Sheri Cobb South (7 page)

After the fifth day’s repetition of this fruitless errand, the viscountess was beginning to feel the strain. As she gazed out the window to the bustling stable yard below, she sipped her tepid tea and entertained a series of increasingly melancholy thoughts. Had her letter somehow gone astray in the post and never reached its intended destination? Worse, had Mr. Pickett met with an accident somewhere along the route north? Perhaps he was not coming at all; perhaps he considered her an hysterical female who, having had one encounter with violent death, now read foul play into every tragic accident. For some reason this possibility seemed more galling than all the rest.

She looked away from the window long enough to refresh her teacup from the steaming pot, and was disconcerted to see the deceased vicar himself entering the hostelry. But no, a closer look revealed a man who, although close to late Mr. Danvers in age, bore no real resemblance to him. What, then, could have given her such a bizarre impression? Surely it had more to do with the man’s costume than any physical similarity; like Mr. Danvers, he was dressed in the well-cut yet sober attire of the country cleric. As Lady Fieldhurst watched, he approached the proprietor and requested a room.

“Aye, sir, and how many nights will you be staying?” inquired this worthy.

“Only the one,” said the new arrival. “I’ll be conducting the funeral service for poor Mr. Danvers upon the morrow. After that, I shall be returning to my own parish.”

The innkeeper blinked at him in some consternation. “I’m afraid you’ll have to cool your heels a bit, Reverend. We’ve had too much rain to be burying. Ground’s too soggy by half.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed the parson. “What has been done with the—where is—?”

“The body’s laid out all right and tight in the church vestry. I expect we’ll have him safely underground by the end of the week, if the weather holds.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” fretted the vicar. “When I agreed to read the burial service, I didn’t anticipate being away from my own flock for so long.”

“Meaning no disrespect, parson, but couldn’t the curate do the burial just as well? He’s a good lad, and that much like a son to poor old Mr. Danvers—him having no family of his own, leastways none that I ever heard of.”

Lady Fieldhurst, her attention now fully engaged, silently shooed away the serving wench offering a plate of bread and butter, and bent her ear to the conversation still in progress.

“No doubt it was because of Mr. Meriwether’s attachment to Mr. Danvers that Sir Gerald hoped to spare him the pain of conducting the burial,” suggested the cleric. “Whatever the reason, Sir Gerald, who has the living in his gift, took it upon himself to make the arrangements—Mr. Danvers, as you say, having no family of his own.”

“Aye, he’s a good man, the baronet—always done right by his tenants.”

“And, having given him my word, I shall stay long enough to honor it and trust that my own curate will tend the flock until I return.”

With many assurances that the funeral could very likely be held by the end of the week, the innkeeper ushered his guest upstairs to his room. The conversation was quickly drowned in the clatter of boots on uncarpeted steps, but Lady Fieldhurst had much to consider nonetheless. If Mr. Pickett failed to arrive before the end of the week, his ability to investigate would be severely diminished. The vicar himself would be laid to rest in the churchyard, and Sir Gerald would eventually grant the living to a new vicar, who would no doubt wish the ruins of the old vicarage cleared away and construction of a new one begun. If Mr. Pickett delayed much longer, he would find very little evidence left to examine.

She glanced out the window once more. The stage had long since departed for its next stop, and the stable yard was now vacant but for a chambermaid beating a rug, a groom smoking a pipe, and two dogs dozing in the late afternoon sun. With a silent plea for Mr. Pickett to make haste, she pushed her empty teacup aside and abandoned her vigil for yet another day.

She arrived back at Hollingshead Place just in time to dress for dinner. After exchanging her gray walking dress and muddy half boots for the striped silk she had worn on the night of the fire, she rang for Rose to dress her hair.

“Oh!” she cried when that overzealous abigail drew the brush through her curls with more force than was strictly necessary. “Why not pull out a handful, while you are about it?”

“Oh, my! I’m ever so sorry, my lady,” said Rose, her guilty, frightened gaze meeting the viscountess’s in the mirror. “I didn’t mean to be so rough, ‘pon my word!”

Lady Fieldhurst, seeing the girl’s eyes rapidly filling with tears, heaved a sigh. “It is I who should beg your pardon, for being so cross.”

