Into Thin Eire Page 12

  “I need to visit the necessary,” she informed him. “Unless you wish to clean up after me, I suggest you let me.”

  Julia was almost certain that his lips twitched, but any illusions she might have entertained that he might be won over through humor died in the next instant. He leaped down from the carriage and held out his hand to help her alight. But as soon as her feet touched the ground, his grip on her arm tightened painfully.

  “No tricks, Mrs. P., or it’ll be very much the worse for you.”

  To her dismay, he did not release her, but led her into the inn and bespoke dinner for the two of them, along with a private parlor where they might partake of it. Clearly, there would be no appealing to any of their fellow guests for assistance in making her escape. As for the necessary, he inquired as to the location of this facility, then, upon being given an answer, inquired of their host as to whether he had a wife or daughter who might come to her assistance.

  “Pretty as a mornin’ in May, my wife is, but quite mad,” he added, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Seems to have the idea that I’m carryin’ her off against her will.”

  “It’s true,” she insisted to the innkeeper’s wife as soon as the two women were alone. “He is carrying me off against my will!”

  “Now, now,” the woman spoke soothingly, “I’m sure I can recognize a runaway match when I see one. Never you mind, dearie, it’s only natural-like to be having second thoughts. That don’t mean you’re mad, though, not by a long chalk—and so I shall tell that man of yours! But never you mind; once the pair of you is leg-shackled, you’ll be merry as a grig, and wondering how you could ever have doubted your man.”

  “He’s not ‘my man’! He’s a complete stranger!”

  “They all are, dearie,” said the innkeeper’s wife, nodding sagely. “It’s my opinion that no woman really knows her man until they’ve lived together as man and wife.”

  “I don’t even know his name!”

  At last Julia succeeded in provoking a reaction, albeit not the one she had hoped for. The woman began to laugh so heartily that both her chins were set aquiver. “Lud, the pair of you were in a powerful hurry, weren’t you? Still, if you was ready to elope on no more acquaintance than that—”

  “We are not eloping! I tell you, I’m being abducted!” Julia insisted, but she might have saved her breath. The innkeeper’s wife was sentimental by nature, but in the years since she’d reared no fewer than five daughters to adulthood and seen them all suitably wed, romance had been sadly missing from her own life. In its absence, she had cast Julia in her mind as a runaway bride who, having successfully eloped with her swain, now regarded with fear and trembling the imminent surrender of her maidenhood. Nothing Julia could say or do had the power to dispel this pleasing image.

  “Here’s your lady again, right as a trivet,” she sang out as they rejoined Julia’s captor in the private parlor. Leaning over the back of his chair, she added in a stage whisper, “You be gentle with her, now, d’ye hear? The poor dearie’s skittish as a fawn. But I can see I don’t have to tell you what to do, for anyone can see you’re that devoted to her, you can hardly bear to let her out of your sight. Reminds me of when Himself and me was a-courtin’,” she added with a wistful sigh, turning away to let them enjoy their dinner in privacy.

  “Wait!” Julia cried, trying another tactic. “If a man should come asking for me—a man named John Pickett—tell him—” Tell him what? She had no idea where she was or where she was being taken. Nor, for that matter, did she know the name of her abductor, or what he hoped to accomplish by abducting her.

  “Never you mind.” The woman turned back to give her what Julia supposed was intended as a reassuring smile. “I’ll know just how to deal with your father, if he wants to come poking his nose in where it’s not wanted.”

  “He’s not my—”

  But it was too late. Her hostess was already waddling away, and her captor pushed back his chair and rose from the table, ready to hustle her back into the carriage, dinner or no. Clearly, he did not intend to take the chance that she might yet persuade someone—anyone!—that she was being taken against her will. She might have pointed out to him that the likelihood of anyone believing such a tale was small; even the most sympathetic of listeners would press her for details as to why she was being taken, and where, and Julia could offer none. Perhaps her next move should be to determine what she could about where he was taking her and just what were his plans for her when they arrived there. Exactly what she might do with this information once she procured it, she didn’t know; still, it must be to her advantage to form some kind of plan, even an incomplete one.

