The Wedding Night Affair--An Historical Mystery, page 1
Coming soon from L.C. Sharp
and Carina Press
Ash & Juliana
The Sign of the Raven
THE WEDDING NIGHT AFFAIR
L.C. SHARP
For my friends in the Romantic Novelists’ Association.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
About the Author
Excerpt from The Sign of the Raven by L.C. Sharp
Chapter One
Spring, 1748
Were all wedding nights this terrifying?
Juliana, as of yesterday Lady Godfrey Uppingham, dared not move. If she did, Godfrey might wake up. Then it would all start again.
Her terror threatened to rise into panic, her heart pounding, her stomach churning. For hours she’d visually traced the curving pattern on the dark green brocade-clad wall opposite the bed, trying to control her senses.
Her mind churned with confusion and horror. Would she have to face this every night? Could she accustom herself to it?
She had no answers. Nobody had prepared her for this assault.
The weight behind her in the bed told her Godfrey was still there, though she could not hear him breathing. After the last time he’d taken her, she’d clung to the edge of the mattress, terrified of rolling over and into him. She was still clinging. From the moment he’d used his dagger to slice her wedding gown off her body, she’d known nothing but pain and terror.
Every part of her body ached, the place between her legs still throbbing, beyond sore. All night he’d been on her, at her, in her. Pain shot through her when she breathed, but she forced control, trying to keep the rhythm regular as if she was still asleep. For a full five minutes, she concentrated, using the loud tick of the clock as a guide: breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Slowly, waiting for her pounding heart to ease and the tears that threatened to shake her body to abate.
She mustn’t wake him.
The thought of him forced her tension up again, nausea setting in, so she took another breath, as deeply as she dared, and let it out slowly. This was her life. She had better get used to it, that was all. She had learned how to handle other uncomfortable realities, so she could learn to cope with this, too.
But she had not expected the act of making progeny to be so visceral, so painful, so—So, violating. It hurt the first time. It hurt even worse the second, and the third and fourth times she preferred not to think about.
She pushed the memories away. She would weep when she was alone, then dry the tears and get on with what her life had become. She had no choice. She never had.
All her life she had obeyed her parents, done what was expected of her, married the man they chose for her, and what had that done for her?
Nothing.
Then why should she carry on this way? What had obedience and acceptance done for her? It had brought her to this horrific wedding night.
No more. Then and there she vowed it, as sacred as any promise she’d ever made. With that final betrayal from her parents, she was done, finished with obedience and propriety. She’d replace them with honesty and independent thought.
Had her parents known what Godfrey was like? If they had, would they have married her to him? She feared the answer was yes. She was on her own, the only person who cared about her.
What power she had, she would use to save herself. If she did not, she’d be dead in a year. She had one weapon, just one, and she’d use it. Her parents wanted a grandson. In order to do that, she’d have to be alive. She would point that out to her mother, who would then ensure her daughter lived to bear the longed-for grandson.
That was a start. Her heart slowly returned to normal and she could breathe properly again. Decision made, she would make her plans.
The clock struck the half hour, its delicate chimes drawing her out from her thoughts. The light seeping through a crack between the curtains was stronger now.
He did not move. He wasn’t even snoring, as he had last night. Perhaps he was exhausted from his efforts. Had the household heard her screams? Most likely they had, but Godfrey took the sounds she made as encouragement, and only came at her harder. She had bitten her cheek and her tongue after that until she tasted blood, then clamped her teeth together until she feared they would break.
And still he lay quietly, without moving. Juliana dared to shift in an effort to creep slowly over the edge of the bed. If she could get out of it without him noticing, she might be able to make her escape.
Her thighs slid together, slippery but cold. She bit back her cry of pain when her aching body protested a move even as slight as that. Slowly, she eased the covers off her naked body, bracing herself to witness the mess she was in.
Blood stained her thighs, and pooled beneath her. She knew there would be blood, but only a smear, a trace to mark her passage to womanhood. There was more than a smear here, and it smelled rank, the tang hitting the back of her throat. Why so much? Had he ruptured something inside her?
She patted her body, wincing as she encountered sore spots and bruises. Plenty of those, but no gashes, nothing that would cause such a mess. When she dared to stretch a little, no more blood emerged from her body. There was so much that parts of the sheet were crusty with it. If she had lost so much blood, why wasn’t she dead?
The blood was congealing, thick, black dots forming on the surface now she had let in the fresh air.
Something was terribly wrong. Her husband lay so still, he might as well be...
She gave up on stealth. As she sat up, gore squelched beneath her. She turned her head slowly, afraid of what awaited her.
