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“Not bloody likely,” said Green Tooth. “Innocent or no, it’ll be weeks, p’rhaps months ’fore any court ’ears yer case.”
“No, it will not,” Claire said, dismissing her. “Now kindly stop bothering me.”
Green Tooth said, “I’m tryin’ to ’elp ye.”
“I need no help,” Claire said. “Not another word out of you, do you hear!”
Green Tooth fell silent, but she continued to carefully study Claire. She couldn’t take her eyes off her. There was something hauntingly familiar about this young woman. That hair, the porcelain skin, those vivid violet eyes, the graceful curve of her throat. Surely a direct link to someone from the past. The name she couldn’t quite bring to bear. She searched her memory.
Could she be? No, too young. But blood told…The daughter. She had to be the daughter.
Eyes closed, Claire sat on the hard stone floor and silently lectured herself. She couldn’t let this hideous turn of events best her. She had to be strong and resourceful. She had to keep her wits about her and figure a way out of this terrible predicament. She was, she knew, in serious trouble.
Who would take her word over that of Lord Wardley Nardees?
No one.
She faced this outrageous charge on her own. All alone.
It wasn’t the first time Claire had been alone. She was used to it. Had been used to it since losing both parents when she was a girl of eighteen. Shortly after their deaths she had accepted the proposal of an old family friend. Dear, stalwart, solicitous Keith Orwell. He would have gladly taken care of her for the rest of her life, but tragedy soon struck again.
Only four years after they’d wed, her kindhearted husband had died suddenly of apoplexy and she was widowed at age twenty-two. Orwell had left no money, so there’d been little time to grieve his passing. Claire had had to immediately find a way to support herself.
Well educated, she had promptly become governess to a fine family’s two well-behaved boys. She’d spent five pleasant years in their employ ending with her young wards leaving for boarding school. She was then chosen to be governess to the wealthy Lord Wardley Nardees’s three unruly children.
Claire shuddered now at the recollection of what had happened in the baron’s huge mansion only last night.
She opened her eyes and again looked above. She felt a small degree of comfort in seeing the turnkey continuing to patrol on the catwalk. But as she watched, he suddenly stopped and moved directly to the rope ladder on which she had descended into the bowels of the Common Cell.
Her heart sank when he loudly announced to the prisoners below, “Raisin’ the ladder, ye miserable scabs! Jest ye try and get out ’o the hole in the middle of the night!” He bent and swiftly drew the ladder up out of reach, rung by rung, and Claire saw her only connection with the world above taken away.
No sooner had the ladder been lifted than the turnkey moved around the catwalk extinguishing most of the wall torches. In minutes the Common Cell was cast into deep dark shadows.
She was to spend the long night in this pit at the mercy of dangerous criminals.
Nothing to worry about, she told herself. The turnkey was patrolling again. He would keep a close eye on the dungeon. She should try to relax and get some much needed rest. Tomorrow she would figure a way out of this travesty.
A quarter past midnight.
Claire was wide awake. Unfortunately the lone turnkey was not. He was no longer patrolling. He was snoring, dead to the world, somewhere out of sight above.
As the hour grew later the hellhole began stirring to life after hours of relative quiet. The new activity greatly unnerved Claire. She was not naive. She was fully aware that she had attracted the unwanted attention of the male denizens and the soulless whores. All had cast lascivious glances at her throughout the evening. All were dangerous. All were free to do as they pleased because the sleeping turnkey was not doing his job. She was helpless against them.
Claire’s anxiety grew when a half dozen of the menacing villains began to gravitate steadily closer. She was paralyzed with fear when a big, strapping female squatted down before her, roughly grabbed Claire’s left ankle and dragged her away from the wall.
“Come to me, beauty,” said the woman, a leer on her chubby face.
Claire kicked wildly at her. “Stop!” she cried, her hips and shoulder blades bumping against the stone floor. “Leave me alone, let me be!”
The fat female smiled in mock surrender and, releasing Claire’s ankle, rose to her feet. Claire scrambled to sit up. She held up her hands defensively as her heart pounded in her ears. She frantically looked around for an escape route. Even if she made it past the evil creatures now circling her, she couldn’t get out of this snake pit.
“I’m first,” announced a cadaverous man with open sores on his face and old scabs decorating his ropy forearms. Shoving the obese prostitute out of the way, he began unbuttoning his filthy trousers as he licked his droopy lower lip.
“The ’ell you are!” snapped a tall, thin woman with greasy corkscrew curls and a long nasty scar slashing down her filthy face. She easily shoved the thin man out of her way. Yanking her tattered skirts up past her knobby knees, she stated, “This one’s mine.”
She’d hardly gotten the words out before a big, muscular brute with a sweat-drenched bare chest and unshaven face stepped in, swung a quick right, and knocked the thin whore flat on her back.
