Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(90)

“Dragons?” Harcroft snarled. “Dragons? What the hell are dragons doing in this conversation?” He raised his hand. In another second, his fist would smash into her face. Pinned as she was against the parquet floor, there was no escape. She ought to have been frightened. Her heart should have been hammering, but instead, all she felt was a heady sense of absolute victory. He couldn’t hurt her. She smiled up at him; his eyes narrowed.

“True heroes,” she told him, “tame their dragons.”

“Harcroft.” The voice came from behind him. “You’d better stop.”

Harcroft turned, his hand arrested in midair.

It was Ned. He’d been waiting in the servants’ corridor. He came forward now, limping carefully, his crutches tapping sharply against the parquet.

“How many times must I tell you?” Ned’s voice was quiet. “Get your hands off my wife. Now.”

Harcroft didn’t move.

“Careful, Harcroft. You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret.”

“Regret?” Harcroft let out a shaky breath. “Regret? You of all people know—what have I to regret? It’s not me.” His hands tightened, digging into Kate’s shoulder. “I— If I had my wife back, it wouldn’t be like this.”

“Oh? You’ve never hit Louisa, then?”

“By accident.” The words were hoarse. “Never on purpose. It wasn’t my fault. Not truly.”

“It wasn’t your fault?”

“You know how it is. I get so angry—she makes me so angry. I can’t let it go. She makes me do it, damn it. They all do. I can’t stop it.”

Ned smiled. “You can’t stop it, Harcroft. But I can.”

“Unlikely. You can’t even walk properly.”

Ned took another limping step toward them. Even wounded as he obviously was, he towered over Harcroft. And then he knelt down on the ground. “I don’t need to.” His voice was quiet. His hand found Kate’s, curling around hers, replacing the cold of the ballroom with that tiny spot of warmth.

“What? What do you mean?”

Ned glanced behind him. “Are you satisfied, Lord Chancellor?”

Harcroft’s head whipped around. “Lord Chancellor? Lord Chancellor? Lyndhurst is here?”

From behind the screen came two gentlemen. One, a short bespectacled man, pressed his lips together. He was dressed in sober brown—the physician, Kate guessed. The other man she’d seen earlier in his full ceremonial garb. In the darkness, the gold stripes on the Lord Chancellor’s robe had faded to ochre.

“Lord Chancellor.” Harcroft stared up at him in disbelief and scrabbled to his feet. “I— That is, what are you doing here? I thought—”

“I’m evaluating whether we need to call an inquiry in lunacy.”

Harcroft glanced around. “But…but my wife is elsewhere. Why would you need to be here?”

“Because I’ve had two petitions brought. One by you, against your wife. And one by your wife, against you. By your own admission, these last few minutes, you pose a physical danger to those around you. One you are incapable of controlling.”

“But—”

The bespectacled man leaned forward. “There’s evidence of hallucinations, too. A potential cause. That talk of dragons.”

“This can’t be right. I took a first in Cambridge—”

“It does happen sometimes. Especially to intelligent men. And there’s so much this might explain, such as bringing that odd suit against your wife’s friend simply because you forgot that she went abroad. Did you truly forget, Lord Harcroft, or did you have another, more dangerous illusion?”

“But—”

“You’ll be evaluated fairly,” the Lord Chancellor promised. “The evidence will be considered by a jury of your peers. Your rights will be considered. We’ll do only what’s best for you. And if you are found incompetent, we’ll appoint a trustee to oversee your properties.”

“A trustee? You’re joking. You would give someone complete legal control over my destiny? Doubtless you think to lodge that responsibility in Carhart, here. This has all been a plot from the beginning, an attempt to get me to give up—”

“No.” The word was softly spoken. But as Louisa stepped from behind the screen, her back was straight and her shoulders unbowed. “I had rather thought they would appoint me.” She looked at him—simply looked—and Harcroft’s mouth dropped open, no doubt tracing through all the implications.

A husband had control over his wife—every husband, that was, except one who had been declared incompetent by the courts. In that case, he controlled nothing. And his trustee…why, she might control everything.

Harcroft sat back on his heels. His eyes fluttered shut, and he put his head in his hands. He’d lost. He’d well and truly lost now.

After all that Harcroft had done, it should have been impossible to feel sorry for him. And yet Kate did, not because he deserved any such emotion from her. But perhaps because he so plainly didn’t. For a second he sat there, almost despairing. Then he stood, stiffly.

He brushed his coat into place and looked over at his wife. For one second, he seemed the old Harcroft again, the Harcroft that everyone always saw—full of charm and grace, doing nothing wrong. He was the man who took firsts at Cambridge, who never missed a point in fencing. He looked one last time at Louisa.