12

In Which John Pickett Receives

a Most Unwelcome Gift

Pickett and his Irregulars, as Harry Carson had dubbed the little group, arose at dawn the next morning and prepared for their first full day on the road. The post-chaise Jamie had ordered drew up into the inn yard as Pickett was attempting, without much success, to choke down a bowl of porridge. The arrival of this vehicle appeared to relieve him of the necessity of completing this task, and so he pushed the bowl away with no small sense of relief.

“Thomas, Carson,” Jamie called, addressing them as if he were still a cavalry officer and they two of the soldiers under his command, “see to the stowing of our bags while I settle our tab here. You”—he turned his attention to Pickett, who had risen from the table—“sit back down and finish that.”

“I couldn’t—”

“You can, and you will,” Jamie said in a voice that brooked no argument.

“I want to be on the road,” Pickett insisted. “God only knows what may be happening to Julia, while I sit here eating breakfast!” He glared at the bowl as if its very existence offended him.

“Very well, then.” Jamie snatched the porridge off the table and disappeared from the room. Pickett felt somewhat deflated; he hadn’t expected his brother-in-law to yield so quickly. But the reason for Jamie’s strategic retreat became clear a few minutes later, when he returned bearing a brown earthenware bowl with a large chip out of its rim.

“I gave the cook tuppence for the oldest container she had, so you can take it with you and eat it on the way.”

Pickett peered inside and discovered not only the remains of his own breakfast, but, he suspected, a couple more ladlesful for good measure. “I don’t doubt you mean well, but—”

“But me no buts, brother mine. You invited me on this little jaunt, and I refuse to deliver you over to Julia looking like a scarecrow.”

Jamie’s calm assumption that it was merely a matter of time before they found Julia safe and sound had the desired effect, although Pickett had to wonder if his brother-in-law actually believed it, or was merely putting on a good show for his sake. In the end, he decided it was better not to know; he would take whatever reassurances he could get.

Having finished transacting his business with the innkeeper, Jamie led Pickett outside where Carson and Thomas were already waiting, and the four men piled into the post-chaise. The Bristol Channel was at this point too wide to be forded, so they were obliged to follow it northeastward for some distance until the channel narrowed to form the River Severn. Here they stopped in Gloucester long enough to change horses and fortify themselves with a hearty repast—yet another meal for which Pickett had no appetite. In fact, he had found this first leg of the journey particularly maddening, as they were very likely farther from Julia now than they had been when they’d set out from Bristol that morning, but, as Jamie pointed out, there was no help for it, unless he intended to swim across the channel.

Once their meal was completed and fresh horses were harnessed and ready, they set out again, crossing the bridge over the River Severn and continuing northwestward. This leg of the journey, a distance of more than two hundred miles, would have been grueling even under the best conditions. And it soon became clear that the conditions under which they would be obliged to travel were far from the best. The roads became more twisting and tortuous as they turned to the north, and the landscape grew so mountainous that the tops of the peaks were hidden beneath a blanket of low-hanging clouds. At lower elevations, a fog lay over the valley, softening the countryside and giving it a blurred, oddly flattened look, like a painting executed by Turner or Constable in a particularly melancholy mood.

In fact, the scenery reminded Pickett so strongly of the Lake District that he was moved to ask of no one in particular, “Where are we?”

“Wales,” was Jamie’s reply.

Wales, thought Pickett, Wales, as in ‘Prince of.’ Did the prince spend much time in this part of the realm from which his current title was derived, or was the designation a mere formality? He wasn’t quite sure what to hope for. On the one hand, it might make a pleasant escape from Town, provided, of course, that Julia would be allowed to accompany him; on the other, the landscape, so reminiscent of the Lake District, might serve as a constant reproach, reminding him of his sojourn there and its disastrous conclusion.

Suddenly a large, dark shape loomed up out of the fog, a shape that resolved itself, as they drew nearer, into the crenelated tower of a castle, or what was left of one. Its existence presented Pickett with a new dilemma: what if Julia was being held captive not in a genteel country house, as he’d imagined, but in a fortification such as this must once have been? If he were to be obliged to storm a citadel to rescue her, then the mission might well be doomed from the start; he feared he would make a very poor knight.

