Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“How jolly dare you! You…you should be hanged for such a preposterous accusation!”
“Perhaps you have it about your person right now,” pressed Valentin, his words an ever-tightening velvet rope.
Every woman and man in the room hung on them; one could have heard a pin drop.
“After all, one can hardly return it to the safe. And it is far too valuable to leave somewhere inside the house. Secreting it about your person is the next best secure location.”
“Codspiffle!”
“If you reach into your trouser pocket, Lord Talybridge, I believe you can show us.”
Mickey didn’t know what, at that moment, drew Talybridge’s eye to Fitzsimmons.
Perhaps it was his utter stillness in a courtroom where the air was thick with agitation.
Or simply that he was an imposing man, taking up the space of two men on the front row.
More likely, it was that he had the half sheet of foolscap opened up in his hand.
And still, even as sheer dread must have been coiling around his insides, Talybridge tried once more.
“No. Absolutely not. I shall no longer be a part of this farce. You have been given much leeway here, Beauregard. But I shall not humour this any longer. It needs to end. Campbell-Allen, I insist that you—”
Tock-tock. Tock-tock. Tock-tock.
The diffident, retiring fourteenth Duke of Ashington tapped the blunt base of his silver handled walking cane on the floor.
Thrice. Tock-tock. Tock-tock. Tock-tock.
If Fitzsimmons was a dominating presence, then Ashington, in full ducal mode, took things another leap further still.
He was a striking man; even without the dukedom he garnered attention—usually unwanted, mind.
Alas, with the dukedom, he was rarely spared it.
Instantly, the judge jerked his attention away from the marquess.
“You wish to say something, Your Grace?”
“Yes.” Ashington smiled charmingly. “Forgive me once more for interrupting the proceedings, Campbell-Allen. My timing is dreadful; things were becoming interesting. But I have a dear friend wishing to join me.”
“No bother at all, Your Grace,” simpered Campbell-Allen, practically curling in on himself. “No bother at all. It is an…um…opportune moment to take a brief pause and—” His eyes darted to an incandescent Talybridge. “—for us all to recollect ourselves.”
The gallery turned as one as an older man, dressed in his Sunday best and seemingly overawed by the whole occasion, squeezed through the crowd.
Touching his hat in apology, he pushed through and made his way to Ashington’s side.
What the gallery would think of this plainly dressed chap joining the ducal party, Mickey couldn’t begin to imagine.
Yet another twist and turn in this extraordinary afternoon spectacle.
“That’s Benedict’s second groom, Alfred,” whispered Tommy with a chuckle in Mickey’s ear. “The fellow wouldn’t know a silver teaspoon from a soup ladle, practically lives in the stables himself. But Talybridge doesn’t know that.”
The groom was certainly old enough to pass as a footman from thirty years ago, if his lined face and greying hair were markers. Yet would the marquess be fooled by it?
Fitzsimmons clapped Alfred on the back as the groom squeezed between the two noblemen. The poor man’s face was red as beetroot.
“Roberts,” Ashington loudly greeted him, grinning broadly. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it!”
Interruption over, the duke gave a wave of his hand.
“As you were, Campbell-Allen. Correct me if I have erred, but I believe we had reached the moment where the accused suggested Talybridge might empty out his pockets, and the marquess declined.” He threw the marquess a beatific smile.
“Do oblige, Talybridge, old chap. Let’s speed things up a bit.
Dreadfully close in here, don’t you think?
Prove this aggravating Frenchie wrong, and we can all be on our way. ”
“It is not an unreasonable request, my lord,” Campbell-Allen ventured, trapped in the invidious position of placating a marquess or refusing a duke. “And thus shall end Beauregard’s defence. As His Grace has stated, the prisoner has been given far too much indulgence by this court already.”
“Do as the judge says, Talybridge,” chided Ashington, clearly enjoying this role far more than his previous one of chief jewel holder.
“Everybody here is waiting for you to prove this foreign fool wrong. We all know he’s only stalling.
Of course you haven’t mislaid your own parure and set this prisoner up.
And I’m confident your mind is anything but feeble.
Whatever will the French think of next?”
Talybridge’s face turned the sickly hue of old parchment. Every eye in the courtroom trained on him. Between them, the duke, Fitzsimmons, and Valentin had ensnared him, though Mickey wagered he knew not how.
“Talybridge?” Ashington prompted.
Time froze as the marquess weighed up his two fates.
Mickey, his heart pounding, held his breath.
If Talybridge attempted to bluster some more, Fitzsimmons would intervene; he’d begin reading the letter dangling from his right hand.
If Talybridge dipped into his pocket, Mickey knew as well as his razor knew the contours of his own chin that the marquess would pull out a parure.
In the dock, Valentin didn’t move a muscle, his dark gaze boring into the marquess as if stripping the man bare. And then, very slowly, Talybridge lifted his hand and reached for his left trouser pocket.
“Good God,” those closest heard him mutter. He withdrew it as if he’d been stung. “Good God.”
Even those farther away couldn’t miss a dazzling flash of light, brilliant as a snowflake trapped in sunshine.
The first diamond to emerge from the dark pocket was followed by a sapphire, then another diamond, and yet another sapphire until, one by one, an entire chain of gemstones dangled from the Marquess of Talybridge’s shaking, fat fingers.
Eyes widened, jaws slackened, corseted bosoms heaved. Doubtless somebody swooned. The impossible had happened, and if it wasn’t for Rossingley choosing that exact moment to grip his upper arm, Mickey thought he might collapse in a dead faint.
“I do believe we have located your missing parure, Lord Talybridge,” rumbled a smooth, French-accented voice. “No further questions, Your Honour. The defence rests.”
A collective murmur of disbelief echoed through the crowd. “How…” Mickey gasped, then stopped. “That’s impossible!”
“Nothing is impossible, my darling,” purred Rossingley, his lips at Mickey’s ear.
“Not when one has…ah…an Angel on one’s side.
You should have learned that by now. Kit slipped the counterfeit parure into Talybridge’s pocket before the case started, whilst I distracted him with talk of Willoughby.
The fake stones belong to the marquess, after all. It’s only fair we should return them.”
“And Beauregard was chained to the dock the whole time,” added Tommy. “Surely, he’s proved his innocence beyond reasonable doubt.”
Mickey shook his head. If only. The sight of Talybridge stood in the wreckage, utterly bewildered as if it were some inexplicable, foreign disaster that had befallen him was undeniably a pleasing one.
That Mickey’s lover had masterminded it, all the more pleasing still.
Yet the matter remained that Valentin was still chained to the dock.
“Except Valentin was found with the key to the safe, and he broke the window during his escape from the study, as a dozen upstanding gentlemen have been only too happy to attest. He bribed a man to rob the Chubb premises, for goodness’ sake!
” Mickey groaned in frustration. Why couldn’t anyone see how dire the situation remained? “Valentin’s still facing the gallows!”
“Shh.” Tommy nudged them both as the judge rose to his feet.
Campbell-Allen banged his fist down hard.
The gleam of approval in his eyes as he regarded Talybridge had dulled, to be replaced by a shrewd, calculating expression.
Turning away from the marquess—the pivot of a man who knew how to survive—Campbell-Allen contemplated the duke instead.
Ashington, flanked by his brother, gravely nodded back to him—an impeachable, unruffled presence and, more importantly, of higher rank.
“Before the jury are dismissed to deliberate,” Campbell-Allen observed, “I shall sum up this…ah…unusual case.”