Sheri Cobb South (18 page)

Mr. Crumpton, still clutching the brass keys, cleared his throat, muttered something unintelligible, and cleared his throat again. “I must beg you not to be too hasty, my lady. Surely now, while your grief is still fresh, is not the time to make such a momentous decision. There is much to be said for your cousin’s suggestion. Then, perhaps later, after your year of mourning is completed—”

Lady Fieldhurst regarded the solicitor with confusion, and no small sense of betrayal. “But Mr. Crumpton, it was your suggestion that I set up my own establishment in the first place! What, pray, has caused this reversal of opinion?”

Mr. Crumpton tugged at his cravat. “Since we last spoke on this subject, I have been to inspect the house, and found it, er, unfit for occupation by a lady.”

“Unfit? In what way? Is it structurally unsound? Do the chimneys smoke? Or perhaps the roof leaks?”

“No, no! Indeed, there is no reason why you might not sell the house for a handsome sum.”

“You behold me agog with curiosity, Mr. Crumpton,” said her ladyship, although her voice was pitched at a tone more indicative of annoyance than inquisitiveness. “If the house is fit for others to dwell in, why should not I?”

The solicitor cleared his throat, then threw a pleading glance in the direction of the heir. Finding no help from that quarter, he plunged into apologetic speech. “It is a matter of the furnishings, my lady. These, I am persuaded, would not be at all to your tastes.”

“I did not realize you were so well-informed as to my tastes.” As the solicitor opened his mouth, she raised a black-gloved hand to forestall further protests. “Understand this, Mr. Crumpton, and you too, George. Although you may have your own opinions as to what I should do, I am not bound by your suggestions. You, Mr. Crumpton, may offer me advice—indeed, sometimes I may even ask you for it—but I am under no obligation to follow your recommendations. As for you, George, although you may be the head of the family, you have no real legal authority over me, nor do you control my purse-strings.”

The end of the interview was never really in doubt. All her life she had been under the domination of a man—first her overbearing father, then her cold and distant husband. Now that she was finally free to do as she pleased, she would not yield her independence to anyone.

By the time her visitors (one still blustering, the other still fretful) took their reluctant leave some quarter-hour later, the keys to the house in Queens Gardens rested snugly in the bottom of her reticule.

* * * *

Queens Gardens was a quiet cul-de-sac tucked away off the Brompton Road. Its distance from London precluded it from attracting the attention of the fashionable world, but its neat, narrow houses exuded an air of upwardly mobile respectability. Aside from the possibility that she might find herself rubbing shoulders with an ambitious City man, Lady Fieldhurst could find nothing in her surroundings to support Mr. Crumpton’s sudden qualms.

The now-familiar figure of Mr. Pickett awaited her on the front stoop of Number 11 and, as the carriage rolled to a stop, he came forward to meet her.

“Well, Mr. Pickett, you are certainly prompt,” she observed, taking the coachman’s proffered arm as she disembarked from the vehicle. “I hope I have not kept you waiting long.”

“Not long at all,” he assured her, wishing he had thought to offer his arm before the coachman could provide this service.

Lady Fieldhurst dismissed the driver with instructions to return for her at four, then turned her attention back to Pickett. “I beg you will forgive my tardiness, Mr. Pickett. It took rather longer to obtain the keys than I expected.” Without quite knowing why, she found herself recounting the interview with her solicitor. As she had noted before, Mr. Pickett had a way of leading one to say far more than one had intended.

“And so he did his best to discourage you?” said Pickett at the end of this recitation. “Why? Did he know, or suspect, your real purpose in coming today?”

“I am convinced he could not, for I never said a word to anyone but you. He would have it that the house was not suitable for a lady, or some such nonsense. As for George, I daresay he is simply envious. He had hoped to inherit everything, lock, stock, and barrel. Between the pair of them, I was half afraid you had given me up.”

“Not at all, my lady,” he assured her. “It still lacks ten minutes to the hour. You did have one prospect arrive early, though.”

Lady Fieldhurst paused with one foot on the stoop and turned to regard him hopefully. “Rogers?”