At that moment, as if in agreement with this gloomy conclusion, the skies opened and the rains descended, quickly turning the roads to meandering rivers of mud and reducing visibility to such an extent that they were obliged to stop for the night fully thirty miles short of where they had intended. A pale sun greeted them the next morning, although the rains had left their mark in the form of the mud that sucked at the carriage wheels and left deep ruts that marked where other carriages had fought the same battle before them. As a result, their progress was not much swifter than it had been the day before. A rough, albeit mercifully brief sea crossing landed them on the island of Anglesey, where their first order of business was locating a post-office where they might hire a chaise to replace the one they’d been obliged to leave behind on the mainland. Alas, everyone they encountered seemed to speak with a thick accent of a kind rarely if ever heard in London, and one which presented a considerable barrier to communication. By the time they contrived to make their transportation needs understood sufficiently to be directed to a place where these needs might be met, they could go no farther than Holyhead, where they were obliged to cool their heels until dawn the next morning, when the next packet would sail for Dublin. Thomas, who had spent much of the journey with his nose pressed to the glass, recalled seeing a promising inn near the harbor, and so it was to this establishment that they repaired, descending weary, stiff, and sore from hours of inactivity.

While Thomas and Carson retrieved their now mud-spattered bags from the boot and Jamie walked down to the harbor to book passage for four on the packet for Dublin, Pickett went into the inn and requested two rooms. As he wrote his name in the register, he noticed the proprietress leaning across the counter for a closer look. This in itself was not unusual, for he wrote with his left hand, having stubbornly resisted, in his youth, any and all efforts to correct this aberration. He was about to some vague apology for this deviation from the accepted standards of penmanship—there were, after all, those who believed this trait to be the mark of the devil—when she spoke, and he realized it was not how he wrote, but what he wrote that had attracted her notice.

“So you’re John Pickett, are you?”

Like her fellow countrymen, she spoke with an accent so thick as to be nearly incomprehensible, even to ears attuned to the many voices of London. Still, Pickett recognized his own name, and from her use of it, deduced that she had some message for him. After three days of feeling as if he were groping in the dark, any word from or about Julia could only be welcome.

“I am,” he said hopefully, looking up from writing the direction of his London residence on the line provided for this information.

She ducked her head to rummage through the storage space beneath the counter. “Summat came t’other day along with a letter asking us to give you it. I’ll get it now in a minute—ah! Here it is!”

“Thank you.” The package was small and roughly cylindrical, and had been wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with string. Pickett took it and walked across the room to where his companions waited. Jamie had just entered the inn, having finished his business on the harbor, while Thomas had brought in the last of the luggage and awaited his orders as to where it was to be conveyed. Carson seemed to be agitating in favor of stopping in the public room for a hot toddy with which they might fortify themselves after the discomforts of the journey.

“What’s that?” Carson asked, pausing briefly in extolling the virtues of this plan.

“I don’t know,” Pickett said, pulling one end of the string until the knot came free. “Our hostess said it had been left for me. At least, I think that’s what she said.”

“Who would even know we were going to be here?” Thomas wondered aloud. “We sure didn’t, until two days ago.”

Pickett offered no opinion on the subject. He unrolled the tube of brown paper until it disgorged its contents—whereupon his expressive countenance changed color. He uttered a strangled sound, dropping the item and its wrappings to the floor as he ran from the inn.

“What—gorblimey!” Thomas exclaimed, his face assuming a greenish cast as Carson bent to retrieve the object and hold it up for their inspection.

It was just over two inches in length and, like its wrappings, roughly cylindrical in shape. Its color was a mottled gray, although at one time it had very likely been nearer to pink.

It was, in fact, a human finger.

* * *

“AND SOMEONE LEFT IT for him here,” Carson said thoughtfully. He lowered his voice, although it was unlikely that Pickett could hear him, having not yet returned from wherever he’d fled.

“In other words, someone knew we’d be pitching up here sooner or later,” Jamie observed. “At least we know we’re on the right track.”

Thomas stared at him. “That’s a bloody unfeeling way of looking at it! If you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir,” he added hastily, all too aware of having spoken disrespectfully not only to one of his betters, but to one of the mistress’s nearest and dearest.

