Chapter 45
Nobleman arrested on charges of kidnapping and inheritance fraud
-Headline from the Times; August 14, 1840
Fitz had questioned whether justice was poetic in the past.
His previous experiences had given him reason to second guess, but now he was convinced.
A high security prison smelled worse than a ship at sea.
Summer in the fetid bowels of London likely wasn’t the holiday Uncle Cranmer had planned, but it was the one he deserved.
The man who’d conspired to take everything from him, but most especially his fiance.
Had the man before him offered Fitz her in exchange for his lands, his title, his funds, he’d have made that barter.
What did it matter if he was a viscount, if he was alone, while she was in the world?
What did it matter if he was rich, if he was without her love?
But he hadn’t had to make that choice.
The woman he loved had seen to that. She’d been willing to make sacrifices and barters of her own for him. He would have thought that his scabrous heart wasn’t worth such risks as she’d put herself through, but she had. Thank God she had.
The man before him had been handled roughly by his captors. He sported black eyes, a gash at his temple, a missing tooth, various bruises and gashes. Any stirring of pity was beyond Fitz’s reach.
“Come to see your dear old uncle, then?”
the man chided. Fitz couldn’t recall a memory he had of this man where he wasn't sporting the finest tailoring his family funds could procure, a gold-tipped cane to match.
Even when he’d started graying at the temples, he’d still been the picture of aristocratic elegance.
Fitz had realized the courts would never take his side if he fought this man over his inheritance, because he didn’t look like a villain.
But now, in this cell, with such little light and what looked like all the grime in the world clustered in one heap around him and something that continued to drip ominously from the ceiling (liberal use of the term ‘ceiling’ here),
Fitz thought the man looked as grotesque as the soul that lay within him.
The soul of a man who would poison the mother of his nephew and shang-hai said nephew simply for the crime of being better-looking.
Fine. Fitz knew that wasn’t his only crime, the crime was “birth order,” and the motive had been greed. But still.
Fitz took a step closer. “You are only right on one score,” Fitz sneered, “You are old, but you are neither ‘dear’ or ‘family’ to me.”
The man rocked, then caught his balance on one of the bars. Fitz toyed with the cufflinks at his wrists.
“You tried to take everything from me. You almost cost me two women I love. Not that you know anything about what it’s like to care for another person. Because, had you ever shown me or my mother, who were in your care, an ounce of kindness, I might have found the decency to share with you.
But from the moment your brother had a son, you conspired to take from me, didn’t you?”
Fitz paced. God, but the smell was cloying.
Somehow, he could feel a seed of guilt for this but then he remembered his uncle's threats.
He remembered his mother’s suffering. He remembered the ship.
He remembered being parted from her. He didn’t care if Cranmer answered.
He didn’t care if this was a one-sided conversation.
He had a score to settle, he had to get the words out, so that he could move on.
“You never cared for your relations,” Fitz shook his head for emphasis.
“We were all an obstacle to your livelihood. You resented not only me, and my mother, but your own brother as well, didn’t you? And not that that bothers me overmuch because the man was never more than a jot or an ink blot kinder to me than you were, but it struck me that perhaps my…inaptitude…
weren’t the only reasons my father added such a terribly ill-advised caveat to his will.”
“You said it yourself, Giles wasn’t a very good father. The will had little to do with me, but when I heard about it I knew I could use it to my advantage.”
“That may be what you try and tell yourself, old man, but you did more than simply ‘take advantage.’ You incapacitated my mother’s protection. You tried to set me up. You intentionally tried to have me eliminated when I didn’t fail. But you didn’t account for something very, very important.”
The other man looked bored, and then when Fitz didn’t answer, he raised an eyebrow.
“Her. It is because of her that I am still here and you lost.”
Her story got the old washerwoman to help him off the ship. Her conspiring led her to him. Her family had assisted her and supported her every step of the way. Her bravery had kept Edward from taking what she’d worked for, what he’d worked to give her.
“You expect me to believe that this,” he gestured to his cell, to the dark rotting cloister of Battersea prison and its walls that closed him in, “is all due to some scheming girl?”
“I don’t care what you believe, you heartless old codger,” there wasn’t much anger to his voice, only a dull edge serrated by past bitterness, filed down to indifference.
“But it’s what I know. And the other thing I know is that you knew my father was unwell, and you had him change the will mere weeks before he passed. And when even that wasn’t enough,
you poisoned his wife and sold your own nephew to a ship like some worthless pieces of property you could dispose of. And for all of those crimes, you will serve out your days on a horrifically hot penal colony. That is, if the crossing to the other side of the world doesn’t do you in first. Which,
I think,” Fitz put a hand on his chest, “personally, feels like incredibly swift and poetic justice. A personal favor to me, you see, from the Queen herself. And no one will mourn you, and no one will even discuss your loss. You already severed any ties between us a long time ago. So with that,
I think I’m done here.”
When Fitz turned on his heel to leave, his uncle called. “So that’s it? You just came here to gloat?”
Fitz called over his shoulder, “I didn’t come here for you. I came here for me.”
And the rest of his way out of that prison, Fitz kept his handkerchief over his nose.
He saw all of the poor rotting souls in that prison, some of which were mere debtors and not the lowest scum like his uncle, and he remembered Adelaide.
How she’d staged the prison raid to save her love, the way Noelle had been willing to go to such lengths to get him back.
How Noelle could have thought of such a story having never been anywhere near a place like this was beyond his imagining.
And when the soft sunshine of September, and of her adoring smile, greeted him outside Newgate Prison, all his prayers and all his thoughts echoed thanks for this woman and her intellect, her courage.
She left Lawrence and the carriage waiting behind her, and ran to him.
The whole time inside he had held the tide of his emotions at bay, but her fingers interlaced at the back of his neck reminded him the worst of it was all over and they’d made it through the other side together.
She’d seen him through the worst, everything from here on, had to be grand.