Pickett grimaced. “I hope not, for I sent the fellow away. He was seventy if he was a day, and I had the impression our man was younger.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Lady Fieldhurst. “I daresay I should have furnished you with a description. But it is a very odd thing about servants. Even though one sees them every day, one rarely sees them. I can say with certainty that Rogers is less than seventy years old, and that he is not stout or bald or cross-eyed, but, as far as telling you what color his eyes are, or whether he is above average height, I should find myself at a loss.”

Fitting the brass key into the lock, she turned the knob. The door swung open with a groan, revealing a shadowy entryway which stretched into darkness at the rear of the house. “It—it’s rather a creepy place, isn’t it?” Her voice echoed down the empty passage, and she instinctively moved closer to Pickett.

Determined not to let this opportunity slip, he cupped his hand around her elbow. “The hinges need oiling, that’s all.”

Against the wall on the right, stairs climbed into blackness; on the left, a wide, arched doorway beckoned. Lady Fieldhurst turned toward this, then froze on the threshold. “Oh! Oh dear!”

The furniture was swathed in Holland covers, but the ghostly appearance was somewhat negated by the fact that, over the fireplace, a large portrait of a nude female stared haughtily down at the intruders. Overhead, plump, winged cherubs chased scantily-clad damsels across elaborately plastered ceilings.

Pickett coughed discreetly. “Er, friend of your husband’s?”

“It would certainly appear so,” acknowledged Lady Fieldhurst, averting her gaze from flashing dark eyes and tumbled ebony locks.

Mr. Pickett, by contrast, studied the portrait with an interest which to the viscountess seemed unwarranted. “Something about her looks familiar.”

“Why, Mr. Pickett!” cried her ladyship, much shocked. “I am surprised at you!”

Pickett flushed deeply. “Her face, I mean,” he amended hastily. “Something about her face looks familiar!”

With an effort, Lady Fieldhurst fixed her gaze on the female’s dark, heavy-lidded eyes, determinedly ignoring the lady’s more obvious attributes. “Yes, I see what you mean. I daresay we have both seen her on the Covent Garden stage. I understand gentlemen often choose their mistresses from among the thespians. At any rate, Mr. Crumpton’s objections would appear to be explained.” She gave a rather shaky laugh. “I suppose I should be thankful that Papa did not remain in London long enough to help me inspect my inheritance.”

Pickett drew one finger along the surface of a small table near the door, then studied the faint coating of dust on the tip of his finger. “If it’s any consolation, my lady, the house appears to have been unoccupied for some time—”

She held up a hand to forestall him. “You are very thoughtful, Mr. Pickett, but pray do not think my husband’s infidelity comes as a shock to me. I have known of it for years. Indeed, he has never made any effort to keep it secret. If this house has stood empty in recent months, it only means he was keeping his trysts at some other location.”

Pickett was not sure which he found the most shocking: the late viscount’s amorous habits, or his wife’s resigned acceptance of them. “His death must have come as a welcome release!”

“One would think so,” confessed her ladyship. “And yet, as long as Frederick lived, there was a chance, however slight, for reconciliation. Now, however, I can only wonder what went wrong, and what I might have done differently—oh, bother!”

Tears were springing to her eyes faster than she could blink them away. As she fumbled through her reticule, searching in vain for a handkerchief, Pickett thrust his own into her hand. She took it and dabbed at her eyes, annoyed with herself for this display of emotion before a relative stranger—a stranger, moreover, who under the circumstances held the power of life and death.

“Will you think me impertinent, my lady, if I suggest that perhaps the blame best lies with your husband?”

She smiled somewhat cynically. “Impertinent, no; accommodating, yes. Certainly no one would guess by your manner that you suspect this display of sensibility is nothing more than a belated attempt to divert suspicion by playing the grieving widow.”

“I wasn’t thinking any such thing—” protested Pickett, painfully aware that Mr. Colquhoun would have been quick to draw that very conclusion.

It was perhaps best that he was interrupted at this point, as a knock on the door heralded the first of the applicants for the position of butler. While Pickett went to admit the caller, Lady Fieldhurst snatched the dust cover off the nearest piece of furniture. The sofa underneath proved to be a virulent shade of green, but there was little she could do to amend matters at this point. Grimacing at the unknown light-skirt’s execrable taste, she bundled up the white linen covering and draped it over the portrait, then seated herself on the sofa and spread her narrow, black bombazine skirts to cover as much of the upholstery as the current fashion would allow. When Pickett entered the room with a tall, hook-nosed man of somber mien, Lady Fieldhurst was the picture of demure widowhood.

