The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery by L.C. Sharp (books to read as a couple TXT) 📕

Her stomach rumbled, shocking her. She was hungry. Such a normal response. She had not been honestly hungry since her father had told her of her impending marriage. Oh, she had eaten, because she had to, but not savored anything, or wanted it. Enjoying her response to the scent of fresh bread, she walked on.

A woman at the end of the street had a tray slung from a piece of twine around her neck. She was shouting and waving prints. Juliana had the sinking feeling that the prints were of her, and involved a great deal of blood. Prints and journals were created at breakneck speed, particularly when something sensational and profitable had occurred. In the hours since Juliana had screamed, servants would have spread the news, someone would have arrived, witnessed the mob and the commotion, and rushed back to a shabby building in Grub Street or another print shop to recreate the scene for everyone to see.

Juliana turned abruptly, but he stopped her, touching her shoulder in a light gesture that stopped her moving away from him. “Don’t mind them. Reports are bound to happen.”

“I know.” She had been the subject of the cruel caricatures before, but not like this. Tears clogged her throat but she refused to let them fall. No weakness. She had wept once and that was all she would allow.

“And you were untouched, a virgin.” He pressed his lips together, as if holding back what he wanted to let loose. His eyes raged, the calm gray completely gone, replaced by storm clouds. “Come. Once we’re home I’ll order a hot bath for you.”

It sounded like heaven. They walked forward once more. “With your permission I’ll ask my sister to make a rough sketch of your body, and the marks he left on it. I know that is an intrusion, but the record could help us in court. It will show how brutally you were used.”

“Do you have to produce it in court?” The thought of everyone seeing what Godfrey had done to her made her cringe inside.

He didn’t answer.

He knew everything about her. But what did she know about him?

Sir Edmund, or Ash as he’d told her to call him, lived in a fine house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This square had been meant for the aristocracy, after the fashion for London mansions faded, but society had moved further West, leaving these houses behind. Except for the Duke of Newcastle, who lived in a fine mansion situated at one end of the square. The duke and her father did not like each other. They were on opposite sides of the political divide. Juliana suspected that her father envied the duke. His brother, Henry Pelham, was the Prime Minister, and the family held the reins of power that the earl would love to control.

Ash’s house was near Newcastle House. It was a handsome white-stucco house, with the door at the side of three handsome windows.

“Do you know the duke?” she asked as he led her up the steps over the narrow area below that the servants used to gain access to the street. Even a detail like that, and the thin lines of green moss showing between the cracks on the large flags fascinated her. The prospect of imminent death concentrated one’s mind wonderfully.

He paused in the act of pushing the shiny black-painted door open. Only slightly. “My father knew him for years. We are invited to balls and the like but we don’t usually go.”

The Newcastle parties were famed for their lavishness. So Ash wasn’t such a nonentity, after all. He had the ear of a powerful man, the brother of the Prime Minister, no less, and the owner of vast tracts of land.

She had been well trained. She could recite titles, names and property. After all, she had been expected to join them one day. “I have only been to one ball there,” she admitted. “My father does not agree with the duke’s policies.”

“Many do not.” He offered no comment on his own political leanings. Perhaps he had none. That would come as a pleasant change.

He led the way into a well-lit, cheerful hallway, the floor decorated with clean black-and-white marble tiles. A footman, not in livery, bowed and smiled.

Goodness! She’d never seen a servant meet his master’s eyes and smile before.

Ash removed his hat and waited for her to divest herself of the borrowed hat that had given her the semblance of respectability. She had grown rather fond of it. It was plain, only a single pink ribbon decorating it, sturdy and honest.

The manservant took the hats. “Would you like tea, sir?”

Ash glanced at her. “I think so, Freeman. Upstairs in the drawing room. Will you tell my sister that we have a visitor, please?” He glanced at her. “Our cousin from the country. Helena Ashendon.”

“Indeed, sir.”

The man was possibly forty, of a burly build, but with brown eyes that appeared kind. He met her eyes, too, and although she balked at his direct regard, she steeled herself and gave him a nod of acknowledgment.

Ash waved vaguely to the half-open door. “That is the library. A breakfast room lies beyond and a parlor, and the study.” He turned his head to address her directly. “The study is mine. When I set up business here, I bought the house next door to act as my offices, but we have encroached into that, too.”

Which meant she was not to intrude. She nodded. She was a good guest. The mention of a library came as welcome news since she had left all her books behind.

Dutifully, she followed her host upstairs. The house was warm, but not stifling. Her mother, who claimed to suffer from poor health, insisted that the house was kept warm, which in fact meant, like a hothouse. This was perhaps as large as her family’s town house, which surprised her somewhat, but the place held