Sheri Cobb South (6 page)

“I’ll powder it,” said Pickett, whose devotion to Lady Fieldhurst stopped short of shaving off his shoulder-length brown locks. He frowned, remembered Thomas’s convoluted instructions. “I only hope I can manage it.”

“I’ll help you,” offered Lucy, slipping her hand through the curve of his arm. “I’ll come over before dawn, and do your hair and cook your breakfast, too. Lud, it’ll be just like I was your left-hand wife!”

Pickett stepped backwards so quickly he almost lost his balance and tumbled into the street. “I won’t be there, Lucy. I’m going to Yorkshire. Her ladyship has sent for me.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “What ladyship?”

“Lady Fieldhurst.”

“O-ho! So it’s Lady Fieldhurst again, is it?” Lucy’s words were mocking, but her expression was petulant. “Does she want you for her fancy-man?”

“Good God, no!” Pickett flushed scarlet. “Her ladyship has no interest in me at all beyond the professional.”

Lucy arched a knowing eyebrow. “More’s the pity, hmm? I know exactly how you feel. Only
some
men don’t even have a professional interest in me, if you know what I mean. How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. Until I can solve her ladyship’s problem, or until Mr. Colquhoun recalls me to Bow Street, I suppose.” Seeing she was still inclined to sulk, he added more gently, “I can’t pass up an opportunity like this.”

“No, you was wanting an excuse to see her ladyship again, wasn’t you?”

Pickett winced at her too-keen perception. “It’s more than that. I have a chance to earn money beyond my usual wages.”

“Why should I care?” Lucy muttered with a disdainful sniff. “It’s not like I’ll ever see a farthing of it.”

Pickett sighed. He was genuinely fond of Lucy and did not want to hurt her, but neither did he want to impregnate her or contract the pox from her. Still, it was not Lucy’s fault that he had set his sights on a woman so far above him that the lady would no doubt laugh at the idea of any relationship between them—in the unlikely event that any such idea should occur to her at all.

“Look, Lucy, when I get back, I’ll take you to the theater. We’ll sit right up front, where the others in the pit won’t block your view.”

“Really?” exclaimed Lucy, all smiles once more. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

“You’ll hurry back?”

“I’ll do my best,” Pickett assured her, knowing it was a lie even as he spoke the words. The longer this case took, the happier he would be, so long as Lady Fieldhurst was there. Prompted by the combined forces of pity, affection, and a guilty conscience, he bent and gave Lucy a quick peck on the cheek. “In the meantime, try not to get yourself tossed into Bridewell while I’m gone.”

* * * *

He arrived at the village of Kendall via stagecoach some four days later. He collected his belongings from the boot and, discovering an obliging farmer headed in the same direction, begged a ride on this worthy’s cart as far as the bridge. Upon being deposited at this destination, Pickett gave the farmer sixpence for his pains, then hoisted the valise onto his shoulder and trudged up the muddy track toward Hollingshead Place. He had not gone far before he came upon the stone church and, beyond it, the blackened remains of the vicarage. He paused. He would want a closer look, but it would not do to arrive at Hollingshead Place smelling of smoke. No, his investigation would have to wait. First, he must get himself safely installed in the servants’ quarters. To that end, he cast one last look at the ruined vicarage, then set off toward the big house, where he soon presented himself at the service entrance.

It was opened to him by a buxom lass wearing the mobcap and apron of the kitchen maid. She looked him up and down appreciatively for a long moment, taking in every detail from the unfashionably shallow crown of his hat to his scuffed and muddied boots. Having completed this inspection, she inquired in unrefined accents, “What can I do for you, ducks?”

“How do you do? I’m John Pickett, footman to Lady Fieldhurst—”

“Footman, eh?” She leaned against the doorjamb, crossing her arms beneath her ample bosom. “Aye, I trow you’d know just how to serve a lady.”

Pickett colored, but plunged gamely on. “I’ve just arrived from London. If you could inform her ladyship—

“Molly!” interrupted a sharp female voice.

The kitchen maid gave a guilty start and turned to face the speaker, all traces of coquetry vanished. “Beggin’ your pardon, Mrs. Holland, I meant no harm—”

“I know exactly what you meant, my girl, and it’ll get you in trouble one of these days, mark my words.”