“ ‘Tis poor Mr. Danvers’s death what’s got everyone on edge, your ladyship,” said the maid sympathetically. “ ‘Tis the same in the servants’ hall.”

Mistress and maid turned their mutual attention back to the task at hand, Lady Fieldhurst surrendering her head without further complaint, and Rose plying her brush more gently. At length, her ladyship’s toilette was complete, and Rose was dismissed. She bobbed a curtsy and crossed the room to the service door, then turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot! Begging your pardon, my lady, but I was to tell you that your footman arrived from London today and will be waiting on you tonight at table.”

“My footman?” echoed Lady Fieldhurst in some confusion, but Rose had already bobbed another curtsy and disappeared through the service door.

The viscountess went downstairs in some bewilderment. What was Thomas doing here? It was possible, she supposed, that he had come north to convey Mr. Pickett’s regrets, although why Bow Street should favor such an expensive and time-consuming means of communication quite escaped her.

A still greater surprise was in store. When the dinner gong sounded and she accepted Sir Gerald’s escort to the dining room, she discovered that the footman who stood behind her chair was not Thomas at all, but a very tall young man in blue and silver Fieldhurst livery whose sleeves appeared to be about two inches too short. She blinked, mistrusting the evidence of her own eyes. Yes, his eyes were brown (as was his hair beneath its coating of white powder, she did not doubt) and the nose was slightly crooked, as if it had once been broken. He did not look at her, but stood rigidly erect at his post, staring straight ahead with the expressionless countenance of the well-trained servant. Indeed, he showed no signs of recognizing her at all until she had taken her seat and was in the act of spreading her napkin on her lap. When it slipped from her trembling fingers and fluttered to the floor, he was at her side in an instant. He stooped to retrieve the large square of linen, and when she glanced up at him, she was almost certain he winked.

The dinner that followed ranked among the longest meals of her life. Somehow she managed to resist the urge to stare at him over her shoulder; after all, one should take no more notice of one’s servants than one would of the furniture. To wheel about in one’s chair to address the footman would be completely outside the pale. Still, she was all too aware of his presence at her back, and of his white-gloved hands refilling her wineglass. It was with an effort that she dragged her attention back to the conversation at the table and found Sir Gerald posing a question.

“Did you find anything in our humble village to interest you, my Lady Fieldhurst?”

“Yes, Sir Gerald, as a matter of fact, I did.” The viscountess plunged eagerly into speech, lest the family notice her distraction. “The vicar of a neighboring parish arrived today to conduct the burial service for Mr. Danvers. I understand you made the arrangements yourself, as Mr. Danvers had no family. I find that very thoughtful of you.”

“Nonsense!” declared Sir Gerald, looking pleased nonetheless. “Least a fellow can do, under the circumstances. And then there’s my duty to my position—
noblesse oblige
and all that, you know. You’ll learn all about that someday, my lad,” he added as an aside to his son.

Philip muttered something unintelligible which gave the company to understand that he was not looking forward to assuming the mantle of his father’s responsibilities. Sir Gerald glowered at the boy, and Lady Fieldhurst judged it time to intervene.

“The general consensus in the village seems to be that the funeral may be held before the end of the week, assuming the weather holds,” she observed.

“Aye, and I for one will be glad to have it over. The sooner everything gets back to normal, the better off we’ll all be.”

“But what of the vacant benefice, Papa?” asked Miss Hollingshead. “Will you grant the living to our cousin Mr. Meriwether?”

“Harrumph!” Sir Gerald cleared his throat noisily. “No sense in rushing into things, I always say.”

His wife concurred. “It is unseemly, Emma, to speculate on such things when poor Mr. Danvers has not yet been laid to rest. I am sure when the time comes your father will make the best decision for all concerned.”

Emma Hollingshead wilted under this mild rebuke, and the conversation thereafter grew more general and considerably less interesting. At last Lady Anne rose, and Lady Fieldhurst seized the opportunity to make good her escape.

“My head aches most vilely,” she declared, pressing one black-gloved hand to her temple. “If you will excuse me, Lady Anne, Miss Hollingshead, I shall seek my bed.”

