Note to Readers
The Old Bailey—May 1820
She had attended every single day of the trial. Alone in the gallery, her face pale, sitting erect, her slim shoulders pulled back as she stared straight ahead. Her hands were hidden among the folds of her skirt. It had taken Hadleigh almost a week to realise that she hid her hands because they provided the only clue to the way she was truly feeling as they twisted a ruined handkerchief into tight, agitated spirals which she kept proudly from view.
She had a child, he knew. A son who was a little over a year old. Yet she never brought the babe to the court as some did in a bid to elicit sympathy. Nor did she give any indication she noticed the hordes who had come to gloat at her tragedy. The blatant pointing and unsubtle whispering; the shameless newspaper artist who frequently perched himself directly in front of her and sketched her expression incorrectly for the breakfast entertainment of the masses—such was the gravitas of this case that everyone wanted to know about it. And about her.
The traitor’s wife.
That quiet dignity had both impressed him and humbled him because it was eerily familiar. Her honesty, yesterday, had shaken him to his core. In a last-ditch attempt to save her husband and prove his good character, the defence had called her as a witness at the last minute. Unexpectedly. They asked leading questions, to which she could answer only yes or no, then stepped aside so that he could cross-examine her.
‘Was he a good husband?’
She had looked him dead in the eye. ‘No.’ He had expected her to lie, but gave no indication of his surprise. Her gaze moved tentatively to the furious man in the dock. ‘No. He wasn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘He wasn’t at all who I had hoped he was.’
‘This court requires more explanation, Lady Penhurst. In what ways was the accused a bad husband?’ He’d had an inkling. More than an inkling, if he was honest, especially as he had lived in a house where a marriage had become a legal prison, but as the Crown Prosecutor his job was to present the government’s case as best he could. The jury deserved the whole truth about the man in the dock, no matter how unpalatable it was. Or how intrusive.
‘He was violent, Lord Hadleigh.’ His friend Leatham had said as much. Violent and depraved and his heart wept for her suffering. She reminded him of another woman in another time. One who had also endured stoically because she had had no option to do otherwise and had not wanted to burden him with her troubles. The bitter taste of bile stung his throat at the awful memory so long buried.
‘He beat you?’
Her eyes nervously flicked to her husband’s again because she knew that if he was acquitted, she would pay for her disloyalty today and there was nothing in law to stop that happening. But her spine stiffened again with resolve and she slowly inhaled as if to calm herself and find inner strength. He knew how much that small act of defiance cost her. ‘If I was lucky, only weekly.’ Her gloved index finger touched the bridge of her nose where the bone slightly protruded. ‘He broke my nose. Cracked a rib—’
