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“Of course.” There was still very little compassion in her face. Whatever memory she had of those times, it brought no light to her eyes, no flashes of past pleasure remembered. He couldn’t even detect any sorrow for broken dreams. It was as if all feeling had been crushed out of her.
Scuff was sorry for her, but he found such coldness oddly frightening.
“We would hardly have allowed our daughter to marry a man we knew nothing about,” she said stiffly, as if Wystan had insulted her. “Love can so …” Now at least there was grief. “Love can so easily be mistaken.”
“Indeed.” Wystan acknowledged the truth of that with an inclination of his head. “And your opinion at that time?”
Her face was tight, as though she were barely keeping control.
“That he was a gentleman, a brilliant lawyer of excellent means, and that great success lay ahead of him,” she replied. “He seemed to care for Margaret, and she certainly cared for him. We thought it a most fortunate match.”
There was a slight murmur around the gallery. Next to Scuff a man shook his head and sighed. A rather large woman in black, sitting on the end of the row, looked at the man beside her and said, “I told you so.” The man ignored her, his eyes never leaving Mrs. Ballinger on the witness stand.
“I am sorry to raise this, Mrs. Ballinger,” Wystan went on, “but when your late husband fell into difficulty, you had sufficient trust in your son-in-law to ask him to represent your husband? That is to say, you trusted both his professional ability and his personal loyalty?”
Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “We did,” she agreed hoarsely. “To our great grief.”
“Why was that?”
Her voice wobbled a bit as she tried to control it. “That was when we learned the extent of his personal ambition, his … his ruthlessness.” She stopped and gulped for air. Her face lost its bitterness and merely looked wounded, vulnerable.
“I am so sorry, Mrs. Ballinger,” Wystan said, with apparent sincerity. “I deeply regret the necessity for obliging you to relive such tragedy. I assure you it is necessary for justice to be done. Oliver Rathbone stands accused of misusing his position as judge, for personal reasons, for power, causing the ruin of another man for purposes of his own-”
Brancaster rose to his feet. “My lord, nowhere is such a wild statement set out in the charge.”
York pursed his lips. “I think you are splitting hairs, Mr. Brancaster. Nonetheless, Mr. Wystan, perhaps you would be wiser to allow the jury to draw their own conclusions as to the motives of the accused. People pervert the course of justice for many reasons, some of them more understandable than others. Please proceed.”
Brancaster’s face flushed with anger. “Sir Oliver has been accused, my lord. He has not yet been found guilty of anything at all. I would remind the jury of that.”
“You may remind the jury of what you please, in your summation,” York said tartly. “Until then you will refrain from interrupting unless you have some point of law to make.”
“Innocence is a point of law,” Brancaster retorted instantly. “Until proven otherwise, beyond reasonable doubt, it is the whole point of the law.”
“Are you presuming to direct me in the law, Mr. Brancaster?” York said with dangerous calm.
Brancaster controlled his temper with an effort so obvious even Scuff could see it from the side of the court where he stood squashed against the wall.
“No, my lord,” Brancaster said, his voice choking.
York smiled bleakly. “Good. I would not like the jury to be in doubt as to who is the judge here. Please continue, Mr. Wystan.”
Wystan inclined his head. “Thank you, my lord. Mrs. Ballinger, just to remind you, you said Oliver Rathbone was profoundly ambitious, far more than you had previously realized. What did he do, or fail to do, that brought you to this unhappy conclusion?”
Mrs. Ballinger had regained her composure. She was now quite eager to answer.
Scuff looked to where Margaret was sitting and saw the expectancy in her also. Her shoulders were stiff. She sat so upright he could imagine the ache in his own back simply from looking at her. But it was the expression now filling her face that he did not understand. She seemed to be both afraid and excited at the same time.
“Mrs. Ballinger?” Wystan prompted.
“When he was defending my husband, we believed at first that he was doing everything he could to prove his innocence. But gradually he became less devoted to it, less … positive,” she answered.
“Really? Did he give you a reason for this?” Wystan looked puzzled.
The bitterness returned to her face, anger overtaking grief again.
“The tide of feeling turned against my husband, and Oliver went with it. It seemed he did not wish to become unpopular, or even worse, appear in a case he might lose. He had no loyalty at all, except to his own career.” She took a deep breath. “It broke my daughter’s heart. She admired her father and was convinced of his innocence. She could hardly believe that her own husband would not use every skill at his command-and his skills were great-to defend one of his own family. It made me realize that his ambition was everything to him. Nothing else mattered.”
Again Brancaster rose to his feet.
