Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [0]
“In this wonderful novel, master storyteller Anne Perry moves closer to Dickens as she lifts the lace curtain from Victorian society to reveal its shocking secrets.”
—SHARYN MCCRUMB
“[A] richly textured re-creation of a bygone age … culminat[es] in an explosive courtroom confrontation in which a shameful secret is finally revealed.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“A richly detailed period atmosphere … revealing social and moral nuances in the grand tradition of the Victorian novel.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Wonderful … rich period detailing, masterful characterizations, subtle romantic subplots, disturbing flashbacks, and powerful courtroom drama recommend this.”
—Library Journal
“Marvelous … a totally absorbing novel that completely hooks the reader. The storyline is a heartbreaker, and only the most hardened reader will have a dry eye at the end of this tale.”
—Rave Reviews
Defend and Betray is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2009 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1992 by Anne Perry
Dossier copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
MORTALIS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ivy Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1992
eISBN: 978-0-307-76777-6
www.mortalis-books.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Excerpt Chapter
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
1
Hester Latterly alighted from the hansom cab. A two-seater vehicle for hire by the trip, it was a recent and most useful invention enabling one to travel much more cheaply than having to hire a large carriage for the day. Fishing in her reticule, she found the appropriate coin and paid the driver, then turned and walked briskly along Brunswick Place towards Regent’s Park, where the daffodils were in full bloom in gold swaths against the dark earth. So they should be; this was April the twenty-first, a full month into the spring of 1857.
She looked ahead to see if she could discern the tall, rather angular figure of Edith Sobell, whom she had come to meet, but she was not yet visible among the courting couples walking side by side, the women’s wide crinoline skirts almost touching the gravel of the paths, the men elegant and swaggering very slightly. Somewhere in the distance a band was playing something brisk and martial, the notes of the brass carrying in the slight breeze.
She hoped Edith was not going to be late. It was she who had requested this meeting, and said that a walk in the open would be so much pleasanter than sitting inside in a chocolate shop, or strolling around a museum or a gallery where Edith at least might run into acquaintances and be obliged to interrupt her conversation with Hester to exchange polite nonsense.
Edith had all day in which to do more or less as she pleased; indeed, she had said time hung heavily on her hands. But Hester was obliged to earn her living. She was presently employed as a nurse to a retired military gentleman who had fallen and broken his thigh. Since being dismissed from the hospital where she had first found a position on returning from the Crimea—for taking matters into her own hands and treating a patient in the absence of the doctor—Hester had been fortunate to find private positions. It was only her experience in Scutari with Florence Nightingale, ended barely a year since,