Page 91 of The Truth About Dukes
“Everything worries me.”
“When this is over, Constance, we will turn our considerable resources to her situation.”
Those resources had not been sufficient to buy the ship Ivy was to sail on. The owner, a widow, refused to part with the vessel that she and her merchant captain husband had traveled together on for years. Even Constance hadn’t been willing to press her on the matter.
The Mansion Hall was the public residence of the Lord Mayor, often used for ceremonies of state and large social gatherings. On this occasion, what looked like a ballroom or banquet hall had been fitted out to accommodate the commission proceedings. A makeshift jury box sat off to one side, and a minstrel’s gallery opposite the witness box provided seating for spectators.
The ladies were handed into the front-row seats in the gallery. The general public and the press would crowd in behind them and even hang about outside the open windows. Witnesses, members of the bar, and other worthy local gentlemen were permitted to sit in the banquet hall proper, rows of chairs having been set up facing the commissioners’ table.
Rothhaven took his place at the counsel table, Cranmouth beside him, a quantity of bound volumes arranged on the table along with paper and pencils. At the opposite table, Weatherby pretended to read a law book, while a clerk at his side arranged ink and writing paper.
“Are you expecting somebody, Con?” Althea asked. “You keep watching the gallery doorway.”
Blast all perceptive siblings to perdition. “Why would I be expecting anybody?”
“Because normally, you’d have your sketch pad out of your reticule by now, and yet, you’re fidgeting instead.”
Jane smiled pleasantly at Lady Phoebe Philpot, who’d arrived with Mrs. Elspeth Weatherby. Neville Philpot was conferring with Solomon Weatherby at the counsel table, and neither man’s expression reflected the solemnity of the occasion.
“Where is Stephen?” Constance asked, quietly, because the gallery was growing crowded and journalists were everywhere.
“Stephen and Rothhaven were conferring late into the evening,” Jane said. “I think they have common ground of a sort, and it’s wonderful to see Stephen embarking on a friendship.”
“Wonderful of Rothhaven,” Constance replied, “to make the effort of forming a friendship with a contrary, self-absorbed in-law. I think I’m about to be sick.”
Jane passed over a peppermint. “Duchesses do not get sick, not in public.”
Althea took a mint too.
A slight commotion behind the counsel tables ensued as Stephen emerged from the corridor and offered a nod to Neville Philpot. A word or two might have been exchanged between Stephen and Weatherby, but then Stephen was moving across the room to take a seat beside Quinn.
“What was that about?” Jane murmured.
“I don’t know,” Constance said, the upset in her tummy growing worse. “I don’t like it.”
She stole another glance over her shoulder. The gallery and banquet hall were packed, the bailiffs were closing the doors to further spectators, and still Miss Abbott was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Twenty
The trial was off to a splendid start, in Neville’s opinion, in part because Lord Nathaniel Rothmere, as the Duke of Rothhaven’s next of kin, had announced that Ebenezer Cranmouth would be called as a witness.
The result was, Cranmouth could not represent His Grace.
The duke sat through this development looking bored. He’d muttered his consent when asked if he waived the confidentiality every lawyer owed his clients, which was proof everlasting that His Grace’s wits had taken wing. With His Grace’s waiver noted in the record, Cranmouth could be questioned on any topic that bore a passing relation to Rothhaven’s competence.
The three commissioners conferred for a moment to debate whether Rothhaven’s waiver was valid in such a proceeding. When Lord Nathaniel added his waiver as well, they concluded that Rothhaven wasn’tyetlegally incompetent, so the waiver of confidentiality must be allowed to stand.
Lord Nathaniel offered Sir Leviticus Sparrow as counsel for the alleged disabled party, alas for the brave knight. Sir Leviticus had never once touched a competency case.
As Mr. Able Drossman, head of the panel of examiners, droned on to the jury about the differences between lunacy, idiocy, and imbecility, Neville risked a glance over his shoulder at Phoebe. Drossman was white-haired, fleshy-jowled, and smarter than he looked, though he was fond of his port and harbored judicial ambitions.
Phoebe smiled down at Neville with particularly gracious warmth, and he resisted the urge to blow her a kiss. Weatherby suggested that Cranmouth testify first, as the court’s witness, and old Drossman was so pleased with that notion that he allowed Weatherby to start the questioning.
And wasn’t that just lovely? Cranmouth droned on about the ducal books—for themostpart quite tidy—though he did slip in the fact that never once had he been called to Rothhaven Hall until the last week or so. As a witness, Cranmouth struck a balance between wanting to aid the court and wanting to protect his client’s privacy, despite any dubious waivers of solicitor-client confidentiality.
“And did there come a time when His Grace visited you at your office?” Weatherby asked.
Cranmouth darted a glance at the ceiling, then looked down, and then over at Drossman. The great Mr. Garrick, late of Drury Lane, could not have presented a more convincing show of hesitation.
