Too Hot to Handel Read online

  The royal party had not arrived yet, for their box was still vacant, but the Bow Street force was already in place. Below the empty royal box, Mr. Marshall sat ready to respond to the thump of the Princess Olga’s cane. In the last row of the pit, Mr. Dixon had staked out a seat at the end of the bench, prepared to make a hasty exit if necessary. Pickett knew there were several others present yet unseen, whose positions he could not recall at the moment.

  Suddenly the door at the rear of the royal box opened, and Pickett rose along with the other theatre patrons as the Prince of Wales and his guests filed in and took their places. Pickett had no difficulty in identifying the portly Prince, his chest bristling with the various badges of his office, but of the identity of the others he was not quite certain. As they returned to their seats, Lady Fieldhurst opened her reticule and withdrew a small brass instrument inlaid with mother of pearl. She aimed it in the direction of the royal box and peered through it for a long moment before offering the instrument to Pickett.

  “Opera glasses,” she explained. “I know you favor a quizzing glass on occasion, but I thought you might find these more useful tonight.”

  He held them up to his eyes, and the royal party appeared near enough that he might have spoken to them without raising his voice.

  “Very useful, my lady. I thank you.”

  While Pickett scanned the royals through the glasses, Lady Fieldhurst put names to their faces, having been introduced to many of them at her Court presentation following her marriage. “I suppose you have already located the Prince of Wales. He is rather difficult to miss, in more ways than one. I daresay the lady in the position of honor on his right is the Princess Olga, or rather her surrogate—and I quite see what you mean about the diamonds! The lady on the prince’s left is his sister-in-law, the Duchess of York. She much prefers the kennels at Oatlands to the amusements of Town, so her presence speaks volumes about the princess’s importance. The gentleman on the princess’s right is Prinny’s brother, the Duke of York, and the gentleman on the Duchess’s left is another of Prinny’s brothers, the Duke of Cumberland. I was obliged to stand up with him once at a ball—not an experience I would care to repeat, for he is a most unpleasant person! I can’t be certain of the people in the second row—various royal attendants and hangers-on, I daresay. Oh, look! I wonder if that woman—second from the left, beside the large gentleman with the black beard—is the real Princess Olga?”

  “Very likely, my lady, but perhaps we’d best keep that information to ourselves,” suggested Pickett in an undervoice.

  Lady Fieldhurst clapped one gloved hand to her mouth. “I beg your pardon!”

  “No need. I daresay no one could hear, but one never knows who might be listening.”

  “Very true, especially when everyone in the theatre seems to be agog to know your identity.”

  Pickett lowered the glasses abruptly. “What?”

  “You once said yourself that the upper classes come to the theatre to watch one another, rather than the action on stage. I assure you, by breakfast tomorrow it will be all over Town that the scandalous Lady Fieldhurst has appeared publicly in colors scarcely ten months after her husband’s death, and in the company of a gentleman, no less. I daresay I will be inundated with morning callers. Shall I be very coy and mysterious?”

  “My lady, I hope you are jesting!”

  “I assure you, I am quite serious. If you wished to be unobtrusive, you could not have chosen a worse female to escort. I heard someone on the stairs speculating that you might be related to the Yorkshire Manningtons, as they are a tall lot. What rubbish!”

  Of course it was nonsense that he might be taken for a member of a noble family, but it stung to hear her say so, all the same. “Rubbish, indeed,” muttered Pickett.

  “Yes, for anyone can see that you are much handsomer than any of the Manningtons.”

  Pickett’s spirits rose considerably at this observation, but he felt compelled to say, “I wish you had warned me how conspicuous we would be, my lady.”

  “So that you might have found a less notorious female to ask in my stead?” Her voice grew pensive. “Perhaps I should have, but I—I wanted to see you again, Mr. Pickett. I wanted it very much.”

  After that admission, a whole army of jewel thieves might have stripped the entire royal party bare, and Pickett would not have noticed. “My lady, about—about this ‘friendship’ of ours—I—”

  At that moment the house lights dimmed, and a hush fell over the audience as the rich red velvet curtains opened and the soprano Esther began the arioso, “Breathe soft, ye gales.”

  As Pickett lacked Lady Fieldhurst’s musical training, it was inevitable that he did not derive the same enjoyment from the performance as she obviously did. But his purpose was not to listen to the music in any case, and so while the bass singing the role of Haman commanded the chorus of Persian soldiers to “pluck root and branch from out the land,” Pickett kept a weather eye on the royal box across the way, with only occasional glances at the lady seated beside him.

  One did not, however, require a musical education to recognize passion when one heard it, and when, late in the second act, Esther and the tenor who played King Ahasuerus joined their voices in the ardent duet, “Awake My Soul, My Life, My Breath,” Pickett would have been hard pressed to remember the Russian princess’s name, so conscious was he of Lady Fieldhurst sitting so close to him that their shoulders almost touched. His gaze drawn like a magnet, he looked down at her, and when he found her looking up at him with eyes sparkling, cheeks becomingly flushed, and lips parted in anticipation, he was a lost man. It was a very good thing that they were in full view of almost four thousand other people, Pickett thought, or else he would have no choice but to kiss her. Again.