With this warning—or was it a threat?—the speaker moved into Pickett’s range of vision. Had the maid’s deferential manner not identified Mrs. Holland as the housekeeper, the older woman’s attire must surely have done so, although this specimen of the breed appeared to have little in common with the plump, motherly woman who performed the same office for Lady Fieldhurst. This formidable female’s starched black bombazine was scarcely more severe than the expression with which she regarded him, as if she suspected him of coming northward for the sole purpose of seducing the serving girls under her charge.

“And you are?”

“John Pickett, of—” He hauled himself up short just before saying
of Bow Street.
“Of London, ma’am. Footman to Lady Fieldhurst. Her ladyship sent for me.”

Her coldly appraising gaze gave him to understand that he had been weighed in the balances and found wanting. “If Lady Fieldhurst is displeased with the service she has received from Lady Anne’s staff, she should have informed me.”

Pickett, painfully aware of having said precisely the wrong thing, hastened to reassure her. “I—I’m sure my lady is not displeased, precisely. Perhaps, being recently bereaved, she merely wishes for the comfort of a familiar face.”

Mrs. Holland raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And your face alone of all her ladyship’s acquaintance can provide her with this comfort?”

Pickett felt his face grow warm and, not for the first time, deplored his tendency to blush. “I should have said, rather, a familiar way of doing things.” Seeing the housekeeper was not convinced, he added, “My presence here may well be unnecessary, ma’am, but surely one newly widowed, and under such circumstances, must be forgiven a few eccentricities.”

If Mrs. Holland did not wholeheartedly embrace this suggestion, at least she did not dispute it. She stepped aside, albeit grudgingly, allowing Pickett to enter. “Do not think that you will be given special privileges merely because you are in the employ of a viscountess,” Mrs. Holland cautioned. “While you are here, you will be expected to follow the same rules as the rest of the staff.”

“Yes, ma’am,” murmured Pickett, wishing only that he might be allowed to put down a valise which was by this time growing quite heavy.

“You will rise each morning at six o’clock,” the housekeeper continued, progressing through the servants’ hall at a stately pace which, though undoubtedly befitting her dignity, did nothing to alleviate Pickett’s burden. “Breakfast for the staff is served promptly at seven. Punctuality is imperative—any servant not appearing at the breakfast table will be obliged to wait until the noon meal for nourishment. Dinner is at one, and supper at half past eight. Like Lady Anne’s own footmen, you will be allotted two pints of beer a day to drink with meals, but drunkenness will not be tolerated. You will also be required to wear livery and hair powder while on duty.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Pickett again, mentally ticking off these instructions on fingers that were beginning to feel as if they were permanently curved around the handle of his valise.

“Like all the other footmen, you will of course be under the direct supervision of Mr. Smithers, the butler, but I do not think I overstep my authority when I tell you that slipping out to the tavern after the family retires is strictly forbidden, as is any form of dalliance with the female staff. And now,” she added, glancing at the longcase clock against the adjacent wall, “you may have half an hour to unpack your belongings and make yourself presentable before assisting in the preparations for dinner.”

“But—her ladyship—”

“Lady Fieldhurst can have no immediate need of you, since she has gone to the village. She will, of course, be informed of your arrival upon her return.”

With this Pickett had to be content. Still, he felt a pang of disappointment. She had been in the village all along, and he had missed her.

“And now, since Molly has nothing better to do with herself, she may show you to your room—after which,” added Mrs. Holland, fixing the maid with a gimlet eye, “she will return promptly to me for further instructions.”

Molly, all eagerness to perform this task, lifted her skirts a bit higher than was strictly necessary and preceded Pickett up the back stairs, rounded hips swaying provocatively as she mounted each riser. “You’ll have a room all to yourself since James—he’s second footman, and it’s his room you’ll be sleeping in—had to go see about his mum, soon as the bridge was fixed.”

Pickett was well acquainted with the bridge, since it—or rather, its absence—had figured prominently in Lady Fieldhurst’s letter. “Had a lot of rain lately, have you?”

“Lud, you don’t know the half of it! The river flooding its banks, the bridge washing right out, the vicarage burning to the ground with the poor old vicar inside—I’ll never forget that night if I live to be a hundred, so help me!”

Pickett would have pressed for more information, but at that moment she reached the top of the stairs and turned back to face him— an action which, intentional or no, placed her substantial bosom scant inches from the end of his nose. Pickett dropped back to the next lowest step in order to avoid a far more intimate acquaintance with Molly than he had any desire for.

