Sheri Cobb South (15 page)

She eyed the notebook in his hands speculatively. “Do you write your deepest, most secret thoughts in it?”

He smiled. “Something like that.” It was not quite a lie, at any rate.

“Perhaps I should do the same,” said Miss Susannah, much struck. “I could write down Madame Rosa’s predictions, and then years from now, when I am a married lady, I can read them and see if they came true.”

“An excellent notion,” seconded Pickett, taking her elbow and steering her toward the door. “You should do so at once, before you forget anything.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Yes, Miss Susannah, I am,” he declared with no roundaboutation.

“Why? Don’t you like me?”

“What I like is entirely beside the point. If you were discovered here, particularly at this hour and dressed in such a way, you would be locked in your room and given nothing to eat but bread and water, and I would be thrown out of the house on my, er, ear.”

“But—” Miss Susannah’s protest died on her lips, and her eyes widened. “Do you mean people would think you had
compromised
me?”

Pickett blushed at her frankness but answered with equal candor. “That is exactly what they would think. And, given the circumstances, who could blame them?”

“Well!” declared Miss Susannah, fairly beaming with pride. “That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Now I feel quite grown up!”

To Pickett’s somewhat bewildered relief, she bade him goodnight and left the room without further protest. He waited a few moments to satisfy himself that she was truly gone, then tucked the notebook back into its hiding place and pondered how best to spend the hours remaining until the household had settled down for the night. If he had harbored fears regarding the coming foray into housebreaking, these had now been laid to rest: surely the night could hold no terrors greater than his recent
tête-à -tête
with Miss Susannah Hollingshead.

He scratched his itching scalp, and dusted the resulting snowfall from the shoulders of his livery. He wished he might brush the white powder from his hair but was obliged to abandon this tempting thought; the last thing he needed at the moment was a fit of sneezing to awaken his fellow servants.

In the end, he paced the floor and watched the clock until at last, an hour past midnight, he picked up his candle and cautiously opened the creaking door. Shielding the feeble flame with his hand, he slowly picked his way down the stairs. He had reached the second floor, where the family’s bedchambers were located, when he saw the faint glow of another candle. Someone was climbing the stairs from the floor below.

Pickett blew out his candle and ducked quickly into the nearest doorway, from which vantage point he could watch from the shadows as the nocturnal wanderer moved through the house in a manner which could only be described as suspicious. Not until the stealthy figure had drawn abreast of his hiding place could Pickett identify the slender form of Philip Hollingshead. In his right hand, the boy carried a brass candlestick holding a single taper; in his left, he clutched the neck of a bottle whose contents glowed in the candlelight like topaz. Apparently young Philip had tired of wine, and was now making inroads into his father’s cognac. The breast of his coat bulged with what was apparently yet another bottle of contraband spirits. In his eagerness to escape to his bedroom with this prize, he did not so much as glance in Pickett’s direction.

Pickett waited until his candle disappeared around the landing above, then let out a long breath. If nothing else, he had solved the mystery of the bottles missing from the wine cellar. Unfortunately, he could not report this newfound knowledge to his superiors belowstairs without being castigated as a talebearer.

Having extinguished his own candle, he was obliged to complete his descent in the dark, which slowed him down considerably. He had almost reached the library door when a female voice hissed, “At last! I had begun to think you had fallen asleep.”

“My lady!” Pickett’s answering whisper seemed scarcely louder than the pounding of his heart. “What are you doing here?”

“Surely you didn’t expect that I would allow you to commit burglary alone?”

“That is
exactly
what I expected—and what you should have done.” But in spite of his protests, Pickett found himself steering her into the library and shutting the door behind them.

“I would not have closed my eyes all night for worrying about you.” Being more familiar with the layout of the room than he, she groped about in the dark room for a flint, then fumbled with the candle until it flared to life. “But what kept you so long? I have been waiting this half hour and more.”

“The corridors were a bit more crowded than I had anticipated.” Seeing her ladyship’s puzzled expression, Pickett explained about his late-night visit from the younger daughter of the house and about the clandestine activities of its son and heir.

