A Woman’s Innocence
Gayle Callen
A Woman’s Innocence
To my mother-in-law,
Joanne Swenton,
a heroine in her own right.
Thank you for your incredible son
and for all the love you’ve shown me.
Contents
Chapter 1
Jail was a terrible place for a woman, even a…
Chapter 2
A wave of guilt made Sam close his eyes with…
Chapter 3
At the stunning touch of her mouth, Sam’s world tilted…
Chapter 4
Sam looked at the stubborn expression on Julia’s face and…
Chapter 5
Julia knew she wasn’t hit by a bullet, but was…
Chapter 6
In the morning, Julia awoke first and found herself on…
Chapter 7
Julia struggled against a feeling of overwhelming sadness and defeat.
Chapter 8
Every bone and muscle in Sam’s body ached, a feeling…
Chapter 9
Julia stood still while Sam dug in his saddlebags and…
Chapter 10
After knocking on the door of Hopewell Manor, Sam resisted…
Chapter 11
Frances did not come for them herself. She sent Florence…
Chapter 12
After supper in the servants’ hall, Julia and Sam found…
Chapter 13
Throughout the morning, Julia watched Sam at work as he…
Chapter 14
Besides Florence, who echoed everything Lucy said, Sam found no…
Chapter 15
A shock went through Sam as he realized what he…
Chapter 16
Julia lay in bed, eyes aching because she couldn’t keep…
Chapter 17
After just an hour’s sleep, they took breakfast with the…
Chapter 18
Julia reached for him and Sam forced himself to step…
Chapter 19
Sam shakily set Julia down on the floor, and watched…
Chapter 20
Sam tried not to show his excitement as he leisurely…
Chapter 21
After seeing that Frances had recovered, Julia spent the morning…
Chapter 22
The afternoon was full of a mellow warmth and hazy…
Chapter 23
In the middle of the next morning, Julia needed to…
Chapter 24
Sam was feeling rather relaxed, knowing that his enemy was…
Chapter 25
Colonel Whittington arrived the next afternoon, distracting the staff from…
Epilogue
“When is that baby going to be born?” Nick Wright…
About the Author
Other Romances
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Leeds, Yorkshire
September 1844
Jail was a terrible place for a woman, even a guilty one. As Samuel Sherryngton stared at the dilapidated building in a rough-looking neighborhood in Leeds, he found himself hesitating, his jaw tight from spending so many hours grinding his teeth in angry frustration. Julia Reed was in there, having spent ten days awaiting transport to trial in London, charged with treason.
He hadn’t seen her since she’d been led away, claiming her innocence with weary desperation. He still felt a pang of shock and disbelief, and a rage he sometimes wondered if he could continue to control.
How had this happened to bright and sunny Julia, the little girl who followed him through gardens so many years ago? How could she have betrayed her country, her family—him? He knew he was taking this too personally, for they had not been close in many years. But thousands of people had died because of her. And he’d spent the previous month of August chasing her through England, ready to intercept her before she could kill the man who would testify against her.
Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and entered the jail. Even in the front office, the stench seeped out, full of hopelessness and fear.
It was easy for him to obtain permission to see Julia. A few shiny coins were all that mattered to the jailer. After agreeing to their transaction, Sam set a basket on the desk.
The man tilted back his chair and smiled wolfishly, his missing front teeth a black hole in his face. “Ye brought her food, then, eh? The wench could use some. She eats like a horse.”
Sam leaned over the desk, directing some of his anger at the jailer. “You had better be taking good care of the prisoner. The charges against her have the attention of Queen Victoria.”
The jailer affably lifted his hands. “Ye need not complain about me, sir. She gets what everyone else does.” Then he sorted through the basket, taking away the bottle of cider and several meat pies for himself.
“No glass in the cell, guv’nor,” he said with a smirk.
Sam waited impatiently while the man unlocked the door, lifted an oil lamp, and led him down a dark passage. On either side were doors with bars as a viewing window. The air was hot, heavy, full of despondency. Someone coughed repeatedly, a deep emptying of the lungs. Another prisoner begged to ask a question, and the jailer ignored him.
“You don’t have a woman’s area?” Sam asked sharply.
“How big a jail does this look like?” the man replied over his shoulder. “This ain’t London. And the lady got a window, somethin’ rare.”
At the last door, there was a feeble light from within the room, the promised window.
The jailer unlocked the door. “Ye want me to come in with ye?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sam said. He stepped through the doorway and straw crunched under his feet. “Julia?” His voice sounded harsh even to himself. He’d get nowhere with her if he couldn’t control himself.
She made not a sound. The door clanged shut behind him. There was a mound of blankets on the cot and a bucket in one corner.
