Jane Austen Made Me Do It (52 page)

W
ell hidden from the ordinary world, in a little-known corner of jurisprudential hell considered by many to be nothing more than a myth, a relentless flow of pleadings, motions, and briefs have led to a legal drama of literary proportions
.

A bailiff's high-pitched nasal voice pierced the packed courtroom. “All rise and give homage to the honorable Judge Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Draw near and you shall be chastised. Court is now in session.”

“Objection!” shouted the gangly young lawyer from the defense table, Adam's apple bobbing indignantly.

“Young man,” said Lady Catherine, a severe-looking older woman who nodded and waved like a queen as she entered the courtroom, scarlet robes flowing in her wake, jurors and spectators bowing and curtseying, “I am not accustomed to being interrupted. Though I have not yet deigned to speak. Are you at all familiar with the rules of this court? One does not object until I begin the proceedings. Which I most certainly have not condescended to do.”

“Your Honor,” persisted the young lawyer, droplets of fear
beading his forehead, “I must ask you to recuse yourself from this case.”

Spectators and jurors gasped as if with one collective breath.

“How dare you!” said Lady Catherine, bringing her gavel down upon the polished surface of her bench. “Sit down this moment!”

“With all due respect,” said the lawyer, voice quavering, “you must see that your own interests are directly affected by the outcome of this case, and thus it would be highly prejudicial—”

“Let me be rightly understood,” said Lady Catherine, fixing him with a death stare. “Your duty is to defend the accused—if such a thing were possible—and allow justice to take its course. In this court I am justice. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“One more word, and I shall hold you in more contempt than I already do.”

The young lawyer for the defense sank into his seat and, with trembling hands, wiped his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. He'd done his best. It would likely not go well for his client, but there was nothing he could do about that. No one, least of all he, would ever succeed in removing Lady Catherine from any case over which she wished to preside, especially one in which her own nephew was the plaintiff. The wheels of justice, such as they were, would turn inexorably till they reached their inevitable conclusion. Then again, he'd known what the rules were when he agreed to take this case. If rules they could be called. Most did not even believe in the existence of this court, which was hidden away so cleverly that few had ever stepped foot within its walls.

Its detractors called it the Court of Intolerable Stupidity, and perhaps he had been stupid beyond measure to have put himself in its power. Certainly he did not know anyone who had mastered its workings. Said workings were, in fact, the stuff of legend.
Or nightmare, depending on whether you were crushed beneath justice's wheels or rode them to victory. But that was the lure of the challenge. And he, Fritz Williams, could never resist a challenge. A legal one, that is.

Besides, there was no accounting for the whims and inconsistencies of a jury, even one sitting under the tyrannical eye of the Honorable Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though as Fritz ran his eyes over the knitting ladies, the bored gentlemen, and the surly youths impaneled for this case, there was little reason to believe they would act any differently than their predecessors had done.

“Is the prosecution ready?” said Lady Catherine.

Till now Fritz had not allowed himself to turn his gaze toward the prosecution table, for he would not have had the courage to stand, let alone speak. But now he indulged himself in gazing upon the perfection that was Tawny Wolfson, chief advocate for the plaintiffs.

“I am, Your Honor,” said Tawny, who spent a great deal of her professional energy attempting to mask the voluptuousness of her form with the iciness of her demeanor and the buttoned-up elegance of her attire. She had never been seen by anyone in court with a hair out of place, a wrinkle in her suit, or a tear in her eye.

As was her custom at the beginning of every trial, she had starved herself down to a size 8, but it was only a matter of time before she returned to her usual 12. She was all too aware that she would never achieve the thin-hipped, waif-like style of beauty so prized by men nowadays, but there was no reason for that contemptible Fritz Williams to stare at her like a microbiologist examining a particularly rare strain of bacteria.

It was no different now than it was the first time they had met. A colleague had invited her to a holiday party at Fritz's firm, and when he introduced Fritz to her, Fritz had stared at her, barely mumbled a greeting, and whisked Tawny's colleague away, leaving
her quite alone in a crowd of strangers. Finally, she retreated to the drinks table, where she overheard Fritz saying to a group of men, “Tawny Wolfson? I can't argue with that, but she's definitely not for me,” at which they all had a good laugh.

Even a year later, the memory still stung. The worst part was that she had no idea what she had done to offend this man, who was unfailingly cold to her whenever their paths crossed.

She couldn't be more wrong about Fritz. What she saw as his coldness was actually shyness and embarrassment. And what he had really meant by the comment she overheard at the party was that she would never look twice at a man like him. His flippancy at the time was an attempt to mask his true feelings, for he was smitten by Tawny from the first moment he saw her, which was long before they were introduced. It wasn't just the beauty of her person that captivated him; it was the depth of her accomplishments, for her reputation as someone who fought for her clients and, most of all, for the law, was well known.

Not that her beauty was an inconsequential part of her allure. Everything about her, from the scent of her perfume as she'd walk past him in the halls of justice, to the little wisp of hair at the nape of her neck when her hair was up in a twist, which he would stare at whenever he had the good fortune to stand behind her in an elevator, made him tremble with desire. A desire that would never be fulfilled. Fritz had never been successful in love, always too timid to ask out the women he really found interesting, and unwilling to settle for the women who found him so, as they were generally enamored with the idea of a successful lawyer rather than the reality of who he was. And Fritz longed to be known, truly known, by a woman. But there was little chance of that happening with anyone, let alone Tawny. She was unfailingly icy towards him, though he had no idea why she should dislike him so.

