Family Plot Read online

  “From London, you say?” Was it Julia’s imagination, or was there the slightest flicker of recognition in the woman’s eyes? Nonsense, Julia told herself sternly. This unfortunate female has no knowledge of her own identity, much less yours.

  The woman believed to be Elspeth Kirkbride put a hand to the doorframe to steady herself as she dipped a curtsy. “Mrs. Pickett, Harold. I believe I have you to thank for my rescue.”

  The words were addressed to Julia, who was quick to demur. “Actually, it was Harold who came to Ravenscroft Manor for help after his younger brother found you on the beach. It is to him and his brothers, not me, that you owe your thanks.”

  Miss Kirkbride bestowed a bewitching smile upon Harold and extended her hand to him. “Mr. Pickett, then.”

  To Julia, the sound of Harold Bertram being addressed as Mr. Pickett was only slightly less jarring than the sight of that young man bowed deeply from the waist and raising the lady’s hand to his lips. It seemed that in addition to her other perceived sins against the Bertram family must now be added the folly of allowing Harold to form an attachment to a female almost twice his age. To where might they banish me for this new infraction, she wondered, the Black Hole of Calcutta?

  With assistance from Harold (whether she needed it or not), Miss Kirkbride sank onto the straw-colored sofa and glanced at the animal heads adorning the walls. “How familiar this room seems!” Her eyes fell upon an ancient deer head over the mantel. “Duncan, you must bag another buck. Poor Jasper is looking quite moth-eaten.”

  Duncan turned white. Gavin blinked. “Jasper?”

  “It was Jasper, was it not?” She looked in pretty confusion from one cousin to the other. “Or perhaps Julian? It was so long ago.”

  Gavin spoke as one in a daze. “It was Jasper. He was the first buck Duncan ever shot. He was only thirteen years old at the time—Duncan, that is. I’ve no idea how old Jasper was,” he added in a feeble attempt at humor.

  Harold set his cup and saucer down with a clatter. “You remember, then? Why, that proves it! You must be Elspeth—er, Miss Kirkbride.”

  It would certainly appear so, Julia thought. Every family’s history contained such minutiae unlikely to be known by outsiders—unless, of course, they were tutored by those in a position to know such things. She couldn’t help but wonder what Duncan would make of this newest revelation.

  She had not long to wait to find out.

  “There’s only one thing to do, then,” said Duncan, regarding the company with an arrested expression.

  Gavin spoke for the group. “And what, pray, is that?”

  “We must know for certain.” Duncan dropped to one knee beside Angus’s chair, the better to look the old man squarely in the eye. “Uncle, you must have this woman investigated.”

  Gavin nodded. “It can’t hurt to send for the justice of the peace.”

  Angus gave a snort of derision. “Faugh! Sir Henry MacDougall couldn’t find hide nor hair of my daughter fifteen years ago, and I’ll wager his eyesight hasn’t improved in the interim.”

  “Not the justice of the peace, Uncle,” Duncan insisted. “Bow Street. You must send to London for a Runner.”

  “I’ll not have a damned sassenach meddling in my family’s affairs!” Angus barked.

  “English or not, Uncle, the Runners are the best in the realm. If anyone can discover the truth about this female, it is they.”

  “Perhaps that is so, Duncan, but I fear I must agree with Uncle Angus,” Gavin put in, glancing around the room at the woman, who had picked up a book and now thumbed through its pages, seeming oblivious to the hushed conversation of which she was the subject. “Even if we were to send for a Runner by today’s post, the fellow would not arrive for more than a se’ennight. Any trail Elsp—er, the woman might have left would have long since grown cold.”

  Lady Fieldhurst heard scarcely a word of this discussion, so aghast was she at the mention of Bow Street. At any other time, she would have been rather pleased at the prospect of seeing Mr. Pickett again, perhaps even assisting him in his investigation as she had done in Yorkshire. But not here. Not now.

  You have nothing to fear, she told herself firmly. It was quite possible that the justice of the peace would get to the truth of the matter, one way or another, and there would be no need to send to London after all. And even if he could not, if the Kirk-brides chose to procure the services of a Bow Street Runner, there were many others besides John Pickett, some of whom had been pursuing lawbreakers throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom longer than he had been alive. If Angus Kirkbride had need of a Runner in Scotland, surely the Bow Street magistrate would send someone older and more experienced than a young man with a mere four-and-twenty years in his dish.