  It was perhaps fortunate that thunderous applause greeted the end of the second act, breaking the spell and recalling Pickett’s attention to the task at hand. As the third and final act progressed and the sopranos soared ever higher, anchored by the booming tones of the bass section, a man entered the royal box and exchanged a few words with the attendant stationed nearest the door.

  “What is he—? That’s odd,” said Pickett, frowning as he reached for her ladyship’s opera glasses. “May I?”

  She nodded wordlessly, her eyes fixed on the performers on the stage below. He raised the glasses to his eyes, and suffered a shock. The entire royal party had risen to its feet, and was now moving toward the door at the rear of the box.

  “What are they doing?” Pickett snatched up his program and scanned the printed lines again to be sure he wasn’t mistaken. “They aren’t supposed to exit until the beginning of the third scene of this act! It’s scarcely into the first!”

  “Mr. Pickett?” Lady Fieldhurst tore her gaze from the stage. “What is wrong?”

  He shoved both program and opera glasses at her and leaped to his feet. “The royal party is leaving early, and I’m nowhere near to being in position! Why wasn’t I informed of the change?”

  The music came to an abrupt and unmelodious halt as the musicians snatched up their instruments and hurried off the stage, while the patrons in the pit climbed benches and shoved each other in an effort to reach the doors. The air rang with screams, but these were soon drowned out by more ominous crackles and roars. Baffled, Pickett leaned over the low wall that fronted the box and looked down.

  “Mr. Pickett? What is happening?”

  He turned back to her with an expression of such horror that it made her blood run cold.

  “Fire! My God, the theatre is on fire!”

  CHAPTER 4

  IN WHICH JOHN PICKETT PAYS A HIGH PRICE FOR HEROICS

  The sound of shattering glass filled the air as the window panes succumbed to the intense heat, and the ensuing rush of oxygen fanned the blaze. Lady Fieldhurst had abandoned her chair and joined Pickett at the front of the box, clinging to his arm as they watched the pandemonium below.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, raising her voic
e to be heard above the roar of the flames and the screams of terrified theatre patrons.

  “We get out of here any way we can,” he said, heading for the door at the rear of the box. He remembered the Covent Garden Theatre fire the previous September well enough to know that, once alight, the cavernous structures went up like kindling.

  “What about the Princess Olga?”

  “The royal party escaped just ahead of the fire.”

  In fact, their timely departure was a puzzle in itself, for the man who had warned them—but he could think about that later. For now, his first priority—his only priority—was getting Lady Fieldhurst out of the burning theatre alive. And after all his fine talk about keeping her out of harm’s way! He grabbed the door knob and pulled, but the door would not give. He pushed, with as little result. He rattled it frantically, to no avail.

  “It won’t open!”

  Lady Fieldhurst, coughing from the smoke rising from the lower levels, appeared at his elbow. “What? But how—?”

  “Have you a hairpin?” While she fumbled among her curls for a pin, he dug a handkerchief from the inside breast pocket of his borrowed coat. “Here, hold this over your nose and mouth to keep from breathing the smoke.”

  He gave her the handkerchief and took the hairpin she offered, then knelt before the door and inserted the hairpin into the lock. This useful talent, one of several skills of dubious legality learned at his father’s knee, had never failed him—never until now, when his hands shook so violently he could not maintain contact with the locking mechanism long enough to release it.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered under his breath.

  He had been picking locks for more than half his life, but never before had the stakes been so high. Neither a tongue-lashing from the constable for successfully picking a lock, nor a thrashing from his father for failing to do so, held any terrors to compare with the prospect of allowing the woman he loved to die a particularly ghastly death.

  Abandoning a strategy that was accomplishing nothing but the waste of precious time, he scrambled to his feet and snatched up one of the chairs. He raised it high over his head and brought it down on the door knob with all the strength he could muster. It hit the knob and splintered into pieces.

  “Mr. Pickett!” exclaimed Lady Fieldhurst, aghast at this hitherto unsuspected penchant for violence. “Must you destroy the furniture?”

  “You can report me to the management in the morning,” he retorted, “if you can find them.” He picked up another chair and repeated this act of vandalism with no visible signs of remorse. The second chair also splintered, but the door knob gave beneath the force of the blow. The entire locking mechanism clattered to the floor, leaving an empty round hole in the panel. Pickett thrust his hand through and jerked the door open.

  And immediately stepped back as he was struck with a wall of heat. The corridor was alive with flame, and as they stood staring into the inferno, a burning beam from the ceiling fell almost at their feet. Pickett slammed the door shut.

  “We won’t be going out that way,” he remarked, glancing wildly about the box for some other method of exit. He seized one of the heavy curtains flanking the box and pulled until it collapsed into his arms in a pile of red velvet. He located the edge and began ripping it into long strips.

  “What are you doing?” asked her ladyship, her voice muffled by the folds of his handkerchief over her mouth.

  Pickett jerked his head toward the sconce mounted on the wall between their box and its neighbor. Its many candles, so impressive only moments ago, now appeared pale and puny compared to the flames dancing all around them.