Godfrey lay on his back, naked, the sheets rolled down to his waist, his brawny, hairy chest matted with blood. His pale blue, protuberant eyes were open, but he saw nothing. Because a knife was deeply embedded in his chest.
Juliana leaped out of bed, breath catching in her throat, her mouth open in a silent scream. As she concentrated on her husband’s pale, goggling, dead eyes, her breath came back in a single, great gasp.
When she screamed again, this time people came running.
Chapter Two
Events happened outside of Juliana, as if she was sitting in the middle of a glass sphere, one that allowed her to see and hear, but not to participate. She had forced that condition on herself for most of her life, for tedious attendances at court when she was dressed like a doll in stiff brocades, sitting through a recitation by someone who fancied herself an opera singer, smiling at suitors who saw gold coins where her eyes should be. But this time she couldn’t break out. She was trapped.
Her mother-in-law screamed, and in the same breath berated her. “You should not have made such a noise. Now all the servants know. Have you no restraint, no sensibility?”
Striding around the room like a giant bird, her loose gown making her appear even larger, the Marchioness of Urmston poured out her fury. “I do not know what I was thinking, arranging your marriage to my beloved son.” Her ladyship wrung her hands, standing staring at the body of her son, her face whiter than her face paint. Her hair, still in its curling rags, added to the grotesquerie of her appearance.
“Oh my God!”
The marquess stood in the doorway, taking in the gory scene in one glance. Turning, he grabbed the footman by his arm and shoved him toward the housemaid. “Get out! All of you except that one, go!” He indicated Wood, Juliana’s maid. “You stay! Your mistress will need you.”
Grabbing the housemaid, he forcibly shoved her out of the room. Three other servants followed, all except Wood. The woman’s tendency to tell Juliana’s father everything she did or said mattered less now than having someone witness what happened. The marquess looked as if he was ready to kill her, and perhaps the presence of her maid would make him think twice.
His face was heading swiftly toward purple. His prominent blue eyes, so like his son’s when he’d been alive, bulged from his head and veins stood out on his neck. He bunched his fists.
“You killed my boy!” he shouted at Juliana, the words rolling over her head. “You will die for this.”
Wood brought a robe. Juliana slipped her arms in the sleeves. Nobody looked away. They stared at her gore-bedaubed body as if she was an exhibit in a horror
show. The robe would be ruined, but Juliana was glad of its shelter.
The marchioness, pale as death, strode across the room and delivered a sharp slap to Juliana’s left cheek. If Juliana had not grabbed the nightstand for support, she would have tumbled to the floor. At least she could feel the sting from the blow.
“How could we have allowed such as you into our house?” her ladyship cried. “What foolish impulse led us to believe we could trust you?”
Spinning on one heel, she flung herself away. “We have lost all we fought for.”
That was her first thought? She was not as grief-stricken as Juliana had supposed. Her fury was from thwarted ambition, not grief. After all, she had other sons. Godfrey was—had been—her second son.
“Our son is dead,” the marquess said blankly. He turned to the window, the glimmer of tears in his eyes.
Juliana was too shocked to weep. The glass sphere separating her from the rest of the world served as an insulator. She could not stop the fine tremor running through her body, so she folded her arms and hugged herself tightly.
“I did not do this,” she said into the silence.
She couldn’t remember much after the last time Godfrey had taken her. She had definite patches in her memory, but she knew with absolute certainty that she hadn’t killed her husband.
Could she have done this without recalling it later? Surely not. Not unless she had run mad; and while she was not herself, she could think rationally. Surely mad people could not do that.
No doubt the news would reach her parents, if it had not already. Enough people had seen this room, and servants’ gossip traveled faster than lightning. They would be here soon enough. Or send a message that she was dead to them. Juliana would welcome that, but she doubted it would happen.
While she was alive, she had value. As the only offspring of a great house, she bore the burden of inheritance on her shoulders.
“Who else could have done it?” her mother-in-law demanded, her thin mouth hard, her eyes flinty. “Did someone enter the room in the early hours and slaughter him with you by his side? Or did you call for someone? Did you have help? What has my son done that you would do this to him?”
The only thing Juliana’s wayward mind retained was that denial. In her very bones she knew she had not done this thing. “Why would I do this? I married him, didn’t I?”
She cut off what she was about to say next. The marchioness might have killed her for it. But in her heart, she knew that her husband—her late husband—deserved to die for what he’d done to her. And what he’d planned to continue to do. Juliana knew because he’d told her, tortured her with the reminder that this was her life to come.
The woman walked around her, the silk of her blue gown hissing. She stopped a foot away, glaring at her.
She eyed Juliana as if assessing a statue or a side of meat. Totally impassively. Her anger had gone, replaced by cool calculation. “Was the marriage consummated?”
