Dinner Most Deadly Page 13

  “What I am trying to say, Miss Braunton, is that blood is not necessarily destiny.” Unless, of course, one was a thief-taker who aspired to marriage with a viscountess, but that was a subject for another discussion, and one in which Miss Braunton played no part. “Your baby’s father may have been a scoundrel, but it does not follow that the child must be one as well. With the support of a good man, even though he might not necessarily be of noble birth, your child might well grow up to be a man or woman you can be proud of.”

  Miss Braunton arched an ironic eyebrow. “Why Mr. Pickett, are you offering your services?”

  Pickett flushed. “I—I—I’m a married man.”

  She laughed aloud at his obvious discomfort. “Never mind, Mr. Pickett, I am merely roasting you. I can just picture my father’s reaction—or, worse, my uncle the duke’s!—were I to tell him I intended to marry a Bow Street Runner.”

  “Hilarious,” muttered Pickett. She did not mean to be cruel, he reminded himself. She was no more than eighteen years old, and very much a product of her upbringing. And of course she had no way of knowing he had lately begun to entertain ideas above his station. “But tell me, are you acquainted with a Mr. Martin Kenney?”

  “Why, yes,” she said. “I danced with him a couple of times early in the Season, before—before I was obliged to leave London. He is a very charming gentleman, but every young lady in Town is cautioned not to encourage him, for everyone knows he hasn’t a feather to—oh!” she broke off abruptly as she realized where the discussion was heading.

  “Hasn’t a feather to fly with,” Pickett concluded for her. “Precisely. In fact, Mr. Kenney was wronged by Sir Reginald, just as you were. It occurs to me that in this instance, at least, two wrongs might well make a right. If you would not find the thought of such a match repugnant, I should like to suggest it to your father—provided, of course, that Mr. Kenney will not be obliged to stand trial for the murder of Sir Reginald.”

  She sighed. “Even if he were to do so, I fear I am in no position to be overly nice in my requirements. Beggars, as you know, cannot be choosers.”

  “So I have always heard,” Pickett acknowledged, smiling, “but it cannot make for a happy marriage, the bridegroom going to the gallows as soon as the vows are said.”

  Miss Braunton laughed in spite of herself. “Very true. In fact, I rather liked Mr. Kenney, and hope he turns out to be blameless in Sir Reginald’s death quite for his own sake as well as mine. Yes, you have my permission to suggest Mr. Kenney to my father as a possible husband for me.”

  “I shall do so as soon as I return to London,” Pickett promised.

  “Thank you. Do you know, Mr. Pickett, it occurs to me that Mrs. Pickett must be a very lucky woman.”

  A very lucky woman who was at that moment contacting her solicitor in order to have the marriage annulled. Pickett’s answering smile held more than a trace of sadness. “Thank you, Miss Braunton. It is my dearest wish that she should believe herself to be so.”

  While Pickett pursued his investigations in Leicestershire, Lady Fieldhurst found herself strangely blue-devilled. Restless and not quite sure what to do with herself, she called on Lady Dunnington with some vague notion of supporting her friend through the ordeal of having a man murdered in her home, she having been through a very similar experience herself some six months earlier with the death of her husband.

  “And,” she concluded, having pointed out this similarity to Lady Dunnington, “at least no one can suspect you of having killed Sir Reginald, since I can vouch for your presence in the drawing room when the shot was fired.”

  “Very true, my dear.” Emily nodded, glancing toward the door as Dulcie entered with the tea tray. “How fortunate it is for me that your Mr. Pickett would never think of doubting your word!”

  “I wish you would stop calling him mine,” snapped Lady Fieldhurst, painfully aware that her word was no longer held in such high regard by Mr. Pickett, and that she had no one but herself to blame for this change in circumstances.

  “Of course, things would be most unpleasant for Dunning-ton, if his presence that night should become known,” continued Lady Dunnington, unaware of Julia’s inner sufferings. “I trust you have made no mention of it?”

  “No, I have not mentioned it,” Julia said, her voice bleak.

  “You are an angel!” declared the countess.