“Call when ye need me,” the jailer said. His uneven footsteps faded away.
“Julia?” Sam said again, louder, with an edge of worry he thought he’d never feel for her again.
The blankets suddenly moved, and in the dim light he watched the woman push herself slowly to sit against the wall. The white-blond hair that so distinguished her hung disheveled and dull. She wore a thin, shapeless dress, more a smock, that sagged off one white shoulder.
He should despise her for what she’d done—but something nagged at him each night as he lay sleepless in a nearby hotel.
“Sam?” Her usually expressive voice was cold.
He nodded and took a step toward her, watching as she sat up straighter. “How are you, Julia?”
She cocked her head. “Well, that’s a ridiculous question,” she said sarcastically.
He sat down on the edge of the cot, testing it first with his weight, to make sure it didn’t collapse beneath them both. He set the basket between them.
“Food?” she asked.
“Yes.”
They stared at each other in the gloom, and he saw the dirt that smudged her face, the dark shadows beneath eyes that glistened. But she didn’t cry.
He almost wished she would.
“So you brought me food, Sam. Am I supposed to thank you? What more could you want from me?” She drew her knees up against her chest and hugged them to her, though it was hardly cold in this oven of a jail.
It was just another barrier between them.
“I don’t know,” he said, giving in to the bewildering thoughts that chased around inside his head. “This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
“If you’re looking for redemption, then y
ou might as well leave.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then just go. Surely you’ll see me at the trial in London, you and your fellow soldiers, full of enthusiasm, ready to gloat.”
Sam closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “You think I’m enthused about any of this? This type of crime…I still can’t grasp that you were a part of it.”
She sighed again and spoke in a dull, flat voice. “Don’t bother hoping that I might incriminate myself. I didn’t do anything. I’ve already told you that. But no one will believe me.”
“There’s too much proof,” he said forcefully.
“Sam, who could possibly hate me enough to want me dead?” she continued. “You know that’s the punishment for treason. Death by beheading.”
He said nothing, sickened by the thought of her baring her long white neck to a blade. She sounded so convincing, so desperate. She had always been able to appeal to his protective instincts.
What if she was telling the truth?
That was why he was really here, wasn’t it? Some part of him still thought there had to be a mistake somewhere. Was he just a fool?
“I just saw Edwin Hume,” Sam found himself saying against his better judgment. Hume was to testify that he’d worked for Julia, passing along information about British troops to the Russians—information that had helped ensure the deaths of sixteen thousand soldiers and their families in Afghanistan.
For a man trying to save his own neck, Edwin hadn’t even been able to look Sam in the eyes. He’d taken to drinking, and would now have to be guarded to make sure he would remain a credible witness at the trial.
“He’s lying,” Julia whispered angrily, “but I can think of no reason why. He was part of my household, my governess’s shy son. When I was young, you always encouraged me to befriend him.”
“He was more of your age,” Sam said briskly. “I was so much older than you. It was inappropriate for me to be your constant companion, even if it was in simple friendship.”
“There were only six years between us. Not so much.”
“Maybe not now, but back then—” He broke off. She’d been the master’s daughter, he the gardener’s son, and at the end a grown man to her fourteen years. He had realized they couldn’t be friends anymore.
Julia sighed. “Edwin and I shared our first kiss.”
He said nothing, though he remembered well his feelings of jealousy. That sweet kiss, not meant for him, had been the final catalyst for Sam’s entry into the army of the East India Company. He knew even then that he could not stay in England and watch her grow up and away from him. Had she felt deserted? Was it his fault that she’d turned to other men?
“And now Edwin has betrayed me,” Julia continued harshly, but with bewilderment. “I haven’t seen him in ten years, since I joined my brother in India. I had no idea Edwin had even left England, and I certainly never saw him in Afghanistan. I can’t believe that he conceived this plot against me. The man I knew would have been incapable of such a crime.”
Sam thought of Edwin, a drunkard now, a man beaten by life. Was there a chance that Edwin was lying, that someone else was involved in a deliberate attempt to destroy Julia?
“Tell me this proof,” she said fiercely, her fists clenched on her knees. “Explain it all to me. I was in shock when you arrested me, and I remember little of it. And the jailer just shrugs at my questions.”
He didn’t want to go through it all again, but…something didn’t add up, and he had long ago learned not to ignore his instincts. Maybe if he said it out loud, it would come to him.
“The first thing that alerted us were the whispers of treason we began to hear in Kabul, months before the massacre. Then one of our informants saw a British woman with pale blond hair deliver a letter to the hideout of a Russian officer.”
He saw her stiffen, but her voice was brisk and impassive. “There are no other blond Englishwomen?”
