Barbara Metzger: Truly Yours

"Thank you," she began, only to be glared at and told to be silent.

"But I-"

Her own defense walked away from her. A gavel pounded and she was dragged off again. This time she was cuffed on the ear for demanding to be heard.

Dizzy, she was taken back to the prison, but pushed into a different room, a windowless cell with nothing but a straw pallet on the ground and one thin blanket.

"No, you do not understand-"

The matron slapped her. "It's you what don't understand, me fine lady. Someone paid for private lodgings, but you're agoin' to be tried for murder and then hanged afore the month is over, and that's the end of it." She smacked Amanda again for good measure, before shoving her so hard that Amanda fell to the damp, cold stone floor.

Amanda had no money, no friends, no influential connections. Sir Frederick had seen to that with his boorish behavior. The only reason she and Elaine still had vouchers to the exclusive assembly rooms was through the kindness of Amanda's titled godmother. The only reason Sir Frederick permitted them to attend was for Elaine's sake, so she could make a profitable match. Young Elaine could not help Amanda now, and heaven knew where Sir Frederick's son Edwin was, or if he considered her a murderess. Her mother's people were all deceased and her father's uncaring family lived in Yorkshire, days away from London. Too late, Amanda recalled that her godmother was in Bath taking the waters. Surely the countess's servants would send for her. Surely…

No one came the next day, or the next. Amanda was alone. No one was coming, because no one believed her innocent. She stopped counting the days by the bowls of gruel pushed through the slot at the bottom of her door; she stopped shouting when she heard keys jangle in the corridor. She stopped hoping when the cough came, and the fevers and chills.

But no, this could not be happening to her. She would not let it. She would simply… not let it.

When she was a girl, Amanda had discovered that if she curled up very small and stayed still as a mouse, sometimes no one would notice her. That's what she had done when her father lay dying after the carriage accident, when everyone was rushing about, crying. She had learned to stay in the shadows when her mother wed Sir Frederick, not letting herself hear her mother's weeping afterward, when there was nothing she could do. She got better at retreating into her own world after Lady Alissa's death, not listening to Elaine's aunt Hermione carping at her to stop daydreaming.

She could go anywhere in her mind-to a place no one could find her, no one could hurt her. So Amanda curled up there on the prison floor and dreamed of blue skies and picnics with her parents-while she waited to die.

"Oh, no, you don't. No one cheats Jack Ketch in my gaol." The warden kicked at her, and then two other prisoners held her while they poured gruel down her throat. She brought it back up, and they slapped her and punched her some more, but she did not feel the blows, did not see the tormentors; not where she was.

"What, ya think playin' the queer nabs will save you? You ain't seen no Bedlam then, have you? You'd be beggin' for the noose, you would."

They left her alone, and she crawled deeper into her own self, as far from this living hell as she could go while still living.

She did not even hear or take notice when the guards bid on who would have her first, when the warden had his day off. She only heard her father calling her back from the lake edge. "Come to Papa, poppet. Come now." She was halfway there.

"No," Rex said. "I will not do it." He had not bothered to sit down, showing his disdain for his father's summons and his intention to be off as soon as the earl said his piece. Instead, he leaned against the mantel, taking the weight off his injured leg. His shirt was open at the collar, with no neckcloth. His breeches were ripped and stained, his too-long hair curling into his shadowed eyes. He needed a shave and he smelled worse than the dog at his feet.

Lord Royce wrinkled his nose, but did not criticize his son's appearance. That Rex had appeared at all was boon enough. "Not even as a favor to a friend?"

Rex raised his glass of brandy. "It is your friend, your favor."

"As a favor to me, then?"

"What, go to London where I am always half-blinded by the swirls of insincerity? Why, I doubt if there is one person in the entire city whose tongue isn't warped with lying. If they are not dealing in falsehoods, they are spewing slander at each other."

The earl could only nod. Being out in society made his own teeth ache with the cacophony of lies that constantly bombarded his senses.

"And now it will be worse," Rex went on. "They will all offer regrets about my leg-when not one of the bastards means it. They'd rather I had not come home, a reminder that war is about gore and guts, not parade marches and pretty uniforms. Everyone will look at my imperfect face and pretend the scar is not there. And, recall, I was an embarrassment to the army, an unspoken blot on the corps. An officer who did not fight, a lord who did not act with honor. A spy. Do you think the whispers have not reached Town, that Daniel and I were monstrous savages, as far from gentlemen as one could fall?"

"You were wounded in the service of your country and commended any number of times. They will remember that!"

"They will remember that I tortured prisoners of war until they gave up their secrets, contrary to every code of decency. Or should I confess that I was merely listening for the truth?"

The earl sipped at his wine, looking away.

Rex lifted his own glass in a mock salute. "The way you did, Father?"

Lord Royce had not been able to defend himself against charges of corruption in the high court. What could he say? That he knew the prisoner in the dock was innocent-because the man had said so in the pure, chiming tones of truth? He'd be laughed off the bench. Instead. he was accused of taking bribes. After all, what other reason could he have for freeing that poor thief instead of hanging him? All the evidence and witnesses pointed toward a guilty verdict, a successful prosecution by the Crown's barrister, who happened to be an ambitious toad.

Instead the felon had gone free-on a seeming whim. If Lord Royce were not accepting money, Sir Nigel had declared, then he was insane, irrational, unfit for the duties of the high court. Hearing the truth in a tone of voice? Humbug.

The truth would have been worse, if anyone could believe it, dredging up those old tales of witchcraft and sorcery. What, the judge could read minds? England was as comfortable with such eeriness now as it was in ancient Sir Royston's time. They might not hang a peer, but they would label him a lunatic and lock him away. Worst of all, the truth would have condemned young Rex to the life of a freak, like the two-headed cow in the traveling circus. Lord Royce had retired from the bench instead, claiming ill health. He could have taken his seat in the House of Lords, listening to the discordant notes of pettifoggery and being subjected to stares and innuendos. He could have become an idle aristocrat, drinking and gaming away his days and nights, if anyone would play at cards with one who was suspected of dastardly acts. Rumors were rekindled about why Lady Royce lived apart. Surely he hid heinous secrets. Lord Royce did not refute any of the charges or make explanations. He chose to live in the country instead, raising his boy.

"I would go to Town myself if I could," he said now, plucking at the blanket covering his legs. "But…"

Signs of his father's infirmity always distressed Rex. He swallowed his brandy and said, "Deuce take it, what is so important about this girl that one of us must travel to London? I read the newspapers. They made much of it-the murder of a baronet. Everyone knew Miss-what is her name?-was known to despise her stepfather, and the scandal sheets reported rumors that she was sneaking out at night to meet with her lover. She was holding the pistol, for heaven's sake!"