Which Reveals a Rather Awkward State of Affairs
“Sir Reginald!” cried Lady Dunnington, kneeling beside him and shaking him by the shoulder in a futile attempt to rouse him.
Gingerly stepping around the body, Lady Fieldhurst crossed the hall to the front door and walked out onto the portico. She looked both right and left, but saw no sign of anyone; whoever had shot Sir Reginald had disappeared into the night.
“Emily?”
She stepped back inside and noted that the noise had roused the entire household. The service door to the servants’ domain below stairs was open and Dulcie stood framed in the aperture, eyes wide and hands shaking as she clutched the door frame for support. Behind her, the stout cook dried her hands briskly on her apron, her breathing ragged from the exertion of climbing the stairs so quickly. On the formal staircase leading to the upper floor, Lady Dunnington’s abigail leaned over the banister, while a bleary-eyed footman clad in a nightshirt and breeches blew his nose vociferously into a large handkerchief.
“Emily,” Lady Fieldhurst said again, “is he—?”
Lady Dunnington had by this time ceased shaking Sir Reginald by the shoulder and progressed to striking him smartly on the cheek with the palm of her hand, but with as little effect.
“Yes,” she said unsteadily. “Yes, I think he is.”
Dulcie sobbed loudly at this pronouncement, and Emily looked up, seeing for the first time the servants gathered around. “Be quiet, silly girl! What was Sir Reginald to you, anyway? All of you, go on about your business. Not you, Jack,” she said to the footman, who was turning to go back up the stairs to his attic bedroom. “Go and get dressed. I am sorry to send you out in this weather when you are ill, but I fear I shall need you to deliver a message.”
Once the crowd was dispersed, Lady Fieldhurst looked down at the countess, still on her knees beside the body of the man who would never be her lover. “What—what sort of message do you have in mind, Emily?” she asked, very much afraid she already knew the answer.
“We must send to Bow Street,” Lady Dunnington said resolutely as she rose awkwardly to her feet. “What was the name of that Runner who investigated Frederick’s murder? Something that started with a ‘P,’ was it not?”
“No!” cried Lady Fieldhurst, turning quite pale. “Not him!”
The countess blinked at her friend’s vehemence. “Why not?”
“We need someone with more experience,” Julia said desperately. “Mr. Pickett is much too young to be trusted with a case like this.”
“Pickett!” exclaimed Emily. “That’s the name! I knew it was something with a ‘P.’ ”
“But Emily, you yourself called him the man-child of Bow Street!”
“Why, so I did, but he must know what he is about, in spite of his lack of years. After all, he contrived to clear you of any involvement in Frederick’s death.”
“He was able to clear me of any involvement in Frederick’s death because I was innocent,” Lady Fieldhurst pointed out in some indignation.
“Very true, my dear, but would a jury have seen it that way, had you been obliged to stand trial? I think not! No, I shall send Jack to Bow Street to ask for your Mr. Pickett.”
“He isn’t mine,” Julia murmured, then, as the countess reached for the bell pull, “Emily, no! Wait!”
“It may have escaped your notice, Julia,” said Lady Dunning-ton with some asperity, “but there is a dead man in my house. I should like to fetch a Runner here without further ado.”
Lady Fieldhurst sighed. “I see I shall be forced to tell you. You asked me what had happened in Scotland. I fear I made rather a fool of myself there.”
“I feel for you, Julia, truly I do, and while I am pleased you have finally decided to confide in me, this is surely not the time—”
“No, no, hear me out, I beg you! I told you George’s sons were there. What I did not tell you was that they found a woman lying unconscious on the beach. We sent to a nearby manor for assistance, and it turned out that the woman bore a striking resemblance to the long-lost daughter of the house. As the woman herself could tell them nothing, the family decided to send to London for a Bow Street Runner to investigate.”
Lady Dunnington raised a hand to forestall her. “Do not tell me, let me guess. The Runner turned out to be your Mr. Pickett.”
“He isn’t mine,” Julia said again. “But since I was there when the woman was found, I was obliged to work rather closely with him, and—well—”
“Yes?” prompted the countess, glancing at Sir Reginald’s body as if she feared it might decompose before Lady Fieldhurst reached the end of her tale. “ ‘Well’ what?”
She darted a quick glance around the hall to ensure that none of the servants remained within earshot. She saw no one, but lowered her voice nonetheless. “I recalled that you had been urging me to take a lover, so on the day Mr. Pickett was to return to England, I—I asked him.”
By this time Lady Dunnington’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “And?”
“He turned me down,” she concluded miserably.
“And no wonder! You asked him? Julia, you shouldn’t have asked; you should have seduced the boy!”
“Hardly a boy, Emily,” Lady Fieldhurst protested. “He is four-and-twenty.”
