant’s signed by Magistrate Fang. I don’t order anything—I just execute it. If you’ll excuse the witticism.”
She stared at him blankly.
“I just execute it,” he repeated. “Execute. See? Heh. Heh.” Despite that odd chuckle, Officer 12-Q had not even broached a smile yet.
Kate let her blank stare take on a chilly component.
“I suppose,” the officer allowed slowly, “it would be less amusing to you, what with your having to stand trial and all.”
“Stand trial! On what charges? And when?”
The man came forward, and Kate stepped backward. Beside her, her footman winced. No doubt he was trying to figure out precisely how far his loyalty to his employer stretched.
“Oh, come,” 12-Q was saying. “Fine lady like you doesn’t want to resist the metropolitan police. As for when—right now. Why do you suppose I was sent to fetch you? Justice waits for no man. Or woman. Particularly not when justice is administered by Magistrate Fang. He doesn’t like staying after his time.”
“But I have an appointment to take tea.” Kate set one foot in the carriage, and her footman backed away from her slightly. Her voice was significantly steadier than her nerves. “Are you intimating that instead, I must undertake a tedious journey to—to—”
“The police court at Queen Square, ma’am.” He fingered his collar. “It’s what the Q stands for.”
“So I must travel to Queen Square, hear a set of trumped-up charges and stand trial? But I shall be quite late. I pride myself on my punctuality.”
Officer 12-Q shrugged and reached for her arm. “If you plead guilty first, there’s no need to stand for trial. Trial’s only if you wish to establish your innocence.” His hand closed around her elbow—firm, but not harsh.
Kate glared at him. “Thank you. That is most helpful.”
“Of course,” he continued, “six months in gaol will likely delay your arrival, as well.”
“Six months!” Kate was no longer even able to pretend at equanimity. “You must be joking. What on earth are they charging me with?”
A ghost of a smile played across 12-Q’s face. “Fang tends toward lenience with women, he does. Six months is if he’s feeling kind—and given the lord who brought the charge, he’s unlike to do so.”
Of course it was Harcroft. She had guessed it from the first. But what would he claim she had done? It could have been anything from theft to murder. At the least, she had the luxury of knowing that whatever it was he claimed she did, she was innocent. Now all she had to do was prove it.
She turned to the footman, who gave her a pained shake of the head, one she translated as I like my wages very well, but not enough to leap upon an officer of the police force. Please do not expect it. She sighed.
“You need to fetch my husband,” she said. “He’s off at Chancery. Tell him I’ve been brought to Queen Square. And that I need him. Now.”
The officer yawned at this interplay and shrugged as the footman turned and dashed away. “Will you come now, or must I bind you and carry you down the street?”
Kate raised her chin and went.
NED CHARGED INTO THE STUFFY ROOM where the police court was held.
He’d convinced himself, on the mad dash over to Queen Square, that the footman’s garbled tale held little relation to the truth. If Kate had been required to make her way into the somber, grubby office lodged in Westminster, surely it was because she had been set upon by some cutpurse. She was there to testify, and nothing more—
But no. As he entered, a sergeant of the police stretched his arm out and grabbed Ned’s wrist. He gave a little twist as he did so—some police trick—and Ned stumbled, one knee stiking the ground, his arm wrenching.
The officer was one of only a few occupants—a red-faced drunkard lay snoring across one bench, a woman and her children, all clad in matching shades of brown, took up another. A handful of officers, all in uniform blue, waited. If Ned had wanted, he might have picked out individual scents: five different bouquets of unwashed-ness. He didn’t want, and so he held his breath and looked forward.
Kate stood at the front of the room, beautiful, her hair slightly disheveled. She held her head high. He couldn’t see her face; instead, she was looking at the magistrate. The man sat—if you could call that disreputable slouch “sitting”—in a rumpled coat and trousers, his sole nod to respectability being a white powdered wig that lay somewhat askew on his head.
Directly across from her, standing just before the bench, was the Earl of Harcroft.
Harcroft had engineered this, then. Ned had known he had some other plan. He just hadn’t expected to find his wife charged with some crime before a magistrate.