“Stay away from me!” Claire warned as the reeking, half-naked man sank to his knees and reached for her.
Claire’s heart stopped.
“You ’eard the lady,” came a low feminine voice from out of the darkness.
Claire blinked as Green Tooth, roused from a fitful slumber by all the commotion, swiftly emerged from the shadows and pressed the tip of a long sharp piece of glass directly against the man’s juggler vein. Firmly clutching the crude weapon by its handle fashioned of used twine, she said quietly, “Move back or get yer throat slit, gov.”
The big man, his calloused hand already clutching at Claire’s shirtwaist bodice, laughed off Green Tooth’s threat. Bent on having the pale, clean beauty, he ripped Claire’s bodice and she screamed.
“Now I will kill ye!” Green Tooth coolly promised. She jabbed the weapon’s sharp tip into his glistening throat and drew blood.
He yelped in pain, released his hold on Claire’s bodice, and rolled away, cursing. Green Tooth stepped directly in front of Claire, thrust the bloody glass weapon forward toward the others and said, “The same goes for the rest of ye. Touch one ’air on ’er ’ead and ye won’t live to see daylight.”
Two
No one doubted Green Tooth’s threat.
They cursed her and vowed to get even and promised, come daylight, they’d tell the turnkey she had a weapon. Then they laughed and jeered and accused her of being a crazy old hag. But all of them slowly backed away.
For several long minutes the slight old crone continued to stay there unmoving, her stance denoting total authority and an absence of fear. Her thin arm extended, jaw set, she had the crude weapon gripped tightly in her hand and thrust forward.
She finally lowered the weapon and began to sink back into the shadows. Claire, clutching at her torn bodice, hurriedly rose to her feet and laid a hand on the old woman’s arm.
“Thank you. You saved me! I’m very grateful to you. What would I have done if you hadn’t intervened?”
Green Tooth brushed Claire’s hand from her arm. “I knew ye’d be causin’ trouble in ’ere,” she said, shaking her gray head.
Without another word, she sat back down on the stone floor, frowning when Claire sank down close beside her.
“I never meant to cause any trouble,” Claire defended herself. “I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong down here.”
“None of us do, lassie,” said Green tooth tiredly. “I told you, we’re all innocent ’ere.”
“But you don’t understand, my employer, Lord Nardees, grabbed me in the middle of the night and—”
“It’s the same old story,” Green Tooth interrupted, “’ve ’eard it all before.”
“Yes, I know, but I—”
“I ’ave to get me rest,” Green Tooth said, closing her eyes, shutting Claire out.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Claire said and fell silent.
Exhausted, nerves raw, afraid as she’d never been before in her life, Claire longed to unburden herself, to confide in someone who would listen and learn the truth.
But no one would believe her if she did.
She sat there in the darkness, berating herself for accepting the position of governess to the powerful Lord Nardees’s three spoiled children.
She had gone to Stonehaven in mid-June, only two short weeks ago.
Late last night, the portly Lord Nardees had pounded on her third floor door, awakening her from a deep slumber. She’d lunged up in bed, sleepy and confused. Before she could rise, the lord, dressed in white cotton attire that looked like a physician’s protective gown, stalked hurriedly into her room and told her that she had to come with him at once. Supposing something untoward had happened to one of the children, she had thrown on a robe and anxiously rushed after him.
“What it is, milord?” she asked, alarmed, as together they dashed down the wide upstairs corridor.
“Shhh,” he cautioned. “We must be quiet.”
Claire said no more, but dutifully swept into the room when he opened the door at the end of the hallway. He hastily followed. Once inside she looked around.
No one was there. No sick child.
The room was empty. But it was well lighted, every lamp blazing. The only furniture was a physician’s examining couch, which sat at the very center of the room. A white sheet was draped over it. Beside the couch, on a small utility table, was a white shaving mug and brush and a pair of scissors.
And, gleaming in the lamplight, lay a silver, fully opened straight-edged razor.
Instantly alarmed, Claire turned to give the lord a questioning look. She was horrified to find that he was now stark naked, the white uniform discarded and lying on the carpeted floor. Beneath his flabby overhanging belly, his male member was fully erect.
“Lord Nardees, how dare you!” she exclaimed in shock and outrage. “Cover yourself at once!”
She made a move toward the closed door. But the lord stood before it, blocking her way, his beady eyes gleaming and a drool of spittle slipping down from the left side of his mouth.
“My dear,” he murmured, stepping close, “since the first moment I saw you, I’ve wanted you for my mistress.”
And with that declaration, the naked nobleman had swiftly caught a stunned Claire up in his arms, pressed her against his big belly and tried to kiss her. Horrified and repulsed, she turned her face away and began to struggle to free herself.