Juliana used what power she had, and stood rigidly, refusing to answer. Only she and Godfrey knew for sure, and he was dead. Any information she had that they did not was to her advantage; anything she could do to save herself, she would. In time, she’d tell them, but she needed someone who knew more than she did about the law to advise her. When her father arrived, if he did, she’d ask him. Whatever his opinions about her failure as a daughter, he’d want her alive.
The remnants of her wedding gown littered the floor. Godfrey had taken a knife and sliced it off her, laughing all the while, especially when she whimpered in fear. She’d stopped whimpering after that and started screaming. Godfrey’s robe remained on the chair where he’d tossed it.
A decanter of wine remained on the small table with the brandy decanter, two used glasses set by it. She could do with a glassful now. Perhaps it would jolt the spirit back into her, so she could feel again.
The tang of freshly spilled blood settled at the back of her throat. The bed was ruined, stiff with brownish red stains, the lifeblood of her husband of a day. No, not even that. They had married at eleven o’clock yesterday, and the elaborately gilded clock on the mantel told her that the time was barely nine.
The gloomy, formal furnishings gave physical form to her mood when she had first entered it, a lamb to the slaughter. At the time, she had thought of the room as a funeral parlor rather than a place to celebrate a wedding, not knowing how appropriate that would become.
“I want you out of my house,” the marquess said. “Gone, do you hear me? I will harbor no murderess here.” He kept his back to her.
Juliana’s body, still naked under the silk robe, was stiff with blood. She had acted as a dam, stopping the stuff pooling on her side. A line of blood had run down the mattress, down the mahogany bedstead and on to the floor. That Persian rug would have to be burned. They would never get the stains out.
Since this would probably be the last time she saw her husband, she gazed on his face. He was handsome in a fleshy way, his lips thick, his eyes pale, his natural fair hair thick and short. No animation remained in his blank stare. He was a husk, a remnant of what once had lived within.
If Godfrey were not born so high, he could have made a living as a bully in an inn, or a wrestler, or a boxer. His chest was broad, his shoulders wide. Stocky, she’d thought on their first meeting.
Godfrey was not marked except for the one, deep wound over his heart. The dagger stuck grotesquely up. A military dagger. She recognized the style and the gilded twine wound around the hilt. He’d been killed with his own dagger, the one he’d used to slice her clothes off.
Godfrey had served in the army, but his role had been one of ceremony; he had never left London. The dagger was part of the trappings of his rank: Captain Lord Godfrey Uppingham. When he was speaking with her during what she could laughably refer to as their courtship, he’d told her of his military years, his uniforms and the glittering diamond orders he possessed. None of which he had earned. Juliana had remained unimpressed.
A flat mahogany box lay on the table under the window, near where she stood. It looked like a gun box, the kind that held dueling pistols. So whoever had killed him had not used those. Perhaps the murderer had needed silence.
His father crossed the room, gazed down and closed his son’s eyes.
Emotion had not yet returned to Juliana, so she could think clearly. While her mother-in-law ranted and raved, wringing her hands, Juliana put her mind to the problem.
She knew she had not killed Godfrey, even though she could not imagine how else it could have happened. Unless he’d killed himself. She dismissed that thought as fast as it had come. He’d had nothing to kill himself for.
Now Godfrey lay there, his spirit completely gone.
She would soon be the same, but only after the silken rope had been tightened around her neck. She could feel it now, inexorably pulling her toward death.
But she would fight that. Although it seemed inevitable, she would not go to the gallows without protesting her innocence at every step.
Chapter Three
At the marquess’s nod, her maid led Juliana to another room, similar to the chamber of death but with no dead man in it.
Silently, Wood stripped Juliana and washed her with cold water, getting rid of every trace of blood. Juliana welcomed the shivering misery. At least she could feel something.
The chant ran through her mind. I did not kill him, I did not kill him, I did not kill him.
Wood brought out her mistress’s usual trappings: the wide hooped petticoat, the elaborate gowns, the hair powder. Juliana said no to it all. “Bring me something simpler.”
Whatever awaited her, she would meet it head-on, with no masks, no subterfuge. Instinctively she understood that she had to show her innocence, demonstrate it with a clear face. She would leave her father and the others supporting her to show all their pomp and power to overawe the authorities.
Only peers of the realm could be tried in the House of Lords, and she was not a peer. She would be tried at the Old Bailey. The man who currently held the seat of magistrate at Bow Street was not awed by anything and he was incorruptible. Henry Fielding, the novelist, and his blind brother John made a formidable, if unexpected bastion against corruption and crime. They had declared as such and were making themselves influential in the law and in the country. She had never met them, though she would certainly have that privilege soon enough.
