In the Lion's Den

Final Developments

Bess

That night, after a lengthy dinner filled with making battle plans for how to prove Sinclair's connection with the murder of Simon's parents and just a few stolen minutes with Simon afterwards, it was difficult for me to fall asleep again, even though I was exhausted.

Simon must have felt the same way.

Close to midnight, he slipped into my room and it felt as if I had summoned him with my fervent wishes.

And when his arms were wrapped around me and his lips pressed kisses into my hair, I finally relaxed and slept.

The next days and weeks went in a whirlwind of legal trials, administrative decisions and wedding preparations.

The contract was the easier thing to resolve.

Lady Beatrice and Cousin Melinda had hired the best law firms in London and together they settled on a strategy to relieve both Marianne and Simon from any negative consequences of the contract.

Mark Caldwell admitted to having used physical duress in order to help Sinclair coerce Simon into signing the second contract, which was then declared void.

The sections concerning Sinclair and MacArthur stayed in effect though, threatening Marianne with debt and poverty.

In a private court session, Simon confessed to being the guilty party for the marriage not going forward due to immoral actions.

As a result, it was decided that because of that, the debt charged on the MacArthur estate had to be covered by Marcus Sinclair, along with a generous dowry and allowance for Marianne.

Lady Beatrice took her in and Marianne, after following all the legal proceedings with eager interest, applied to study the law in Oxford.

The criminal charges against Harry MacArthur, Mark Caldwell and Marcus Sinclair in contrast were debated in public inquiries and later judged accordingly.

Harry MacArthur was proclaimed guilty of attempted murder and given a life sentence.

His guardianship over Marianne was moved to Lady Beatrice.

Mark Caldwell remained a riddle.

Simon repeatedly tried to contact him, but he refused to communicate with anyone but his lawyer.

Nonetheless, he gave an extensive confession in court and even pointed the authorities to where Caldwell's father had hidden the documents, proving who had employed him for which assassination and when.

Apart from proving Sinclair's guilt, they provided a solution to a whole array of past unsolved murders.

Because of his cooperation, Mark Caldwell received a ten-year sentence, which was on the lower end for the combined charges of false imprisonment and grievous bodily harm with intent.

I was not sure what drove Simon to want to help Mark, but when he explained to me his reasoning, I did understand.

Simon was convinced that having found a surrogate family, people who believed in him and saw the best in him, had saved him from making the same mistakes Mark had done.

And that maybe, if he found people who believed in him and supported him now, he could change as well.

And so Simon wrote letters and tried to visit Mark again and again.

Marianne did too, wanting to thank him for effectively saving her life.

And in the end even I tried, for Simon's sake, even though I had no real inclination to see him.

But it was all to no avail.

Ultimately, Marcus Sinclair was found guilty of solicitation to murder of Captain Andrew Brandon and his wife, and sentenced accordingly.

Simon had put it in his head to go and see the execution of the sentence, and I went with him, knowing that it would be a very emotional moment for him for various reasons.

I closed my eyes through most of it though, just feeling Simon's hand cramp in mine.

He was grim the following days.

The new evidence had been kept a secret until the trial, and so Sinclair had not thought to change his will before being convicted.

Simon was still his main heir, inheriting Sinclair Estate and what was left of the funds after having paid out Marianne.

He did not have any inclination to hold on to a property that held mostly bad memories and so he sold it and divided the yield into four parts.

He intended to keep one of them for whenever we needed it and put the other parts in trust funds, one for Sarah, one for Mark, and one just in case, should any other half-siblings show up.

Sarah for now stayed on, helping in the household, but planned to use her part of the inheritance to buy a small tailor's shop for her mother and study bookkeeping herself.

My mother employed me for much of the wedding preparations while Simon only had one request in regard to the wedding.

He wanted for his friend Tommy to officiate the wedding.

I was not really sure about this at first, but then I saw how strongly he felt about this, and so we wrote to ask him.

The reply came two weeks later and it shocked us.

In the aftermath of the wedding ceremony that went so incredibly wrong, there had been conflicts in his parish over whether he had handled the incident well enough or not.

Eventually, he had been suspended, and his superiors had decided to send him to Cameroon, to be chaplain for the newly installed colonial forces there.

He was to travel at the end of Octobre, so he would not be able to attend our wedding.

But he would come for the engagement dinner my parents had planned for the Octobre 4th, when the trials were finished.

Whenever there were no trials or wedding preparations, we spent as much of the day together, going on long walks, driving out for picnics and once, on a rather warm September day, we even went to the seaside.

Simon's episodes were getting less frequent, and he showed more of the happy, boyish side of him.

And when in the beginning, every parting felt final for me, slowly I learned to trust that we would meet again.

Simon sneaked up to my room almost every night.

Sometimes we would whisper with one another until deep into the night.

Sometimes we would just sleep in each other's arms.

And sometimes, well... sometimes we would enjoy other activities together, getting little to no sleep.

I thought my parents must know.

We tried to be quiet, but I knew for a fact we weren't always.

They never said a word though.