Chapter One #2
The gavel came down hard on the block, the noise ringing around the courtroom and eliciting even more jeers from the spectators at the gallery. “Lady Lucy, your time—which you should never have been given—is up.”
“But, Judge Bonner—”
“Sit down, Lady Lucy,” came the indictment from above.
Frustration prickled within her, refusing to allow her to give in. “I only wished to say—”
“Sit down or find yourself in the dock yourself!” thundered Judge Bonner.
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat as she stared over at the dock—or at least, the chair that was operating as a dock, to which prisoners had been dragged to hear their fates before being dragged out again.
It had obviously been something she had considered. Would she risk her very life and liberty for what she believed in? Would she take the stand herself if it could mean making a difference for others?
For a moment, Lucy’s head swam as she looked at it as that foreboding threat. A seat of judgment: a seat where one’s fate, forever, could be decided.
A seat from which she could be sent to prison, and she had seen the sorts of circumstances in which she might find herself.
Why, when she had visited the Clink with the other ladies who were advocating for prison reform, it had been quite overwhelming: the stench, the darkness, the way that rats had scuttled by them nipping at their heels…
Lucy’s head swam. Could she do it? Could she be brave, could she force herself forward and sit elegantly in that seat?
Could I do it?
Her knees wobbled, just for a moment, and entirely uninvited, a hand grasped her arm.
“My lady, sit by me,” came the voice of the solicitor who had recommended she keep her identity quiet.
Lucy allowed herself to be helped a few steps backward before collapsing onto a hard, wooden chair beside the man, her shoulders slumped.
Well, if she had ever needed a test, there it had been: and she had failed.
“Next prisoner!” yelled the judge, and the bailiffs by the door scrambled to obey as Lucy watched them dully from her seat beside the solicitor.
She’d had an opportunity, a real one, to put her own life on the line and challenge the system, demonstrate just how ridiculous it was that so many of these fine people had merely found themselves in unfortunate circumstances…and she had failed to take it.
She had failed to be brave.
Disappointment seared through her like a burning poker. How could she ever look at herself in a looking glass again, eyebrow sternness practice notwithstanding?
How many times had she passionately told another person about prison reform, about how she would risk her very life and limb, her freedom, to make it happen?
And now, Lucy thought dully, I have to sit here until the next recess, watching more and more prisoners accept terrible fates merely for the crime of being born in the wrong part of town.
“Dixon, Bernard,” called out the bailiff at the door. “Incoming prisoner, Dixon, Bernard!”
Poor man, Lucy thought reflexively before the man appeared in the doorway.
A young rapscallion, probably, who’d stolen a loaf of bread to feed his sickly mother.
Or an elderly gentleman fallen on hard times, forced to steal a pie after starving for days.
Or, and here Lucy’s imagination really started to fly, perhaps he was a disgraced man of a profession, who had been forced under duress to—
The man who stepped through the doorway, his wrists handcuffed together and two bailiffs standing either side of him grasping his arms, was not a young rapscallion.
He had certainly been one once, Lucy was certain, as her gaze fell upon him. The man had the air of a rascal about him, the sense he had tried his luck in the past and it had always gone his way.
Until very recently, that was.
And this man was no elderly gentleman. No, he was in the fine flush of strength and youth, vigor clear in his arched brow, in the way he held his shoulders, in the breadth of his chest.
There was a reason the two court men were holding such tight grips of his arm. Lucy would not have been surprised, her pulse fluttering most unaccountably, if this Mr. Dixon could release himself from those handcuffs with a mere wrench of his arms.
He was tall, taller than both the man who flanked him, and his dark curls sorely needed a brush. There was a sharpness, a precision in his eyes that spoke of intelligence rarely seen in the docks of a court like this. There was a curve to his mouth, almost as though the man were smiling.
Which, Lucy told herself firmly as she did only what everyone else in the courtroom was doing, and watched the man’s progress from the doorway to the dock, was impossible.
What sort of man would smile upon finding himself in such a position?
Mr. Dixon grinned as he sat down in the dock. “Judge Bonner, we meet again.”
“Sadly, for both you and I,” snapped the judge. “Order, order!”
He was required to call order, for there were shouts from the gallery…and all of a feminine persuasion.
“Oh, Mr. Dixon, Mr. Dixon!”
“I love you, Dixy, I love you!”
“Dixon, Dixon, over here!”
Lucy inexplicably flushed as she watched the aforementioned Mr. Dixon smile and wave at the majority of those in the gallery, who, she now realized, had come to see him and no other prisoner on today’s docket.
Clearly, he was a lady’s man, she observed darkly, trying not to judge the man but finding it a little difficult not to do so. Perhaps he was involved in… Well. In that sort of thing.
Organizing ladies of the night.
Even the thought made her cheeks burn, and so it was most unfortunate that at that very moment, she caught the gaze of the man himself.
Mr. Bernard Dixon.
Heat, molten and unexpected, burned through Lucy’s entire body. She was burning, burning up with the pleasure of his notice, and all she wanted to do was please him, gain his attention, make him notice her—
Mr. Dixon’s attention meandered on.
Lucy tried to take in air, but it was almost impossible to do so.
What had just happened? For a moment, it had been as though she had been a mere insect trapped in amber, unable to do anything but look upon the handsome man who was so charismatic, she had been utterly entranced by him by a mere look.
Was this what love was?
Surely not. No, she was being idiotic, Lucy told herself steadily. She had met enough confidence tricksters in her time advocating for prison reform to know one when she saw one.
At least, she was almost certain that was what had just happened.
“Order, order!” cried Judge Bonner, banging his gavel against the block with a glare at the gallery that slowly brought silence to the courtroom. “Well, Dixon, it’ll be transportation for you if I have my way—”
“No!” cried a clear, confident, and ringing voice.
For a heartbeat, Lucy looked around to see who had spoken. They had done so with such fire, such certainty, that she wished to ask the person afterward just how they had managed to do such a thing.
The trouble was, she had a strange feeling it had been…herself.
“Lady Lucy,” hissed the solicitor seated beside her.
“You must not get involved, especially after you’ve already been warned.
I know he is apparently charming”—he whispered the word as if distasteful, but the way his aquiline nose raised in the air, it was clear the prisoner’s adoring devotees had perturbed him—“but I thought you displayed more fortitude than that.”
Lucy ignored him. Not only because there was a more pressing matter at hand, but also because she was not entirely sure how to answer the accusation. She hardly knew what to think of the strange sensations she was experiencing herself.
“Transportation to Australia to work as a slave is a barbaric practice,” Lucy said loudly, her confidence suddenly returning as she stood once more on familiar ground. “So many prisoners die on the journey itself.”
Yes, this is it. Facts and statistics and reasons for the law to change, Lucy thought wildly as her tongue took over and she found herself on her feet once again.
Do not think about the handsome man. Do not think about how one look from him made you want to take all your clothes off.
“—and it would be morally reprehensible,” she found herself saying, “to subject a man—”
“Lady Lucy, are you a member of the House of Lords?”
Lucy halted, wrong-footed by the judge’s bizarre question. “N-No, but my father is.”
“Have you sought election through the House of Commons?”
Now her cheeks were burning, and Lucy was most decidedly not noticing that the man in the docks had fixed her with a curious and intrigued expression.