How to Woo a Reluctant Lady (17 page)

Giles arched an eyebrow. “So you haven’t been meeting him late at night in his cobbler’s shop?”

“He’s betrothed to another lady!”

“I am well aware of that. Answer the question, if you please.”

She drew herself up with great indignation. “I’m a good girl, I’ll have you know! I take care of my parents, and I—”

“That isn’t what I asked, Miss Tuttle. I
asked
if you’ve been meeting him at his cobbler’s shop late at night. And remember that you’re under oath.”

Her lower lip trembled, but she didn’t speak.

“If you like, I can put the younger Mr. Lancaster on the stand to confirm whether the two of you have been meeting.”

Mr. Pitney groaned and barked a terse command to his clerk, who began frantically leafing through papers.

“Mr. Andrew Lancaster is a friend of mine, yes,” Miss Tuttle said stiffly.

“Is your friendship of a romantic nature?” Giles asked.

When Miss Tuttle looked panicked, Mr. Pitney rose to address the judge. “My lord, I fail to see what significance this has to the case at hand.”

“I am coming to that, my lord,” Giles said.

“Then get on with it, Mr. Masters,” the judge said.

“Please answer the question, Miss Tuttle. Are you and Mr. Andrew Lancaster romantically involved? I have two witnesses who are willing to testify that they saw him kissing you outside the cobbler’s shop one night.”

She slumped in the witness box. “Yes. Mr. Lancaster and I are romantically involved.”

The courtroom was very quiet now. Everyone hung on Miss Tuttle’s words.

Minerva felt a little sorry for her. Giles was being rather ruthless for no reason that she could see. Then again, it was his job to get at the truth.

“And is Mr. Lancaster’s fiancée wealthy?” Giles asked.

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“But it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that she has a dowry of several thousand pounds, would it?”

“No,” Miss Tuttle said wearily.

A low murmur began in the courtroom all around them.

“And if the defendant is found guilty of murder, do you know who will come into his fortune?” Giles asked.

Miss Tuttle hesitated.

“Come now, madam, it should be fairly obvious who that would be, since the defendant has no children.”

Mr. Pitney leaped to his feet. “My lord, as Mr. Masters knows perfectly well, the law states—”

“Sit down, sir,” the judge ordered. “I wish to hear Miss Tuttle’s answer.”

“I repeat my question, Miss Tuttle,” Giles said. “If the defendant dies, who will inherit his fortune?”

“Answer the question, Miss Tuttle,” the judge said.

She glanced from the judge to Mr. Pitney, then said in a small voice, “Mr. Andrew Lancaster, sir.”

“So you might see it as convenient if the defendant is hanged as a result of your false testimony. Then his brother would inherit his wealth and wouldn’t have to marry for money. Andrew Lancaster could marry
you
instead of his rich fiancée.”

“My lord!” Mr. Pitney interjected again. “Mr. Masters is deliberately misleading the witness!”

“And doing it rather effectively,” the judge drawled.

“If my lord will permit me,” Giles put in, “I would now be happy to explain the situation to Miss Tuttle.”

“Oh, please do,” the judge said drily. “I wait with bated breath to hear it.”

The prosecutor released a pained sigh.

“Miss Tuttle, the fact is that convicted felons forfeit their property to the Crown,” Giles said in a hard voice. “So if the defendant is found guilty of murdering his wife and is hanged, his brother gets nothing. And he will lose any chance of ever inheriting money from the defendant.”

The blood drained from Miss Tuttle’s face. How clever of Giles to figure out that she didn’t know the law, for otherwise she would have had no motive for lying about Mr. Lancaster’s behavior.

“So you may wish to reconsider your testimony,” Giles told her, “remembering that lying to the court is called perjury and is a crime for which you can be prosecuted.”

“Lord bless me,” she muttered, her eyes huge.

“So I must ask you, Miss Tuttle,” Giles went on, “and I advise you to answer honestly this time. When did you last see Mrs. Lancaster alive?”

The whole courtroom held its breath.

Miss Tuttle glanced to Mr. Pitney, but he now watched her with the same cold look as Giles.

She gripped the front of the witness box. “I saw her the morning of the day she drowned. I paid her a call to bring her a gown I’d borrowed.”

The spectators’ section erupted into cries of outrage, which had to be squelched by a command from the judge.

