A Breach of Promise

Rathbone looked across to where she sat beside her father. Her expression was completely unguarded. Disbelief and confusion were so naked those next to her were for once ashamed to stare. She barely understood what had been suggested. Rathbone doubted she was familiar with much of the intimacy of normal love, let alone that between man and man. Most girls of her age and station learned little before their wedding nights. He felt profoundly sorry for her. She sat rigid, staring straight ahead as if at some disaster she could not tear herself from. He had seen such wide, fixed eyes and unmoving lips when he had had to tell people of unexpected deaths, or that a case was lost and they would face a fearful sentence. In that moment he had no doubt at all that Zillah had truly loved Melville, whether he was aware of it or not. However blindly, for whatever reason, it was a terrible wrong he had done her.

He looked at Barton Lambert beside her. His expression was completely different. His skin was red with anger and frustration. He turned one way then another, ignoring his wife, who was speaking quietly to him, her cheeks also flushed. Had either of them any idea what they had done to their daughter? Had they allowed their anger, their ambition, their intellectual understanding of the injury Melville had inflicted upon her to obscure any sensitivity or imagination to her i

He wondered briefly, and pointlessly, if Sacheverall had actually spoken to Lambert as he had asked. He thought not. Sacheverall was still relishing his victory, standing, smiling very slightly, surveying the jury, avoiding the judge's eye.

McKeever adjourned the court, a

There was a scramble to leave the public gallery. No doubt journalists would be weighing what they would say and composing it in their minds as they snatched cabs back to Fleet Street. Rathbone could imagine, but nothing that came to his mind would show a shred of compassion and very little reticence. Killian Melville was a well-known figure; so was Barton Lambert. Zillah was young and pretty. There would be plenty of interest.

Rathbone looked at Melville, who straightened his back slowly and lifted his face. He looked appalling, as if he felt so ill he might faint. It was impossible to begin to imagine what he must be feeling.

"I think we should leave," Rathbone said to him quietly. "We ca

Melville swallowed with difficulty. "There's nothing to say," he answered between dry lips. "I never meant to hurt Zillah… or Isaac. And I seem to have done both. Zillah will recover. She will be all right." He screwed up his face as if feeling a physical pain deep inside his body. "What will happen to Isaac? Will he be ruined? Will they try to send him to jail?"

This was no time for false hope for Wolff or for Melville himself. Sacheverall's face should have swept any such delusions away.

"They may. If it is prosecuted there is really very little defense. It is something people don't usually bother with-if no one under the age of consent is involved and no nuisance is caused by acts in public."

Melville started to laugh, quietly, but with a wild desperation that warned it would turn to weeping any moment.

For once Rathbone did not even consider propriety, or even what his professional reputation would suffer. He put his hand on Melville's shoulder and gripped him hard, even prepared to support him physically if necessary.

"Come," he ordered. "The least we can do is offer you a little privacy. They've had their pound of flesh; let us deny them the pleasure of carving it off and watching the blood." And he half hauled Melville to his feet, pulling him through the press of people, elbowing them out of his way with uncharacteristic roughness.

Out in the hallway, Melville straightened up. "Thank you," he said shakily. "But I am composed now. I shall be… all right."

He looked appalling. His skin was flushed and his lips dry. But his eyes were unflinching, and there was a kind of wild, black humor in them. He still knew something that Rathbone did not. Something that mattered.

Rathbone drew in a breath to ask yet again, then knew it would be a waste of time.

"Do you want me to settle?" he asked, searching Melville's face, trying to see beyond the clear, aquamarine eyes into the man inside. What was there beyond brilliance of ideas, the mass of technical knowledge, the dreams in stone of a thousand generations of history stored and made new? What were the private dreams and emotions of the man himself, his likes and dislikes, the fears, the laughter, the memories? Or weren't there any? Was he empty of everything else?

"I won't marry her," Melville repeated softly. "I never asked her to marry me. If I settle now, say I was wrong when I wasn't, what will happen to all the other men in the future, if I give in?"

"You haven't given in," Rathbone answered. "You were beaten."

Melville turned and walked away, his shoulders hunched, his head down. He bumped into someone and did not notice.

Aching for him, confused and angry, Rathbone hurried after him, determined at the least to find him a hansom and see that he was not harried or abused any further. He caught up with him and escorted him as far as the back entrance. He glared at a couple of men who would have approached Melville, and strode past them, knocking one aside roughly.

At the curb he all but commandeered a hansom and half threw Melville up into it, giving the driver Melville's address and passing him up a more than generous fare.

When the cab was safely on its way, he went back into the courthouse having no idea what he was going to do the next day. When the case resumed he would have to try to find something to change the present opinion. What was there? The last witness had turned the balance beyond redeeming. His only hope was to attack, but what good could that do now? Melville was ruined whatever the result. The only possible advantage would be to save him something financially. And perhaps Barton Lambert, at least, might be willing to do that. He had no need of money.

Rathbone's last hope of achieving that by force, if he could not by appeal to clemency, would be to know something about Lambert, or his family, which Lambert would very much prefer to have kept in silence.

But if Monk could not find it within the next twelve hours, then there was nothing left.

Personally, Rathbone would advise Melville to leave England and try to build his career in some other country where the scandal would not follow him or where they had a more liberal view towards men's private lives. There certainly were such places, and his genius was international, unlike language. Thank God he was not a poet!

Ahead of him, Zillah Lambert was standing next to her parents. He recognized her first, seeing her bright hair, its luxuriant waves catching the light from the lamps above her. She still looked bemused, uncertain about the bustle'and clatter around her, like an animal caught in a strange place. He had seen people shocked like that many times. These halls had witnessed so much human agony too raw to be disguised by any dignity or self-protection, too new yet to have found a mask.

Sacheverall walked up to them, still smiling.

Delphine saw him and her expression immediately altered to one of charm and gratitude.

"Mr. Sacheverall," she said earnestly. "I ca