  “And so,” she observed aloud, once they were back on the road, “Mr. Hetherington has escaped from prison with your assistance, in exchange for his promise that he will aid you in the cause of Irish independence if you will—what? Kill me? But you might have done that in London, with far less trouble to yourself.”

  Silence was the only response she received.

  “Unless,” she continued, undaunted, “he doesn’t trust you not to be persuaded by my beaux yeux into taking pity on me, and intends to do the thing himself.”

  Evidently the suggestion that he might be untrustworthy (or more susceptible to feminine wiles than he might care to admit) had the effect of loosening his tongue. “He trusts me,” he said, bristling. “He trusts me to bring you to him safe and unharmed.”

  “ ‘Unharmed’? What a pity you didn’t remember that bit before coshing me on the head,” she retorted, massaging the sore spot on her scalp.

  “Aye, he won’t be best pleased about that, but it was the only way to get you into the carriage.”

  “Yes, I suppose I’m quite unreasonable about being abducted from my home in broad daylight. I daresay I should beg your pardon for putting you to so much trouble, but I find myself quite unable to do so. Still, I can’t quite see why our mutual friend insists that I be ‘safe and unharmed’ if he intends to kill me anyway.”

  “Oh, it’s not you he’s after. You’re only the bait by which he means to reel in your husband.”

  “In that case, I fear you have both made a rather important mistake. My husband is in Dunbury.” It seemed oddly dreamlike, she thought, to be discussing the details of her own capture and, presumably, eventual murder. She could imagine herself awakening shortly and recounting the details to her husband over the breakfast table, where they would both laugh over the absurdity of it all. At least, she would have laughed. But in retrospect, she realized that John’s demeanor had been devoid of laughter in the weeks since they had returned from the Lake District. His was not a giddy nature, and so she had not noticed until now. Had he imagined that something like this might happen? If so, then why had he not confided in her?

  The Irishman’s next words quickly drove the question from her mind. “To be sure, he’s in Dunbury. Who do you think sent him there?”

  “You?”

  He shrugged. “The letter was written by our mutual friend, but I was the one entrusted with seein’ it posted.”

  “But—but it was signed ‘Edward Gaines Brockton’!”

  Again that careless shrug, as if they were discussing of no more importance than the weather. “Edward Gaines Brockton—E.G.B.—Éire go Brách.” Seeing her momentarily bereft of speech, he added, “It was necessary, you see, to get Mr. Pickett out of London for a few days, and with a colleague in tow, just to make sure he couldn’t bring you along as he did to the Lake District. Now it’s just a matter of seein’ how long it takes him to discover he’s been sent on a chase after mare’s nests.”

  And just that quickly, her absurd “dream” had turned to nightmare. This abduction was not really about her at all; no, it was a carefully planned and painstakingly executed plot for vengeance against one who had done nothing to deserve it. “Tell me,” she said slowly, trying her best to keep her voice from shaking, “did you kill my butler?”

  He waved one hand in a g
esture of contempt. “Pshaw! Of course not! I daresay the fellow had come ’round before we reached Hyde Park.”

  And once conscious, Rogers would have lost no time in sending Andrew to Bow Street, she deduced. Would Mr. Colquhoun have sent word to John in Dunbury, or would he have dispatched whatever Runner happened to be nearest to hand, in the hope of overtaking them on the road? She hoped it was the latter—a set of pretty fools her captors would look, if the wrong fish took the bait!—but she feared the former were far more likely. The bond between her husband and his magistrate was deep and strong, all the more so for the necessity of pretending, at least in front of the other men under Mr. Colquhoun’s supervision, that it did not exist. She had no doubt that Mr. Colquhoun would send his swiftest courier to Dunbury with the news. And after John came in pursuit, then—what?

