Sheri Cobb South (10 page)

“Hmm,” said Pickett, thinking of the missing wine bottles. “I wonder if that’s not the only thing he’s been stealing.”

“But tell me, what did you find at the vicarage?”

“How did you know I’ve already been?” he asked in some surprise.

“There was a faint smell of smoke about the buffet this morning. No, no, you need not worry,” she added hastily, seeing his puzzled expression turn to one of chagrin. “I had the advantage of knowing that you planned to pay a visit there. I doubt anyone else would have noticed.”

“Particularly if they were looking for the smell of alcohol instead.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Lady Fieldhurst, bewildered.

Pickett shook his head. “Never mind.”

“You must have been out and about very early, to be back in time for breakfast.”

In fact, he had
not
been back in time for breakfast, at least not his own, but he saw no reason to burden the viscountess with this information. “Just after dawn, in fact.”

Now it was Lady Fieldhurst’s turn to feel chagrin. “Why so early? Surely you did not think I was serious when I chided you for wanting the afternoon free?”

Pickett regarded her with limpid brown eyes. “I dared not take the chance, my lady. A servant’s life is a hard one, particularly with such an exacting taskmistress as mine.”

She gave a startled laugh. “Very well, Mr. Pickett—John—I suppose I deserved that, after dragging you all the way from London on what might well prove to be a search for mares’ nests.”

“Not at all. In fact, I wanted to allow myself sufficient time to powder my hair. Besides being messy, the stuff makes me sneeze.”

“I confess, I am not at all sorry to have been born too late for that particular fashion—”

She broke off in some confusion as Pickett left the road for the path leading to the church door.

“John?” After the initial awkwardness, she found it all too easy to call him by his Christian name. “Where are you going?”

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “When you mentioned stopping by the church, I assumed the trip to the village was a ruse for my benefit.”

“And so it is, for the most part. But we must go to the village first.”

“Oh?” He returned to the road, and they set out in the direction of the village once more. “Why is that?”

“My dear John, it would be very odd for a lady to go shopping and not make a single purchase!”

“You would know best about that,” he acknowledged, bowing to her superior wisdom.

“But now that we are alone, you must tell me: what did you find at the vicarage?”

“Nothing conclusive, I’m afraid.”

“I feared as much.”

He regarded her quizzically. “Was I so obvious?”

“Not to anyone else. But I know from experience that you get a certain light in your eyes when you are on the verge of making a discovery. When I saw you at breakfast, I knew that only a man whose efforts were unproductive could assume so wooden an expression.”

“Hmm,” said Pickett, pondering this statement, “I wonder if I have just been offered a compliment, or an insult?”

“Oh, a compliment, I assure you! I daresay it was a good thing for the sake of your incognito that you found nothing, for otherwise your expression must surely have given you away.”

The ground grew softer as they approached the temporary bridge, and Pickett took her ladyship’s arm to assist her across a muddy patch. When she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, Pickett’s cup overflowed. Granted, it seemed a bit macabre to woo his lady while discussing a corpse, but then (as he was sure Mr. Colquhoun would not have hesitated to point out, had he been present), she was not his lady, and there could be no wooing on his part, macabre or otherwise.

And then, without warning, Pickett’s belly betrayed him by loudly protesting his neglect.

Lady Fieldhurst regarded him quizzically. “You must have breakfasted very early indeed, if you are already impatient for luncheon.”

“I haven’t had anything to eat,” Pickett confessed. “The despised hair powder took longer than expected, with the result that I missed eating the morning meal with the rest of the staff.”

“Poor John! You must be quite famished. Surely the housekeeper might have given you a slice of toast, or a cup of coffee!”

“No, Mrs. Holland feels that having to go hungry until luncheon will teach me to be more prompt in the future.” Pickett’s efforts to eliminate any trace of bitterness from his voice were not entirely successful.

Lady Fieldhurst’s bosom swelled with righteous indignation. “Oh, does she, indeed? I should like to know where she came by the idea that she might order my servants about and discipline them willy-nilly!”