“Good afternoon,” he said, inclining his slightly stooped shoulders. “I have come to present myself as a candidate for the position of—of—of—”

As the man’s voice trailed off, his eyes grew increasingly wider, and his gaze appeared to be fixed at some point over her right shoulder. Even as she turned to identify the cause of his consternation, Julia knew with a sinking feeling what she would see. Alas, the dust cover was slipping, displaying inch by inch the abundant charms of the painted female adorning the mantle.

“Well!” the offended butler bristled, drawing himself up to his full height with an air of outraged dignity, “I was given to understand that this was a respectable household! I can assure you, madam, that you could not offer me sufficient wages to persuade me to toil within a—a den of iniquity!”

Pickett, correctly surmising that this personage was not the missing Rogers, seized the impertinent butler by the collar.

“Here now, no one’s going to offer you anything but a bit of the home-brewed, unless you start showing some respect for her ladyship!”

Lady Fieldhurst leaped to her feet, the color of the sofa cushions long forgotten. “No, Mr. Pickett, pray do not! His is an honest enough reaction, for were we not ourselves saying something very similar only moments ago?”

She might have saved her breath. The butler continued to denounce his present company, prophesying a series of gruesome fates, not only for her ladyship, but for all those who rejoiced in iniquity. Pickett, being a young man of action rather than words, twisted his fist more tightly into the man’s collar and bore him inexorably toward the door. Lady Fieldhurst’s protests were lost in the sounds of a scuffle and, finally, the slamming of the door.

“Well, that’s taken care of that,” pronounced Pickett with no little satisfaction as he re-entered the room.

“Are you injured, Mr. Pickett?” asked Lady Fieldhurst, watching with growing concern as he wiped a red substance from his knuckles. Surely that was blood he now wiped from his knuckles with the same handkerchief that had so recently dried her tears?

“Not at all. The fellow’s nose—it, er, sprang a leak.”

Lady Fieldhurst cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “And I suppose your hand became bloodied when you helped to stanch the flow. Really, Mr. Pickett, it was badly done of you! What else was the poor man to think, with that—that creature there?” She glanced toward the portrait, immediately regretted it, and looked hastily away.

“I know how to deal with her,” declared Pickett. He crossed the room in three strides, then lifted the portrait from its nail above the mantel and set it on the floor with its face turned toward the wall.

When the next applicant appeared, they were better prepared. The Holland covers had been removed from the rest of the furniture, and the viscountess, seated in stately dignity before the fireplace, received each applicant as Pickett presented him. As he called out the name of each hopeful, Pickett gave Lady Fieldhurst a questioning look, which she answered with the slightest shake of her head. In this manner, he would know when—or if—the fugitive Rogers finally presented himself.

They spent two full days in this manner, and Pickett, who had always fancied that he knew London well, was forced to concede that he had never dreamed the Metropolis contained so many unemployed butlers. They had seen dozens of butlers: old ones and young ones, tall ones and short ones, thin ones and fat ones, bald, periwigged, and bespectacled ones. They had seen so many butlers that at last Lady Fieldhurst threw up her hands in mock dismay and declared that they had mingled into such a blur in her brain that if Rogers should appear on the instant, she was not at all certain she would recognize him.

In this, at least, she was mistaken. For when, at half-past three on the third day, Mr. Pickett ushered in a man answering to the name of Brown, Lady Fieldhurst’s arrested gaze told Pickett all he needed to know. One glance at the man Brown confirmed Pickett’s hopes. The erstwhile butler stared at the viscountess in abject horror, then, before she could say a word, darted for the door. Pickett moved quickly to block his exit and, while the two men struggled in the doorway, Lady Fieldhurst abandoned her place by the fire and hastened to reassure her former servant.

“Pray calm yourself, Rogers! There is no need for this outburst. You are in no danger here. Indeed, I have been very worried about you.”

To the dismay of his captors, these comforting words had the unhappy effect of causing the butler to burst into tears. As great, wrenching sobs racked his frail body, the viscountess placed an arm about his stooped shoulders and guided him to one of the hideous green chairs.