Trial by Desire

It had happened so gradually, on her husband’s disappearance from England. Kate had blamed Blakely for sending her husband to China. Foolish; she’d known Ned had volunteered, that he’d wanted to leave as much as she had wanted him to stay. She’d blamed the marchioness, out of a deep envy for the woman’s easy friendship with her husband. Kate had known the response was neither reasonable nor rational, but her resentment at being left behind had been too large to direct at only one person.

Over the years, the familial relationship had quietly strained. A different woman might have made some attempt to mend what had frayed; instead, Kate had excused herself. She had her own set of friends. She didn’t need to add her cousins by marriage to that number.

And so it had come to this: everyone in the room, if they knew what she had done, would see her as the enemy.

Her greatest enemy stood next in line to greet her husband. The Earl of Harcroft was slim and tall. He was Ned’s age, but he looked as if he were still eighteen, his face unlined by worries or age. The earl, Kate thought bitterly, appeared to be quite the golden child. He was a master at cricket, a veritable genius at chess and an expert when it came to appraising Flemish paintings of goat-girls. He gave to charity, never swore and attended church, where he sang hymns in a delightful baritone.

He also beat his wife, taking care to hit her only where the bruises wouldn’t show. It was his legal right, as Louisa’s husband, and if he discovered that Kate had hidden her away, he could compel her at solicitor-point to give her up.

Kate wasn’t about to give him the chance.

Ned relinquished Harcroft’s hand and looked expectantly around the room. “Where’s Louisa?” he asked brightly. “Is she lying in, finally? I certainly hope she hasn’t taken ill again.”

Silence fell. The three guests exchanged glances. Kate’s spine straightened; Lady Blakely subsided into her chair and spread her hands carefully down the light purple of her gown. She did not meet Ned’s eyes. Instead, she glanced at her husband, who by a shake of his head clearly delegated the task of divulging the truth back to her.

“We don’t know where she is,” Lady Blakely said simply. “But you’ve just returned. Don’t concern yourself with it.”

Of course. They’d come to talk with Kate. Not a good sign, then, that nobody in the room was looking at her.

“Jenny,” Ned said carefully. “Are you trying to protect me?”

The smile on Lady Blakely’s face wavered.

“I should think that if I’ve earned anything over the last years, I’ve earned the right to the truth. I’ve proven to you by now that I can help.”

“Ned, that’s not what I meant. I simply thought—”

Ned held up a hand. “Well, stop thinking simply.” He spoke lightly, but again something passed between them, and Lady Blakely nodded.

Oh, it was irrational to feel that stab of jealousy. And it was not because she suspected that anything untoward could happen between them. Lady Blakely was devoted to her husband. Still, that exchange of glances bespoke a trust, a friendship between them that Kate had never had a chance to develop with her husband. All she’d had was a handful of breakfasts, and a smaller handful of nights that had more to do with marital expectation than ardor. She’d had three months to raise her hopes, and years to watch them dwindle into nothing.

“If anyone has the right to the truth,” Kate said with some asperity, “it is I. Louisa is one of my dearest friends. I thought, after she gave birth three weeks ago, the danger had passed. Has something happened to her?” Kate didn’t have to pretend her concern for her friend. “Is she well? And did you come to fetch me to her side?”

Harcroft’s cold gaze fell on her as she delivered this speech. But as much as she quaked inside, she did not let herself show more than natural worry.

Lady Blakely must not have seen anything amiss in her expression, either. She let out a sigh. “There’s no easy way to say this. Louisa’s gone.”

“Gone?” Ned asked, his shoulders drawing together, his head snapping up.

“Do you mean she’s passed on?“ Kate echoed in perfidious concern.

“I mean,” Lady Blakely clarified, “she is missing. She was last seen yesterday shortly before noon, and we are absolutely frantic trying to locate her.”

“Was she taken by ruffians?” Kate asked. “Have you received some sort of a demand letter from abductors?”

Ned turned to Harcroft. “Harcroft. You used to find misplaced books in the Bodleian Library for amusement. How could you be so careless as to misplace your own wife?”

