The Duchess's Case: A Fantasy Legal Procedural Novelette: Lost Colony, #1.4

By M.E. Pickett

Time to Read: about 1 hour

 

With her career and her family's prospects at stake, Eleanor Marjoy, a young solicitor, is asked to judge the case of a wealthy and cunning duchess, a case that could condemn a man to his death.

Lost Colony is a quarterly magazine of masterfully crafted mid-length (10,000 to 25,000 words) science fiction and fantasy in all of their varieties. This ebook edition includes an Editor's Note in which the editor explains why this story was chosen for publication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Colony Books
• Release date: Oct 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215689998

Book preview

The Duchess's Case © 2022 Rebecca Marshal

Editor’s Note © 2022 M.E. Pickett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the copyright holder, except for brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Cover image by AlexeyMaltsev via Shutterstock

Cover and interior design by M.E. Pickett

Lost Colony is a publication of Lost Colony Books, a division of Great Pond, LLC

www.lostcolonymagazine.com

www.lostcolonybooks.com

Lost Colony and its colophon are trademarks of Great Pond, LLC

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Volume 1, Issue 4

October 2022

Contents

About Lost Colony

The Duchess’s Case

About the Author

Editor's Note

About the Editor

Support Lost Colony

About Lost Colony

Lost Colony publishes one masterfully crafted piece of mid-length (10,000-25,000 words) speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy in all of their manifestations) every quarter. Quarterly stories are published for free on our website (with ads) and for one or two dollars as an ebook (without ads). Once a year, all four of the stories that have appeared in the magazine are published in an annual anthology, both electronically and in print. If you buy the ebook of either the quarterly story or the annual anthology, or if you buy the print version of the annual anthology, you will also get editor’s notes that explain why each story was chosen for publication.

I started Lost Colony after I wrote a mid-length story and very quickly ran out of outlets to submit it to. I thought that the mid-length story should get more love, so I decided to launch this little publication.

I named it Lost Colony because I had moved to Roanoke, Virginia, shortly before launching it. Roanoke, Virginia, has nothing to do with the lost colony of Roanoke (which was in North Carolina), but it was the first thing that I thought of when I learned about the city, so it made sense to me. It also evokes a sense of mystery, the supernatural, or even the exploration of the cosmos, so it fits nicely with what I’m looking for in the stories that I publish (for more details on what I’m looking for, check out the Submission Guidelines).

The Duchess’s Case

By Rebecca Marshal

Lord Denbury gave the case to Eleanor. This was only fair, in a way. There were four of them in Denbury’s service that year—there had been only two the previous year, but under Queen Philippa the purse of the Treasury had been opened more generously—and as the work to be done did not always equal the number of lawyers prepared to do it, there were sometimes polite little quarrels. Only ten days earlier, Eleanor had handed over to Henry Fairfax, not without regret, the task of preparing a memorandum on the law of wills. Henry had not exactly asked her for it, but he had made her understand it would be indefensibly selfish of her to keep it, when, after all, he had studied wills under Charles Antarat. That the memorandum was good work—the sort of work that might, with luck, attract someone’s attention, someone with the power to bestow appointments—was beside the point.

In light of which, Eleanor argued to herself, it was not really wrong of her to accept the duchess’s case. But she was still uneasy as she pushed open the door of the chamber reserved for Denbury’s lawyers.

Paulina and Thomas, their heads close together, were bent over an old book of Plumbridge’s Reports. And Henry—she allowed herself one quick glance—was trimming the nib of a pen. The colorless sunshine poured through the single high, narrow window and made a pale stripe on the flagstone floors. This particular chamber, once upon a time, had been used for storing quicklime in the days when the Kingdom of Chancon had had to repel the blue-sailed ships of Alget and the war-boats of Marevia. But no enemies had crossed the sea in two hundred years—not since Queen Margaret’s day. The chamber now held four tall desks, and several book-chests, cheaply made, and cupboards, and, on a shelf next to some dusty paper flowers, a painted prayer-image of the Lady of the Sword.

There was no fire. The generosity of her Majesty’s Treasury did not extend as far as that. As she sat at her desk, Eleanor rubbed her hands together to make the blood flow.

Paulina said, Has he given it to you?

Eleanor became abruptly and disconcertingly aware that they were all looking at her.

Aye, she said, he has—

Don’t tie yourself in knots, said Thomas. He’s given it to you. Naturally, we’re all bitterly envious and we all despise you. He winked at her. You can’t blame us; it’s an interesting case, isn’t it? Something sly came into his face. "Don’t you think it’s interesting, Henry?"

Henry set down his half-mended quill.

Very interesting, he said. "But I don’t envy you, poor girl, having to dig through two or