Chapter 5

 

Which Confirms the Old Adage That a Trouble Shared Is a Trouble Halved

 

His father’s immediate future having been settled, Pickett released Julia and Kit from exile and they returned to the drawing room, Kit bearing a sheaf of papers torn from his sketchbook, from which he presented several of his more successful efforts for his father’s inspection. Gentleman Jack was suitably impressed—or at least made a show of it convincing enough to satisfy any budding artist—and to Pickett’s surprise, the hours remaining until dinner passed quite pleasantly. His father was certainly putting himself out to charm his daughter-in-law and the young son of whose existence he had not previously been aware, and since even his worst enemy could not deny the fact that Gentleman Jack Pickett could charm the birds from the trees when he set his mind to it, it was hardly surprising that an audience already inclined in his favor should find much in him of which to approve.

Meanwhile, Kit’s temporary banishment to his room had served to remind him of several favorite toys which he must needs bring to his father’s notice, and with this end in view, he all but dragged this interesting personage up to the schoolroom so that he might behold these riches for himself.

Left alone with her husband for a brief tête-à-tête, Julia slipped her hand through Pickett’s arm. “Well?” she prompted, casting an appraising look about the room. “Nothing seems to be broken, and I didn’t hear any shouting, so I take it things went well?”

Pickett darted a wary glance toward the stairs, whence Kit’s enthusiastic commentary could be heard. “It—it’s given me a lot to think about. In fact, this whole day has given me a lot to think about. I’ll tell you later, after Kit has gone to bed, shall I? In the meantime,” he added, somewhat self-consciously, “I’ve told Da he can stay, at least for the nonce, so you can speak to Mrs. Applegate about preparing a room for him.”

Smiling at him in approval, Julia promised to do so, seeing no reason to tell him that she had been so confident of his eventual capitulation that she had already consulted with the housekeeper on the matter, and a suitable chamber had been prepared and was even now awaiting his father’s occupancy, with clean linens on the bed, fresh candles in the sconces, a fire laid, and a plate of biscuits on a small table beside the bed.

Alas, had Pickett but known it, his father’s presence at the board had almost led to an uprising in the kitchen when Cook was informed that the dinner over which she had labored for most of the day must, on very short notice, be stretched to feed an additional mouth, and the mouth of an adult male at that—the very same adult male who had earlier in the day called at the servant’s entrance, apparently laboring under the misapprehension that young Mr. Pickett occupied some position on the household staff, rather than having been the master of the establishment for almost a year. Fortunately for the sake of domestic harmony, Rogers conceived the happy notion of suggesting that Master Kit’s portion might be diminished so that his father might be fed—a proposal that so offended Cook (with whom Kit was a great favorite) that she resolved to demonstrate to the butler her ability to feed any number of unexpected guests without resorting, as she claimed, to snatching the food from the mouths of babes.

Upstairs, of course, none of the Picketts had the slightest inkling of trouble below stairs, so they repaired to the dining room in blissful ignorance—at least until Jack threw Rogers into confusion by insisting upon lending the butler his aid in serving the meal, just as he had done many years ago in the household of his lordship the Marquess of Melrose.

Julia, recognizing the same name her husband had mentioned earlier, darted an inquiring glance at him, but received only the slightest shake of his head in reply. “Later,” he mouthed, under the cover provided by Rogers’s shocked remonstrances.

Unquestioned master of the servants’ domain he might be, but the butler was no match for Gentleman Jack Pickett. In the end, it had not been Rogers’s persuasions that had prevailed upon him to take his proper place at Mrs. Pickett’s right hand, but that lady’s sotto voce protest that, kindly as his offer of assistance was, she would not want Rogers to think he—or, indeed, any of the family—found the butler’s service unsatisfactory.

Balked in his purpose, Jack settled for entertaining the company with lively (and, Pickett suspected, highly expurgated) tales of his adventures in the Antipodes. Kit, not to be outdone, recounted for his father’s edification a thrilling description of his own rescue from Roger and Jud (whose occupations he altered from “thieves” to the less specific but more ominous “Bad Men,” lest his father, a thief himself, should take offense) by the elder brother he had once heard of, but had never actually met. As his heroics certainly lost nothing in the telling, Pickett was obliged to interrupt this very flattering narrative more than once in order to set the record straight regarding some of Kit’s more lurid descriptions.

The end of dinner was signaled by a remove of fruits, cheeses, and nuts, and after sampling a few of these, Julia rose from the table, observing with some regret that she had defied her doctor’s orders quite enough for one day. The three males at the table rose with her, as courtesy demanded, but Julia was surprised and dismayed to discover that her father-in-law did not intend to return to the board after she withdrew, but had the fixed intention of taking his leave.

“I told John I’d fetch my kit right after dinner,” he said when she objected to his departure. “It’s a goodly walk, and I’ve not been gone from London so long that I’ve forgot there’s places it’s not so healthy to venture late at night.”

“But you need not walk at all,” Julia protested, “not when a carriage can have you there and back in a fraction of the time.”