  Surely it must be so. It must be. For any Runner assigned to the case would wish to interview her and the boys regarding the discovery of the woman on the beach. And she would be obliged to explain to Mr. Pickett how she came to be parading about Scotland under an assumed name.

  His name.

  The following morning saw a note delivered to Mrs. Pickett at the Wild Rose Inn, requesting her to call at Ravenscroft Manor at two o’clock that afternoon so that she might be interviewed by the justice of the peace, Sir Henry MacDougall, at the same time he was to meet with the Kirkbride family. Alas, Lady Fieldhurst’s hopes for Sir Henry, while never very high, were dashed the moment that revered gentleman entered the Kirk-bride drawing room. A stooped little man in his dotage, he wore an old-fashioned (and, she suspected, moth-eaten) frock coat and a bagwig that appeared to be in imminent danger of slipping off the back of his bald head.

  Upon being introduced to her, he leaned very close to inspect her through squinting blue eyes, then drew back and announced in the too-loud voice of the hard of hearing, “By Jove, Angus, the gel’s an imposter. She don’t look a thing like that lass of yours. Elspeth was always dark, and this chit’s yaller-haired. Don’t know how you came to be so taken in!”

  “No, no, Sir Henry,” Gavin interposed. “This is the lady who—”

  “Don’t be daft,” Angus chided, not mincing matters. “I never said she was Elspeth! That’s Mrs. Pickett. She and her sons found—”

  “Nephews, actually,” murmured Lady Fieldhurst, hardly sure whether to be amused or insulted at the suggestion that she, at six-and-twenty, might be the mother of the eighteen-year-old Harold.

  “Beg your pardon, Mrs. Pickett,” Angus interposed. “As I was saying, Sir Henry, Mrs. Pickett and her young nephews found my daughter on the beach.”

  “What’s that?” barked Sir Henry, raising an antiquated ear trumpet to his right ear. “I thought your daughter was dead.”

  Duncan, viewing the scene from where he stood near the fire with one arm resting on the mantel, made a contemptuous noise.

  “And so did we all, Sir Henry, until this woman turned up,” said Gavin, with a speaking look at his cousin. “But the resemblance is quite remarkable, and so we have been forced to consider that she might have met a very different fate than we had assumed. But you must meet her yourself, and tell us what you think.”

  “Mrs. Pickett, eh?” Sir Henry turned his attention back to Lady Fieldhurst, fixing his quizzing glass on her black bodice in a way that made her feel as if she had neglected to put on her stays. “Tell me, my dear, is there a Mr. Pickett about?” he asked, with a gleam in his rheumy eye.

  “I—I believe Mr. Pickett may be joining me very shortly,” said her ladyship with perfect truth.

  During this exchange (which was conducted at a far greater volume than the mortified Lady Fieldhurst could have wished) Gavin murmured a word to the footman stationed near the door. The servant nodded, then withdrew from the room and returned a moment later with the supposed Elspeth Kirkbride in tow. Once again she wore an outmoded gown presumably unearthed from a trunk in the attic, a nip-waisted, full-skirted frock of stiff brocade that gave her the curiously unworldly air of a woman out of time.

  “Here she i
s now,” said Angus, gesturing the woman forward eagerly. “Come in, my dear, and make your curtsy to Sir Henry MacDougall. He once dandled you on his knee when you were little more than an infant, but you won’t remember that.”

  “Sir Henry.” The woman did as she was bidden, and achieved a very credible curtsy. Lady Fieldhurst, who remembered hours spent practicing this skill before a mirror prior to her presentation at Court, acknowledged that the woman was very likely of gentle birth. Certainly, she had been taught to curtsy correctly.

  “Stap me if it ain’t Elspeth, come back at last!” Sir Henry exclaimed. “You’ve been sorely missed my dear. Don’t see what you’re making such a mystery about, Angus. It’s plain as a pikestaff the girl simply went for a swim and stayed out too long. Young people are often thoughtless, but there’s no reason to make a Cheltenham tragedy of it.”

