Into Thin Eire Page 4

  “And the tenth part is apparently ingratiating oneself with wealthy widows,” added Carson, with a sly look at Pickett.

  “Better than ingratiating oneself with horses,” Pickett replied. “I never envied you fellows on the Horse Patrol.”

  “You’re on the Horse Patrol, then?” Thomas asked Carson.

  Carson, having discovered that here was a topic into which his colleague could not follow, nodded. “My father owns a livery stable in Cheapside, so I’ve been around horses all my life. He hoped I would take over the business one day. It makes a tidy living for him and Mum and my sisters, but it always seemed like deadly dull work to me. I wanted more excitement, so I asked Lord Grantham—he sometimes rents a hack from my father when he’s in Town—to recommend me to Bow Street. And he did,” he concluded proudly, “so here I am. Still, it’s not quite as exciting as I’d thought it would be, so I hope to be promoted to principal officer someday, like Mr. Pickett here.”

  Pickett examined this speech for some hidden insult, and found none. In fact, Harry Carson’s account sounded strangely familiar: Even though his work hauling coal for Elias Granger had given him food in his belly and a roof over his head, he’d been aware of a craving for something more, something he could not have named, but which he’d looked for first in the books in Mr. Granger’s library, and then in the fetching form of Mr. Granger’s nubile daughter. Something he had eventually found, not in the position of a Bow Street principal officer, but in the arms of his lady wife. Perhaps, he conceded, he and Carson were more alike than he’d realized.

  This charitable thought lasted until that evening in Reading. Having obtained a room at the White Hart for themselves and a place in the stables for Thomas, the three young men refreshed themselves with a hearty but plain meal of roast beef and potatoes before seeking their separate quarters for the night.

  “Shall I come up for your boots, sir?” Thomas offered.

  Pickett glanced down at his feet and discovered that his boots were indeed the worse for having traveled forty miles over dusty roads, even in an enclosed carriage. “Yes, thank you.”

  The valet turned uncertainly toward their traveling companion. “And Mr. Carson?”

  Pickett nodded. “If you would be so good, Thomas, I would be obliged to you.”

  Upstairs in their room, they surrendered their footwear to Thomas, who bore them off for cleaning before seeking his own bed.

  “You’ll need to give him vails,” Pickett advised Carson after they were alone.

  Harry Carson looked bewildered. “I’ll need to give him what?”

  “Vails. Money. To show your appreciation for his services.”

  Carson was less than pleased with these instructions. “All very well and good if you’re married to a wealthy woman, but for the rest of us—”

  “It needn’t be much, just a little something in recognition of the fact that you’re asking something of him that goes beyond his usual duties.” Seeing that his colleague was inclined to be skeptical, he added, “Trust me on this, Carson. Of course, if you can’t bring yourself to do so, I can always tell Thomas he needn’t put himself out for you.”

  “Oh, all right, then.” Carson turned away and began stripping off his coat and waistcoat, muttering something under his breath, the only discernable word of which was “hoity-toity.”

  Pickett, having made his point, shed his own coat, waistcoat, breeches, and stockings, and climbed between the sheets still clad in his shirt and drawers. These garments, which he found superfluous while in his own bed in Curzon Street, were preferable to bare skin against a mattress on which countless travelers would have slept before him—a mattress, which, to judge by the crackling sound that accompanied his every move, was stuffed with pea-shuckings, or perhaps straw; in any case, something other than the soft feathers upon which Julia was no doubt at that minute reposing.

  Julia . . .

  Obeying a sudden impulse, Pickett scrambled out of bed and padded in his bare feet across to the small table positioned beneath the window. He groped for the flint and lit the tallow candle, then fetched the small notebook and pencil he always carried in the inside pocket of his coat. He tore out a sheet, sat down before the table, and began to write:

  My dearest love, I hope this finds you—what? Safe? Healthy? Alive? He didn’t want to frighten her to death—I hope this finds you well, he wrote at last. This is to inform you of my safe arrival in Reading. If all goes well, I shall reach Dunbury by tomorrow evening.

