Family Plot Read online

  “I bought them from a fellow in the tavern,” he said. Having removed his boots, he collapsed onto the pillow. “They’re for Edward and Robert. Perhaps it will help to make up for the adventure they missed. You may tell them I would have been happy to surrender my place to them,” he added with a ghost of a smile.

  “You may tell them yourself, after you awaken.” She placed the boats carefully on the small table beside the bed. “It was kind of you to think of them.”

  “Not them. You.” His eyes were closed, and she thought his color was beginning to look slightly less green. “I told you I would try to make it up to you.”

  “Well then, it was kind of you to think of me,” she said briskly. He could not have paid more than a couple of shillings for the two boats combined, thus there was no reason, no reason at all, for her to feel so very much affected by so very small a gesture.

  She fetched the vial of lavender water from her travelling case and, shaking some of its contents onto a handkerchief, sat on the edge of the bed and bathed his brow, just as she had done Edward’s when he had been ill in the carriage. He seemed to relax under her ministrations, and she felt a sudden urge to brush the brown curls back from his brow and press her lips to his forehead. It occurred to her that, while she had indeed been married for six years, it had been a very long time since she had had a man in her bed—and there was something profoundly unsettling about the sight of this particular man there.

  Appalled at the direction of her thoughts, she raised herself quietly from the bed, so as not to disturb him, then picked up her gloves and bonnet.

  “Sleep well, Mr. Pickett,” she whispered, then left the room before she could say or do something she might later regret.

  CHAPTER 8

  IN WHICH LADY FIELDHURST

  RECEIVES A WARNING

  * * *

  Upon reaching Ravenscroft Manor, Lady Fieldhurst was surprised to find the drawing room quite full of visitors, none of whom, thankfully, were previously known to her. Most were relations of the Kirkbride family, all presumably invited to the ball to be held in Miss Kirkbride’s honor the following night. Lady Fieldhurst could not but wonder if any of them had their own misgivings as to the woman’s identity; if this was the case, they—unlike Duncan Kirkbride—kept to themselves whatever doubts they might harbor. As Gavin Kirkbride introduced her to the rest of his uncle’s guests, she identified a few notable exceptions to the family party. The first of these was Mr. Ferguson, the family’s solicitor.

  “Come from Edinburgh at Uncle’s request,” Gavin explained. “I believe you are putting up at the same inn—the Wild Rose, is it not?”

  “It is, indeed,” said Lady Fieldhurst, privately resolving to give Mr. Ferguson a wide berth if she should happen to see him at the inn.

  “And here is another distinguished practitioner of the legal profession: Mr. Patrick Colquhoun, the magistrate who oversees London’s Bow Street force.” He lowered his voice. “Mr. Colquhoun has agreed to investigate our fair guest’s unexpected appearance. If anyone can recognize an impostor, it is surely he.”

  “Oh,” Lady Fieldhurst said faintly, offering her hand to a white-haired gentleman with keen blue eyes beneath bushy white brows. Mr. Pickett might assure her of the magistrate’s trustworthiness, but she had no such confidence. “I—I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Colquhoun.”

  He bowed over her hand. “And I yours, Mrs.—Pickett, did you say? I believe we have a mutual acquaintance, ma’am.”

  “Do we?” She regarded the magistrate warily, but saw nothing in that canny individual’s countenance beyond bland interest. Somehow she found his seeming indifference more disturbing than an outright accusation.

  “We do indeed, my lady. But let us take a turn about the room while we discuss our mutual friend, and spare poor Mr. Gavin. There is nothing more tedious, you know, than to listen to others exchange reminiscences about a person one has never heard of.”

  With a nod in Gavin’s direction, Mr. Colquhoun took her arm and steered her away. “I confess, I have wanted to meet you for some time—Lady Fieldhurst. You will have gathered, I trust, that the mutual acquaintance of whom I spoke is John Pickett.”

  “I did indeed, sir. Mr. Pickett has spoken of you often. He seems to think very highly of you.”

  Mr. Colquhoun paused before a large portrait of a younger Angus Kirkbride and, turning his back to the room, pretended to study it with great interest. “But not half so highly as he thinks of you, my lady. Therein lies the problem. I realize there is little you can do about the situation as it now stands. But I hope you will not take it amiss when I ask you, upon your return to London, to drop the acquaintance.”

  Lady Fieldhurst bristled at such plain speaking. “I understand, Mr. Colquhoun, that Mr. Pickett is answerable to you regarding his activities concerning Bow Street, but surely he may choose his friends to please himself! I fail to see how you should have any say in his personal life.”

  “Let us just say that there are—reasons—why I take a particular interest in Mr. Pickett’s personal affairs.”

  “I should love to hear them.” The words were as much a challenge as they were an invitation.

  “As you wish.” Mr. Colquhoun tore his gaze from the portrait and paced off a few more steps before stopping to inspect a stuffed and mounted pheasant, its wings spread as if in flight. “The duties of a magistrate are often as unpleasant as they are necessary. In one of my first cases, I ordered a man, a habitual ne’er-do-well, transported to Botany Bay for thievery. It was not until after I had pronounced this sentence that I learned the man had a son, a lad of fourteen, who was already an accomplished pickpocket. Sadly, in such cases the son usually follows the father’s example, eventually ending up in Newgate or Botany Bay. In days not so long past, the worst cases ended at Tyburn Tree, where the criminal was hanged by the neck until dead.”

