Chapter One #3
She was not doing this for him. She was doing it for all prisoners, for all those wrongly indicted for crimes committed out of desperation.
“Lady Lucy?”
“No. You know full well that a lady may not vote, let alone seek office. No, I am not speaking from a place of power, but of privilege,” Lucy managed to say. Remember what you practiced! “And I think it outrageous—”
“But it does not matter what you think, begging your pardon, my lady,” said Judge Bonner sardonically, undermining his statement by rolling his eyes theatrically and gaining cheers from the gallery.
He could give Cousin Samuel’s wife lessons, Lucy thought joylessly. And she was once a celebrated actress on the stage.
“It is outrageous,” she said aloud, definitely not looking at the handsome Mr. Dixon. “This poor man—”
“‘This poor man,’ as you call him, is a thief and a liar and a rogue,” interrupted Judge Bonner pompously. “No matter what brings him to my courtroom today, I will be sending him down and he will be transported to Australia!”
And perhaps that was what gave Lucy the strength to continue. The judge’s injustice, his barbarity, the fact that this Mr. Dixon, whatever he had done, was not going to find an unbiased trial here—it was too much.
Someone had to do something.
And that someone was her.
“He should be freed!” Lucy said in a clear voice that echoed around the courtroom.
Freed… Freed… Freed…
There were shocked murmurs in the gallery now, not jeering, but Lucy was not paying much attention to them.
No, her attention had—against her better judgment—meandered to the man in the dock. He looked…mildly surprised, his head tilted just slightly and his mouth parted half an inch. Handsome, but not impressed, not astonished, not applauding her statement or—
Stupid, stupid!
Lucy forced the nonsense from her head and tried to remind herself that she was here to change the way the law worked, not to impress one particular prisoner. Even if that prisoner was remarkably handsome.
Stupid!
“Lady Lucy, the reason that we have prisons is so that criminals—”
“Do not speak of him like that! You have not yet convicted him of anything!” Lucy interjected, outraged.
Judge Bonner grinned maliciously. “Not today.”
Ah. Well. That changed things, she supposed, though the rule was still supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, even if the man had been found guilty before. After all, that was prejudice, wasn’t it? A man should not have been considered guilty just because he had made a mistake in the past.
“As I was saying,” the judge continued malevolently, his grin widening. “We have prisons to keep men like this rogue under our eye. We have to make sure the blaggard does not make a mistake again. Whether you like it or not, my lady, someone has to keep an eye on him.”
Righteous anger flared within Lucy. “Yes, someone should,” she retorted. “Someone without such blatant bias, someone who believes in a person’s ability to change, someone who—”
Her words were drowned by the downing of the judge’s gavel. “Order! Quiet now. I will have order!”
The boisterous crowd was not listening, however, and one lady, at least old enough to be the sly prisoner’s mother, shouted louder than even Lucy’s impassioned speech, “Marry me, Mr. Dixon!”
Smirking, Mr. Dixon wriggled his fingers at her, the movement causing the chains on his handcuffs to jingle, and the crowd went wild.
“That’s it!” Judge Bonner snapped. “I want everyone out—everyone out! Or I will have you all arrested for contempt of court! Bailiffs!”
The next few minutes were a jumble of noise as every bailiff except one standing beside the prisoner shepherded the entire gallery out to much protest.
“Not you, Mr. Dixon!” snapped the judge as Mr. Dixon’s bailiff grabbed him by the shoulder.
The prisoner shrugged and winked at Lucy as she reluctantly made her way to the back of the crowd, trying not to let the image of his handsome, conceited face winking at her sear itself into her memories.
“And not you, either, Lady Lucy!”
Lucy turned around and was rather disconcerted to see the judge’s grin twist into something far more worrying.
“Release the prisoner,” he intoned, and Lucy’s spirits leapt.
Justice! It may only have been justice for one person, but it meant one less person pressganged into those dreadful ships to sail halfway round the world to work.
It was a start! Perhaps she had been too quick to judge the old judge.
Perhaps he had thought to get the crowd out so no one would question the legality of his sentence, given even before the reading of the list of charges.
“Release the prisoner into Lady Lucy’s custody.”
Wait a moment. That wasn’t right.
Lucy blinked. The nearly-empty courtroom swam back into view: the gaping solicitor who had tried to keep her from speaking earlier, the rapid blinking of the bailiffs, the wicked—yes, wicked grin on Mr. Bernard Dixon’s face…and the satisfied smug look on the face of the thin-lipped Judge Bonner.
“Thank you, my lady,” he said seriously, malevolence glittering in his eye, “for volunteering.”