  “What are you doing?” asked Carson, who had by this time staked his claim to the other half of the bed.

  “Writing a letter to my wife,” Pickett said without looking up from the task at hand.

  Once there, he continued, putting pencil to paper once more, I hope to make a summary end to this business, whatever it may prove to be, and return to you with all due speed. Until then I am, always and forever,

  Yours,

  John Pickett

  He folded the paper and sealed it with a drop of wax from the candle, then wrote her name and direction on the outside before snuffing the candle and padding back to the bed. Alas, Carson, having been granted this brief glimpse into his marriage, had apparently lost all interest in sleep.

  “What’s it like, then?” he asked.

  “What’s what like?” asked Pickett, shifting on the crackling mattress in search of a relatively comfortable position.

  “Having a viscountess in your bed,” Carson answered impatiently, as if the answer should have been obvious.

  Heaven, thought Pickett. Paradise. Everything I ever dreamed of, yet never dared to hope for. On that thought, he drifted toward slumber, and had almost achieved it when Carson, apparently taking his silence for an answer, spoke again.

  “She’s older than you, isn’t she?”

  “Mm-hm.” In fact, Julia was two years his senior, but there were far greater differences between them than mere date of birth.

  “So, what’s it like?” Carson asked again. “Do you have to beg her pardon before you—”

  “Shut up, Harry,” growled Pickett, and turned his face to the wall.

  4

  In Which John Pickett’s Quarry

  Proves to Be Surprisingly Elusive

  After an indifferent night’s sleep interrupted at intervals by Carson’s sleeping assurances to various damsels named Molly, Sally, and Peg that she was the only girl for him, Pickett awoke to a light scratching at the door. Throwing back the counterpane, he rolled out of bed—noticing that at some point in the night Carson had chosen to take his half down the middle, a fact that went some way toward explaining his own unsatisfying slumber—and padded across the room to the door. He opened it to find Thomas standing in the corridor holding Pickett’s cleaned and polished boots in one hand; Carson’s footwear stood on the floor beside him, presumably placed there in order to free up one hand for knocking.

  “Good morning, sir,” he greeted his master with a cheerfulness Pickett found disgusting. “Here’s your boots, and Mr. Carson’s, too. The polish is not quite what I would wish, but—well, it was late, and the lighting not the best so—” He broke off with an apologetic shrug.

  “Never mind, Thomas. I’m sure they’ll be much worse before the day is over. Have you had breakfast yet? No? We’ll all go down together, then. Go pack your things, and we’ll meet you in the public room in five minutes.”

  “Five minutes?” groaned a sleepy voice from beneath the counterpane. “You expect me to be ready in five minutes?”

  “No, I expect Thomas to be ready in five minutes. I expect you to be ready in two and a half. The stagecoach won’t wait, and I’d like a minute in front of the mirror to shave, too.”

  Harry Carson threw back the counterpane and crawled out of bed, mumbling something, very likely curses, under his breath. Pickett wasn’t surprised when he took fully four minutes out of the five, obliging Pickett himself to make a hasty job of shaving before scrambling into his clothes. By the time they ca
me downstairs, they found Thomas already waiting.

  “I took the liberty of ordering breakfast for the three of us,” he said apologetically. “I hope I haven’t overstepped, but I was afraid there wouldn’t be time, not with the coach already in the yard.”

  “No, you did very well,” Pickett assured him, much more in charity with his valet at the moment than he was with his colleague.

  As Thomas had said, the stagecoach already stood before the door, and the public room was overflowing with passengers either fortifying themselves for the next stage of the journey or awaiting the signal to board. They made a hasty repast of porridge, washing it down with weak coffee before joining the throng picking their way across the muddy yard to the waiting carriage. Several of their fellow travelers had reached their destination in Reading, but their places were taken by new passengers, so the vehicle was no less full than it had been before.

