she answered the questions he put to her, the words mechanical and without emotion. How many times had she already been through those questions? How many times had she already listened to the same words?
The cold grey eyes focused on her, and an unnerving sensation raced up and down her spine.
‘What a very fortunate young woman you are, Miss Cummings. Tell me something, do you honestly feel no compunction, no guilt, no remorse?’
It was too much. Lark stared at him, her temper suddenly deserting her.
‘No,’ she told him recklessly, ‘I don’t feel any of those things. Not a single one. I don’t need to. I’m not guilty. I haven’t done anything. You don’t understand. You’re wrong, wrong!’
To her horror she discovered she was crying, her whole body shaking with the force of her emotions. There were sounds behind her, tuts from the jury, the vague sounds of unease the British always make in the face of other people’s emotions.
Hatred engulfed her as she tried to control herself. He had done it deliberately—deliberately trapped her into saying what she really felt. She looked at him proudly, her head held up, her body trembling under the force of her feelings. Grey eyes looked back at her. She could read nothing in them, but then, what had she expected to read? Triumph, because he knew he would win his case? He was far too professional for that, she decided scornfully, watching him as he turned and walked away from her.
The rest of the proceedings passed in a blur. There were questions and then more questions. There were speeches and then more speeches, but none of it meant anything to her. She already knew what the outcome was going to be. No one had had such a profound effect on the jury as James Wolfe, no one had had as profound an effect on her.
Her solicitor was withdrawn and ill at ease when the case was eventually adjourned for a break. The jury had retired to make their decision. As she stood in the long, draughty corridor next to her solicitor, Lark shivered convulsively. Only now, when it was over, did she actually realise what was happening to her: this could be one of her last few precious hours of true freedom. Prison. She shivered, unable to contemplate the enormity of what was going to happen to her.
Why? Why, when she was innocent? But this was a case in which innocence had to be proved, and how could she prove hers when she had been condemned by a dying man?
A harassed-looking court official appeared and drew her solicitor to one side. She saw them looking at her and her heart sank. Had the jury made their decision already? Was that what they were talking about?
Her solicitor turned to her and excused himself. The judge wanted to speak to him, he told her. He was gone for what seemed to be a long, long time. His assistant tried to take her mind off things by talking to her, but Lark wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat. In other circumstances, she might have been willing to make more of an effort. The young man was shy and meant well, but it was more than she could manage at the moment to respond to his inarticulate small-talk.
When her solicitor came back, he looked slightly flushed and rather surprised. He drew her to one side, his smile almost avuncular as he said jovially, ‘You’re a very lucky young lady, Miss Cummings. Crichtons have made a last-minute decision to withdraw their case. Apparently they’ve decided that the publicity your conviction would give them would not reflect well on them.’
‘To withdraw the case …’ Lark was practically stammering. ‘But surely they can’t just do that?’
‘Not in normal circumstances,’ her solicitor agreed. ‘But … er … in this case the judge has decided …’ He was plainly struggling to give her an explanation for this extraordinary turn of events, but Lark didn’t care. All she cared about was the enormous feeling of relief sweeping away the fear and anxiety of the past long months. It was over. She wasn’t going to prison. She was free, she could simply walk out of this court and never again have to hear another word about Crichton International or Gary. She could hardly believe it. Especially not after the way James Wolfe had so effectively destroyed her while she was in the witness box. After what he had done, she had felt quite sure that the jury would have convicted her to a life sentence in Russia’s salt mines if he had asked them to.
How infuriated he must be by Crichtons’ decision! He hadn’t struck her as the kind of man who would enjoy having the rug pulled out from under his feet like that.
Added to a sense of relief was one of dizzy pleasure. He had been cheated of his prey. She had actually escaped the net he had woven so cleverly around her.
God, how she hated him! How she hated all men like him who preyed on those less fortunate than themselves, using their intelligence, their skills, their training, to earn themselves a very good living from the misfortunes of others.
He had not cared whether she was guilty or innocent. All he had cared about was his fee.
Her solicitor was saying something, but she hadn’t really been listening. She turned to look at him, her eyes flashing with the force of her emotions. He took a step backwards and eyed her uncertainly. He had not wanted to handle the case right from the very beginning. It had been loaded with potential disaster, with problems and uncertainties. At the very best, all he had hoped to get was a conviction that took into account her youth and lack of a previous record. That Crichtons should suddenly and almost inexplicably decide to drop the case was something he had not anticipated at all, and even now he could hardly believe it had actually happened.
She was free. Really free, for the first time since Gary’s death. Without a backward glance, Lark walked out of the court and into the spring sunshine.
The London streets were busy, heavy with the sounds of traffic, a muted dull roar which suddenly sounded as triumphant as the most triumphal of all hymns. She wanted to dance down the street, to embrace almost everybody she saw. She wanted to cry out to them that she was free, that the ordeal was over. And yet, would they understand? No.
Probably, like the jury, they would have condemned her too, had they been given the chance.
A week later she wasn’t feeling anything like as euphoric. Reality had set in hard upon the heels of her initial exuberance. Since Gary’s death she had been living in a small bedsit she had managed to rent, but she had very little money of her own.
According to her aunt and uncle, the money that her parents had left her had been virtually swallowed up by her education. After school she had gone on to university, where she had obtained a Business Studies degree, and then it had taken her six months to find her first job.
Her bedsit was cold and damp, and she grimaced bitterly to herself as she sat huddled over its one-bar electric fire. Who would have believed that twelve months ago she had considered herself to be one of the luckiest people she knew? She had just landed her first job with a prestigious PR firm in the city. The salary hadn’t been very high, but the PR firm was a very high-profile one which handled a lot of famous names.
She had planned to stay there for two or three years to gain some initial experience, and then look for something better. When added to her salary and carefully eked out, the five thousand or so pounds that was left to her from her parents’ money would have just about lasted until she had been in a position to look for something better, but now all that was gone.
She had lost her job almost as soon as the news had broken. Her boss had called her into his office and explained to her in cool and bitingly unkind words that a high-profile PR firm could not afford to carry an employee whose name was splashed so notoriously all over the front pages of the nation’s gutter
