Page 57 of The Autumn Wife
With a huff, she said, “Cecile Tremblay.”
If only she’d had time to marry Theo before she’d been arrested—and become Cecile Martin. At least then she would have shaken off the last vestige of her husband from her life.
The clerk wrote her name in his book, and then gestured toward a set of double doors. The guards nudged her into a bare-walled courtroom flanked with narrow windows that filled the space with gray light. A long, gleaming table stretched across the back wall. Before it stood rows of chairs at precise intervals. A fenced dais loomed in the center of the room—the box for the accused—and the solders led her between the rows of seats toward it.
Glancing at the dozen or so people already seated, she recognized Montreal’s only doctor—also the mortician and coroner—who didn’t bother to turn his head to look in her direction.
Then her gaze fell upon a familiar silhouette.
She must have made a sound, for Theo twisted in his chair, swung an arm over the back, and met her gaze with a face that blazed with determination.
He’d come.
He shouldn’t have—she should send him a scolding scowl—but her heart surged aloft at the sight of him.
“Step up, miss,” a guard prodded as they reached the box.
She did as the soldier commanded, tripping up the step and grasping the rail for balance as she fixed her focus on Theo. He wore new clothes—a blinding-white boiled linen shirt and a fine woolen doublet edged with braid. His breeches bore brass buttons. His hair, pulled back in a neat queue, gave emphasis to the slashes of his cheekbones and the cut of his resolute jaw.
During the days they’d been apart, he’d transformed into a free man of stature. How it warmed her sore heart to know at least one of them had shaken off chains.
“All rise.”
At the clerk’s announcement, chairs scraped against the wooden floorboards. The tap of a musket barrel urged her to turn her attention forward. A corner door swung open to the magistrates parading in. The judge wore somber black wool. Another man, more finely dressed, followed behind him. His well-oiled wig sported chestnut-colored curls that tumbled to midchest. The gold trim upon his cinched doublet gleamed in the dusky light.
Heavens alive. She clutched the front rail for balance, her wrist shackles ringing. This was the most powerful man in the entire settlement—Intendant Talon himself.
Everyone in the courtroom sat—except for her, for there was no seat in the box. She wasn’t sure her knees would bend, anyway, as she’d gone as stiff as a corpse.
Why had Talon come all the way from Quebec on the edge of winter to attend this hearing? Was it for the spectacle, a woman accused of murder? Notto protect a King’s Girl, for sure, because when Talon swept up the skirts of his doublet to drop into his seat, he skewered her with a fierce and angry look.
The clerk opened the proceedings by naming her as the accused. He recited the accusation of murder and then called up a witness.
Her shackles clanked.A witness?
She glanced at Theo, now casually bracing an elbow on the back of the seat beside him. He didn’t flinch at all.
She drew a measure of comfort from his ease. The witness, a man she didn’t recognize, tugged on his deerskin tunic and swaggered to the chair. She was too far away to smell him, but she knew such a man would reek of bear-grease. Examining his bearded face and light-colored eyes, she recognized him as a common species ofcoureur de bois,though he was not one of Eduard’s old acquaintances.
The lumbering fur trader sat with an arrogant slouch as a clerk approached and raised a sheaf of papers.
Cecile, swaying on her feet, dug half-moons into her palms
“Sir,” the clerk said, “I have here your signed testimony that I will now read aloud to this court.” The clerk cleared his throat. “On or about the tenth day of June of this year, the deceased, Eduard Tremblay of Trois-Rivières, came out of the wilderness and entered a private drinking house on the westernmost end of the Rue Charles, treating allthe card players, including the witness, to wine and brandy paid for by new pelts.”
“He could be generous, Eduard could,” the man blustered, running his hand down his curly black beard. “That’s why I remember—”
“Sir, be so kind as to not interrupt the proceedings.” The clerk waved the papers in his hand. “You are here to testify to the truth of your signed statement. You’ll have a chance to add detail, but only after I am finished.”
Cecile listened to a tale she’d never heard, afraid to breathe. Eduard had returned to Montreal in June with a large haul of furs and gone straight to a gambling den—no surprise there. Much later, he’d bolted up from a losing hand to announce he had a wife hungry for a tumble in Trois-Rivières. At the crudeness of the report, Cecile choked down a wave of nausea.
“And that was the last time this witness saw Eduard Tremblay alive.” The clerk lowered the paper. “Is this your true and faithful testimony, sir?”
“It is.” The witness tugged on his beard. “Rightly told.”
“Is there anything you’d like to add?”
When the witness shrugged, the clerk turned to her in the box.