  Pickett, squeezed between Thomas and a stout man smelling of tobacco, recalled his first journey by stagecoach only the previous summer, when he had been summoned to Yorkshire. On that occasion, he hadn’t been overly troubled by the crowded, poorly sprung carriage; he’d been eager to see something of the world beyond London. Or so he had told himself; in fact, he’d been even more eager to see Julia—or, rather, Lady Fieldhurst, as she was then. Since that time, he’d become accustomed to traveling by post-chaise. He supposed the Prince of Wales would have his own private carriage—very likely more than one—and wondered how His Royal Highness would expect his personal bodyguard to accompany him. Please, God, not on horseback, he prayed silently. He was resolved to do whatever it took to return Julia to something approaching her rightful place in society, but there were some sacrifices he would prefer not to have to make.

  Their progress was slower today, for the rain had steadily increased since they’d left London. The windows of the stagecoach were spotted with raindrops which ran down the glass and mingled with the mud thrown up onto the panes by the horses’ hooves, leaving Pickett with no more pleasant way to pass the time than listening with barely concealed impatience as Harry Carson regaled Thomas with a highly embellished account of his career with the Bow Street Horse Patrol, including a number of occasions on which he’d got his man only through great cunning and physical courage. The knowledge that he himself might have held Thomas equally enrapt at any time over the past six months, had he been inclined to boast of his own exploits, made Carson’s tales no easier to stomach, and the fact that most of their fellow passengers had abandoned their own attempted amusements in order to listen admiringly to the supposed hero in their midst made them more intolerable still. It was not until Harry turned his attention to Thomas, however, that Pickett was moved to protest.

  “You seem like an intelligent fellow,” Carson told Thomas, who visibly preened at this praise. “Maybe you should consider going to work for Bow Street yourself.”

  “I don’t know—” Thomas demurred modestly.

  “Are you trying to steal my valet?” demanded Pickett.

  Carson, seated directly opposite Thomas, turned his attention to Pickett. “You can’t blame a man for being ambitious. Maybe Thomas here wants something more out of life than starching your cravats and polishing your boots.”

  “Well—” Thomas began feebly.

  “You are trying to steal my valet!”

  The tobacco-scented man made a shooing motion with his hands. “Never mind that!”

  “Get on with the story,” the farm wife seated next to Harry urged impatiently.

  Harry was nothing loth, and Pickett, clearly in the minority, lapsed into surly silence.

  Even the most tedious of journeys must eventually come to an end, and Pickett breathed a sigh of relief as the stagecoach lurched into the yard of the Cock and Boar and rolled to a stop. The passengers disembarked slowly in spite of the rain that still fell in sheets, the long hours of inactivity having rendered their muscles stiff and sore. In less inclement weather, Pickett might have gone inside to procure a room for the night, leaving Thomas to reclaim their bags from the boot. But as he had no doubt that Carson would follow him inside, leaving Thomas to fetch his bag as well, he remained resolutely outside in the rain until all three bags had been cut loose and tossed down, taking what satisfaction he could from the sight of rainwater dripping from the curled brim of Carson’s hat.

  Once all three valises had been returned to their respective owners, Pickett led the way inside and took his place in the throng of travelers procuring rooms, having either reached their destination or broken their journeys for the night before resuming the journey to Wells in the morning. As before, Thomas was given a place over the stables while Pickett and Carson were assigned a room upstairs, inside the inn proper.

  Just before surrendering his place in line to the person behind him (whose enormous and no doubt muddy portmanteau was pressing against the backs of his legs), Pickett raised his voice to be heard above the crowd as he inquired of the innkeeper, “Can you tell me in which room I might find Mr. Edward Gaines Brockton? I’m supposed to meet him here.”

  With a distracted sigh, the innkeeper flipped back a page in his ledger. “Mr. Brockton is in the room right next to yours, at the top of the stairs.”

  “Thank you,” Pickett said, and squeezed his way past the portmanteau and back to his traveling companions.

  Together they climbed the stairs, Pickett feeling more than a little foolish at carrying nothing more burdensome than the key to the room while Carson followed with his own valise and Thomas brought up the rear with the bags of both master and servant. As they reached the top of the stairs, however, a dilemma presented itself. Mr. Brockton is in the room right next to yours, at the top of the stairs, the innkeeper had said. Had he meant that Mr. Brockton’s room was at the top of the stairs, and theirs was the room just beyond it, or was it their own room that was at the top of the stairs?