To his surprise, the viscountess found the former the more intriguing of the two. “Why, John!” she exclaimed. “I believe you have made a conquest!”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Pray do not be so modest! It is obvious to the meanest intelligence that Miss Susannah Hollingshead is in the throes of a schoolgirl
tendre.”

“Nonsense! All I did was walk with her as far as the gypsy camp and back.”

“Yes, you took her to see Madame Rosa when no one else would, and you didn’t report her indiscretion to her governess. Furthermore, you were too gallant to compromise her when given the opportunity—”

Pickett’s blushes outshone the candle in his hand. “What rubbish!”

“And now you are doubtless her
beau ideal.
I am sorry if you don’t like it, John, but I fear you brought it on yourself.”

Pickett closed his eyes, his expression pained. “Just show me the desk, my lady.”

“Very well, I shan’t tease you anymore, but I hope you will deal gently with her. Schoolgirl
tendres,
however short-lived, can be very keenly felt.”

He stammered something so incoherent that she took pity on him and led the way to a mahogany desk positioned before the window to catch the morning sun. At the moment, the long velvet curtains were tightly closed against the darkness, and Pickett gave them an extra tug to make sure the faint illumination from their candles could not be seen from outside. Satisfied, he set his candle on the desk and pulled gently on the top drawer. It was locked, just as Lady Fieldhurst had said.

“Have you a hairpin I can borrow?” he whispered, dropping down onto one knee.

She said nothing but dug her fingers into her hair and withdrew a long pin from the elegantly coiffed curls. He took it from her and inserted it into the lock. Pressing his ear close, he manipulated the hairpin in the lock until he heard a faint click, then withdrew the pin and slid the drawer open.

“A useful talent,” murmured the viscountess, observing the proceedings over his shoulder. “Where, pray, did you develop it?”

He grinned sheepishly. “Best not say, perhaps.”

At first glance, the drawer appeared to contain nothing but an assortment of old letters. Pickett leafed through these until he uncovered a calf-bound ledger. Before he could remove it from the drawer, a footstep sounded in the hall beyond, and a moment later the doorknob rattled. For one agonizing second, the Runner and the viscountess stared at each other in mutual horror.

The knob turned and the door began to swing open. Lady Fieldhurst was the first to react. Seizing Pickett by the lapels of his borrowed livery, she dragged his head down and covered his mouth with hers.

Chapter 8

In Which Are Put Forth a Number of Theories and Speculations

John Pickett was no fool. Once he had recovered from the initial shock, he lost no time in wrapping his arms around the lady and returning her kiss with feeling. A faint gasp sounded from the open doorway, then the door closed with a faint click and the footsteps receded. Neither Pickett nor the viscountess, however, demonstrated any great eagerness to return to their search, but remained locked in a fervent embrace for a full thirty seconds after the hall had fallen silent. Alas, sanity eventually reasserted itself, and Lady Fieldhurst took a wobbly step backwards.

“I-I beg your pardon!” she stammered, blushing crimson. “I could think of no other way to account for our presence here, and at such an hour.”

“Very—” The word came out on a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Very resourceful of you, my lady.”

“Who was it? Did you see?” A lock of her hair had come loose and now caressed her shoulder. Irrelevantly, Pickett wondered if it had been dislodged by her removal of the hair pin, or by his own probing fingers.

“No. I—”
I
had my eyes closed.
A fine admission for a Bow Street Runner to make! “—I couldn’t tell.”

She looked down at the open drawer. “Whoever it was, they’re gone now. I daresay we can get on with it. The search, I mean,” she added hastily.

Nodding agreement, he removed the drawer from its tracks and set it on top of the desk. Lady Fieldhurst gathered up the loose papers on the top, while Pickett turned his attention to the ledger, starting at the back with the most recent entries and working his way forward.

“What a scrawl!” he muttered, moving his candle nearer in the vain hope that brighter illumination would somehow make Sir Gerald’s penmanship more legible. “I don’t know why he bothered to lock the thing up; no one else could make head or tail of it.”