  “Sir Henry,” Duncan put in, “do you mean to suggest that Elspeth has been at sea treading water for fifteen years? Why, fifteen minutes would have been too long, if the tide had been coming in at the time.”

  “Eh?” Sir Henry sought recourse to his ear trumpet. “What’s that?”

  “Fifteen years, Your Honor,” Gavin echoed. “That’s how long it has been since Elspeth ‘went for a swim,’ as you say.”

  “Has it been that long?” marveled Sir Henry, turning back to Elspeth for confirmation.

  “So they tell me,” she said. “I confess, I don’t remember.”

  “Why, it seems like only yesterday. And you, my dear! You don’t look a day older than you did at seventeen,” declared Sir Henry, which only served to confirm Angus’s low opinion of that gentleman’s eyesight. The supposed Elspeth was certainly a beautiful woman, but that she was in fact a woman, and no longer a girl, could not be disputed by any but the most generous of critics.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” declared Duncan, stating the obvious. “Sir Henry, we want you to investigate this woman—find out, if you can, who she is, where she came from, and how it was that she contrived to wash ashore practically on our doorstep.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” Sir Henry agreed, wagging his head. “Now, Elspeth, you heard your cousin: how did you contrive to wash ashore at virtually the same spot you’d disappeared from all those years ago?”

  The woman shrugged in pretty confusion. “I wish I could tell you, Sir Henry, but I fear I cannot remember.”

  “Eh? What’s that?” asked Sir Henry. He leaned closer to the woman, although whether this was to hear her better or to give him an unimpeded view down her bodice was not immediately apparent.

  “Good God!” grumbled Duncan. He heaved himself out of his chair and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going, nephew?” Angus demanded.

  “To pen a letter,” Duncan snapped, “to the Bow Street Public Office in London!”

  CHAPTER 5

  WHICH FINDS JOHN PICKETT

  CONSIDERING MATRIMONY

  * * *

  Some three weeks after his encounter with Lady Fieldhurst at the theatre in Drury Lane, John Pickett approached the magistrate’s bench in the Bow Street Public Office. Taking a deep breath, he gripped the slender wooden railing that separated the magistrate’s raised bench from those lesser mortals who came before him seeking justice or mercy, depending upon which side of the law they found themselves.

  “Mr. Colquhoun, sir, if I might have a moment—” he began.

  “By all means, Mr. Pickett. In fact, you’re a breath of fresh air.” The magistrate’s scowl lightened at the sight of his most junior Runner. “If anyone had told me twenty years ago that the Metropolis was home to so many pickpockets and petty thieves, I never would have believed them. Sometimes I wonder if there’s an honest man in all of London. Perhaps I should take up a lantern and go in search of one, like Diogenes.”

  As Pickett’s education did not extend to classical references, the slight smile with which he greeted this sally was more out of courtesy than amusement.

  “But why so solemn, Mr. Pickett? What troubles you this morning?”

  “I wonder, sir, if you might speak on my behalf regarding a—” Pickett swallowed hard. “—regarding a rise in my wages.”

  Mr. Colquhoun’s bushy white eyebrows rose. “I seem to recall you were rewarded quite handsomely for that Hollingshead affair. How much does it take to maintain a bachelor establishment these days?”

  “There’s the rub, sir.” Having committed himself this far, Pickett threw caution to the winds. “I am contemplating matrimony.”

  “Well, I’m dashed!” The magistrate heaved himself to his feet and reached across the railing to shake Pickett’s hand. “Never say that viscountess of yours has said she’ll have you! Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

  Pickett saw nothing to amuse him in this attempt at hilarity. “I am preparing,” he said with great solemnity, “to make an offer of marriage to Miss Lucy Higgins of Seven Dials.”

  “John!” The twinkle in Mr. Colquhoun’s blue eyes was extinguished, and when he spoke again, there was no trace of amusement in his voice. “You intend to tie yourself to a common strumpet?”

  “As you are so kind as to point out, the Viscountess Fieldhurst is unlikely to so demean herself,” Pickett said stiffly.

