Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [182]
“Indeed.” Lovat-Smith gave in gracefully. He had sufficient instinct to recognize an error and cease it immediately. “It does not alter facts, but of course it matters, Mrs. Sobell. I have no further questions. Thank you.”
“Mr. Rathbone?” the judge asked.
“I have no further questions, thank you, my lord.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Sobell, you may go.”
Rathbone stood in the center of the very small open space in front of the witness box.
“I call Miss Catriona Buchan.”
Miss Buchan came to the witness box looking very pale, her face even more gaunt than before, her thin back stiff and her eyes straight forward, as if she were a French aristocrat passing through the old women knitting at the foot of the guillotine. She mounted the stairs unaided, holding her skirts in from the sides, and at the top turned and faced the court. She swore to tell the truth, and regarded Rathbone as though he were an executioner.
Rathbone found himself admiring her as much as anyone he had ever faced across that small space of floor.
“Miss Buchan, I realize what this is going to cost you, and I am not unmindful of your sacrifice, nevertheless I hope you understand that in the cause of justice I have no alternative?”
“Of course I do,” she agreed with a crisp voice. The strain in it did not cause her to falter, only to sound a little more clipped than usual, a little higher in pitch, as if her throat were tight. “I would not answer did I not understand that!”
“Indeed. Do you remember quarreling with the cook at Carlyon House some three weeks ago?”
“I do. She is a good enough cook, but a stupid woman.”
“In what way stupid, Miss Buchan?”
“She imagines all ills can be treated with good regular meals and that if you only eat right everything else will sort itself out.”
“A shortsighted view. What did you quarrel about on that occasion, Miss Buchan?”
Her chin lifted a little higher.
“Master Cassian. She said I was confusing the child by telling him his mother was not a wicked woman, and that she still loved him.”
In the dock Alexandra was so still it seemed she could not even be breathing. Her eyes never left Miss Buchan’s face and she barely blinked.
“Is that all?” Rathbone asked.
Miss Buchan took a deep breath, her thin chest rising and falling. “No—she also said I followed the boy around too much, not leaving him alone.”
“Did you follow the boy around, Miss Buchan?”
She hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
“Why?” He kept his voice level, as if the question were not especially important.
“To do what I could to prevent him being abused anymore.”
“Abused? Was someone mistreating him? In what way?”
“I believe the word is sodomy, Mr. Rathbone,” she said with only the slightest tremor.
There was a gasp in the court as hundreds of throats drew in breath.
Alexandra covered her face with her hands.
The jury froze in their seats, eyes wide, faces aghast.
In the front row of the gallery Randolf Carlyon sat immobile as stone. Felicia’s veiled head jerked up and her knuckles were white on the rail in front of her. Edith, now sitting beside them, looked as if she had been struck.
Even the judge stiffened and turned to look up at Alexandra. Lovat-Smith stared at Rathbone, his face slack with amazement.
Rathbone waited several seconds before he spoke.
“Someone in the house was sodomizing the child?” He said it very quietly, but the peculiar quality of his voice and his exquisite diction made every word audible even at the very back of the gallery.
“Yes,” Miss Buchan answered, looking at no one but him.
“How do you know that, Miss Buchan? Did you see it happen?”
“I did not see it this time—but I have in the past, when Thaddeus Carlyon himself was a child,” she said. “And I knew the signs. I knew the look in a child’s face, the sly pleasure, the fear mixed with exultancy, the flirting and the shame, the self-possession one minute, then the terror of losing his mother’s love if she knew, the hatred of having to keep