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“It is not too late,” he said urgently. “You can still admit you were overcome by grief and spoke without due thought.”
“I am not overcome,” she said with a self-mocking smile. “I spoke after very careful thought indeed, and I meant what I said.” She was dressed in tawny reds and browns. Her jacket was beautifully tailored to her slender shoulders and straight back, and the skirt swept out in an unbroken line over its hoops. Her attire was devastatingly unsuitable for the occasion. She did not look remotely penitent or consumed by grief. She looked magnificent.
“I am going into battle without weapons or armor.” He heard his voice rise in desperation. “I still have nothing!”
“You have great skill.” She smiled at him, her green eyes bright with confidence. He had no idea whether it was real or assumed. As always, she took no notice whatever of what he said, except to find a disarming reply. He had never had a more irresponsible client, or one who tried his patience so far.
“There is no point in being the best shot in the world if you have no weapon to fire,” he protested, “and no ammunition.”
“You will find something.” She lifted her chin a little. “Now, Sir Oliver, is it not time for us to enter the fray? The usher is beckoning. He is an usher, is he not, that little man over there waving at you? That is the correct term?”
Rathbone did not bother to answer but stood aside for her to precede him. He squared his shoulders and adjusted his cravat for the umpteenth time, actually
sending it slightly askew, and went into the courtroom. He must present the perfect image.
Instantly the hum of conversation ceased. Everyone was staring, first at him, then at Zorah. She walked across the small space of the open floor to the seats at the table for the defendant, her head high, her back stiff, looking neither right nor left.
There was a dull murmur of resentment. Everyone was curious to see the woman who could be so unimaginably wicked as to make such an accusation as this against one of the heroines of the age. People craned forward to stare, their faces hardened with anger and dislike. Rathbone could feel it like a cold wave as he followed her, held the chair for her as she sat with extraordinary grace and swept her huge skirts about her.
The murmur of sound started again, movement, whispered words.
Then a moment later there was silence. The farther door opened and Ashley Harvester, Q.C., held it while his client, the widowed Princess Gisela, came into the court. One could sense the electric excitement, the indrawn breath of anticipation.
Rathbone’s first thought was that she was smaller than he had expected. There was no reason for it, but he had imagined the woman who had been the center of the two greatest royal scandals in her nation’s history to be more imposing. She was so thin as to look fragile, as if rough handling would break her. She was dressed in unrelieved black, from the exquisite hat with the widow’s veil and the perfectly cut jacket bodice, emphasizing her delicate shoulders and waist, to the huge taffeta skirt which made her body seem almost doll-like above it, as if she would snap off in the middle were anyone to be ungentle with her.
There was a sigh of outgoing breath around the crowd. Spontaneously, a man called out “Bravo!” and a woman sobbed “God bless you!”
Slowly, with black-gloved hands, Gisela lifted her veil, then turned hesitantly and gave them a wan smile.
Rathbone stared at her with overwhelming curiosity. She was not beautiful, she never had been, and grief had ravaged her face until there was no color in it at all. Her hair was all but invisible under the hat, but the little one could see was dark. Her forehead was high, her brows level and well marked, her eyes large. She stared straight ahead of her with intelligence and dignity, but there was a tightness in her, especially about the mouth. Considering her total bereavement, and this fearful accusation on top of it, the fact that she had any composure at all was to her credit. If she were tense while facing a woman who was so passionately her enemy, who could be surprised or critical?
After that one gesture to the gallery, she took her seat at the plaintiff’s table without looking left or right, and markedly avoided letting her eyes stray anywhere near Rathbone or Zorah.
The crowd was so fascinated they barely noticed Ashley Harvester as he followed and took his place. He had sat down before Rathbone looked at him. And yet it was Harvester who was his adversary, Harvester’s skill he would have to try to counter. Rathbone had not faced him in court before, but he knew his reputation. He was a man of intense convictions, prepared to fight any battle for a principle in which he believed and ready to take on any foe. He sat now with his long, lean face set in an expression of concentration which made him look extremely severe. His nose was straight, his eyes deep-socketed and pale, his lips thin. Whether he had the slightest shred of humor Rathbone had yet to learn.
The judge was an elderly man with a curious appearance. The flesh covering his bones seemed so slight one was unusually aware of the skull beneath, and yet it was the least frightening of countenances. At first glance one might have thought him weak, perhaps a man holding office more by privilege of birth than any skill or intelligence of his own. In a gentle voice, he called for order and he obtained it instantly—not so much by authority as from the fact that no one in that packed room wished to miss a word of what was said by the protagonists in this extraordinary case.
Rathbone looked across at the jury. As he had said to his father, they were, by definition, men of property—it was a qualification for selection. They were dressed in their best dark suits, stiff white collars, sober waistcoats, high-buttoned coats. After all, there was royalty present, even if of a dubious and disowned nature. And there was certainly a great deal of noble blood and ancient lineage, either here in the court or to be called. They looked as solemn as became the occasion, expressions grave, hair and whiskers combed. Every one of them faced forward, barely blinking.
In the gallery, reporters for the press sat with their pencils poised, blank pages in front of them. No one moved.
The hearing commenced.
Ashley Harvester rose to his feet.
“My lord, gentlemen of the jury.” His voice was precise, with a faint accent from somewhere in the Midlands. He had done his best to school it out, but it lingered in certain vowels. “On the face of it, this case is not a dramatic or distressing one. No one has received a grievous injury to his or her person.” He spoke quietly and without gestures. “There is no bloodstained corpse, no mangled survivor of assault to obtain your pity. There is not even anyone robbed of life’s savings or of prosperity. There is no business failed, no home in smoldering ruins.” He gave a very slight shrug of his lean shoulders, as if the matter held some kind of irony. “All we are dealing with is a matter of words.” He stopped, his back to Rathbone.
There was silence in the room.
In the gallery, a woman caught her breath and started to cough.
A juror blinked several times.
Harvester smiled mirthlessly. “But then the Lord’s Prayer is only words, is it not? The Coronation Oath is words … and the marriage ceremony.” He was talking to the jury. “Do you regard these things as light matters?” He did not wait for any kind of reply. He saw all he needed in their faces. “A man’s honor may rest in the words he speaks, or a woman’s. All we are going to use in this court today, and in the days that follow, are words. My learned friend”—he lifted his head a little towards Rathbone—“and I shall do battle here, and we shall have no weapons but words and the memory of those words. We shall not raise our fists to each other.”
Someone gave a nervous giggle and instantly choked it off.
“We shall not carry swords or pistols,” he continued. “And yet on the outcome of such struggles as these have hung the lives of men, their fame, their honor and their fortunes.”