Giles stood there perfectly calm, waiting until the noise died, then said in his controlled tone, “So it would be impossible for the defendant to have killed his wife, since he was out of town, would it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you have any part in her drowning?” Giles asked.

“No!” Glancing around at the unforgiving faces in the courtroom, she admitted, “I just . . . well, when the coroner
said it wasn’t a drowning and Mr. Lancaster had to have murdered her, I thought . . . They
did
argue sometimes.”

“I daresay many couples argue,” Giles retorted. “But that doesn’t make it acceptable for you to imply that an innocent man committed murder, just so that you might gain a husband.”

A look of pure chagrin crossed her face. “No, sir.”

He flashed her a thin smile. “Thank you for telling the truth at last, Miss Tuttle. That will be all.”

The rest of the trial was mercifully quick. Andrew Lancaster was brought to the stand to confirm that he’d been romantically entangled with Miss Tuttle, though he swore he’d had no idea of her plan to effect a marriage with him by getting his brother hanged. The defendant was then allowed to protest his innocence, which had more weight now that Giles had shown it to be the truth.

In Mr. Pitney’s closing summary, he tried to hang his case on the word of the coroner alone and to assert that Miss Tuttle had been bullied by Mr. Masters into contradicting her earlier testimony, but it was no use. Giles had proved his case. And the jury confirmed it by coming back in a scant few minutes with an acquittal.

The crowd cheered, as did they. Seeing innocence prevail gave Minerva a decided thrill, especially because it was Giles who’d brought it about. How strange that she should even care if it was him. Hadn’t she fortified her heart against him better than that?

Giles and Mr. Lancaster walked out the door together, while Mr. Jenks brought Maria, Freddy, and Minerva out the side door to meet them in the hall. Mr. Lancaster was understandably ecstatic. He thanked Giles over and over for gaining him his freedom, then left with his brother to return to his home in Ware.

Before they could speak to Giles, Mr. Pitney came out,
walked up to him, and held out his hand. When Giles shook it, he said, “I’m looking forward to the day when you are on our side of the table as a K.C.”

Giles smiled. “Are you sure that day will come?”

“Everything I’ve heard says that it will, and soon.”

“Well,
I’m
looking forward to the day when coroners know enough about their business to give reliable testimony,” Giles said drily.

Mr. Pitney sighed. “I shall have to find that book you spoke of. Seems it’s no longer enough just to know the law, eh, sir?”

“Very true.”

With a bow, Mr. Pitney headed outside, leaving Giles to them. They crowded round him.

“Remind me never to try lying to you,” Minerva teased. “You have a scary ability to sniff out the truth.”

“You were brilliant!” Maria gushed. “Absolutely brilliant!”

“Was I?” he drawled, casting Minerva a questioning glance.

“You know perfectly well that you were,” she told him. “Don’t pretend to be modest about it.”

His eyes twinkled at her. “Does that mean I’ve managed to impress you?”

“Perhaps a little,” she said with a smile.

“That deserves a celebration.” He glanced around at them. “This was my only trial today, so I’m free for the afternoon. I need to return to my office so I can change my clothes, but after that I thought that the four of us might wish to have a late lunch. I know the perfect place for it.”

“Thank God,” Freddy said. “I’m famished.”

“You’re always famished,” Maria said.

“Mr. Jenks should join us, too,” Minerva put in, noticing the clerk’s downcast look, “since he’s been so helpful today. It hardly seems fair to leave him out.”

“Very well,” Giles said. “Jenks, you’re going with us.”

“Thank you, sir!”

As she took the arm Giles offered and they headed out the door, he bent to whisper, “You just made a friend for life. Law clerks don’t earn much, and they do love a good meal at someone else’s expense.”

“Well, you’ve made a friend for life in Freddy. He loves a good meal no matter how much money he earns.”

Their coachman brought the carriage round, and they all squeezed in. After they set off for Giles’s office, Maria said, “Mr. Masters, thank you so much for inviting us to see the trial.”

“Was it exciting enough for you, Lady Stoneville? I hear that you like a great deal of blood and gore in your trials.”

Maria blushed. “I suppose it
was
a bit lacking in that area, but it was still terribly interesting. And how clever of you to guess that Miss Tuttle was lying.”

“It wasn’t a guess.” He took off his wig to reveal hair that was endearingly mussed. “Jenks and I spent a few hours in Ware and learned that matters weren’t quite as they seemed.”