“She has a point, really.” Pickett was not quite certain which sounded the most jarring: hearing Lady Fieldhurst refer to him as her servant, or hearing himself come to the housekeeper’s defense. “House rules, and all that, you know—”

“House rules be hanged! You must be famished.” She dug into her reticule and withdrew a few coins. “Here, take this and buy yourself something to eat at the Pig and Whistle. You will want to keep up your strength if you are to examine the body upon our return. That is why you wished to stop at the church, is it not?”

“It is, my lady, but I have money of my own. I won’t take yours.”

She would have insisted, but something in his voice and in the set of his jaw made her reconsider. She had not realized until that moment how much of his independence he had been obliged to give up in order to accommodate her request for anonymity. She suspected his pride was still stinging from whatever tongue-lashing the housekeeper had given him, and resolved not to add to his burden any more than she must.

“Very well.” She dropped the coins back into her reticule, where they landed with a soft
clink.
“I shall meet you at the Pig and Whistle when I’ve done with my shopping. I hope you enjoy your belated breakfast; you deserve no less after sacrificing the morning in a futile exercise.”

“I wouldn’t call it futile, exactly,” Pickett said thoughtfully. “I surprised a fellow scavenging among the ruins—or perhaps I should say
he
surprised
me.
I wonder if you may have seen him? Dark, slender, quite young—”

She had to laugh at this description. “If you found him ‘quite young,’ he must have been little more than a babe in arms!”

“I’m not as young as all that!” protested Pickett.

“I seem to recall your once telling me that you were four-and-twenty.”

“And you, I’ll wager, are not a day over thirty.”

“Thirty!” protested Lady Fieldhurst, offended as only a lady can be whose age has been estimated at greater than her actual years. “I’ll have you know I am but six-and-twenty!”

“I stand corrected,” said Pickett with a smug smile. “You are a whole two years my senior, in fact.”

“Oh, you tricked me! Unfair!” cried her ladyship.

“But effective.”

“You are wandering from the subject,” Lady Fieldhurst informed him with a haughty sniff that did not fool Pickett for one moment. “You say he was dark. Do you mean dark hair, or dark complexion?”

“Both. Swarthy skin, black hair worn long, shabby clothes, and none too clean.”

“And so naturally you thought he must be an acquaintance of mine!”

Pickett’s lips twitched, but he resisted the urge to reply in kind. Alone with her, away from the trappings of wealth and rank, it was all too easy to forget the difference between their respective stations and tease her as he might Lucy, the Covent Garden strumpet whose services he gently but firmly declined on a regular basis. He doubted the viscountess would appreciate the comparison. Perhaps he should have taken her money after all, to remind him of his place.

“I didn’t mean to suggest you’d asked him to tea,” he said. “I thought perhaps you might have seen someone who looked like him—a laborer on the estate, perhaps, or a vagrant along the road.”

“No, I can’t say that I—wait! Sir Gerald complained of gypsies in the Home Wood, and Mr. Danvers said they had been stealing his chickens, and he had purchased a gun to frighten them away. Could your dark stranger be a gypsy, do you suppose?”

Pickett regarded her with mingled respect and admiration. “I think it not only possible, but very likely. I thank you.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

“I don’t know. I daresay it will depend on what I find at the church.”

They were now climbing the hill rising up from the opposite bank of the river, and eventually the rooftops and chimneys of the village came into view. Pickett, seeing that the time for private conversation was at an end, fell behind once more to the discreet distance expected of a servant.

To her consternation, Lady Fieldhurst felt strangely bereft without the warmth of his arm beneath her fingers.
You had best have a care,
she chided herself,
or you will turn into one of those pathetic creatures so desperate for male companionship that they will fling themselves at anything in breeches!
Yet she could not deny a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that they resided beneath the same roof.
And why not?
came the inevitable mental scold.
You are dwelling among strangers, in a house only a stone’s throw from where a gentle parson met a gruesome death. It would be a very odd woman indeed who did not take comfort in the presence of a Bow Street Runner.
The very idea that her pleasure in John Pickett’s nearness might have more to do with his person than with his profession was too absurd to contemplate.

