Chapter Fifteen #4
He swore under his breath. “I vow that clerk was very well to live. He reeked of ale! I wonder if he even sought the magistrate, or is fallen asleep t’other side of that door.”
He began to pace up and down again. Naomi watched him lovingly.
When she’d heard the first shot she had thought for one ghastly moment that he must have been slain.
Lady Derrydene had run, screaming, down the hall, and she had followed, dreading what they might find.
As they’d passed the dining room, two more shots had rung out, and she’d caught a glimpse of Gideon soaring over the wall with an easy grace that had set her fears at rest. She had stayed long enough to determine that although he was practically apoplectic with rage, Derrydene was relatively unharmed.
Then, she had quietly slipped away, sending a lackey to call up her carriage.
Gideon had joined them at the next corner, and rode beside the carriage to Bow Street.
A watchman had guided them to this unfortunate chamber.
He had listened, goggle eyed, to Gideon’s terse demands that constables be at once sent to apprehend Sir Louis Derrydene.
Muttering that he must “fetch someone in authority” he had gone away, to reappear with a clerk.
The clerk had explained that the magistrate was busied with another case, and that it would be necessary to first take down “the particulars.” Not all Gideon’s rageful insistence on the necessity for speedy action had moved this stolid minion of the law, and he had laboriously written out his report, then gone in search of the magistrate.
Disregarding the constable who sat by the outer door, Gideon strode to the inner door and pounded on it angrily. “Hey!” he shouted. “Have you all expired in there?”
“Now then, sir,” protested the constable, running over, much shocked. “You cannot be a’doing of that in here! I speck as his honour’s at his luncheon and you’ll just have to wait.”
“I have been waiting! Two confounded hours! And the lady—” Gideon returned to sit on the bench beside Naomi and take her hand. “My poor love,” he exclaimed contritely. “You must be starving hungry! I’ll call up your carriage and have you taken home. This idiotic magistrate will probably—”
“Do you refer to me, Captain Rossiter?”
The dry voice came from a stringy little man with a grey face and a grey and greasy wig, who had taken a seat behind a battered desk against the rear wall, and was surveying them through a dirty quizzing glass.
Gideon sprang to his feet and hurried to the desk. “Sir, I presume that you have read my statement and seen the evidence I handed your clerk. There has already been much time lost, and you must make haste, else this scheming rascal will—”
“I have here,” interrupted the magistrate, turning his quizzing glass on the various items before him and peering at them near-sightedly, “one letter; exceeding brief and of little significance. One engagement book containing entries of no interest. And what appears to be a child’s toy.
I find it little short of incredible that on the strength—or perhaps I should say the weakness—of these objects, you expect me to take seriously the allegations you have made ’gainst a respectable and titled gentleman. ”
“Good God, man!” burst out Rossiter. “Did you not read my statement? It took that block of a clerk the better part of half an hour to—”
“Now then, sir,” intervened the constable, again coming forward and looking shocked. “You mustn’t talk to the magistrate like that there. You must call him ‘your honour’ and you must be respeckful when—”
“Respectful! Why you dimwit, don’t you know that while we fripper about and do nothing, Derrydene is doubtless making haste out of the country?”
“Sir Louis Derrydene,” said the magistrate in his sour voice, “is a gentleman whose only misstep in an otherwise exemplary life appears to have been to become associated with Rossiter Bank.”
“Associated, do you say, sir,” roared Gideon. “That scoundrel damn near ruined my father with his trickery and—”
“And I will not allow slanderous statements of no foundation to be made in this court,” interrupted the magistrate shrilly.
Jabbing his quizzing glass at Gideon, he leaned forward.
“I have heard some cock-and-bull fustian in my time, Captain Rossiter. But this—this mishmash you have brought me is downright ridiculous! You have wasted my time, sir; you have treated this court with contempt; you have used unseemly language before not only the appointed representative of law and order, but”—the quizzing glass slid to the side, the little eyes glittered, and the wizened face contorted into a grimace that might have been a smile—“before this lovely lady.” He returned his gaze to the fuming Rossiter, and his smile became a scowl.
“Disgraceful,” he said, and rapped his quizzing glass on the desk. “Fifty guineas.”
“Fifty guineas!” exclaimed Rossiter. “What the deuce for? You have done nothing!”
“We will make it—sixty guineas,” snapped the magistrate. “And one more outburst will provoke me into indeed doing something, sir, for I shall have you clapped up, sir!”
Naomi hurried to Gideon’s side and bent her most winning smile on the representative of law and order.
“I do apologize for my affianced, your honour,” she murmured softly.
“He is but now returned from the Low Countries, where he was seriously wounded and came near to dying. He is not quite himself as yet. In fact, I do suspect…” Ignoring Gideon’s impatient growl, she leaned nearer and lowered her voice to a confidential whisper.
The nostrils of the representative of law and order caught the essence of eau de jasmin; the quizzing glass was brought to bear on the rich soft swell of my lady’s snowy bosom, and the little beady eyes softened.
“Poor fellow,” he murmured. “Poor fellow. I quite understand, my dear. You are to be commended for your loyalty. Take him away. As for you, sir,” the quizzing glass swung to Gideon’s angry face.
“You are greatly blessed, and do not deserve it. I shall lower your fine to twenty guineas, and warn you not to waste the time of this court in future!”
Seeing Gideon’s expression, Naomi rested her hand on his arm. “Please pay his honour, my love. ’Tis time for you to go home and have your nap.”
Seething with frustrated fury, Gideon exchanged his evidence for twenty guineas, and retreated in disorder.