THE DUKE CHOSE THE PLAIN GIRL AT A MAYFAIR AUCTION — THEN THE VEIL CAME OFF
Chapter 20
The application reached them by telegraph at eleven o’clock the following morning, and Mr. Finch came up the drive at four, having ridden the last stage with his hat in his hand.
“A petition to the Court of Chancery,” he said, spreading it on the library table. “In the matter of the person and estate of Lady Emmeline Ashby, a person of unsound mind. And a certificate.”
“Signed by whom?”
“A physician named Croft. Not Penn; Croft. He is thirty-one years old and he is the third son of Lord Croft and he has never in his life written a certificate that was not for hire.” Mr. Finch’s mouth was a thin line. “My lord, they have gone one better than your father. They have laid the certificate before the Court and they have made the argument that the earlier proceedings — the fifteen years — establish a presumption of lunacy, and that the wife’s continued residence with her daughter, in a house full of strangers, against the advice of physicians, is itself a species of harmful indulgence.”
Evelyn almost laughed, and then found she could not.
“They are arguing my mother is mad and that I am mistreating her by keeping her.”
“They are arguing that Lady Emmeline Ashby has been the subject of lawful proceedings since eighteen thirty-two, that there is no record of any competent authority having certified her recovery, and that the burden rests on those who assert it.” Mr. Finch looked at the Duke. “And they have asked for an interim order. The hearing is set for the twenty-first of December, in Chancery, before the Vice-Chancellor, and they have asked for her to be placed in the custody of the Court in the interim.”
“Which means back into a licensed house,” said Sebastian.
“Which means back into a licensed house, my lord, and Aldous Kerr has an interest in four of them.”
Evelyn looked across the room to where her mother was sitting by the window with a book open on her knee, three days into her recovered life, wearing a dress of soft grey that had once belonged to Lady Marguerite Vane.
Sixteen years. Sixteen years in a lodge behind a wall, and now a fresh piece of paper with a fresh signature was travelling toward her at the speed of a mail coach with a paid driver.
She turned back to the table.
“Mr. Finch,” she said. “The hearing is in Chancery.”
“It is, my lady.”
“Then why,” said Evelyn, “do they want her in a house in the interim?”
Mr. Finch opened his mouth, and then closed it, and looked at her with an expression that suggested he was about to be taught something by a woman of twenty-three.
“Because a woman in a house is a woman no one can see,” said Evelyn. “And a woman nobody can see can be moved, the way she was moved in eighteen forty-three, and a motion may be adjourned, and a case may take three years, and in three years anything may happen to a woman of forty-nine who has spent fifteen years in confinement.” She looked at her husband. “They are not trying to win. They are trying to wait.”
Sebastian was very still.
“Then we will not let them wait,” he said.
“Sebastian—”
“We will not fight them in Chancery. Chancery will take two years and the Vice-Chancellor will do whatever is cheapest, and I have watched the Vice-Chancellor do whatever is cheapest for eleven years.” He put both hands on the table. “We will fight them in the only court in England that cannot adjourn.”
“Which is?”
“Public opinion,” said Sebastian Vane, “and there is precisely one drawing room in England where it convenes, and Lady Selby’s Michaelmas auction is in eleven days, and every one of them will be there.”
Mr. Finch went pale.
“My lord, if you lay that evidence before the ton—”
“I intend to lay it before the ton.” Sebastian straightened. “Kerr cannot buy silence in a room of nine hundred people who all hate each other and all talk to each other daily. Every whisper in that ballroom will be in every newsroom in London by morning, and the newspapers will make the case immortal, and a Vice-Chancellor does not adjourn a case that has been printed in four newspapers, because Chancery may be slow but it is not deaf.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“You would go back to that ballroom,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The room where they laughed at me.”
“That exact room.”
She stood quite still for a moment. Somewhere in her chest, something that had been folded up very small since a night in October began, slowly, to unfold.
“Then I will need a dress,” she said. “Gold, I think. And the lace veil. I want it in my hands.”
“Evelyn.”
“No,” she said. “It is not for wearing. I have one more use for it, and it is not mine.”
She turned and walked out of the library, and at the door she stopped, and said to Mr. Finch, without turning around:
“Mr. Finch. Draw the papers tonight. Not against Kerr. Against Dr. Croft and his certificate, and against every person who has ever signed a paper about my mother, and put a clause in it — an express clause — that no order of any court shall place Lady Emmeline Ashby outside the parish of Halstead without her own signature.” She paused. “And one further thing. There is a young woman who is going to arrive at this house within the week, and no one is to turn her away.”
“My lady?”
“My sister,” said Evelyn. “She is in trouble, and she has been in trouble for four months, and she has been writing to me at Ashby Grange, where my father has been burning her letters.” She looked at the fire. “Servants talk. How could they not? I have known since September. I was simply waiting for her to run out of places to go.”