  “I’m making a rope to tie to that candelabrum. You can climb down into the pit and escape from there. And don’t wait for me. As soon as your feet reach the floor, I want you to forget everything you ever learned about being a lady—push, shove, do whatever you have to do, but get out, do you understand?”

  “And what about you, Mr. Pickett?”

  He glanced at the brass fixture. “I’m not sure if it will bear my weight, my lady. I suppose I’ll have to try—I don’t much fancy my chances in the corridor—but I’ll not make the attempt until I see you safely down.”

  She leaned over the balustrade and looked past the three tiers of boxes to the pit some forty feet below, then turned back to confront Pickett. “Setting aside the likelihood that I would lose my grip and plummet to my death, do you honestly think I would leave you alone up here, to make your escape—or not!—as best you might? No, Mr. Pickett, I will not have it! Either we go together, or we do not go at all!”

  The crash of falling timbers punctuated this statement, and although there was nothing at all humorous in the situation, he gave her a quizzical little smile. “ ‘ ’Til death do us part,’ Mrs. Pickett?”

  She lifted her chin. “Just so, Mr. Pickett.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair as he cast about for an acceptable alternative, and found only one. He could not like their chances, but they seemed to have no other option, and he had no time to waste in trying to persuade Lady Fieldhurst as to the wisdom of his original plan.

  “All right, then, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll climb down the rope with you on my back.”

  She looked doubtfully at the wall sconce. “It seems to me that if it might not bear your weight alone, it would be even less likely to support the both of us. Are you sure, Mr. Pickett?”

  “I’m not sure at all, my lady, but I see no other way and, as you say, at least we would go together. Do you think you can hold on?”

  She stuffed his handkerchief into her bodice and began stripping off her long white kid gloves. “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Pickett, I don’t see that I have a great deal of choice!”

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  Having finished tying the lengths of curtain together, he looped one end around the sconce where it met the wall. He tied it, then tugged on it with all his might to pull the knot taut.

  “I’m going to sit on the balustrade and get a good grip on the rope. As soon as I’m ready, I want you to lock your arms around my neck and wrap your legs around my waist.”

  “But—my skirts—”

  “You’ll have to hike them up.” Anticipating her objections, he added, “Modesty has no place here, my lady. Everyone is trying to save his own skin. No one is going to be looking up your skirts, least of all me.”

  Without waiting for her consent, he sat on the balustrade and swung his legs out so that they dangled in empty air. He wrapped one arm around his makeshift rope to strengthen his grip, then seized it with both hands. “All right, my lady, it’s time.”

  She did not hesitate, but stepped up behind.

  “John?”

  Her anguished tone, as much as her almost unprecedented use of his Christian name, made him turn his head.

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “For luck,” she said, and kissed him swift and hard on the mouth. Then she hitched her skirts up over her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  There would be time later, Pickett reflected, to savor the memory of bare arms about his neck, of warm breath in his ear, of slender silk-clad ankles locked about his waist. For now, there were more urgent matters at hand.

  “Hold tight,” he said, then strengthened his grip on the velvet rope and eased himself off the balustrade.

  As they descended, Julia was overcome with a curious sense of detachment, as if their present danger were nothing more than a scene from a play being enacted on the burning stage below, or a dream from which she knew she would soon awaken. Perhaps she had no doubt of his ability to rescue her from any disaster; perhaps her traumatized brain could only seek refuge in numbness. Whatever the cause of her unnatural serenity, she drew strength from the realization that there were surely worse fates than dying with John Pickett in her arms.

  At his residence in Westminster, Mr. Colquhoun sat reading in his study and trying not to watch the clock. It was more than half pa
st ten; the musical program being performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane would by now be drawing near to its conclusion. Had he been twenty years younger, he might have taken a more active rôle in the operation he himself had planned. But such plots were meant for younger men, and besides, the sort of music he would be obliged to listen to sounded to his untrained ear like so much caterwauling. No, he would spend a quiet evening reading before his own fireside, and hear a full report in Bow Street the next morning.

  Unless, of course, his young protégé brought him news tonight. A satisfied smile curved his lips as he thought of John Pickett, and wondered what that viscountess of his had thought of the boy in his finery. If she possessed the sense to see beyond the circumstances of a man’s birth, she would fall into his arms. Indeed, thought Mr. Colquhoun, if his own daughters had been a few years younger and still unwed, he would not have hesitated to entrust any one of them to John Pickett’s keeping. In fact, he might have welcomed the opportunity to formalize a connection that—

  A scratching at the door made him look ’round, and he was surprised and disturbed to see his own coachman hovering on the threshold. The expression on the man’s face was enough to tell him that something was wrong. If that confounded woman had insisted upon being taken home early, or done anything else to botch the operation, he would have something to say about it, something that would make her ladyship’s ears burn.

  “Jervis? Back so soon?”

  “Bad news, sir,” the coachman said. “The theatre’s burning. I couldn’t get closer than St. Martins Lane before being obliged to turn back.”

  “Burning, you say?” The magistrate stood abruptly, and the book in his lap fell to the carpet unnoticed. “How bad is it?”