“I’m that obliged to you, but after eating such a meal, the walk’ll do me good.” He patted his perfectly flat belly as if in demonstration. “John can see me off, so you needn’t come to the door at all. You go upstairs and lie down, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Pickett seconded this plan, adding only that she should wait for him to assist her in climbing the stairs, and Julia, recognizing the futility of argument, yielded with a good grace. For his part, Pickett watched as his father took leave (with considerable charm, he was forced to admit) of his newly-discovered son and daughter-in-law, then walked with him as far as the door.

His father stepped out onto the portico, then turned back to regard Pickett with a quizzical look. “The Bank of England, eh?”

Pickett could not quite suppress a grin. “Old Lady Threadneedle herself,” he said, for the first time feeling a sense of pride in what had indeed been quite a remarkable accomplishment, however morally questionable.

“You were always a good lad,” his father said with a chuckle, then set off down the street.

* * *

Having seen first Julia and then Kit off to bed—no easy task in the case of the latter, who seemed to be laboring under the delusion that his brother was going to permit him to stay up awaiting their prodigal parent’s return—Pickett lingered in the drawing room for some time. While he would have vehemently denied any suggestion that he himself was awaiting his father’s return, there was no denying the fact that Gentleman Jack held a prominent place in his thoughts. Pickett had been in deadly earnest when he’d said he would not allow his father to take Kit back to live with Moll. And yet he’d also meant it when he’d said he would not burden Julia with his father’s support in addition to his own and Kit’s and, any day now, the baby’s. He could not lawfully prevent his father from seeing Kit; he wasn’t sure he would have done so in any case, for Julia had been right when she’d said the boy deserved to know his father. Perhaps more to the point, the sooner Kit became fully acquainted with the man who had sired him, the sooner their father would tumble off the pedestal on which Kit had so eagerly placed him. Even as this pleasing prospect rose to his mind, he acknowledged the jealousy that had inspired it. It was disturbing to realize that, less than twenty-four hours after his father’s arrival, he was already bringing out all Pickett’s own worst instincts.

He had no idea how long he sat there, but suddenly Rogers was hovering solicitously over him.

“Would you care for something to drink, sir?” The butler cast a discreet glance at the small table at Pickett’s elbow, on which stood a brass candlestick bearing what had once been a tall wax taper, but was now well on the way to becoming a misshapen lump. “Or another candle, perhaps?”

“Wha—?” Startled out of his reveries, Pickett gave a spasmodic jerk. “Oh—no, thank you. I didn’t realize it was so—but—my father hasn’t come back yet?”

Even as he asked the question, he recognized how foolish it sounded. It would be a very poor Bow Street Runner indeed who could remain oblivious while his father had knocked at the door, been admitted by the butler and, finally, been ushered upstairs to the bedroom that had been prepared for him.

But although Rogers must surely have noted the stupidity of this inquiry, he gave no sign. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

“Oh. Well”—Pickett glanced at the long-case clock as he rose to his feet, but found it impossible to read, lost as it was in shadows—“he might have run into any number of old cronies. He may not return until morning. In any case, you need not wait up for him, but if he should knock—” He broke off, yawning.

The butler nodded in understanding. “I shall sleep with one ear cocked, sir, and if I should hear him return, I shall admit him myself.”

“Thank you, Rogers,” Pickett said, giving him a rather sleepy smile. “I’m very much obliged to you.”

Rogers inclined his head. “My pleasure, sir.”

Pickett rather doubted this, but accepted it in the spirit in which it was intended, then picked up the candlestick and started for the stairs. Upon reaching the bedroom he shared with Julia, he opened the door very carefully so as to avoid making any noise that might awaken her—and was taken aback to discover her sitting up in bed, propped up against her pillow and reading by the light of her own bedside candle. Or she had been, until his not-so-stealthy entrance caused her to look up from her book with a smile.

“Well?” she prompted, scooting to one side of the bed. “Aren’t you going to tell me about it? I’ll admit, I was beginning to wonder.”

“Surely you haven’t been waiting for me all this time!”

“Well, not entirely,” she confessed. “I’ve been finding it very difficult to sleep lately, so your prolonged absence gave me a good excuse for delaying the inevitable. Darling, I am all agog! What, pray, does Lord Melrose have to say to the matter? You could have knocked me over with a feather when your father mentioned him, when you yourself had done so only a few hours earlier.”

Picked did not answer right away. He shrugged off his coat and waistcoat, untied his cravat, and pulled his shirt over his head, then draped these discarded garments over the back of the nearest chair before lowering himself onto the despised camp bed and setting to work on his shoes and stockings.

“John!” cried Julia in some chagrin. Lest he miss the point of her complaint, she patted the vacant side of the bed with a mischievous smile.

“Are you sure?” Pickett was almost afraid to ask, so fearful was he of getting an answer he did not want. Suddenly there was nothing in the world he wanted—no, needed—so badly as her embrace. “After all, the midwife—”

“The midwife isn’t here,” she pointed out, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Tomorrow I shall obey orders as meekly as she or Dr. Gilroy might wish, but for tonight, what they doesn’t know won’t hurt them.”

He needed no more persuasion. He slid between the sheets, but instead of sitting back against the pillows in the place where she’d made room for him, he stretched out beside her, resting his head on her shoulder with the contented sigh of one who has come home.

