Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews! Glad everyone likes it. This chapter is short - sometimes shorter is more powerful.
The news splashed all over the papers in the gossip column.
Former doctor arrested for attempted murder again!
The long-dead Marchioness will have justice!
Ex-physician on trial for illegal surgery!
She threw down the paper and blew her nose into the handkerchief. "Brigands, I can't stand it. They don't know him and treat him like a monster. He left two days ago, and they celebrate in town like he was some oppressive ruler."
"They do not understand. Eat your breakfast, my lady. The babe needs food." He patted her back.
"Dear, can't you take her to find lawyers who will defend him?" his wife asked from bed. Her color improved more each day.
"He has the only lawyer I could find to take the case," he sighed.
"Perhaps they'll let me testify. I can tell them that he -" she sniffled.
Brigands shook his head. "My lady, you've only know him for a couple months. Gossip says he saved you from starvation by making you his mistress under the guise of a wife title. You'd have no credibility. The jury is already out for blood." He dropped his head into his hands from his seat on the edge of the bed. "I don't think there's anything we can do."
"Take me to him. There has to be a way. Maybe he knows of something from the trial last time. Maybe a lawyer from that case would defend him."
He stared at her. "Take you to a prison? He'd have my head, assuming we didn't die from picking up a plague or something there. No."
"Please." She turned to his wife. "If it was Brigands, wouldn't you need to see him? To see that they aren't harming him? That he isn't starving or ill? He has another week until the trial, and his injuries haven't healed yet."
His wife gave him a firm look. "Take her."
"I'll take her."
She turned. Dr. Englewood stood in the doorway, right on schedule for the rabies injection. Her heart dropped. Mark wasn't even getting the rabies treatment. She turned away from him.
"My lady, I know you are angry with me. What choice did I have?"
Whirling in the chair, she hissed, "You could've listened to his diagnosis!"
"He was not technically a physician," he countered gently.
Her voice rose to a shout. "He was one of the best goddamn physicians in his field! He has experience you do not possess! You both took oaths to save lives and put patients first! You put your pride first!" She thrust a finger at the ground. "He kept his vows even though it cost him his life! And you sent him to the gallows for doing what you should've done!" She shot to her feet, blood hot with rage. "It's all because an unlicensed doctor told you that you were wrong! Get out!"
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I should've listened." He met her cold eyes. "You're right - I blew him off because he's not a doctor anymore. You don't know how it's eating at me - "
"And you don't know how it's killing me to watch my husband go to the gallows because he did the honorable thing! Get out of this house!"
"You need the injection - "
Storming over to him, she glared. "Leave it. Then get out and don't come back." She swept past.
Brigands entered a few minutes later with the injection. "My lady, you and the babe need this. Who is to give it to you?" He fretted.
She stared out the window over the gentle snowfall blanketing the world in white. "The physician from the next town is coming - Tim sent word last night. I will take that one to Mark and pray he's had enough treatments because one way or another, he's getting out." Her voice held a steel undertone never heard before. There was no longer a place for a meek, rejected outcast. She was a marchioness whose husband needed her to throw around her power and make everyone else think she knew exactly what she was doing.
"You need to be ready for the worst..."
"I thought this Christmas couldn't get any worse - losing Papa, having no food or home, a babe coming, no wedding ring..." She looked down at the gold band on her finger. "I have everything without the fear of a man running my life, like I wanted two months ago. And yet I would give anything to have the Devil Debonario back home. I didn't know it was possible to still breathe with pain like this."
Footsteps crossed the room and an arm wrapped around her shoulders. "We will go to him tomorrow. We will find a way out, my lady."
"And the sheriff will come too," she said.
She held her belly and swallowed down her stomach as the carriage bounced on the two-hour ride to the London prison. Brigands tried to insist on stops to rest, but thoughts of Mark thrown in filth and left to rot pushed her on. Perhaps the babe knew something was wrong or God took mercy, but the babe kept quiet.
