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“I believe it is true,” she said inflexibly, her face set, body rigid. “And it is not your calling to be judge as well as counsel, is it?”
He took a deep breath. “It is my obligation to tell you the truth … which is that if Friedrich was indeed murdered, by the use of yew leaves, then Gisela is the one person whose actions and whereabouts are accounted for at all times, and she could not have killed him.”
She stared at him defiantly, her chin high, her eyes wide. But she had no answer to his logic. It beat her, and she had to acknowledge it.
“If you wish to be excused, Sir Oliver, then I excuse you. You need not consider your honor stained. I seem to have asked of you more than is just.”
He felt an overwhelming relief, and was ashamed of it
“What will you do?” he asked gently, the tension and the sense of doom skipping away from him, but in their place was a whisper of failure, as if some opportunity had been lost, and even a sort of loneliness.
“If you see the situation as you have said, no doubt any other barrister of like skill and honor will see it the same way,” she answered. “They will advise me as you have. And then I shall have to reply to them as I have to you, so I shall have gained nothing. There is only one person who believes in the necessity of pursuing the case.”
“Who is that?” He was surprised. He could imagine no one.
“I, of course.”
“You cannot represent yourself!” he protested.
“There is no alternative that I am prepared to accept.” She stared at him with a very slight smile, irony and amusement mixed in it—and behind it, fear.
“Then I shall continue to represent you, unless you prefer me not to.” He was horrified as he heard his own voice. It was rash to a degree. But he could hardly abandon her to her fate, even if she had brought it upon herself.
She smiled ruefully, full of gratitude.
“Thank you, Sir Oliver.”
“That was most unwise,” Henry Rathbone said gravely. He was leaning against the mantelshelf in his sitting room. The French doors were no longer open onto the garden, and there was a brisk fire burning in the hearth. He looked unhappy. Oliver had just told him of his decision to defend Zorah in spite of the fact that she refused absolutely to withdraw her accusation or to make any sort of accommodation to sense, or even to her own social survival, possibly to her financial survival also.
Oliver did not want to repeat the details of the discussion. It sounded, in retrospect, as if he had been precipitate, governed far more by emotion than intelligence, a fault he deplored in others.
“I don’t see any honorable alternative,” he said stubbornly. “I cannot simply leave her. She has put herself in a completely vulnerable position.”
“And you with her,” Henry added. He sighed and moved away from the front of the fire, where he was beginning to be uncomfortable. He sat down and fished his pipe out of his jacket pocket. He knocked the pipe against the fireplace, cleaned out the bowl, then filled it with tobacco again. He put it in his mouth and lit it. It went out almost immediately, but he did not seem to care.
“We must see what can be salvaged out of the situation.” He looked steadily at Oliver. “I don’t think you appreciate how deeply people’s feelings run in this sort of issue.”
“Slander?” Oliver asked with surprise. “I doubt it. And if murder is proved, then she will to some extent be justified.” He was comfortable in his usual chair at the other side of the fire. He slid down a little farther in it. “I think that is the thrust I must take, prove that there is sufficient evidence to believe that a crime has been committed. Possibly in the emotion, the shock and outrage of learning that Friedrich was murdered, albeit for political reasons, they will overlook Zorah’s charge against Gisela.” His spirits lifted a little as he said it. It was the beginning of a sensible approach instead of the blank wall he had faced even a few minutes ago.
“No, I did not mean slander,” Henry replied, taking his pipe out of his mouth but not bothering to relight it. He held it by the bowl, pointing with it as he spoke. “I meant the challenging of people’s preconceptions of certain events and characters, their beliefs, which have become part of how they see the world and their own value in it. If you force people to change their minds too quickly, they cannot readjust everything, and they will blame you for their discomfort, the sense of confusion and loss of balance.”
“I think you are overstating the case,” Oliver said firmly. “There are very few people so unsophisticated as to imagine women never kill their husbands, or that minor European royal families are so very different from the rest of us very fallible human beings. Certainly I will not have many on my jury. They will be men of the world, by definition.” He found himself smiling. “The average juror is a man of property and experience, Father. He may be very sober in his appearance, even pompous in his manner, but he has few illusions about the realities of life, of passion and greed and occasionally of violence.”
Henry sighed. “He is also a man with a vested interest in the social order as it is, Oliver. He respects his betters and aspires to be like them, even to become one of them, should fortune allow. He does not like the challenging of the good and the decent, which form the framework of the order he knows and give him his place and his value, which makes sure his inferiors respect him in the same way.”
“Therefore, he will not like murder,” Oliver said reasonably. “Most particularly, he will not accept the murder of a prince. He will want to see it exposed and avenged.”
Henry relit his pipe absentmindedly. His brow was furrowed with anxiety. “He will not like lawyers who defend people who make such charges against a great romantic heroine,” he corrected. “He will not like women, such as Zorah Rostova, who defy convention by not marrying, by traveling alone in all sorts of foreign lands; who dress inappropriately and ride astride a horse and smoke cigars.”
“How do you know she does those things?” Oliver was startled.
“Because people are already beginning to talk about it.” Henry leaned forward, the pipe going out again. “For heaven’s sake, don’t you suppose the gossip is running around London like smuts from a chimney in a high wind? People have believed in the love story of Friedrich and Gisela for over a decade. They don’t want to think they have been deluded, and they will resent anyone who tries to tell them so.”
Oliver felt the warmth of his earlier optimism begin to drain out of him.
“Attacking royalty is a very dangerous thing,” Henry went on. “I know a great many people do it, especially in newspapers and broadsheets, and always have, but it has seldom made them liked among the sort of people you care about. Her Majesty has just recognized your services to justice. You are a knight, and a Queen’s Counsel, not a political pamphleteer.”
“That is all the more reason why I cannot allow a murder to go unquestioned,” Oliver said grimly, “simply because I shall not be popular for drawing everyone’s attention to it.” He had placed himself in a position from which it was impossible to withdraw with any grace at all. And his father was only making it worse. He looked across at the older man’s earnest face and knew that his father was afraid for him, struggling to see an escape and unable to.