“If it were really her finger, you’d be right,” Jamie told him. “But it’s not. It can’t be.”

Seeing the major did not intend to hold his lapse against him, Thomas was emboldened to ask for an explanation. “Why not? If you don’t mind my asking,” he added hastily.

“Whoever this belongs to was dead before her finger was cut off. If you’ll look at the end here, you’ll see there’s no sign of its having bled.”

Thomas forced himself to lean in for a closer look. “At least”—he swallowed hard—“at least he’d already killed her before he did—this.”

“It’s very likely she died of natural causes—illness, perhaps, or childbirth. I tell you, this is not Julia’s—Mrs. Pickett’s—finger. It can’t be.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if Mrs. Pickett had been killed, it must have been done at least a week ago—and that’s assuming she was murdered on the same day she was abducted. This woman, whoever she was”—he indicated the severed finger—“has been dead rather longer than that.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I saw action on the Peninsula and in the Low Countries,” Jamie said, his voice hardening with the recollection of long-suppressed memories. “Casualties can’t always be buried in a timely manner. Let’s just say I know what a dead body looks like at various stages of decomposition.”

Thomas merely nodded, disinclined to ask for further enlightenment.

“So you’re saying,” Harry Carson put in, “that someone went to the trouble of digging up a woman’s body, cutting off its finger, and sending it to Mr. Pickett here, knowing full well that he’d think the fellow was chopping his wife’s fingers off? That takes a special kind of madness.”

“Or a special kind of hate. The man behind her abduction holds Mr. Pickett responsible for the death of his own wife, and this seems to be his idea of revenge.” Jamie cast a glance toward the door through which Pickett had fled. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d best see to him.”

He left Carson and Thomas to the task of discovering to which rooms they had been assigned while he went outside in search of his brother-in-law. Pickett was not difficult to find; Jamie had only to follow the sobbing, snarling noises, more animal than human, emitting from around one corner of the inn. He reached the end of the building and discovered his young brother-in-law pressed against the half-timbered wall, his face buried in the curve of one arm while with the other arm he beat at the wall until his knuckles bled. A rather pungent pool at his feet represented all that remained of the porridge Jamie had compelled him to eat that morning.

“It’s not hers, old thing.” Jamie put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze, all the while speaking in low, soothing tones. “It’s a cruel prank, but nothing more. It’s not hers.”

Gradually the significance of his words began to penetrate Pickett’s brain. At last he turned to his brother-in-law with something akin to hope lightening his bleak expression. “You think so?”

“I know so.” For the second time, Jamie explained his reasoning, concluding, “But the fact that he had it sent to you here, rather than, say, London, or the Lake District, would seem to suggest we’re on the right track.”

Pickett collected himself with an effort. “Yes—I know you’re right—it’s just—it’s just that I feel so bloody helpless! Julia is in the clutches of a madman, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it!”

Jamie nodded. “I know,” he said simply, and Pickett realized Major Pennington was probably the only man of his acquaintance who did, who could. For he, too, had been forced to stand by helplessly while the woman he loved was in danger. In Jamie’s case, the danger had come from Claudia’s own husband, a man with not only age and experience, but power, position, and even the law on his side. And yet Jamie had won in the end, and that without firing a shot: first when he’d carried off Claudia, Lady Buckleigh under her husband’s nose, and again a dozen years later, when justice had finally caught up with his lordship.

“But,” Jamie continued, more firmly now, “I disagree that there’s nothing you can do. There is—and you’re doing it. And now it seems to me that there’s something else you can do.”

“What?” Pickett asked eagerly.

“Come inside and get what sleep you can before we set out to sea in the morning.”

If there was one form of transportation Pickett disliked even more than riding on horseback, it was setting out to sea in a boat. Still, he had no intention of trusting Julia’s rescue to his companions while he waited patiently on land. He took a deep breath, then set his jaw and followed Jamie back inside.

* * *

THE QUESTION OF JUST how she was to get word to her husband was one that caused Julia considerable perturbation of spirits. Her abductor refused to leave her alone for a minute except when they stopped for the night, at which time he either locked her into her room and kept the key, or tied the handle of his own chamber door to the handle of hers—a fact she had discovered early in their journey, when she’d attempted to make her escape in the middle of the night while her captor slept.