Chapter 5

A Visit to the Church

“What I shall do with it all, I have no idea,” complained Lady Fieldhurst some time later, as they trudged down the road leading away from the village. “One can always use gloves and handkerchiefs, but as for the bonnet, I can’t even wear it for another nine months. I have defied convention enough by putting off my blacks far too early; provoke it further by wearing colors before the year is out, I dare not!”

Pickett, who had the honor of transporting said bonnet, along with her ladyship’s numerous smaller purchases, picked up his pace to catch up with her. “Then—if you’ll pardon my presumption—why did you buy it?”

“So that you might have the privilege of carrying it,” she said, albeit not without sympathy for the Bow Street Runner reduced to the role of beast of burden. “Having announced that you would accompany me, I had to provide myself with sufficient purchases to justify your presence.”

Pickett paused long enough to transfer the strings of the bandbox, which had been banging against his shin for the better part of the journey, to his other hand. “Always happy to be of service.”

“Come now, you must confess, this is better than skulking about the church in the middle of the night, is it not?”

Pickett, recalling one memorable occasion when his candle had gone out while he was searching a crypt and the stygian darkness that had enveloped him on that occasion, could not deny it. He glanced at the viscountess to concede the point and found her regarding him speculatively.

“Still, it is a pity to let such a fetching bonnet go to waste,” she said. “Is there a female among your acquaintance who might like to have it?”

He considered the various females of his acquaintance. Lucy of Covent Garden fame would be in alt to receive such a gift, but as he was doing his best to discourage her embarrassingly obvious designs upon his person, it would be reckless in the extreme to present her with such a stimulus. Likewise Molly, although heaven knew he could use an ally in the servants’ hall. He thought fleetingly of presenting it to Mrs. Holland, but rejected this notion out of hand; aside from the likelihood that she would consider such a gesture a form of bribery, she might well accuse him of theft and see him clapped in the roundhouse.

There was another female, however, about whom he need have no qualms. Mrs. Catchpole, who allowed him to hire the rooms above her shop, and who also cooked and cleaned for him, had much to bear with his comings and goings at all hours of the day or night. It was past time that he gave her some token of his appreciation.

“Yes, I know someone who would be delighted to have it,” he said at last.

“Excellent! Then you may give it to her with my compliments,” said Lady Fieldhurst although, in truth, she did not understand why this solution, in every way so satisfactory, should put her quite out of temper.

At length they crossed the bridge and began the gentle climb toward the church, Lady Fieldhurst picking her way somewhat gingerly through the muddier spots, as Pickett’s arms were too full to allow him to steady her. As they reached the doorstep, he shifted his burden under one arm and tugged open the heavy oak door, which groaned as if protesting the coming desecration. The inside of the church was cool and so dark that it took a moment for Pickett’s eyes to adjust sufficiently to pick out the carved angels over the altar.

“They are lovely, are they not?” remarked Lady Fieldhurst, following his gaze upward. “According to Mr. Danvers, all the carving was done by local artisans.”

“They give me the creeps,” said Pickett, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “Almost as if they know what I’m about to do, and they disapprove.”

“You are trying to see that justice is done. Surely they could not disapprove of that.”

Lady Fieldhurst, who along with the Hollingshead family had attended a strained and solemn service conducted by Mr. Meriwether on the Sunday following the vicar’s death, was sufficiently familiar with the church to locate the vestry, where a plain wooden casket rested on a heavy deal table. A handful of wilting wildflowers lay on top, a pathetic and yet touching tribute to the vicar’s popularity with his flock. Pickett piled Lady Fieldhurst’s parcels against the wall and took himself off to plunder the sexton’s shed. He soon returned bearing an iron crowbar.

“You’d best guard the door,” said Pickett, stripping off his coat for greater freedom of movement. “If anyone comes up the path, head him off.”

In truth, his concern was less for being caught than for the viscountess to be subjected to a sight too gruesome for a lady’s eyes. He had half expected her to protest his rather cavalier dismissal, but she accepted her assigned role readily enough and left the vestry with a swiftness suggesting relief.