“All the men servants have their quarters in this wing,” she explained, gesturing toward a shadowy expanse of uncarpeted corridor. To Pickett’s immense relief, she turned her back on him and set off down the hallway, pointing out the various rooms as they passed.

“First door on the left is Charles, the under butler. Then Ned—he’s first footman—then Robert, what valets for Master Philip whenever he’s home from school. James has the room on the end, a little apart from the rest on account of him snoring.”

Pickett wondered at her knowledge of the sleeping habits of the male staff, but judged it best not to inquire too closely. Halfway down the corridor, she stopped at the door of a tiny chamber which made his two hired rooms above a Drury Lane chandler’s shop seem palatial by comparison. Though spartanly furnished with no more than a single narrow bed, a scarred wardrobe, a three-legged stool, and a rickety washstand bearing an earthenware pitcher, so small was the room that even these meager furnishings rendered it cramped. Still, it was meticulously clean —the credit for which condition, he suspected, must go to Mrs. Holland’s iron-fisted management of her staff—and well lit with sunlight from a single window. He crossed the floor to this aperture, twitched back the single threadbare linen panel that served as a curtain, and looked out over a straight drop to a flagstone terrace fifty feet below.

He frowned. There was no conveniently placed tree or downspout, nor any other object which might assist him in making a nocturnal descent from the window, should the need arise. In fact, the nearest structure appeared to be the stables, situated some two hundred yards away. This was hardly the ideal situation from which to conduct a clandestine investigation; should he wish to examine the vicarage (or, indeed, anything else), he would be obliged to navigate the corridor, the back stair, and the servants’ hall—this last under the disapproving eye of Mrs. Holland.

He cast another longing glance at the stables. Why hadn’t he thought to pose as Lady Fieldhurst’s groom instead? But even as his mind raised the question, he knew the answer. Aside from the fact that he had a very limited acquaintance with horses, a groom’s access to her ladyship would be far more restricted than a footman’s. No, he decided, allowing the curtain to fall back into place, whatever the disadvantages, he was better off here than in the stables.

He turned away from the window and received a shock that almost sent him running for the stables, their shortcomings notwithstanding. Molly bent over his narrow bed, plumping his pillow invitingly and at the same time affording him an uninterrupted view of her considerable cleavage.

“Anything else I can do for you, ducky?”

Pickett had no great faith in his ability to powder his hair unassisted, but the predatory gleam in Molly’s eye gave him to understand that she was far more interested in taking things off than putting them on.

“N-no thank you, I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble—” He blushed at the unintended implications of this speech. “That is, Mrs. Holland will likely be expecting you—”

Molly gave a disdainful sniff. “Mrs. Holland, my eye! If there was ever a Mr. Holland, I’ve never seen hair nor hide of him! The old battle-axe expects us all to act as if we was as dried up and spinsterish as she is.”

Still, Pickett’s warning had apparently served its purpose. Molly made no further advances, but gave the mattress one last pat and betook herself from the room. Pickett waited until he heard her footsteps clattering down the stairs, then closed his door, removed Thomas’s livery from his valise, and set about the alterations that would transform him from a reasonably independent Bow Street operative to a lackey at the housekeeper’s beck and call. If his hands trembled slightly during the application of the dreaded hair powder, it was very likely due to the fact that he found himself in the uncomfortable position of maintaining an incognito in the presence of no less than two disconcerting females—one of whom disliked him on sight for reasons he could not fathom, the other who appeared to like him a great deal too much for his peace of mind. Certainly his nervous state could have nothing at all to do with the fact that he would very shortly be coming face-to-face with the woman who had haunted his dreams for the last two months.

* * * *

Lady Fieldhurst formed the habit of making daily treks to the village a full three days before Pickett might reasonably be expected to arrive. She always contrived to time her arrival so that she might be partaking of tea or lemonade at the Pig and Whistle just as the stage arrived from Leeds, and she always sat at a table near the window overlooking the courtyard, from which vantage point she might observe the passengers as they disembarked. But although she scanned each day’s new arrivals for some sign of a tall young man with curling dark hair tied with a ribbon at the nape of his neck, no such individual materialized out of the crowd of weary, cranky travelers collecting their belongings from the boot and booking rooms for the night.