It was not until the third night that a new and unexpected opportunity presented itself. Or perhaps it was the fourth night; the pain in her head had subsided, but there were still great chunks of time unaccounted for in her memory, so much so that she suspected the man of adding something to her food.

She could recall several stops during which meals had been obtained while the horses were changed, and she had vague memories of being taken aboard a sea-going vessel, although exactly how long the journey had taken, or in what direction they had traveled, was unclear. They had stopped once more for the night—or was it twice?—and although her head was finally clear, she had no idea where they were. As they had been traveling in northwesterly direction, she thought it unlikely that they had crossed the Channel to France—a suspicion that was confirmed when the proprietress of the establishment inquired in English as to what she might do for them. And not just any English, Julia realized with growing certainty, but English spoken with the same lilting accent that distinguished her abductor’s speech. Which meant they must be in Ireland—although exactly where in Ireland she had yet to determine. The framed prints adorning the walls offered no clues, at least not in the casual glances with which Julia was forced to be content. Nor could she hope to glean any information by eavesdropping on her fellow guests, since her captor had asked if he might hire a private parlor where they could partake of their dinner safe from any prying eyes.

If their hostess had seen anything unusual in this request, she had not let on. She had ushered them into a small room where, she assured them, they would not be disturbed, and then produced a hearty albeit humble meal of bacon and cabbage, to which she’d added a thick white sauce and a sprig of parsley. They had been sequestered in the private parlor with this repast for perhaps half an hour when the requested privacy was interrupted by a man in a caped frieze coat whose well-worn condition identified him as an actual coachman, rather than one of those sporting gentlemen who had appropriated the fashion and made it their own.

“Bohannan?” Her companion scowled. “What the devil might you be wantin’?”

The readiness with which her captor identified the newcomer gave Julia to understand that this was their driver. Until that moment, she had not given much thought to this individual; he had merely been a bulky but anonymous presence on the coachman’s box, little more than a broad back and a somewhat misshapen hat pulled down low over his ears. Now, as she listened to their conversation, she realized that here at last was the opportunity she had been waiting for.

“I thought we were agreed that you were to be remainin’ in the stables.”

The unhappy Bohannan had removed his hat, and now twisted its brim in his hands, a gesture that went a long way toward explaining its sorry state.

“I know, and ’tis sorry I am to be after floutin’ your wishes.” Bohannan’s voice betrayed his Irish origins just as surely as her captor’s did. “ ’Tis the front axle, it is.”

“Broken?” A fierce scowl accompanied the single word.

“Not yet. But ’twill be a near-run thing if we expect to reach—where it is that we’re goin’—without it.” While his passenger considered the implications of this speech, Bohannan said, more urgently, “I know you’re in a hurry, Flynn, but Himself won’t be pleased if we’re after havin’ an accident on the road. Besides takin’ us longer to get there, she could be hurt, or even killed. And then—”

“You don’t have to be drawin’ me a picture,” interrupted her captor—Flynn, Julia thought, pleased to know he had a name, at any rate. He uttered what Julia suspected was a Gaelic oath. “I expect I’d best be havin’ a look.”

He pushed back his chair and rose, then looked down at her. “Before you go gettin’ any ideas, Mrs. P., you should be aware that the stables offer a fine view of the front of the inn. If you think to escape, you’ll have to be doin’ it through the kitchens—and that would raise such a hullabaloo that we’d surely hear of it in the stables.”

Julia hung her head in apparent defeat, but her brain was awhirl. She waited only long enough to hear the door close behind them before seeking out their hostess.

“I wonder if I might ask for your help,” she said in hushed accents, glancing furtively over her shoulder at the door through which the two men had exited. “As you may have guessed, we—my companion and I—are a runaway couple.” Julia silently blessed the proprietress of the earlier establishment where they had stopped, and took considerable satisfaction in the knowledge that, by giving the woman the idea that they were eloping, Flynn had himself provided the means by which she now might warn her real husband.

The woman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Aye, I was after thinkin’ there was somethin’ queerish about the pair o’ ye.”

