The Smile in Court

Everyone expected tears. Instead, she smiled delightedly.

Clara Merivale sat in the defendant’s chair like it were a chaise lounge, gloved hands folded, a ribbon perched smartly in her hair. Behind her, the courtroom murmured, eyes blinking in disbelief. The charge was attempted murder—of her husband, no less—and still she smiled, as if amused by the inconvenience.

The barrister, Mr. Fennick Greaves, flailed with theatrical desperation. His robes swirled as he twisted toward the jury. “My client is not a criminal,” he cried, pointing a trembling, pale hand toward the ceiling, “she is a shield! A barrier between cruelty and the quiet dignity of survival!”

Gasps, scoffs, and one bark of laughter rose from the pews.

Only Clara remained composed, that maddening hint of mischief in her lips. She didn’t glance at Fennick once. Not even when he used the word “fortify” to describe her “courageous heart, guarded for too long behind the ramparts of a loveless home.”

Fennick was drowning. He knew it. His legal training could not save him from the weight of truth bearing down on his chest. Or the fact that he loved her. That he had wanted her since the first late-night meeting, her voice barely above a whisper, confessing a bruised arm and bruised dreams.

She’d leaned on him, trusted him. But never promised him anything.

The husband had survived—barely. Found unconscious with laudanum in his brandy and a rope around his wrist. Clara said she had found him that way. She had screamed for the servants. She had stayed by his side through the fever.

Fennick had believed her.

At first.

But now? The evidence was damning. The vial hidden in her writing desk. The unsigned letter hinting at a new life “without the weight of the past.” Her refusal to cry. Her refusal to ask him for help during the trial.

He was a tool, and he knew it.

Still, he stood there, arms flung wide, blocking the jury’s judgment like a guard at the gates of truth. “Have none of you loved someone and been wrong?” he asked, voice cracking. “Have none of you mistaken safety for guilt, silence for scheming?”

Clara blinked, once. A long, slow blink. Her smile faltered for half a second. Enough for Fennick to imagine—no, hope—that some part of her felt shame.

Or something else. Something harder to name.

In the end, the verdict came quickly.

Not guilty.

Cheers. Applause. A few boos from the far left benches.

Clara stood, glided past Fennick without a glance, and whispered to no one in particular, “He’ll die next time.”

He turned to face her, but she was already walking away, back straight, the smile back in place.

Fennick lowered himself to the bench, the courtroom spinning around him. He had fortified her defense, guarded her freedom, shielded her secrets.

And somewhere, deep in the walls of his chest, betrayal dug in.

He had wanted her.

But wanting someone isn’t the same as knowing who they are.