Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

“The cells!” Kate said.

“Lady Kathleen,” Ned said quietly, “will not be seeing the inside of the cells. Surely Your Worship recognizes that a gentleman such as myself can be trusted to return her for trial tomorrow.” He stared the magistrate full in the eyes, letting his threat sink in. If a duke and a marquess were to turn their attention on a puny little police magistrate, the man would be stripped of his seat on the bench before he had a chance to pronounce sentence.

“Ah. Yes.” The magistrate glanced warily from Ned to Harcroft, and licked his lips.

An earl could cost him his seat, as well. Ned would have felt sorry for the magistrate, except that he’d agreed to go along with this travesty in the first place.

“I release the prisoner into her husband’s care for tomorrow’s trial,” the man finally said. “We’ll start at eleven. Sharp.”

NED FELT HOLLOW ON THE carriage ride home. He’d known Harcroft was planning something. He just hadn’t guessed what. He should have known. He should have done something. But now Kate was threatened, and all his fine plans to prove himself tangled up in his mind.

“Are you sure,” Kate asked dryly, seated across from him, “that we can’t just slay this dragon?”

“Ha.” Ned shook his head wistfully. “I think there are a handful of swords somewhere in Gareth’s home. Maybe stored in the attic?”

It was an enchanting thought, that—sneaking into Harcroft’s house in the dark of night, swathed in a black cloak, sword in hand. With nobody to prosecute the case on the morrow, Kate would be sent home.

It would be lovely, up until the moment when Harcroft was discovered dead in his home. At which point the municipal police wouldn’t need to look far to discover a person who had both an interest in his demise, and an inconvenient bloody sword wrapped in a black cloak.

As if Kate knew the path down which his thoughts had drifted, as if she’d trodden silently down the hallway of his imagination, sword in hand, she sighed. “Drat.” The carriage rolled up to the house and she shook her head as the door opened.

She disappeared into the night, and Ned stared after her. She’d meant the crack about dragons as a joke, as a way to defuse the tense, despairing energy that ran between them. But to him, it felt like more. Dragon or no, she was in need of a hero. And lo, here sat Ned, in the carriage still. He fought the urge to rush into the servants’ quarters in search of long kitchen knives. Some knight he made.

Damn it.

As names went, “Harcroft” didn’t even have a particularly villainous ring to it. It sounded respectable. Stodgy, even. And the threat—imprisonment—wasn’t even the sort of thing that could be slain. Not by typically heroic means. The heroes in the stories had it easy. A week ago Ned had been trying to figure out how to win Louisa’s freedom. Now he was fighting for his wife’s. His entire quest had started off-kilter, and it had only skewed with the passage of time.

Ned pushed himself out of the carriage. “You know,” he said, catching up to her at the door, “If I killed Gareth, we could forestall this whole affair, too. I’d be the Marquess of Blakely. And you, as my wife, could only be charged in the House of Lords.”

“Well. There’s a thought. And so convenient, since the swords are stored in his attics.” Her lips quirked up.

And the sight of that tentative smile—the first he’d seen since she’d been taken to Queen Square—was exactly what Ned needed. Enough with the analogies. Enough with the panic. Kate didn’t need the sort of hero that slew her enemies. That was the easy kind of heroism—the stab-and-vanquish sort. Any idiot with a sword or a kitchen knife could engage in the appropriate hacking motions. No. At this moment Kate needed a real hero. The kind that would put a smile on her face today, and bring her victory tomorrow.

Ned could be that sort of hero.

She walked into the parlor and sat on the silk-cushioned sofa, her silhouette illuminated by the firelight. She turned to look into it, presenting him with her back.

Her back seemed as good a place as any to start. The thin, tense line of her stance made a miserable curve.

He set his hands on her shoulders. The silk of her gown seemed cool to his touch as he slid his hands down; he could feel the ridges of whalebone beneath, stiff lines against his hand. She was wearing a small corset, one that fit neatly under her br**sts, clasping her ribs. The chances of his being able to remove it seemed as dim as the lighting in the room.