  If her abduction—and, presumably, her death—were to be Mr. Hetherington’s revenge, then it behooved her to consider exactly what form that vengeance might take. She tried to recall the sequence of events that had led to the death of Brigid Hetherington, but her own memories were vague. She had spoken the truth when she’d told her captor that the woman’s death had not been murder, but a tragic accident; Brigid Hetherington been shot as the two men had struggled for possession of the pistol. Beyond that, however, Julia knew very little. John was mostly silent on the subject, although she suspected it still preyed on his mind a month later. It appeared, moreover, that Robert Hetherington held John responsible for the death of his wife, even though he’d held the gun in his own hand. Did he think to force John to witness her own murder before being killed himself? Perhaps crueler still, did he intend to compel John do the deed with his own hands, and then leave him to live with the consequences of his guilt?

  Either way, one thing was certain: this time she must rescue herself, rather than wait for husband to do so. For both of them would be safe only as long as he stayed in Dunbury, or London—or anywhere, really, so long as it was far, far away.

  12

  In Which John Pickett Receives

  a Most Unwelcome Gift

  Pickett and his Irregulars, as Harry Carson had dubbed the little group, arose at dawn the next morning and prepared for their first full day on the road. The post-chaise Jamie had ordered drew up into the inn yard as Pickett was attempting, without much success, to choke down a bowl of porridge. The arrival of this vehicle appeared to relieve him of the necessity of completing this task, and so he pushed the bowl away with no small sense of relief.

  “Thomas, Carson,” Jamie called, addressing them as if he were still a cavalry officer and they two of the soldiers under his command, “see to the stowing of our bags while I settle our tab here. You”—he turned his attention to Pickett, who had risen from the table—“sit back down and finish that.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  “You can, and you will,” Jamie said in a voice that brooked no argument.

  “I want to be on the road,” Pickett insisted. “God only knows what may be happening to Julia, while I sit here eating breakfast!” He glared at the bowl as if its very existence offended him.

  “Very well, then.” Jamie snatched the porridge off the table and disappeared from the room. Pickett felt somewhat deflated; he hadn’t expected his brother-in-law to yield so quickly. But the reason for Jamie’s strategic retreat became clear a few minutes later, when he returned bearing a brown earthenware bowl with a large chip out of its rim.

  “I gave the cook tuppence for the oldest container she had, so you can take it with you and eat it on the way.”

  Pickett peered inside and discovered not only the remains of his own breakfast, but, he suspected, a couple more ladlesful for good measure. “I don’t doubt you mean well, but—”

  “But me no buts, brother mine. You invited me on this little jaunt, and I refuse to deliver you over to Julia looking like a scarecrow.”

  Jamie’s calm assumption that it was merely a matter of time before they found Julia safe and sound had the desired effect, although Pickett had to wonder if his brother-in-law actually believed it, or was merely putting on a good show for his sake. In the end, he decided it was better not to know; he would take whatever reassurances he could get.

  Having finished transacting his business with the innkeeper, Jamie led Pickett outside where Carson and Thomas were already waiting, and the four men piled into the post-chaise. The Bristol Channel was at this point too wide to be forded, so they were obliged to follow it northeastward for some distance until the channel narrowed to form the River Severn. Here they stopped in Gloucester long enough to change horses and fortify themselves with a hearty repast—yet another meal for which Pickett had no appetite. In fact, he had found this first leg of the journey particularly maddening, as they were very likely farther from Julia now than they had been when they’d set out from Bristol that morning, but, as Jamie pointed out, there was no help for it, unless he intended to swim across the channel.

  Once their meal was completed and fresh horses were harnessed and ready, they set out again, crossing the bridge over the River Severn and continuing northwestward. This leg of the journey, a distance of more than two hundred miles, would have been grueling even under the best conditions. And it soon became clear that the conditions under which they would be obliged to travel were far from the best. The roads became more twisting and tortuous as they turned to the north, and the landscape grew so mountainous that the tops of the peaks were hidden beneath a blanket of low-hanging clouds. At lower elevations, a fog lay over the valley, softening the countryside and giving it a blurred, oddly flattened look, like a painting executed by Turner or Constable in a particularly melancholy mood.