  “Yes, but you need not choose one end of the spectrum or the other. If you’ll look about you a bit, you’ll discover there is a whole range of females who fall somewhere between the extremes of an aristocratic widow and a ha’penny whore!”

  Pickett, very much on his dignity, drew himself up to his full height. “I must remind you, sir, that you are speaking of the young woman I intend to marry.”

  “Fine words, my lad, but the fact remains that the girl is nothing but a prostitute!”

  “And what am I but a reformed pickpocket?”

  “John?” There was confusion and, yes, pain in the magistrate’s voice. “After all you have accomplished here, can you truly think so little of yourself? You are one of the most promising young men it has been my pleasure to know.”

  Pickett hesitated. He knew Mr. Colquhoun felt a certain sense of responsibility where he was concerned; he sometimes suspected that sense of responsibility was not unmixed with affection. But although he was aware of the debt he owed the magistrate, there were things he could not confide in him. He could not tell him, for instance, that every evening for the past three weeks had found him in the pit of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. For twenty-one nights running, Hamlet had pondered aloud whether “to be or not to be” while John Pickett gazed up at the box directly overhead for a glimpse of the widowed Lady Fieldhurst. Not once had his diligence been rewarded; however pleased her ladyship had appeared to be at the opportunity to renew his acquaintance, she had clearly forgotten the encounter. It was long past time for him to do the same.

  Unfortunately, in spite of his best efforts, this appeared to be easier said than done. Suddenly weary of his self-imposed celibacy, he saw only one way out of his dilemma. He had decided long ago that he would not be one of those Runners who arrested on Sunday morning the same doxies whose favors they had purchased on Saturday night. For a principled man, there was only one outlet for those urges natural to any healthy, red-blooded Englishman: marriage. Pickett had come to the conclusion that the only way to banish one female from his heart was to tie himself irrevocably to another.

  “I will do my best to justify your faith in me, sir, but where would I be had you not intervened?” Pickett asked, seeing the magistrate was awaiting an answer. “Locked up in Newgate, perhaps, or dancing from the end of a rope on Tyburn Tree.”

  Mr. Colquhoun made a shooing motion with his hands, as if to wave away any suggestion of sentiment. “Nonsense! Cream will rise to the top, my boy—you can’t stop it. In any case, they stopped hanging felons at Tyburn before you were born! But ‘ ’til death do us part’ can be a long time if you’re wed to the wrong woman. A man wants to be sure his children have his own blood running through their veins.”
r />   “I believe Lucy will be faithful to me, once she is assured of a roof over her head and food in her belly. Perhaps all she needs is a chance. Since I can’t—that is, since it is impossible—” He broke off and swallowed hard. “I will not try to convince you that I am in love with Lucy, but I am fond of her. I believe I could find some contentment in knowing that I gave her a better life than she could provide for herself. It might not be a blissful marriage, but I think it could be a mutually satisfying one.”

  The magistrate heaved a world-weary sigh and rolled his eyes heavenward. “There are times,” he said, “when I could cheerfully wring the Viscountess Fieldhurst’s neck! I’m sure your feelings do you credit, John, but by Jove, you can’t marry a female in a fit of philanthropy!”

  “But sir, I—”

  “You, sirrah, will hold your tongue when you approach the bench!” commanded Mr. Colquhoun at his most magisterial. He picked up a folded sheet of paper and spread it open on his desk. “I fear you will be leaving the Metropolis for a time, Mr. Pickett, so let us have no more nonsense about marriage. I have been thinking for some time now about visiting my native Scotland to harass the local trout population. You will accompany me. We will board the Royal Mail Coach at the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin’s Lane first thing tomorrow morning. The Mail departs promptly at eight. Do not disappoint me.”

  Pickett heard only one part of this speech. “Fishing, sir? In October?”

  “Faugh! Has city living made you soft? A fine husband you’d make some poor female, if you can’t stomach the prospect of a little cold and damp! Providentially, I have only this morning received a request to send a Runner to Ravenscroft, a village on the southwestern coast of Scotland. Missing person, presumed dead, suddenly reappeared. Family wants to know if it’s a hoax. You shall investigate while I indulge in a brief holiday. Do I make myself clear?”