  Lady Fieldhurst could think of other, more accurate descriptors, but she said only, “Emily, had you best not make a clean breast of the matter? It is bound to come out eventually, for everyone at the table heard what was said. Or allow me to tell Mr. Pickett, if you cannot bring yourself to do so. As you said, my—my word holds some weight with him.”

  “No, Julia, you must not! For Dunnington’s words must appear most damning, in view of what happened later.”

  Lady Fieldhurst could not help wondering at the countess’s determination to shield a man for whom she’d not had a kind word in the six years the two women had been friends. “Never fear, Emily. Mr. Pickett has gone to Leicestershire to follow up on some line of inquiry, so unless Lord Dunnington has some secret connection in the North, I believe he is quite safe.”

  “Thank God!” declared Lady Dunnington. “Yes, Dulcie, you may go now. There is no need for you to be lingering about.”

  The two ladies lapsed into silence until the maid had left the room, shutting the door behind her.

  “Really!” exclaimed Lady Dunnington in an undervoice. “Did you see how the girl’s ears pricked up at the mention of a certain someone’s journey to Leicestershire? I do believe she is enamored of your Mr. Pickett! First there is Polly skulking about with the footman down the street—as if I did not know all about it, the silly girl!—and now this. I vow, at this rate I shall have no housemaids left by Christmas.”

  “I can assure you that whatever Dulcie’s feelings toward Mr. Pickett may be, she will not be married to him by Christmas,” said Lady Fieldhurst in a flat voice.

  “Well, thank heaven for that! But how do you know?”

  “Because Mr. Pickett is already married.”

  “Is he? I wonder who robbed the cradle.”

  “As a matter of fact,” confessed Julia miserably, “I did. Mr. Pickett is married to me.”

  Lady Dunnington set down her teacup with a loud clink. “Julia! He refused you as a lover, so you married him instead? My, my, you did want the man-child from Bow Street in your bed, didn’t you? I hope he was worth it!”

  “Mr. Pickett has never been, nor will he ever be, in my bed!” Lady Fieldhurst declared, her cheeks flaming. “I tell you, it wasn’t like that at all. It—it happened in Scotland.”

  “Everything interesting seems to, these days,” drawled the countess. “Really, I must go there myself sometime. It certainly made a merry widow out of you!”

  “I was not a merry widow! But I didn’t want to molder away at the Fieldhurst estate, so we—George’s boys and I, that is—stopped at an inn on the coast, and to make sure we couldn’t be traced, I registered there under a false name.”

  Lady Dunnington held up a hand. “Do not tell me, let me guess: you called yourself Mrs. Pickett.”

  “It seemed harmless enough at the time,” Julia insisted. “How was I to know that Mr. Pickett would turn up a week later?”

  “Chasing you down to demand the return of his name, I daresay,” observed Lady Dunnington.

  “Of course not! In fact, he had accompanied his magistrate there. Mr. Pickett was investigating a case while Mr. Colquhoun, his magistrate, enjoyed a fishing holiday. I—I rather think Mr. Colquhoun may have dragged him away from London with the idea of getting him out of my clutches.”

  “I guess you showed him, didn’t you?”

  “It isn’t funny, Emily! When Mr. Pickett arrived at the inn and gave his name, the proprietor assumed he was my husband, and put us in the same room. Of course we never actually shared the room,” she added hastily, anticipating the countess’s next question.

 
Lady Dunnington clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “No wonder Cousin George was beside himself! Gadding about Scotland, corrupting England’s youth—”

  “Nonsense! Thanks to their explorations along the shore, the boys went to bed exhausted every night long before the adults of the party turned in. Even if we had been occupying the same room, the boys never would have known. It was all perfectly innocent—until we learned that in Scotland, such a thing constitutes a legal marriage.”

  Lady Dunnington pursed her lips and let out a long, low whistle. “So what do you do now? Has it occurred to you that, had he accepted your, er, interesting proposition, you would be—”

  “Yes, it has, many times,” Julia put in quickly. “As it is, we intend to meet with my solicitor to discuss an annulment as soon as Mr. Pickett returns from Leicestershire. Until then, there is nothing I can do.”