“But how did you even know to examine the situation more closely?” Minerva asked. “Most people would have taken the facts at face value—accepted what the coroner said and assumed that the witness was telling the truth.”

“Not Mr. Masters,” Mr. Jenks put in, a hint of pride in his voice. “He never takes anything at face value.”

“My client protested his innocence from the beginning,” Giles explained, “and I already knew that drowning is harder to prove than many assume. I figured that in a town like Ware, where everyone knows everyone, you’re bound to get at the truth if you ask the right questions. It only took me a few hours. It wasn’t any great effort.”

“But I daresay many attorneys wouldn’t bother to do
that
much,” Maria said.

“Certainly Mr. Pitney didn’t,” Minerva said. “And he’s the one who should have fought hard to get at the truth.”

“I agree, Lady Minerva,” Mr. Jenks said stoutly. “It was sloppy work on Mr. Pitney’s part. At the very least, he should have questioned Miss Tuttle more thoroughly.”

“We’ll see if you still say that when we make it to the Crown offices,” Giles said with thinly veiled amusement. “From what I hear, they work the King’s Counsels like dogs. They probably don’t have the time to investigate the way we do.”

“Then why do you want to become a King’s Counsel?” Minerva asked. “I imagine it’s more political than lucrative.”

His gaze burned into her. “I want to do something beyond just collecting fees. I want to see justice done. More importantly, I want to see it done fairly, which doesn’t happen nearly often enough. There are too many crimes going unpunished in this city, and too many people being punished for the wrong crimes.”

“Hear, hear, Mr. Masters!” Maria said. “They’ll be lucky to have you.”

Minerva thought so, too. Giles had this astonishing ability to take a hard look at a crime and uncover things that no one else might have.

Her gaze narrowed. Yes, he did, didn’t he? Hmm.

“What I don’t understand is why the younger Mr. Lancaster didn’t realize what his sweetheart was up to,” Maria said. “Did he
want
his brother to hang?”

“No, but it didn’t occur to him that she was misguided,” Giles said. “Everyone looking at the case knew what the penalty for murder was—they just assumed that she did, too. Lawyers often forget that the average person doesn’t know the law.”

“Mr. Masters is always saying, ‘Don’t forget that people are often more stupid than you expect,’” Mr. Jenks put in.

“Isn’t that rather cynical?” Minerva teased Giles.

He shrugged. “Perhaps. But you haven’t seen the slice of humanity I see every day—seasoned gamblers taken in by sharpers, shopkeepers fooled by swindlers, young women ruined by smooth-talking scoundrels. We had a bigamist in court last week—he’d managed to live two entirely separate lives and support two different families for eight years without either family catching on. His business partner uncovered the crime. These people stupidly trust those whom they shouldn’t.”

“Oh, but you’re mixing up stupidity with love,” Maria said. “Miss Tuttle was blinded by love. The women ruined by smooth-talking scoundrels and the bigamist’s wives—they trust because they love. It’s awful that their love was betrayed.”

“
Blinded
is the key word,” Giles said. “That’s why love is so often betrayed. No one with any sense should ever let love blind them.”

Mr. Jenks steadied himself as they made a sharp turn. “That’s another thing Mr. Masters is always saying: ‘Love is for fools and dreamers. The only people who benefit from it are flower sellers and Valentine artists.’”

“How romantic of you, Mr. Masters,” Minerva said with feigned sweetness.

Giles winced. “Mr. Jenks, did I fail to mention that Lady Minerva is my fiancée?”

Mr. Jenks turned an interesting shade of purple. “Oh, sir, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s all right,” Minerva interrupted. “Mr. Masters and I have a more practical sort of engagement.”

“Do we?” Giles brushed her foot with his as if to remind her
of the less . . . practical side of their association. “And here I thought you were mad for me.”

“I always say that love is like the meat in a pie,” Freddy put in. “The crust is what people see—the practical things that hold a couple together. But love is the important part—without it you’ve got a meatless pie, and what’s the point of that?”

“Why, Freddy,” Minerva said, “that was almost profound.”

“Freddy is always profound when it comes to pie,” Maria remarked. Then she turned pensive as they drew up in front of an imposing building of gray stone. “But I think love is like the ocean. The surface may be stormy or ruffled by wind, rain may fall on it or lightning strike it, but if you sink down where the water is deep and steady, no matter what happens on the surface, you can always have a marvelous swim.”