“Let me go, damn you! Stop this at once!” she demanded, hitting his beefy arms and broad back with doubled up fists.
“Ah, yes, fight me a little while I rub myself against you, sweet beauty! I like my lovers to be fiery.” The eager lord shoved Claire’s robe off her right shoulder, yanked the yoke of her nightgown open down her chest and buried his wet, fleshy lips in the curve of her neck and shoulder.
“Let go of me, you miserable swine, or I shall scream so loudly your wife will come running.”
Sucking eagerly on the tender flesh of her exposed throat, Lord Nardees ignored her threat. Claire was well aware that his homely, lazy wife was probably snoring soundly in their suite on the mansion’s first floor and would not hear her screams. Claire continued to beat on the baron’s bare back and tried to kick his shins. Vainly, she struggled to free herself from the excited, perspiring man.
Finally, having no other recourse, she turned her face inward and bit his jowls. Hard. Drawing blood. Shocked and in pain, he automatically raised his head and loosened his hold. Claire seized the opportunity and viciously kneed him in the groin. He released her and grabbing himself, sank to his knees, keening in agony there before the closed door.
Claire knew she had to get out of that room and out of that house. Finding strength she didn’t know she possessed, she shoved him over onto his back, grabbed him behind the knees, and dragged him away from the door. She darted around him, opened the door and fled down the hall to her room. Heart pounding, she hurriedly dressed and began packing.
She wasn’t sure what the thwarted lord would do next, but she had no intention of staying in his home long enough to find out. After only a few short minutes spent collecting her belongings, Claire was ready to make her escape.
But she was too late.
The door to her room was now locked and barred from the outside. Claire ground her teeth in frustration. The angry baron had already summoned his minions to confine her.
She dropped her valise and hurried to the tall leaded windows that faced the estate’s rolling back gardens. She opened one of the windows and looked down. She had never realized how high off the ground this third floor room was. There was no balcony on which to step outside. No trellis on which to climb down. It was a sheer drop of forty feet to the ground below. If she jumped she would likely break a leg. Even if she didn’t, guards patrolled the vast rear grounds at night. She’d never get past them.
She was trapped.
Throughout the long night Claire paced, worried and wondered what would happen to her.
Come the morning she found out.
While the entire staff watched and whispered, Claire was taken from the baron’s house by two uniformed policemen. Lord Nardees had accused her of stealing some of his wife’s valuable jewelry and had alerted the authorities.
At police headquarters Claire had vowed her innocence, but to no avail. Her repeated requests for counsel were refused. After the long tiring day of futilely demanding that a barrister be appointed for her, she was thrown into Newgate prison’s Common Cell with a stern reminder that stealing from one of England’s titled noblemen would surely get her several long years in prison.
Now in the prison’s darkness, Claire swallowed hard and fought back the tears that clogged her tight throat. The terrible truth dawned that she might never get out of this dungeon.
Dawn was not far off when Green Tooth slowly turned her head, looked at the fair, blond young woman and saw that she was sleeping.
Finally.
Green Tooth glanced warily around at the rest of the prisoners to make sure all were asleep. Satisfied they were, she reached down and dug deep into her worn left shoe and pried from its sole a shiny gold coin. A coin she’d treasured for years.
She laid the coin in her lap and reached into the pocket of her filthy skirt. She withdrew a small pad of paper and a stubby lead pencil.
In minutes she was up and silently crossing the Common Cell. She waved a thin arm until she attracted the attention of the head turnkey who was back on his perch above. She motioned to him. He frowned, shook his head, but dropped the ladder over and came down it.
“Need a favor, gov,” Green Tooth whispered and handed the guard a folded note and the gold coin.
The turnkey glanced at the note, bit the coin to check its authenticity, and nodded in affirmation.
Three
Alas, it wasn’t weeks or months until Claire’s arraignment. It was later that very same morning.
Nine sharp.
Thursday, the twenty-seventh of June, 1895.
Claire’s case was first on the docket. If indicted—which seemed assured—she would be convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
The honorable Percival Knowlton sat on the bench above in his colorful flowing judge’s robes and curly white powdered wig. The prosecutor, Cecil Twiggs, a slight man with thinning, sandy hair and sallow complexion, was there to represent the Queen.
Claire stood beside him as Twiggs stated the charges. “Your honor, the defendant, Mrs. Claire Orwell, betrayed the trust and kindness of her employer, Lord Wardley Nardees. Mrs. Orwell was employed…”
The arraignment, a predetermined farce, had begun.
Once the charges had been fully read, the elderly judge sat back in his chair, reached up under his white wig and rubbed a spot on his temple.
He looked at Claire. “Who speaks for the defendant?”