Like now, for instance. She glared at him with her green-gold
eyes, and he felt his face grow hot. He pretended to busy himself with the files on the table before him, hoping that no one would notice his discomfort.

Why was she so intent on intimidating him? As if it weren't terrifying enough to be her adversary in court—a scenario he had longed for as well as dreaded.

“Your Honor,” said Tawny, fortified by her small victory over Fritz, “we will prove that the defendants' so-called literary works have caused grave and irreparable harm to the plaintiffs, who only wish to continue their lives as their Creator conceived them. Since She has long since shuffled off this mortal coil, Her creations must carry Her torch alone, a mission they are hindered from doing with every turn of the page of these heinous works.

“Your Honor, we had hoped that the conviction of the man who authored the most damaging work on record—the infamous film that dared appropriate the name of the Creator's most cherished work—would have brought relief to my clients, as there has since been an embargo of that film's sale in all the Empire. However, the State has neither the resources to do a house-to-house search of the citizenry in order to confiscate all copies, nor the means to staunch the flow of illegal downloads.”

Tawny paused to run her eyes over the jurors and spectators. “The effects on one of my clients have become so severe that the State can only conclude that the screening of this illegal and offensive material has increased rather than diminished since the ruling was made.”

Fritz noted that many of the spectators and jurors looked down at their laps. Were they as unable to withstand Tawny's gaze as he was, or were they motivated by guilt?

“Your Honor,” said Tawny, “I call my first witness—”

Fritz rose to his feet. “Objection! I have not yet made my opening arguments.”

“Silence!” said Lady Catherine.

“But Your Honor,” said Fritz, “how am I to mount a defense if I cannot tell my clients' side of the story?”

“Defense? Ha!” said Lady Catherine. “Your clients not only had the effrontery to ‘continue' the Creator's work and the vulgarity to peep behind the closed doors of Her creations' marital bedchamber, they had the assurance to mock the Creator's work with undead fiends and blood-sucking monsters. This shall not be borne.”

“Your Honor!” said Fritz. “This is highly prejudicial to my clients. You might as well try this case yourself.”

“That is the most sensible thing you have said so far, young man,” said Lady Catherine. “I could save the Court a good deal of time and expense.”

“Your Honor, I beg you!”

Lady Catherine bestowed a predatory smile upon Fritz's clients, a group of mostly women and a few men in their thirties, forties, and fifties, all of whom had a shell-shocked glaze in their eyes. “I have taken the liberty of preparing your lodgings in the dungeons,” she said.

Then she glared at Fritz. “Now take your seat, Counselor, before I put you there as well.”

Fritz knew better than to push it. He gave what he hoped was an encouraging look to his clients, but by now some of them were weeping silently.

Was there even a wisp of a chance that he could save them? All they had done was write stories inspired by the work of one of the most beloved authors of all time—Creator, he must remember to refer to her in this court.

The Creator's characters did not take kindly to the effects those new works had had on their lives. Yes, lives, for as most avid readers had long known without the benefit of so-called rational
proof or the recognition of this court, the Creator breathed life into her characters and the public perpetuated that life. Those characters, in fact, had taken on lives of their own. The more people who read the Creator's works, the longer the duration of their popularity, the stronger was the life force of her creations. And thus anyone who wrote new stories that incorporated her characters tampered with their lives in a manner never intended by their Creator. Which is what led to the groundbreaking case that made watching the most infamous film of the Creator's most famous work a crime in and of itself. And which is why Fritz's clients never really had a chance, opening arguments or no opening arguments.

Fritz sighed. He would do his best for them, no matter what.

“If it please the Court,” said Tawny, “I call my first witness, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

The Court was not only pleased, it exploded in a cacophony of squeals, screams, and gasps. “Darcy! Darcy! Darcy!” arose the spontaneous chant, the women in the courtroom retrieving from some heretofore hidden place placards declaring their devotion.

Lady Catherine pounded her gavel, which was barely audible above the foot-stomping and whistling. “Order! Order or I shall clear this courtroom!”

At once there was silence.

“One more sound, and I shall hold this session in closed court. Bailiff.” She nodded to the stocky, uniformed woman standing guard at the courtroom doors, and everyone turned as one.

The doors opened, and through them walked a remarkably handsome man. At first glance what was most remarkable about him, aside from the rippling muscles on his torso, was that said muscles were in plain view. He was, however, fully clothed, though his shirt was thin, white, and soaking wet, rendering it transparent.

Darcy shivered as he made his way down the aisle towards the witness box, shedding droplets in his wake. The lady by his side—one noticed her almost as an afterthought—was, upon further examination, quite beautiful as well as elegantly dressed in a Chanel-like suit and large round sunglasses. Darcy continued toward the witness box, while the lady left his side to take a seat directly behind Tawny. She removed her sunglasses and, if anyone but Lady Catherine had been watching her, entranced as they were with Fitzwilliam Darcy, they would have seen that with a single cold glance of her bright eyes she did what no one had ever been seen to do before: unnerve Her Honor.

Suddenly, a large female spectator clad in loose trousers and a T-shirt proclaiming in large black letters
TEAM DARCY
bolted to her feet. “Take me to Pemberley, Fitzwilliam!”

“Bailiff! Remove that creature!” said Lady Catherine.

The bailiff bowed obsequiously and complied, but not before the offending woman managed to lob a rather large pair of white panties at the head of Mr. Darcy.