The carriage pulled up to a dirty, crumbling building that smelled of filth even from the outside. Fierce armed guards stationed around made her heart beat faster, but it was the screams from within that terrified. There were so many screams of pain that it was impossible to make out any of them as Mark. She clung to Brigand's arm, thankful that he wasn't a frail man as her only ally in this frightening place.
He led her through a front door and to a desk where a severe-looking man sat. "We're here to see Marcus Debonairo," he announced like a king not to be disobeyed.
The man smirked. "William, take them to the gallows wing." Then he eyed her. "Tis not a place for a woman."
She held his eye, Mark's words echoing in her head. Hold your head high, Tanya.
A huge man with pistols and a baton on his belt rose and opened a heavy wood door.
The walk took forever, seeming to go through half the prison. Brigands kept a tight hold on her arm as men in cells gawked and made remarks that burned her ears. "Don't make eye contact," Brigands whispered and pulled up her hood, concealing her face.
The stench of waste and unwashed men threatened to bring up the little food she had eaten for breakfast. Brigands walked her around yellow puddles in the hall. When she was nearly ready to scream from frayed nerves, the man turned down a hall without cells. She sighed in relief - until she glanced out a tiny window on the left. It overlooked the gallows in the center of the courtyard, as if laughing at the men within the walls.
Another door. The men in this hall didn't have filthy cots but straw as beds and windows. Windows that overlooked the gallows. This must be the hall where Mark was. These men looked dangerous. These men didn't make crude comments but tried to grab at her skirts. One man caught it.
The guard whirled and slammed the baton against the man's arm, a horrid crunch and scream of pain echoed. She startled hard at the violence and stared in horror as the guard walked away from the man whose arm he'd just broken. Brigands wrapped his arm around and pulled her closer. One cell at the end was quiet as they approached.
A man leaned against the back wall of the cell with his legs stretched out and head bowed in despair. His clothes had so much filth that he looked like a pauper. His unshaven face and disheveled hair didn't hide the flush of fever in his face. His hands rested in his lap in shackles. If not for his swollen knee, he may've been unrecognizable at a glance.
"Mark." Letting go of Brigands, she rushed to the cell.
His head shot up with wide eyes. He pulled himself to his feet as fast as he could and limped heavily to the bars. "Tanya, what are you doing here? It's not safe," he rasped, his voice terribly hoarse.
She touched his hands that wrapped around the bars. "You're burning up." Reaching through the bars, she touched his damp brow before he pulled back. "Brigands, his bag."
"You shouldn't be here," Mark protested.
Brigands handed her the bag, and she turned to the guard. "Open the door, please."
"No one goes in," he snorted and folded his arms over his chest.
"He's ill!"
The man didn't budge.
"You have no right to deny him medical care." Pulling herself up to her full height, she glared at the guard.
The moment she rattled off the statute number for it, he snapped, "Shut up!" Then he opened the door.
She stepped in.
"No!" Mark held up a hand and limped toward her. "Don't touch the straw - there's lice. Don't touch anything. Disease is everywhere in here."
The guard slammed the door, nudging her a little closer into the cell.
She reached to hug him as he stopped before her, tears springing to her eyes. "Mark."
He stepped back. "No, I'm infected. Don't touch - I'm not sure what I have."
So she dropped her arms and let the tears fall.
"Don't cry. It'll be alright." It looked like it ripped his heart out to be so close yet so far apart.
"No, it won't. The papers are turning you into a monster." She wept and pulled down the hood.
"Tanya," he said, his voice hoarse but gentle, "You need to focus on taking care of the babe. Everything will work out how it's meant to."
He looked so terribly ill. Stepping forward, she unbuttoned his shirt to check the sutures. Perhaps they were infected and causing the fever.
Someone whistled. "Pass her over when you finish with her!"
Mark didn't pay attention but tried to jerk the material from her hands. But it wasn't before revealing black, long bruises on his chest.