But where was he to start? Even as he asked, he knew the answer; she had provided it herself. “What do you know about Lord Melrose?”

“Not much,” she confessed. “Why? Is he important?”

“I think perhaps he might be,” said Pickett, displaying a previously unsuspected talent for understatement.

“Very well, then.” She ticked off the facts on her fingers. “I know he is a marquess. I know he has been a widower for many years, for his wife died long ago. I know he doesn’t seem to be a very pleasant person, but perhaps this must be forgiven him, for he has known his share of tragedy. In addition to his wife, I believe he also lost a daughter many years ago.”

“He did,” Pickett said tersely.

“And then,” Julia continued, “only last month, his son and heir was killed in a hunting accident—”

“So that’s what it meant!”

“That’s what what meant?” Julia asked, interrupting her recitation.

He shook his head. “Never mind. Go on.”

“All right, then. His son and heir, Lord Huxton, was childless—he had never married, according to Emily Dunnington. She says that rather than let the title fall into abeyance when he dies, he intends to petition the Crown to allow it to pass through his daughter instead. In that case, the heir presumptive would be his grandson, who is apparently a very unsuitable person, and not at all the sort one would hope to carry on one’s legacy. Still, he seems to be the only blood relation Lord Melrose has left, so one can’t really blame him for—”

“Sweetheart—” Pickett sat up and turned to face her, finding her shoulder not nearly so comforting as it had been a moment earlier. “Lord Melrose’s daughter was my mother. I’m the ‘unsuitable person.’ ”

“I beg your pardon?” Julia regarded him with a bemused smile, as if she could not quite understand the joke.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “Lord Melrose is my grandfather.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, John, but it won’t do. I don’t know what you’ve been told, or by whom, but no one seeing the two of you together could deny that you are your father’s son.”

“Oh, I’ll not deny that. But Lady Lydia Melrose was my mother. She eloped with my father while he was his lordship’s footman. Ran off the very night her betrothal was to be announced, the pair of them.”

He had the dubious satisfaction of seeing the smile wiped from her face. “You cannot be serious!”

“You heard what Da said about serving at Lord Melrose’s table,” he reminded her.

“Yes, but serving at one’s table is a far cry from eloping with one’s daughter!”

“Be that as it may, his lordship was apparently certain enough that he had two of his henchmen snatch me off the street, bundle me into a carriage, and take me to Park Lane so he could look me over. I’m afraid your pears were innocent victims in the struggle that ensued. I’m sorry; I’ll go back and buy you some more tomorrow.”

“Never mind the pears,” she said impatiently. “Did you meet Lord Melrose, then? What did he say?”

“He said pretty much what you just told me: that his only son had died recently, and that he intended to make the best of his one remaining descendant. Sweetheart, can he really do what he said—petition the Crown to make me his heir?”

She considered the matter for a long moment. “He can certainly try,” she said at last. “Although whether his petition is granted is another matter entirely.”

“He might as well save himself the trouble,” Pickett said, setting his jaw. “Even if he manages to persuade the king, he can’t make me agree to it. If I do inherit the title, I intend to turn it down.”

“Yes, but darling, I don’t think you can,” protested Julia. “That is, you can certainly refuse to tend to his lordship’s estates, or take up his seat in Parliament, or see to any of the other responsibilities that come with the title. But it seems a shabby thing to do to your own heir, who would eventually inherit lands suffering from decades of neglect.”

Pickett, usually not given to profanity, make a creative but physically impossible suggestion as to what Lord Melrose might do with his title and his estates.

“Would you mind it so very much?” she asked coaxingly, lacing her fingers through his. “Can you not consider such a thing—if it happens at all, which is far from certain—for the advantages it would give your children?”

You’ll be singing a different tune one there is a son to educate or a daughter to dower… Yes, that was exactly what Lord Melrose was counting on—and it was frightening how accurately his lordship had got his measure, even on so little acquaintance. Still, that was not the greatest of the temptations offered by the marquess’s petition.

“If I’m tempted at all,” he confessed, “it’s by the prospect of laying those honors at your feet.”

“Oh, John”—she tugged her fingers free of his, but only so that she might slip her arms around his neck—“I couldn’t possibly love you as Marquess of Melrose any more than I did plain John Pickett of Bow Street. As long as I can be ‘Mrs. Pickett,’ I need no other title.”

“Oh, but you can’t,” he exclaimed, laughing. “I almost forgot: Lord Melrose intends to buy off my ‘St. Giles wench’ and find me a wife of his own choosing. He thinks I might be acceptable to some well-born female who’s desperate enough to take me rather than end up on the shelf.”

“He what?” Julia’s tone was indignant, but secretly she would have endured any number of slights to her honor in exchange for seeing the distress banished from her husband’s eyes.

“You have to hand it to his lordship, really,” Pickett conceded with grudging admiration. “He managed to insult three people in one breath: You, me, and the poor woman he thinks to marry me off to.”

“He might have saved himself the trouble,” Julia retorted, relaxing into his embrace. “There isn’t enough money in the world to buy off this wench.”