Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(74)

Kate tossed her head, and something about that ungraceful movement drew Ned’s eyes to her hands. Her wrists were bound.

“What have you to say to the charges?” the magistrate asked. By his tone of voice, he was bored with the proceedings already.

“I can have little to say, Your Worship, seeing as how I haven’t heard them.” Kate’s voice was strong—as always, she betrayed no weakness.

“Haven’t heard them?” The magistrate looked puzzled. “But how can that be?”

“You haven’t read them to me, Your Worship.”

The magistrate cast Kate a baleful look, as if it were somehow her fault that his court had to pause for such futile things as the reading of charges. In an elaborate gesture, the man swooped a pair of spectacles off the bench and balanced them on his nose. He held a piece of paper in front of him at arm’s length. “There,” he said. “Abduction.”

He ripped the glasses off and peered at Kate again. “Now what have you to say to the charges?”

“Abduction of whom, Your Worship?”

A longer pause, and the magistrate’s lips thinned. “I am accustomed,” he said in a commanding voice, “to people knowing with whom they have absconded.” He glared at Kate.

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

Slowly, he picked up his spectacles, and once again set them on the bridge of his nose. He read the paper more carefully. “Ah, yes. I recall now. Abduction of this fine lord’s wife.” Off came the glasses again. But instead of glaring at Kate, he glanced at Harcroft.

“How odd,” he said. “Abduction of a wife? By another woman? I have only ever seen the case brought against other men.” He glanced back at Kate.

“But there is nothing in the law preventing its application to a woman, is there?” Harcroft spoke for the first time, his voice soothing. “You heard the evidence for the warrant, Your Worship. Must I repeat it all now, or can we dispense with the formalities?”

“He claimed to have evidence that I forcibly abducted his wife?” Kate said. “He’s lying.”

“Abduction by persuasion, at a minimum.” Harcroft didn’t look at Kate as he spoke. “A wife, of course, has no power to consent to leave her husband without his permission.”

Ned looked down at the hand still restraining him, and then slowly, gingerly, he pulled his sleeve from the sergeant’s grasp. He’d never given it much thought, but what Harcroft said was likely true. And if that was the case…Harcroft might in fact have hit on a crime Kate had actually committed.

“Wait!” Ned called from the back. “I’m her husband!”

The magistrate took Ned in. He gave him one long, pitying look, and then shook his head in dismissal. He turned back to Kate. “Well? Did you do it?”

“How can you even charge her?” Ned demanded. “She’s my wife. Whatever she’s done—whatever you think she’s done—should I not be charged with responsibility for it, as her husband?”

The judge fixed Ned with a pointed stare.

“That is, I should be charged with responsibility, Your Worship,” Ned appended belatedly.

“Mr. Carhart, I presume,” the magistrate said. “This is not the proper way to present an argument to the bench.” He looked around the room. “Having heard the evidence in this case, I hereby find that—”

“Your Worship,” Ned said, “which of these individuals—” he spread his arm to encompass the courtroom stuffed with sorry specimens of humanity “—is sitting on the jury?”

“Jury?” The magistrate frowned. “Jury? There isn’t time this afternoon for a trial by jury.” He glared at Kate. “You didn’t say you wanted a jury. In fact, you can’t have one. Not unless the amount involved is over forty shillings.”

“The Countess of Harcroft is likely worth more,” Ned said. “Your Worship.”

Harcroft glanced at him through slitted eyes, but did not contradict.

The magistrate sighed and set his glasses back on his nose, looking at Ned in the back of the room. “You appear to be a gentleman.”

“I am a gentleman. I’m the heir presumptive to the Marquess of Blakely.”

A crease formed in the magistrate’s brow, and he peered once at Harcroft. “But you said—that is, I thought Mrs. Carhart—”

“My wife is Lady Kathleen Carhart. The prosecutor did disclose that she is the Duke of Ware’s daughter, did he not? This is not a suit that you can dispose of in such a summary fashion.”

As Ned spoke, the magistrate looked to Harcroft again, his lips thinning. Ned could imagine how this particular case had evolved. Harcroft had indeed tried to take the upper hand. No doubt he’d impressed the judge with his title. Perhaps he’d even attempted to purchase the outcome with a few well-placed bank notes. But even the most corrupt magistrate would balk at sending a duke’s daughter to gaol for money.

Under Ned’s scrutiny, this particular magistrate straightened his wig and shuffled the papers on his bench. “Perhaps a fine,” he said to Harcroft. “You’ll be satisfied with a fine—a few shillings?”

“The Countess of Harcroft,” the earl said, with a cutting look at Ned, “is worth a great deal more than a few shillings. That woman has my wife. I want her back. No, Your Worship—I must insist on pressing charges. Trial will proceed.”