The viscountess, in the meantime, discovered that her pile of papers consisted mostly of correspondence. The majority of these had to do with Miss Hollingshead’s approaching London season: there were numerous letters from estate agents quoting rates for hiring a house for the Season in a fashionable part of Town, and one confirming the date of Miss Hollingshead’s presentation ball, along with a receipt for the deposit paid in advance for the hiring of suitable assembly rooms. In stark contrast to these were three letters from various clergymen, each recommending his protégé for the vacant vicarship. The contrast between Miss Hollingshead’s desires and those of her parents could not have been more clearly demonstrated.

For his part, Pickett found nothing in the ledger that could be construed as blackmail payments. Indeed, the only transactions between Sir Gerald and Mr. Danvers were ones in which the vicar, not the baronet, was the recipient, and these were hardly sinister: a handsome donation toward restoring the medieval bell tower, and a number of smaller ones for various parish charities.

“If our man Danvers was being blackmailed by anyone, it wasn’t Sir Gerald,” Pickett concluded with a sigh as he closed the ledger.

“There is nothing here, either, except for the financial details of Miss Hollingshead’s presentation,” concurred the viscountess, laying aside the last of the letters. “In fact, the entire evening appears to have been a complete waste of time.”

Pickett understood what she meant, but the remark stung all the same. Only moments ago, she had kissed him with great feeling. How could she dismiss the incident as a waste of time, when his entire world had just tilted on its axis?

* * * *

Lady Fieldhurst lingered in bed the following morning, but her slothfulness was not entirely due to her nocturnal adventures. No, her reluctance to rise was more attributable to a pronounced dread at the prospect of putting in an appearance at breakfast, where her
faux
footman would no doubt be waiting to serve her. She did not know how she could look John Pickett in the face. She had not kissed a man since her husband was alive— and, if truth be told, it had been many years since she and the late Lord Fieldhurst had kissed with anything approaching the enthusiasm of last night’s performance.

Seeing that she could delay the inevitable meeting no longer, she threw back the covers and set about making her daily ablutions. For all his youth, she reasoned, John Pickett was an intelligent man. He would surely understand that that kiss had been nothing more than an expedient solution to an unavoidable crisis—wouldn’t he?

By the time she reached the breakfast room, the family had apparently already partaken, for the sunny chamber was empty save for a very tall young footman in blue and silver livery.

“Good morning, my lady,” he said stiffly, holding out a chair for her.

“Good morning, John,” she responded in kind, coloring slightly as she allowed him to seat her at the table.

“Coffee, my lady?” He had the mouth of a poet, a full lower lip supporting a perfect Cupid’s bow above. Why had she never noticed?

“Chocolate, please.”

As he filled a delicate Spode cup with steaming chocolate, she noted with relief (and, illogically, a slight feeling of annoyance) that there was nothing in either his bearing or the tone of his voice to suggest that he remembered the events of the previous night at all. She could not know what an effort his seeming indifference cost him. She was in the act of accepting the cup of chocolate from his hand when the door opened. Emma Hollingshead froze on the threshold.

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed, blushing furiously. “I was—that is, I thought perhaps my mother was here.”

“I haven’t seen Lady Anne this morning,” said Lady Fieldhurst, puzzled by the young lady’s obvious discomfort. “I supposed she had already breakfasted.”

“Yes, I-I daresay you are right. Pray—pray forgive me for interrupting.”

She ducked out of the room and quickly shut the door behind her.

“There’s one mystery solved, at any rate,” Pickett observed.

“Oh?” inquired her ladyship.

“We know now who opened the library door last night.”

“Miss Hollingshead? Why do you say so?”

“Because,” he said wryly, “only a gently bred young woman who had caught a houseguest and her servant in a passionate embrace could possibly look even guiltier than we do.”

She was startled into looking him full in the face for the first time since entering the room, and his expression was so comically sheepish that she had to laugh. Her own expression must have mirrored his, for he laughed, too, and with that shared amusement, the earlier awkwardness fled.