Heathbrook glared at him. “I can take care of my own, damn you.”
“Thank you,” Giselle said hastily. “I am sure everything will be fine.”
“I hope so.” Then with a bow to her, Scovell left.
“What was that about?” Giselle whispered in English.
“Scovell sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” When she looked confused, he sighed. “I told him about our bargain.”
“Are you not worried that Jon will hear of it?”
“I made Scovell promise not to tell anyone. But he guessed why I got engaged so suddenly, and that left me with no choice.”
She chuckled. “How unusual for you.”
“Don’t tweak my nose over it, for God’s sake.”
“Why not? He was being very sweet, and you do not appreciate that.”
“Being sweet toyou,you mean. Not so much to me.”
Her pretty eyes sparkled at him. “That seems to be happening to you a great deal lately.”
He couldn’t deny that. And he probably deserved it, too. He only hoped the court didn’t see it that way. Because if he couldn’t gain custody of his brothers, all of his machinations—including his faux engagement—had been for naught.
Giselle had not known what to expect at the Court of Chancery, mostly because she’d never been inside any court, in EnglandorFrance. It was just her and Heath and his lawyer Mr. Pitney on the one side and Mr. Yates and the man’s attorney on the other. Maman was seated with her and Heath, too, since Mr. Pitney had felt that her presence might play on the sympathies of the judge.
But was that even possible? As they rose for the Lord Chancellor, the judge who entered the courtroom, resplendent in his black robes with their gold stripes and his white, full-bottomed, powdered wig, did not seem to have any sympathies toward anyone. He scowled at them indiscriminately, as if the very fact that they graced his court annoyed him.
Giselle leaned over to whisper to Heath, “Where are the boys?”
“Outside in the hall, probably.”
“Have they no say in who their guardian is?”
“Evan and Kit do because they’re over fourteen,” Heath explained, “but I doubt they know that they do. And why would Yates tell them? He would not wish to have them choose between me or him. They would choose me. Or Kit would, at any rate. I no longer know about Evan. He seems to have taken on some of Yates’s own traits these days.”
She eyed him askance. “Or he is just a typical boy of eighteen who cannot tell his friends from his foes and so would rather keep his distance from all.”
Heath released a breath. “You’re right. He certainly doesn’t seem to be sure of his enemies these days.”
“Shallyoutell them they have a choice?”
He looked startled by the question. “And have them make the wrong one? There’s too much at stake for that.”
She was about to point out that he was then no better than Yates, when court was called to order, and they had to take their seats.
The two barristers took turns explaining why they thought their respective clients deserved to have custody. Then the evidence portion of the trial began.
What followed from Mr. Yates’s side of the argument was a parade of six women with flamboyant personalities wearing gowns that ranged anywhere from desperately cheap to wildly extravagant. As each came in and stated her name, Heath groaned.
Because, as it turned out, they were all former ladybirds or actresses or married acquaintances of his lordship. A couple were détenus, reminding her that Heath was not to be trusted when it came to women. She even knew one of them, who waved to her as she walked past, and actually called out, “Mademoiselle Bernard! It’s good to see you again.”
Even as Giselle swallowed hard, Mr. Yates’s attorney began to speak. “My apologies, Your Honor, for the language I am about to use. But the women you see here are all willing to testify to havinghad … er … intimate relations with the earl upon several occasions.”
Heath had gone red in the face, but Giselle could not tell if it was from anger or embarrassment.
“That should demonstrate adequately to you, Your Honor, that his lordship tends to spread his affections around, so to speak. That his character is the sort we find in the unreliable ne’er-do-wells who populate the city now that the war is over. That a man of his proclivities—”