  In fact, the scenery reminded Pickett so strongly of the Lake District that he was moved to ask of no one in particular, “Where are we?”

  “Wales,” was Jamie’s reply.

  Wales, thought Pickett, Wales, as in ‘Prince of.’ Did the prince spend much time in this part of the realm from which his current title was derived, or was the designation a mere formality? He wasn’t quite sure what to hope for. On the one hand, it might make a pleasant escape from Town, provided, of course, that Julia would be allowed to accompany him; on the other, the landscape, so reminiscent of the Lake District, might serve as a constant reproach, reminding him of his sojourn there and its disastrous conclusion.

  Suddenly a large, dark shape loomed up out of the fog, a shape that resolved itself, as they drew nearer, into the crenelated tower of a castle, or what was left of one. Its existence presented Pickett with a new dilemma: what if Julia was being held captive not in a genteel country house, as he’d imagined, but in a fortification such as this must once have been? If he were to be obliged to storm a citadel to rescue her, then the mission might well be doomed from the start; he feared he would make a very poor knight.

  At that moment, as if in agreement with this gloomy conclusion, the skies opened and the rains descended, quickly turning the roads to meandering rivers of mud and reducing visibility to such an extent that they were obliged to stop for the night fully thirty miles short of where they had intended. A pale sun greeted them the next morning, although the rains had left their mark in the form of the mud that sucked at the carriage wheels and left deep ruts that marked where other carriages had fought the same battle before them. As a result, their progress was not much swifter than it had been the day before. A rough, albeit mercifully brief sea crossing landed them on the island of Anglesey, where their first order of business was locating a post-office where they might hire a chaise to replace the one they’d been obliged to leave behind on the mainland. Alas, everyone they encountered seemed to speak with a thick accent of a kind rarely if ever heard in London, and one which presented a considerable barrier to communication. By the time they contrived to make their transportation needs understood sufficiently to be directed to a place where these needs might be met, they could go no farther than Holyhead, where they were obliged to cool their heels until dawn th
e next morning, when the next packet would sail for Dublin. Thomas, who had spent much of the journey with his nose pressed to the glass, recalled seeing a promising inn near the harbor, and so it was to this establishment that they repaired, descending weary, stiff, and sore from hours of inactivity.

  While Thomas and Carson retrieved their now mud-spattered bags from the boot and Jamie walked down to the harbor to book passage for four on the packet for Dublin, Pickett went into the inn and requested two rooms. As he wrote his name in the register, he noticed the proprietress leaning across the counter for a closer look. This in itself was not unusual, for he wrote with his left hand, having stubbornly resisted, in his youth, any and all efforts to correct this aberration. He was about to some vague apology for this deviation from the accepted standards of penmanship—there were, after all, those who believed this trait to be the mark of the devil—when she spoke, and he realized it was not how he wrote, but what he wrote that had attracted her notice.

  “So you’re John Pickett, are you?”

  Like her fellow countrymen, she spoke with an accent so thick as to be nearly incomprehensible, even to ears attuned to the many voices of London. Still, Pickett recognized his own name, and from her use of it, deduced that she had some message for him. After three days of feeling as if he were groping in the dark, any word from or about Julia could only be welcome.

  “I am,” he said hopefully, looking up from writing the direction of his London residence on the line provided for this information.

  She ducked her head to rummage through the storage space beneath the counter. “Summat came t’other day along with a letter asking us to give you it. I’ll get it now in a minute—ah! Here it is!”

  “Thank you.” The package was small and roughly cylindrical, and had been wrapped in heavy brown paper and tied with string. Pickett took it and walked across the room to where his companions waited. Jamie had just entered the inn, having finished his business on the harbor, while Thomas had brought in the last of the luggage and awaited his orders as to where it was to be conveyed. Carson seemed to be agitating in favor of stopping in the public room for a hot toddy with which they might fortify themselves after the discomforts of the journey.