He shrugged. “He said the woman’s hair was so blond as to be white. And we already knew you’d been in Kabul unescorted, because I had discovered you. Your brother is a British general—surely you can understand why you were one of the few people with access to military information.” He raised a hand before she could protest. “In no way did we believe it was you just from this meager evidence alone. But then Nick Wright was visiting the Russian officer in an unofficial capacity, and he saw a necklace casually left on a table. He knew he had given it to you.”
Would she deny her affair with Nick—or with the Russian?
Her eyes grew as frosty as ice. “As I told you when you arrested me, it had disappeared from my jewelry box.”
“You’re trying to say that somebody took it to frame you. You were living with your brother, so he had access. Who else did?”
“Our servants. We’d brought a cook and maid from India with us. We had officers for dinner several times a week. I couldn’t even begin to name them all.” She lifted her chin as if to say she’d proved her point.
“As you’ve already seen, we have two of the letters written in your own hand, with a code added that betrays British military troop strength.”
“Anybody could have intercepted those letters and added their own code.”
“We have documented testimony you were seen delivering them!”
She flung her hands up. “Your witness could have been paid to say whatever the real traitor wanted him to say!”
His anger faded, replaced by tired bewilderment. “Altogether this evidence is damning, and you can’t refute any of it.”
“The real traitor is out there, Sam,” she said passionately. “The evidence was all set up for you too perfectly.”
He was being a fool, letting her sway him. But what if she was right? Could he watch her go to her grave, without being absolutely sure?
He frowned. “Tell me again why you traveled north to Leeds to meet with Edwin Hume.”
She twisted to face him, her knees now on the cot, and leaned toward him. “My old governess died in her sleep, and she left possessions my brother thought Edwin would want.”
He well remembered Lewis Reed, now a general in the queen’s army. As young boys they’d played together, but Lewis had soon realized the differences in their stations. There had been animosity between them from then on, and Sam had been stunned by Lewis’s indifference to his sister.
Yet Julia claimed that the governess’s death was the catalyst for her journey. Edwin had said this story was agreed on beforehand, should their meeting be discovered. But the old woman had died only a few weeks ago. Had the story been concocted before she died? And did that mean someone had deliberately killed the governess, just to fashion an alibi? Sam needed to question Edwin further.
And if Julia had betrayed her country for money, where had the money gone? None had been found. He stared into her face, not allowing himself to believe that there was a chance she could be innocent. For a moment, her eyes caught the scant light from the window, and seemed to shine with that odd blue color of stained-glass windows that had always fascinated him.
“No more questions, Sam?” She tilted her head mockingly. “Nothing else to go over?”
He got to his feet. He was on his own trying to look deeper into her case. Everyone else believed a swift trial and execution were all that was left. He couldn’t go to his compatriots, Will Chadwick or Nick Wright. Not only did they believe her guilty, but Will was off on his honeymoon and Nick had gone to offer his own marriage proposal.
They’d been three spies ordered to uncover a plot against England—maybe only a spy could discover the real truth.
And Sam was a damn good spy.
“I have to go,” he said, turning to rap on the door.
She scrambled to her feet, tall in the meager cell. To his surprise, she asked, “Will you come back?”
Just an hour ago he would have refused. “I promise I will,” he said, then turned away as the jailer arrived.
Julia watched the do
or close behind Sam and, though she hadn’t thought it possible, felt even more alone than before. The jailer leered at her between the bars before he followed Sam down the hall, but she only turned her back, having learned that he was too much a coward to attempt her harm.
She went to the window and pressed her face to the bars, her only view the polluted shores of the Aire River, crowded with mills and slaughterhouses. The smell was little better out there, but she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of freedom.
It had been ten days since she’d been cut off from the world, ten days of listening to the hopelessness of other prisoners, the occasional shouts or the quiet sobs late in the night. The despair of this place weighed on her, threatening to close her throat with the hoarse sobs she yet held back. She’d cried when Sam and Nick had first captured her, but not since. She was too numbed by all that had happened, all they’d accused her of.
She had her sins, some of which she didn’t want revealed—but treason and murder weren’t among them. So many people she’d known had been among the dead, their friendships lost to her forever. Her brother had been transferred from Afghanistan back to India six months earlier, and she’d gone with him, realizing only later how fortunate they’d been. Thousands and thousands of men, women, and children were killed by the Afghanis, who’d wanted the British invaders gone. Even now, the images of their faces still haunted her—the officers’ wives who’d insisted on inviting her to dinner whenever the soldiers were away, the children who gathered in awe around her horse, which had been bred to be the fastest. They were all dead, slaughtered as they tried to leave the country under a peace treaty in the dead of winter.
And her own government was accusing her of causing the slaughter. Grief and despair welled up inside her again, and she fought it back, knowing she needed a clear mind.