“I see now why you considered poor Lord Edwin and his forty-five years too old,” the countess remarked. “But Sir Reginald has been shot, and in my house at that, so I must do all I can to see that his killer is found. Therefore, I am sending to Bow Street for your enfant prodige. I am sorry if you are made to feel uncomfortable, but perhaps it is no more than you deserve for bungling the thing so badly. You realize, do you not, that were the situation reversed and he made you such an offer, it would be considered an indecent proposition?” With that Parthian shot, she gave the bell pull a tug.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Julia realized her friend was right. Of course, the situation would never have been reversed, for Mr. Pickett was too—too—yes, too gentlemanly, in spite of his humble status, to have made such an offer, even if it had occurred to him to do so.
So what did that make her?
She had meant no disrespect. She only knew she wanted more: more than a stolen kiss or two, and not only when there was a dead body somewhere in the vicinity to throw them together. So she had asked. And in the process, she had destroyed a budding friendship that had come to be precious to her for reasons she could not quite comprehend, much less explain.
“Thank God that’s done,” grumbled Mr. Patrick Colquhoun, magistrate of the Bow Street Public Office, as he signed his name with a flourish and laid aside his quill. “I’ve never seen such a docket in all my years as a magistrate. Dinner will be cold by now, and my poor Janet ready to send out a search party.”
“Things did rather pile up while we were in Scotland, sir,” agreed John Pickett, a very tall young man with curling brown hair worn unfashionably long and tied at the nape of his neck in a queue.
“Ah well, the price of a holiday, I suppose.” The magistrate bent a keen eye on his young protégé. “Speaking of which, I never did hear how that little business of yours came out. What did her ladyship have to say?”
Pickett’s gaze slid away to fasten on the wooden railing that separated the magistrate’s raised bench from the rest of the room. “I—I haven’t told her yet, sir.”
Mr. Colquhoun’s bushy white brows rose. Pickett knew his magistrate and mentor expected an explanation, but he had none to give. How did one tell a lady that, through some quirk of Scottish law, she was accidentally married to him? It’s a funny thing, my lady, but while I quite sympathize with your desire to escape to Scotland under an assumed name, and I am honored to have lent my name to the cause, it is my duty to inform you that you are now wed to a thief-taker with no more than twenty-five shillings a week on which to support you. It was impossible.
And yet that was not the worst of it. For the past three weeks he had held close to his heart the knowledge that he was secretly married to the Viscountess Fieldhurst—so secretly, in fact, that his “wife” did not even know of it. But once her ladyship was informed of her newly wedded state, the process of obtaining an annulment would begin. The illusion that he might be married to Lady Fieldhurst, whom he had loved from the moment of their first meeting over her husband’s dead body, was only that—an illusion—which must dissolve in the face of reality.
“There’s no time like the present, my lad,” the magistrate pointed out, not ungently. “It’s not likely to grow easier with delay.”
Pickett glanced at the clock mounted on the wall above the magistrate’s bench. “It’s very late, sir, past nine o’clock. I should hate to interrupt her ladyship at this hour.”
“They keep late hours amongst the fashionable set. Recall, if you will, that they don’t have to get up early to go to work like the rest of us.”
While Pickett struggled for an excuse to further postpone the inevitable, the door opened, admitting a gust of wind that ruffled the papers on Mr. Colquhoun’s desk. Carried in on this wind was a footman whose scarlet livery was scarcely redder than his nose, which he dabbed at frequently with a large handkerchief. Mr. William Foote, at thirty-five years of age the unofficial head of the night patrol, came forward to meet him.
“Nasty weather to be out and about in,” the senior Runner observed. “What can we do for you?”
“There’s a man been shot at Lady Dunnington’s house in Audley Street,” said the footman, gasping for breath. “Sir Reginald Montague. He’s dead, sir. I was told to—”
“Lady Dunnington, you say?” said Pickett, recalling the dark-haired, tart-tongued countess who had made more than one unflattering observation regarding his age, or lack thereof. “I know her.”
“Yes, Mr. Pickett, we’re well aware that you’re thick as inkle-weavers with half the aristocracy,” the senior Runner said impatiently, then turned his attention back to the footman. “Audley Street, you say? I’ll be right there.”
The footman glanced uncertainly from one Runner to the other. “I was told to ask for Mr. Pickett.”
Mr. Foote made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. “It’s true that Mr. Pickett has succeeded in achieving a certain notoriety in a very short time, but—”
“A moment please, Mr. Foote.” Mr. Colquhoun never raised his voice, but he had the full attention of one footman and two Bow Street Runners nevertheless. “I believe Mr. Pickett was going to pay a call in Mayfair in any case, were you not?” Seeing Pickett agree—for what choice did he have?—the magistrate turned back to Foote. “Since he is already going in that direction, and is acquainted with one of the principals involved, let him handle this one. You may report to me in the morning, Mr. Pickett.”
“Yes, sir,” said Pickett, and followed the footman out into the cold November night. He sighed. With any luck, the case would prove so complex that by the time he left Audley Street, Mr. Colquhoun would agree it was too late to call on Lady Fieldhurst even by Society’s standards.