“The three of us, actually, for his cousin is lending his aid by driving the carriage. But there can be no marriage over the anvil for us. I have a husband, you see, and I fear that he may at this very moment be pursuing us.”

This much was true, so far as it went. But her hostess was clearly not pleased by the idea that she might be called upon to assist an adulterous union. “Well, now, and mayhap you ought to let him,” she advised the runaway bride. “I’m sure it’s not unusual for a married couple to be havin’ a little spat from time to time.”

“Yes, but this is nothing like that,” Julia said with perfect truth. “Alas, some husbands are cruel and abusive, and in such a case, what choice does a woman have but to flee?”

“Aye, I suppose you’re right about that,” came the reluctant concession. “But then, what can you expect from the English? This man of yours is an Englishman, is he not?”

“He is, but Mr. Flynn, my”—she could not bring herself to call him her lover, not even to save her husband’s life—“my gentleman friend is Irish.”

“Flynn, you say?” the woman asked with renewed interest. “Aye, it’s a good old Westmeath name! My late husband’s sister was after marryin’ a Flynn, although—but never you be mindin’ that! You say you’re wantin’ my help?

“Yes! I want to write a letter to my husband, to be left here for him in case he comes in search of me. I shall urge him not to pursue us—Mr. Flynn and me, that is—as such a course of action could only cause pain.”

Her hostess apparently took this claim quite literally. “D’you mean one of them might be killin’ the other in a duel?” she asked, both thrilled and horrified at the prospect of such an outcome.

Julia had meant no such thing, although she didn’t hesitate to embrace such a scenario, now that it had been presented to her. “Yes, should they meet, I fear it must come to that very thing.”

“What will you be needin’, then? Paper and ink brought up to your room, I suppose, and a quill?”

“Yes, and I would be obliged if you could bring me a cup of tea as well, and milk, sugar, and lemon to go with it. I find tea a wonderful composer when one is suffering from an agitation of spirits, don’t you?”

To this the woman readily agreed, and so Julia was emboldened to continue. “I fear I must impose on you for one other favor. Mr. Flynn must know nothing of this. He—he is very jealous of my husband, you know. Heaven only knows how he may react if he discovers I am in communication with him, even for such a purpose as this.”

The innkeeper’s wife frowned at this, and gave it as her opinion that it sounded as if there was very little to choose between the two of them.

“I suppose it must sound that way,” Julia acknowledged, then added, again with perfect sincerity, “but if you only knew the two of them, you would see that there can be no comparison.”

“And what’ll you be doin’ with this letter, once you’re after writin’ it?”

Julia cast another surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the door, a gesture that was only half feigned. “I dare not bring it downstairs for fear Mr. Flynn will see. Instead, I shall drop it out the window of my chamber. Is there a kitchen maid or a stable hand you would trust to retrieve it for me?”

“I’ll be doin’ it my own self, ma’am,” her co-conspirator vowed, placing a hand over her heart for emphasis.

“Excellent woman! I wish I could give you some token of my appreciation, but I was obliged to come away with nothing but the clothes on my back.”

“I’m sure I don’t wonder at it, ma’am, if your man’s as brutal as you claim. But how am I to be knowin’ him? What’s his name? What does he look like?”

He’s beautiful, Julia thought. Beautiful, and brilliant, and brave, and if he were to be killed in an attempt to rescue me, I should die of grief. Aloud, she merely said, “His name is John Pickett. He is quite tall, with brown eyes and brown hair that curls, and a diffident manner that makes people tend to underestimate him.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but the fellow you describe doesn’t sound like the brute you’re makin’ him out to be.”

“No,” admitted Julia, improvising rapidly. “He is usually the sweetest and gentlest of men. It is only when he is in his cups that his temperament changes.” In this she knew she did him an injustice, for on the one occasion when she had seen him the worse for drink, his conduct had still been nothing less than gentlemanly.

Something in her expression must have aroused her co-conspirator’s suspicions, for the woman’s eyes narrowed. “It sounds to me like you’re still lovin’ him, for all that.”

“I daresay I shall love him until I die,” she said, blinking back tears at the bitter irony that the last thing she could do for him was to blacken his character in order to save his life.