Harcroft scrubbed his hands through his hair. He made a fine picture of a distraught husband, Kate thought bitterly. “You know,” Harcroft said softly, “about the illness she’s suffered. The problems she had conceiving. Well, after she got with child … The physician said some women don’t take to childbirth. Something about too much excitement laid upon the feminine sensibility. She wasn’t herself afterward. The female mind is delicate as it is, you know. She changed during her confinement. She was less biddable, more excitable. More given to hysterics.”

Harcroft shrugged. The gesture conveyed helplessness, and Kate’s lip curled. Helpless, Harcroft was not. Kate suppressed the urge to lift the nearby oil lamp with her delicate, female hands. She felt excited and unbiddable right now; why, she might slip and use her own delicate, female sensibility to bash all that heavy brass into his head.

However satisfying that exercise might prove, it wouldn’t help Louisa.

“And no,” Harcroft continued, turning to Kate, “we’ve had no notes of ransom. Whoever it was that took her—” his voice took on a sour note, and he tilted his head to look Kate directly in the eyes “—whoever it was, packed a valise for Louisa and clothes for the child. They took my son, without his uttering a cry to alert the nursemaid.”

“Oh, no,” Kate said. She froze her face into a mask of perfect sympathy and met Harcroft’s eyes. “Not little Jeremy. What sort of wicked, depraved, awful person would hurt that little angel?”

Her words might have been half lies, but the emotion that crept out during that speech was all real. She only hoped that everyone understood it as sympathy for Harcroft instead of the painful accusation that it was.

He couldn’t know what was in her mind, but his own thoughts could not have been comfortable. The skin around his mouth crinkled and he looked away.

“As I said,” he muttered, “there have been neither threats nor demands.”

“How can I help?” Ned asked. “I assume that’s why you came, right? As soon as you heard I’d arrived? Because—” He stopped and looked at the carefully schooled faces surrounding him. “But no. None of you even knew I’d returned here.”

“They’ve come to speak with me,” Kate said into the intervening silence. “To see if Louisa divulged anything of importance.”

The Marquess of Blakely stepped closer. He was tall, and Kate had never seen him flinch at anything. He was damnably intimidating, and she leaned away despite herself. “And has she?”

Kate shook her head as if trying to recall. “We had planned to see each other again at the Hathaway’s house party in November, if the roads were passable. She made no mention to me of any other plans.”

True enough; Kate had been the one to coax her into action. Kate had laid the plans; Louisa had only agreed.

Kate continued, “She had not spoken of any desire to see anything else. Or—excuse my plain speaking on the subject, but under the circumstances, it seems necessary—anyone else. Louisa isn’t the sort to stray.”

A disappointed silence followed this.

“Perhaps,” Harcroft offered, “you might trouble yourself to recall anything she might have said about Berkswift’s environs. Yesterday evening, a woman alone, answering Louisa’s description, alighted from a hack in Haverton, just five miles from here. The hack had been hired in London, and so the occurrence was much talked about.”

“A woman alone? She didn’t have a child? Where did she go?”

“No child. But an auburn-haired woman with deep blue eyes—it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“It must be.” Kate shook her head. “Louisa would never leave Jeremy, not for any reason.” It had, in fact, been a sticking point of their plan—convincing Louisa to allow Kate to take her child in London, so that when Louisa traveled she would not be so easily identified. A red-haired woman with a newborn was too memorable, and looking as Louisa did would only have made her shine, like a lighthouse set on the shore.

“Perhaps,” Kate ventured, “you might tell me if there is anything that happened that might have precipitated her flight. It might help my memory.”

She didn’t want to be the only one telling lies here. Let Harcroft announce that he’d hit her in the stomach, and promised to break her infant son’s arm if she told anyone.

“I can think of other ways to jog your memory.” Harcroft stepped closer.

For a second, Kate shrank from him. She, of all people, knew the violence he was capable of. Then Ned moved to stand beside Kate. It was foolish to feel more secure because of a man who had abandoned her years ago. But she did.

“For instance,” Harcroft said smoothly, as if he had not just uttered a threat, “you might allow yourself time to think about the matter. You could report to me if you recall anything important.”

“Of course. I will send a messenger the instant anything comes to mind.”

Harcroft shook his head. “No need for that. Ned, my friend, you asked me if you could help. A hired hack left my wife a mere stone’s throw from here, and no accounts yet have that woman leaving the district. I’m convinced she’s nearby.”