  And this lack of progress, surely, was the reason for her low spirits. There could be no other reason why, in a city of a million souls, the absence of one should be so keenly felt.

  CHAPTER 13

  In Which John Pickett Receives a Most Unpleasant Surprise

  On his last evening in Leicestershire, Pickett sat alone in his room at the inn from which he would take the southbound stage the next morning. He was not quite sure what to do with himself. His bags were packed in preparation for the journey, but it was still too early to go to bed. The public taproom downstairs held no appeal, and he hadn’t thought to bring anything to read. He decided to write a letter to Lady Fieldhurst; she had, after all, requested him to let her know when he returned to London. Never mind the fact that it was her eagerness to set matters in train for the annulment that inspired this request; alone in a strange place, he craved some connection with her across the many miles that separated them. His mind made up, he tore a sheet from his occurrence book and set pen to paper.

  Or at least he tried to. This task proved to be easier said than done. Dear Mrs. Pickett, he began, but quickly decided against this form of salutation; her ladyship might not understand that he meant it in jest. In fact, he wasn’t quite sure he did mean it in jest. He wadded up the paper, threw it into the fire, and began another. Dear Lady Fieldhurst, he wrote, but then hesitated. Did the “dear” seem presumptuous? True, it was a standard greeting in written correspondence, but he would not want to be perceived as being overly familiar. This attempt at the epistolary arts joined its predecessor in the flames. My Lady Fieldhurst, read his third attempt, and this one he regarded with satisfaction. It was perfectly correct in form, and if he was a bit too fond of the possessive pronoun, surely no one but himself need ever know.

  By the time this reaches you, the letter continued, I will have returned to London. I await your instructions in regard to a meeting with your solicitor so that we might put an end to the—Here he paused. He could not bring himself to use the word “marriage.” To do so in this context would seem too final, too irreversible. The awkward situation in which we now find ourselves, he wrote at last. Having cleared this hurdle, he found he could discourse easily enough on such innocuous subjects as the weather in Leicestershire and the beauties of the Northern countryside as compared to those of Town. There had been a time when he would have brought her up to date on the progress (or lack thereof) of his investigation, but no more. Not when he knew her to be deliberately withholding information from him. It was probably just as well, he thought; the condition in which he’d found Miss Braunton was hardly the sort of thing one could discuss with a lady, even one who was nominally his wife. Heaving a sigh, he turned himself to the task of bringing his letter to a conclusion.

  The closing phrase, however, gave him cause for further soul-searching. Love, John Pickett was clearly out of the question. Respectfully submitted, John Pickett seemed too cold and formal by half. At last he settled on Yours, John Pickett. Besides allowing him the opportunity to render on paper (however obliquely) the declaration he could never speak aloud, it had the additional advantage of being true: he was indeed hers by law, at least for the nonce, whether she wanted him or not.

  Four days later, Lady Fieldhurst was reading in the drawing room when her footman Thomas entered, bearing a letter on a silver tray.

  “The morning post, my lady,” he said, bowing and simultaneously placing the tray within easy reach.

  “Thank you, Thomas.”

  Setting aside her book, she took the letter and looked at her own name written on the front. She did not recognize the handwriting, but saw that the wax seal had been broken.

  Thomas, noting the direction of her gaze, was quick to explain. “A tuppence had been placed beneath the seal to cover the postage, my lady. I took the liberty of removing it in order to pay the postman.”

  A wealthy correspondent, then, who wished to spare her the burden of paying postage, but not a nobleman, as the aristocracy enjoyed franking privileges and therefore had the luxury of sending letters at no charge. “Very well, Thomas. You may go.”

