In the Barrister's Chambers Read Online Free PDF

“What I believe matters naught. Do you think you can persuade Mr. Harding to take Randolph on as a client?”
    â€œIf he believes you want him involved, then yes.”
    Her father stood and made to leave. “Good. I have a lecture at the university this morning that I cannot miss.”
    Evelyn rose. “I shall pay Mr. Harding a visit then.”
    Her father stopped and turned. “Alone?”
    â€œI shall take Janet as a chaperone.” She dare not tell him that she had already been alone with Jack Harding in the client consultation room of the Old Bailey Courthouse. Knowing her father, he would protest if he learned she had observed Jack’s trial in the spectators’ gallery with the general masses without a proper chaperone.
    â€œPlease extend my gratitude for his aid last night,” her father said. “And invite him to dine with us one evening when we entertain the judges. I’m sure Mr. Harding would enjoy a meal with both Lordships Bathwell and Barnes.”
    â€œOf course,” she said.
    Evelyn waited precisely five minutes after her father’s departure before summoning a carriage. She had no intention of taking her maid.
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    Evelyn stepped out of the carriage and looked up in awe at the magnificent structure before her. She had visited Lincoln’s Inn of Court many times in the past as it was her father’s Inn, and he had maintained his chambers here before leaving to teach at Oxford. But it had been years since she had explored its hallowed halls as an excited and eager girl, lingering in her father’s chambers and listening to him advise his clients and lecture his pupils.
    Yes, she had been here dozens of times in her past, and yet Lincoln’s Inn still enthralled her.
    It was a compound more than a single building. She started down Chancery Lane and the Tudor Gatehouse came into view. Built in the sixteenth century, the brick gatehouse had massive oak doors with three coats of arms above its entrance.
    The first coat of arms showed a lion rampant, which Evelyn knew was the symbol of Lincoln’s Inn. But it was the memory of her father, sitting her high upon his shoulders as a little girl, pointing at the lion that made her smile. He had danced around and roared and she had giggled upon his shoulders as a giddy, carefree five-year-old. Years later she had learned that the lion was not only the symbol of the Inn, but the arms of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. The other two arms above the oak doors belonged to Henry VIII, one of England’s most controversial kings who ruled at the time the Gatehouse was built, and Sir Thomas Lovell, who was not only a member of Lincoln’s Inn and the House of Commons, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer who funded the Gatehouse.
    Stepping through the oak doors, she stood in Gatehouse Court, an appealing Tudor-style, half-timbered courtyard with turrets and flowering pots overflowing with fragrant blooms. Before her lay the Old Hall, the impressive library with its collection of rare and current law books, the dining hall, and the seventeenth-century chapel with its stunning stained glass, but she suppressed the urge to take a leisurely tour.
    She turned to the left instead and headed for the Old Buildings, which housed the professional accommodations of the barristers.
    If she had been born a man, she would have gladly entered the pupilage to become a barrister herself. The truth was, she had studied her father’s books with a voracious hunger for knowledge and had been envious of the pupils that had come and gone, seemingly oblivious to their fortunes that only because they had been born male they could attain what she wanted most, but would never be able to have.
    And then Jack Harding had come along.
    He was the first student who made her not yearn to be born a male, but quite happily a female. He had been charming and carefree and quite horribly the worst pupil to enter Emmanuel