Stepping around, she yanked up the back to see worse bruising. "Why did they beat you?!"
"Tanya, you need to go."
"That's not all they did," someone laughed from a nearby cell.
"What?" Oh god, what had they done to him? The hoarseness...maybe it wasn't from illness but from screaming.
He looked at Brigands. "Take her home."
"No! I'm not leaving you like this!" She dug in his bag, and he quietly let her tend to the sutures as best as the filthy conditions allowed.
When she couldn't stall any longer, he caught her eye. "You need to go now."
"I need the names of lawyers. Any lawyers. I'll go see them - "
"Tanya, you need to rest. I have a lawyer - "
"No. Good ones - big name ones. Ones who have the power to sway the public eye."
"I don't know any. It will be fine. Please go before you get sick."
"I'll find someone. I'll bring him to the trial."
He herded her toward the door. "Go. The men are getting restless and these cells aren't that strong. I beg you, go." Desperation leaked into his voice.
She spun around. And stopped herself at the last minute from kissing him. Her falling ill wouldn't help him get out of here. "I love you."
A small smile touched his lips. "I miss you." Tears welled in his eyes.
The guard stepped forward. "Time's up."
"Keep your leg clean." She slipped the rabies syringe into his hand and met his eyes.
"Go." He slid it in his waistband.
"Out!" The guard snapped the command.
She stepped carefully around the straw, but the guard grabbed her arm and yanked her hard, her belly hitting him.
"Get your hands off her!" Mark ordered and broke between them to free her. Then Mark turned to her. "Are you alright?"
The guard whipped out his baton and slammed it against Mark's back.
A cry of pain and Mark grabbed the bars, stopping himself from slamming into her. He panted shallow breaths like a rib bruised or broke. "Go," he gasped, keeping himself between her and the guard. "Before you get hurt."
The guard raised his baton again.
She darted under his arm and stepped in front of the guard.
"Out of my way!" The guard roared in a fit.
"Tanya," Mark panted, leaning against the bars and holding his side. He was too weak and ill to put up much of a fight.
She stepped out but gave a forceful tug to the man's sleeve, making him stumble out. Then the guard raised the baton at her. But she held her ground.
Mark slammed himself against the door to break out. "NO!" The iron groaned.
"Do it," she hissed. "Let's take battery to a civilian to the Courts. Then we can point out battery to the prisoners."
"Tanya, go," Mark begged, hysterical panic rising in his tone.
Brigands stepped before her as a shield, but she stepped to his side and swept aside the cape to reveal her belly. "Death to the future Duke carries heavy charges." Please, let him believe the lie or be too dumb to know better.
The guard paled. "You can't prove it. Murderers and thieves are not witnesses!"
Sending up a prayer that the sheriff had been able to sneak in to testify to any harm he'd witness to Mark, she said with a tone of steel, "Sheriff."
The sheriff stepped out from a dark corner of the hall. "I saw the entire thing." He came forward with shackles. "You're under arrest for assault." He slapped them on the guard and hauled him out.
She met MArk's wide eyes. "I'm bringing you a lawyer to the trial," she stated.
"Tanya, how did you know to bring the sheriff?" He leaned against the bars, holding his side.
"I may not be smart like you, but I have enough streets smarts. My dear, I fear we're in a situation where I have the upper hand on you."
He cracked a smile. "Tanya, you're intelligent in many ways - you just don't know it yet. I have a feeling England is about to deal with a force to be reckoned with."
She held her head high, feeling every bit the marchioness, if not a queen, for the first time. Her gaze could level any man. "Oh, I will bring Hell, husband." Then she handed the medical bag to Brigands and folded her hands. Then she turned back to Mark. "I will return in seven days."
"Yes, my lady." Hope glinted in Mark's eyes. "I believe even the guards will announce your arrival."
Her eyes held his, unwavering and fierce. "No." The helplessness and grief disappeared, replaced with determination that the King himself ought to fear. "The cannon fire will."
