Page 88 of How the Earl Entices

With no choice, she pulled the ruby ring from her finger and placed it into his palm.

“As fast as you can,” she repeated in a whisper, blinking hard to keep back her tears. Then she climbed inside, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed.

Chapter 26

Ross gritted his teeth as he gazed out over the chamber, not knowing whether to shout in anger or laugh in bitter amusement. The House of Lords had erupted into chaos and confusion already, after only two hours of a trial that was expected to last at least a fortnight before the verdict was pronounced. Just long enough to have every embarrassing bit of his life—and then some—flayed open for public scrutiny.

Good Lord, he’d rather be hanged now than suffer a moment longer of this.

The Lord High Steward pounded the end of his white staff against the floor, but none of the men paid him any mind. They were too busy squabbling and arguing amongst themselves, with the solicitors and barristers doing the same right there before the bar. The Duke of Wembley nearly came to blows with Lord Houghton, their fisticuffs broken up only by the quick action of the chamber guards, one of whom lost his hat in the scuffle.

“Point of order!”

The trial had turned into a debacle. Because not one of the so-called quality wanted to miss what was certain to be the trial of the century, peers filled the chamber to overflowing. Including some who rarely attended the sessions, some who had been far into their cups only a few hours earlier, and all of them loudly opinionated on whether Ross had actually committed treason, petty treason, or simply espionage. As if any of it made a difference to how tightly the noose would fit around his neck.

Then, there was Wentworth.

Ross slid a murderous gaze sideways to where the ambassador sat, surrounded by his cronies. A smirk on the man’s face showed how much he was enjoying bearing witness to Ross’s downfall.

“Point of order!”

This time, the loud shout from the floor caught enough attention that voices fell quiet just long enough for Lord Batten to be heard as he waved his hat in the air to be recognized to speak. But as with everything else that had happened so far, proper procedure fell by the wayside as men began to jeer at him, behaving more like the MPs in the Commons than distinguished peers of the realm.

“Point of order!” Batten tried again. This time, he ignored the jeers and continued on, shouting them down, “This is the first trial of a peer for treason in nearly one hundred years.” He turned in a circle so that his voice would carry above the din to the far corners of the room. “The proper procedure is in question.”

More jeers and boos went up, until the entire room had joined in.

Ross inhaled a deep breath for patience and kept his expression inscrutable, not allowing the humiliation of this debacle to register on his face. For his entire adult life, he’d worked tirelessly to serve England, to be a statesman with decorum and dignity. Only for his reputation to be sullied by this.

“Spalding is an earl,” Batten continued, drawing boisterous laughs at that embarrassingly obvious statement. His face reddened, yet he pressed on, “It is not our place to try him for treason.”

That statement shocked the room. Even the lawyers were taken aback as indignant shouts went round ofTrial of peers by peers!

“It is our right—nay, our very responsibility—to ensure an attainder first!” He pounded his fist on a table when astonished gasps went up at that declaration. “His crimes have betrayed England, and he does not deserve any of the privileges afforded him as a peer. He has forfeited the respect and dignity of the title, and so he should be stripped of all rank and privilege, to be tried like a common criminal!”

His jaw tightened at that. So much for a fair trial.

“The king must attaint!”

More angry thumps of Batten’s fist were lost beneath the noise of confusion and chaos that erupted so loudly that they could have been the crowd at the Ealing races instead of England’s so-called finest. Wentworth’s knowing smirk only deepened at the unfolding fiasco.

Batten pointed an accusatory finger at Ross as he sat on the platform that served as the trial’s dock, placed on display like a stuffed peacock for all to gawk at.

Ross’s eyes met Christopher’s as his brother crowded into the rear of the chamber with the guards, even then allowed only just inside the door. Kit solemnly returned his gaze.

Guilt gnawed at his gut. His brother didn’t deserve to have the family name dragged through the mud like this, to lose their fortune, or have his future ripped away the way it would be once the trial was over and Ross was hanged. Kit would be expelled from the Home Office and marked forever as the brother of a traitor, having no peace for the rest of his life.

What Ross regretted most about this—theonlything he regretted—was what his conviction would do to the people he cared about. To Christopher, for destroying four hundred years of family legacy connected to the Spalding title, to Mary Jacobs for never bringing to justice the man who murdered her husband, and to Grace, for not giving her and her son the future they deserved.

“Attainder is meaningless!” Lord Daubney shouted at Batten from his seat at the side of the chamber. “A peer cannot claim privilege in cases of treason, you pompous blowhard of a—”

Laughter and shouts drowned out the end of that tirade. The pounding of the High Lord Steward’s staff went unheard, so did pleas by the lawyers to allow them to continue to present their evidence.

“The Spalding title must first be attainted,” Batten insisted, his cheeks now turning scarlet. “It is a matter ofmoralprinciple!”

A final insult, and it galled him. It wasn’t enough for them to destroy his family’s reputation beneath a charge of treason. No. They wanted to humiliate him first.

Amid the clamor and confusion, Ross stood and stepped forward. He shouted out, “I claim only those rights due to me as a servant and citizen of England!” He glared at Batten, so ferociously that the man’s ruddy face paled to white. “Unless you prefer to play at being king, to strip even those God-given rights away from me.”