Page 49 of A Duke in Disguise
“You’ll need to be more specific,” Verity said, narrowing her eyes.
“I can’t believe you’re going to make me admit this.” Amelia sank into the chair that Verity thought of as Ash’s. “The Princely Pretense, which I wrote with your brother. Have you printed it? I thought I could just take the money and be done with it, but a third of the fee you paid me was meant for Nate and now I don’t know what to do with it. Also if the book is actually”—she sketched out a vague rectangle with her hands—“abookthen I want to see it.”
“Well.” Verity stared at the girl. “I suspected as much—”
“Of course you did.” Amelia rolled her eyes. “How many people do you know who would write a book about Perkin Warbeck?”
“What possessed you?”
“I have to do something to earn a bit of money. Otherwise I stay up all night thinking of penury and Mama says that’s bad for the complexion. Sleeplessness, that is. Not penury. Although, that too, I expect. So I wrote the book and was thinking of sending it off to a publishing house. But when you mentioned the possibility of printing...thatsort of book. I talked to Nate and we, ah, collaborated. No, that isn’t a euphemism.”
“It doesn’t need to be! My brother wrote an obscene book with a child of seventeen—”
“Eighteen, now,” Amelia said grandly.
“Collaboration, indeed! I assume he wrote the, er, bedroom scenes? I knew I recognized his penmanship, or lack thereof.”
“Well, it’s done, so are you going to let me see it?”
“I suppose the illustrations aren’t that explicit,” Verity mused.
“Illustrations!” Amelia all but shrieked, clapping her hands together. Verity gave up any semblance of protest and went downstairs, returning with the first volume and the proofs of the second and third.
“Are people actually buying it?” she asked as she paged through the first volume.
“Yes,” Verity assured her. “We’re doing the next two volumes at the same time. It’s a very engaging story, Amelia. You could do it again, even without Nate’s contributions. If you’re looking for a way to support yourself, that is.”
Amelia went pink, more from happiness than embarrassment, Verity thought. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ve already started a novel about Isabella of France.”
“Or you could write a book about somebody who isn’t... dreadful.”
“Why on earth would I want to do that?” Amelia asked, scrunching her nose in distaste.
Only after Amelia left did Verity realize she had conducted the entire conversation in a velvet gown and with tortoiseshell combs in her hair. It was a reminder that fine gowns or tatty frocks, she was still herself. Maybe this was a chance for her to decide what parts of her life she wanted to keep and which she wanted to leave behind. She was so used to digging in her heels and fighting to keep things that were hers, that she hadn’t thought of letting go as an option, let alone an opportunity. But whether she wanted to or not, things were going to change for her, and she could take advantage of that, but only if she trusted Ash enough to ask him for help.
It took three footmen to clear the way for Ash and his aunt to enter Westminster, and once they reached the courtroom themselves they found it packed nearly to the rafters with noisy spectators. Only when the judge pounded his gavel and the barristers began making their speeches did the cacophony settle into a restless whisper.
Ash felt hundreds of eyes on his back as his uncle’s barrister described him as a grifter and a cheat, an impostor and a liar. He kept his face impassive, only reaching out to hold his aunt’s hand when the lawyer’s invective turned to describing Lady Caroline’s betrayal and hinting at a hereditary insanity. They had expected as much, but hearing it said in a packed court, in front of people who knew them, made Ash feel exposed and ashamed. It was a reminder that there would always be those who believed he was every inch as bad as his uncle’s lawyer insisted. Ash’s mind turned to what his uncle would do when the trial was over. Regardless of the outcome, Ash didn’t doubt that his uncle would retaliate against Ash, Caroline, and even the duke. He was a violent man, accustomed to getting his way.
When the court recessed, he took a surreptitious glance at the crowd on the way to an antechamber with his aunt. On the balcony he saw Verity sitting next to Portia Allenby. She shot him a small smile and waved discreetly. She was wearing a hat, which was so singular a circumstance he could only stare. He mouthedhatand gestured at his own head, and he would swear on his life that she actually blushed.
Later, his aunt took the witness stand, telling of how, after witnessing her brother push her orphaned nephew down a set of stairs, she had sent the injured child away with her lady’s maid and a purse filled with coins. His uncle’s lawyer asked all the questions Ash’s solicitor had told them to expect: if she knew for a certainty that her brother had attempted to take the life of an innocent child, why not inform her father? Her answer—that she expected her father to support her brother’s murderous efforts—made the courtroom explode into a buzz of conversation.
“The child was epileptic,” Lady Caroline clarified. “As was his father before him. I knew my father and brother to have a prejudice against those afflicted with that condition.”
Now Ash knew to a certainty that every eye in the room was fixed on him, as if waiting for him to have an episode right on the spot. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his uncle’s malevolent gaze.
The judge then read the statement of the Duke of Arundel admitting that he knew his nephew had not died. This, the judge instructed the jury, was to assume even greater gravity given the duke’s perilous health and the fact that the declaration was against his own self-interest.
Then the rector of Ashby testified, a tiny old man with sparse white hair and thick spectacles. Ash tried to remember him but came up with nothing. He had thought that perhaps the trial, with its orderly progression of evidence, would awaken some memories. But that period of his life before Roger was as lost to him as it ever was, leaving him with nothing but fragmented images that failed to coalesce into anything he could understand.
When court adjourned for the day, Ash and his aunt stayed back, waiting for the crowd to thin before attempting to summon their carriage. They sat in the judge’s antechamber, barely making conversation while they drank the tea that appeared before them.
Ash did not want to go back to Arundel House. He would have preferred to walk along the river, to shake loose some of the restlessness that had settled in his limbs that day. But when the carriage was called, he went with his aunt. On the street, a somberly clad figure waited for them beside the carriage.
“Miss Plum,” Lady Caroline called, before Ash quite got his bearings. “Let us drive you home.”
“It’s out of your way,” Verity said, at the same time Ash flung the carriage door open and said, “Get in, Plum, before you get abducted by a newspaperman in search of a good story.”
