Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride Read Free

his face went red and he fell down. So I rang for help and pulled on my clothes and—’
    â€˜He was dead? You are certain?’
    â€˜Oh, yes.’ Lina hadn’t been able to bring herself to touch him, but she could tell. The bulging blue eyes had seemed fixed on her, still avid with lust even as they began to glaze over. She had stared in horror as her fingers fumbled with ribbons and garters. ‘They all came in then—the valet, the butler, the younger son, Reginald Tolhurst. Mr Tolhurst knelt down and tried to find a pulse—then he sent the valet for the doctor and told the butler to lock me in the library. He said his father’s sapphire ring was missing.’
    â€˜The Tolhurst Sapphire? My God.’ Her aunt had stared at her. ‘Wasn’t he wearing it when you—?’
    â€˜I don’t know!’ Lina’s voice quavered upwards and she caught her herself before it became a shriek. ‘I wasn’t looking at his rings.
    â€˜I heard them talking outside. They said the ring was not in the room, not in the safe nor the jewel box. The butler said Sir Humphrey had been wearing it when I arrived. Mr Tolhurst sent a footman to Bow Street, to the magistrates.’ She was gabbling with anxiety, but she could not seem to steady herself.
    â€˜He said I would be taken up for theft, that I must have thrown it out of the window to an accomplice. He said I would hang like the thieving whore I was.’ She closed her eyes and fought for calm. Her aunt was ill, she must remember that. But she had nowhere else to go, no one else to help her. ‘I climbed out of the library window and ran,’ she finished. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
    â€˜You must go out of London until the truth can be discovered,’ Clara said with decision, suddenly sounding more like her old self. ‘I’ll send you to Simon Ashley— Lord Dreycott—in Norfolk, he will take you in.’
    â€˜If I go to the magistrates with a lawyer,’ Lina said, ‘they’ll believe me then, surely? If I run away—’
    â€˜You live in a brothel. No one will believe you are innocent, and once they have you, there will be no attempt to establish the truth,’ her aunt said with all the bitterness bred of years of dealings with the law. ‘The Tolhurst Sapphire is famous and worth thousands. Did you read about that maidservant who was hanged a fortnight ago for stealing a silver teaspoon? It was found a few days after the execution where her mistress had lost it—down the side of the sofa. If they didn’t believe her, a girl with a good character, they are not going to believe you. Help me get up.’
    â€˜But, Aunt—’
    â€˜Hurry, Lina.’ Clara threw back the bedclothes and walked unsteadily to her desk. ‘Put on your plain bombazine walking dress. Pack what you need in bags you can carry. Hurry .’
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    â€˜There is no time to lose,’ Trimble urged.
    Lina blinked. This was the present and she had to focus on the present danger, not the past. The staff lined up, tugged cuffs and aprons under the butler’s critical eye. Mrs Bishop, the cook, headed the row of maids; the footmen and the boot boy aligned themselves on the other side next to Trimble. It was not a large indoor staff—ten in all—but a reclusive and eccentric ninety-year-old baron had needed no more. Where should she, the cuckoo in the nest, stand?
    â€˜Miss Haddon?’ Trimble gestured her to the front. It was uncomfortable using a false name, but her real one was too dangerous. Makepeace had considered that Celina Shelley sounded suitable for a courtesan, so the law had known her real name from the beginning.
    Trimble seemed tense. Lina smiled at him in an effort to reassure both of them. In the days since her improbableprotector had slipped away in his sleep, eased on his last journey by copious glasses of best cognac, an injudicious