  He wished he had noticed the ambiguity of the statement before giving up his place in line, but it was too late now. Besides the fact that he would have to wait his turn all over again, he didn’t want to give Harry Carson any evidence of incompetence with which to torment him. There was nothing for it but to insert the key into the lock of the first room at the top of the stairs, and pray that it opened. If not, he would make the acquaintance of Mr. Edward Gaines Brockton a bit earlier than anticipated, and under less felicitous circumstances than he might have wished. If that should prove to be the case, well, he would have to put Carson off with some nonsense about catching the fellow off his guard.

  His mind made up, he inserted the key into the lock, pushed the door open, and beheld the room that was to be his home for the foreseeable future. Granted, very little of the room was visible at the moment beyond vague shapes, as it was now fully dark outside and no fire had been lit in the grate in anticipation of the new arrivals. Still, Pickett was by this time well-traveled enough to know that most such rooms were very much alike. The large shape against the adjacent wall was the bed, which he would be obliged to share with Carson; the smaller shape next to it was the washstand, before which he and Carson would no doubt jockey for position in the morning; the low, square shape beneath the window was a writing table, where he would sit down and compose a brief letter to Julia, informing her of his safe arrival. Before he could settle down to this domestic task, however, there were certain things that had to be done.

  “Choose your side, Harry, and I’ll take the other,” he told Carson, gesturing toward the bed. “Thomas, if you’ll get the fire started, I’ll go next door and introduce myself to Mr. Brockton. I doubt he’ll want to open his budget just yet, not with such a din downstairs, but perhaps it will save us some time in the morning.”

  Carson needed no urging. He sat down on the edge of the bed nearest the window, dropping his valise at his feet with the air of an explorer planting a flag. Meanwhile, Thomas knelt before the cold grate and groped about in the darkness for the flint.

  As for Pickett, he left the ro
om, walked the few feet down the corridor to the next door, and rapped upon it. Receiving no answer, he tried again, this time calling, “Mr. Brockton? Mr. Brockton, it’s John Pickett, from Bow Street.”

  Still no answer. Either Mr. Brockton had gone out and not returned, or else he had already sought his bed—in which case he would not be pleased to be roused in his nightshirt by a travel-stained fellow whose companions were apparently dismantling their room board by board, if the noise they were making was anything to judge by. It appeared Pickett would be obliged to wait until morning after all. Giving up a lost cause, he returned to his room, consoling himself with the realization that, if Mr. Brockton had indeed gone out, he would almost certainly hear the man return, given the seeming thinness of the walls.

  “What the devil is going on in here?” Pickett asked irritably as he re-entered his own room.

  The answer to his question was self-evident. The fire had been lit, and Thomas was now engaged in emptying Pickett’s valise into the clothes-press provided for that purpose. As they had not unpacked their bags the previous night—given that they would be back on the road at first light, it had seemed an unnecessary waste of time—this was Harry Carson’s first look at Pickett’s clothing beyond the brown serge coat he usually wore to Bow Street, which he had also worn on the stagecoach.

  “I say, you’ve come up in the world!” Carson exclaimed. He snatched a dark blue double-breasted tailcoat out of Thomas’s hands and held it up to his own chest. “I didn’t know you planned to make your bow to the Prince of Wales on this trip.”

  Actually, Carson was closer to the truth than he knew, but Pickett wasn’t about to make him a gift of this information; he would never hear the end of it. “My wife’s parents live not far from here,” he said, albeit not without reluctance. “If I have time, I might have to pay Sir Thaddeus and Lady Runyon a visit while I’m in the area.”

  “ ‘Sir’ Thaddeus! ‘Lady’ Runyon! Lord, but you’re moving in rarified circles these days!” Carson slid his arms into the sleeves of Pickett’s evening coat and examined the results in the mirror over the washstand. “Look! The sleeves come all the way down over my hands! It’s a pity you’re such a long-shanks, for I wouldn’t half mind borrowing this.”