“By all means,” said her hostess. “I thought during dinner that you did not look at all the thing. Depend upon it, it is all this walking to the village. A little such exercise is all very well, but you will wear yourself to the bone if you go on in this way.”

Lady Fieldhurst agreed readily, having previously given no thought to how she might abandon, now that it was no longer needed, the habit she had so firmly established.

She climbed the curving staircase to the accompaniment of the ladies’ best wishes for her improved health, forcing her steps to remain slow and steady until she reached the floor above, well out of sight of anyone in the hall below. Then she picked up her gray silk skirts and hurried the last few feet down the corridor to her assigned bedchamber, where she shut herself in, turned the key in the lock, and tugged vigorously on the bell-pull. She had not long to wait, but to Lady Fieldhurst, pacing the carpet, every moment seemed an eternity until at last she heard a faint tap on the service door. To her relief, it opened to reveal not Rose bearing a freshly laundered nightrail (or, worse, a vile-tasting concoction for her nonexistent headache), but her counterfeit footman bearing a scuttle filled with coal.

“You rang, my lady?” he asked with a formality belied by the twinkle in his eyes. While she struggled for words, he stepped past her and knelt before the fireplace, where he emptied his scuttle into the grate.

“What is that?” she asked, momentarily distracted.

“Coals for your fire. Mrs. Holland is already inclined to distrust me, and since she rules the servants’ hall with a rod of iron, I thought it best to provide myself with an errand.”

“But why should you care for Mrs. Holland’s good opinion, and what are you doing in the servants’ hall, and in such a guise?”

Having finished his task, he rose and brushed the knees of his blue satin breeches. “I’m pleased to see you again, too, my lady.”

His tone, deceptively meek, startled a laugh out of her ladyship. “And now you must think me shockingly rag-mannered! Of course I am pleased to see you—-heaven knows I have thought of little else for the past se’ennight!—but I never expected to see you like
this!”
The wave of her hand encompassed every part of his disguise, from his powdered hair to his white silk stockings.

I
have thought of little else for the past se’ennight
... It would be the height of folly, Pickett knew, to refine too much upon those words. On the night they had met, Lady Fieldhurst would have taken a lover, one Lord Rupert Latham, had not the discovery of her husband’s body interrupted their assignation. Pickett had little doubt that, with that particular impediment removed, Lord Rupert had lost no time in worming his way back into her ladyship’s good graces, as well as her bed. Wrenching his mind away from a picture too revolting to contemplate, he concentrated instead on the lady as she stood before him now, taking in the subtle changes wrought over the last two months.

“If I may say so without seeming impertinent, my lady, you’re looking very well,” he said, gesturing toward her elegant gray gown. “I see you’ve put off your blacks.”

“I have gone into half-mourning,” she admitted. “A bit premature, I admit, but it seemed—hypocritical—to do otherwise.”

Pickett could see how it might be a bit awkward, mourning one man while sleeping with another. “And—and how fares his lordship?”

The look she gave him was one of utter bewilderment. “His lordship is dead—as you, of all people, have reason to know.”

“I-I meant Lord Rupert.”

“Oh! Yes, of-of course. Lord Rupert,” Lady Fieldhurst stammered, not quite certain why the mention of the man who had almost been her lover should render her tongue-tied. “I-I suppose he is well enough, at least I have heard nothing to the contrary. In fact, I have not seen him since the trial.”

“Oh!” said Pickett, suddenly feeling much lighter at heart.

“But how came you by the Fieldhurst livery, and to what purpose?”

“I borrowed it from Thomas. I hope you don’t mind.”

“If Thomas did not object, I can hardly complain,” observed the viscountess. “But
why?”

“You asked me to keep my association with Bow Street secret,” he reminded her. “I can learn much more here, living in the servants’ quarters, gossiping with the staff, than ever I could staying at the Pig and Whistle.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She arched a quizzical eyebrow. “Did you, by any chance, offer any explanation as to why Lady Anne’s servants were insufficient to my needs?”

“I told Mrs. Holland within earshot of the kitchen maid that you’d grown a bit eccentric since your husband’s death. I daresay the whole household knows by this time.”

“I might have known!” declared her ladyship with a sigh of resignation. “You are nothing if not resourceful, Mr. Pickett.”