  Thomas bowed and betook himself from the room. Alone once more, Lady Fieldhurst unfolded the single sheet and began to read. The first sentence was sufficient to identify the sender, and she smiled a little at the idea of Mr. Pickett in faraway Leicestershire including tuppence with his correspondence so that she would not be put to the inconvenience of paying a trivial amount that she could no doubt spare far more easily than he. She read through the letter a second time and then a third, as if searching for some secret message hidden between the lines, and was vaguely disappointed to find none; she could not know what it had cost him to pen so carefully neutral a communication. At last, giving up this fruitless exercise, she rose and crossed the room to her writing desk, where she spent the next ten minutes composing a note to her solicitor. Having dispatched Thomas to deliver this missive, she read through Mr. Pickett’s letter once more, then refolded it and tucked it away in her desk drawer, although she could not have said precisely what it contained that might be worth keeping.

  Her second attempt at arranging a meeting proved more successful than the first, and so it was that Pickett arrived at Lady Fieldhurst’s house on Curzon Street and was admitted by Rogers, her butler, and ushered up the stairs to the small room that she had fitted out as a library.

  “If you will wait here, Mr. Pickett, I will notify her ladyship of your arrival.”

  Left to his own devices, Pickett wandered over to the bookshelves and was perusing the titles when the door opened to admit Lady Fieldhurst, soberly clad in a grey half-mourning gown trimmed with black ribbons.

  “Mr. Pickett, how good of you to come.” She held out her hands to him as she approached; apparently he had been forgiven for his lapse where Lord Rupert was concerned. “I am sorry to take you away from your work in Bow Street.”

  He took her hands and gave them a little squeeze before reluctantly releasing them. “It’s quite all right, my lady.”

  “I trust your trip went well?”

  He shrugged. “It was informative, but I’m not sure I’m any closer to solving the case. I seem to be finding more suspects instead of eliminating them.”

  “It was kind of you to write, although you need not have paid the postage. I should have been happy to do so.”

  Pickett could hardly admit that his pride would not have allowed it, so he was not entirely sorry when the door opened once more to admit Rogers, with the solicitor in tow.

  “Mr. Crumpton, my lady,” announced the butler.

  “Do come in, Mr. Crumpton,” Lady Fieldhurst said.

  “Your ladyship.” Mr. Crumpton bowed from the waist, then stood upright and regarded Pickett with professional interest. “I take it this is the, er, bridegroom?”

  “This is Mr. John Pickett, of Bow Street,” said Lady Fieldhurst. “I believe you met him briefly during his investigation into my husband’s death.”

  “Of course, of course,” said the solicitor with a nod. He shook hands with Pickett, then moved behind the large desk positioned before the window and withdrew a she
af of papers from a leather satchel. “With your permission, your ladyship?”

  This being granted, he began to spread out the papers. “Do have a seat, both of you, and we will see what we can do about extricating you from your present dilemma.”

  Lady Fieldhurst took a seat at one end of a green striped sofa that faced the desk, and nodded at Pickett, giving him to understand that he was welcome to sit beside her. He did so, having no intention of allowing such an invitation to go to waste.

  He thought she looked most uncomfortable, and more than a little frightened. He could enter into her sentiments wholeheartedly, although he suspected she was most likely fearful that the marriage could not be nullified, where he was equally fearful that it could.

  “Ah, yes, annulment of a Scottish irregular marriage,” said Mr. Crumpton, seeking recourse to his papers. “While you were out of Town, Mr. Pickett, Lady Fieldhurst explained to me how you came to find yourselves in such a predicament, so we need not go through that again. In truth, the pair of you sent me back to my law books on this one. It seems most cases involving such marriages have to do with their being proven valid, not the other way ’round.”

  Lady Fieldhurst leaned forward eagerly. “Then there is a chance we are not truly married, after all?”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as that, your ladyship. Scottish irregular marriages are perfectly legal in England, but because of their, er, irregularity, they are more likely to be challenged and, if challenged, more likely to be overturned. As you might guess, such marriages are usually disputed by the families of the bride or, less frequently, the bridegroom, usually when a fortune or, in the latter case, a title is involved. Challenges are more likely to be successful if there are other discrepancies present as well: one party being underage, perhaps, or falsifying other pertinent information—being closely related by blood, for example, or already being legally wed to another. I gather none of these applies in this case?”