  Lady Fieldhurst shuddered. “A grisly fate, sir, and one I am sure you must deplore. But where does Mr. Pickett come into it?”

  “The fourteen-year-old son’s name,” the magistrate continued, “was John.”

  Lady Fieldhurst caught her breath.

  “My own father died when I was sixteen, so I know what it is like, to be left to fend for oneself at an early age,” Mr. Colquhoun said. “In the hopes of rescuing the boy from a life of crime, I arranged for young John Pickett to be bound as an apprentice to a collier. For the next five years of his life, he hauled coal in exchange for room and board.”

  One of the other guests, an elderly gentleman in an old-fashioned frock coat and bagwig, approached them with purpose in his step, but Mr. Colquhoun fixed so quelling a stare upon him that the man turned away disappointed.

  “Sir Henry MacDougall, local justice of the peace,” the magistrate said. “Insufferable bore, and incompetent to boot. We can only hope he will take the hint and leave us alone. Now, where was I? Oh yes, young John Pickett hauling coal. A colossal waste of a fine mind, although I did not know it at the time. He made deliveries to the Bow Street Public Office occasionally, so I was able to follow his progress. At times, when I was in a particularly mellow mood, I would toss him a penny for his pains, and congratulate myself on my Christian charity.”

  This last was said with such bitterness that Lady Fieldhurst could almost find it in her heart to feel sorry for the magistrate. She dared not interrupt to say so, however, and he once again picked up the thread of his narrative.

  “On one such occasion, he was left to cool his heels in the Bow Street Public Office while I wrote out a bank draft for payment. It seems that at some point in his career, our Mr. Pickett had been sent to school (possibly the only decent thing his father ever did for him) and as a result, read anything and everything he could get his hands on. Unfortunately, this was usually not much; the coal business, as you might guess, is not known for the richness of its literature.”

  “But his speech is not that of the sort of person you describe.”

  “
Ah yes, his speech. It appears that John Pickett has a gift for mimicry—a talent that has served him well in cases involving the aristocracy. By the time we return to London two weeks hence, I have no doubt he will have acquired a fine Scots burr.”

  “How did he go from delivering coal to investigating crime?” asked Lady Fieldhurst, both fascinated and appalled by this previously unknown history of the young man even now lying fast asleep in her bed at the inn.

  “I am coming to that. As it happens, on that particular occasion in Bow Street, there was an issue of The Hue and Cry left lying about by one of the other Runners.”

  “The Hue and Cry? I am not familiar with it.”

  “Nor would I expect you to be. It is a police gazette, published quarterly with information about wanted persons, unsolved crimes—that sort of thing. In any case, John Pickett was not familiar with it either, but that didn’t stop him from picking it up to read while he waited on his payment. By the time I had finished writing out the bank draft, he had picked up on the one discrepancy the investigating Runner had missed, and deduced that Mrs. Cranston-Parks’s emeralds had not been stolen by her lady’s maid, but by Mrs. Cranston-Parks herself, who had fenced them to cover her own gambling debts.” He chuckled at the memory. “He was quite right, too, which did not sit well with Mr. Foote, the Runner assigned to the case.”

  “What happened then?”

  “To make a long story short, I met with the collier and bought John Pickett’s contract out of my own pocket. I found a place for him on the foot patrol until he got his bearings, at which time he became a Runner. He was not yet twenty-four years old.” He scowled at her beneath bushy white brows. “You ask by what right I should presume to choose Mr. Pickett’s friends. I might answer that I bought him. If that is so, he is undoubtedly the best investment I ever made.”

  Lady Fieldhurst regarded the magistrate with a kindlier eye than she had done previously. “And yet I suspect your interest in him is less monetary than it is personal. You would appear to be very fond of him.”

  He nodded. “Too fond, at any rate, to bear with equanimity the sight of him being hurt for no greater cause than the stroking of your own vanity.”

  She could not have been more shocked if he had slapped her. “Vanity? And what, pray, do you know of my vanity?”

  “Only that it would be a very odd female who, finding her name a byword amongst her own set, would not be gratified by the admiration of a personable young man, no matter how lowly his social status.”

  She stiffened. “Am I to understand, sir, that you believe me to be deliberately toying with Mr. Pickett’s affections?”

  “What else am I to think? Surely the most democratic of individuals could not suppose you to have a serious interest in securing his regard.”

  She took a step back, allowing her hand to drop from his arm lest he feel her trembling with rage. “I must confess, Mr. Colquhoun, I find your observations on our mutual friend as bewildering as they are contradictory,” she said, controlling her voice with an effort. “On the one hand, you tell me what an exceptional young man he is, while on the other, you seem quite confident that he could not earn my admiration on his own merit.”

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt you are sincerely grateful for his efforts on your behalf following the murder of your husband—God knows you should be, for he risked his career for your sake!—but to an impressionable young man, the gratitude of a beautiful woman may be mistaken for something else entirely.”

  She was spared the necessity of answering (or perhaps robbed of the opportunity to do so) by the appearance of Gavin Kirk-bride, who chose that moment to interrupt.

  “Mrs. Pickett, have you met Sir Lachlan Malcolm and his wife, Lady Malcolm? They are my uncle and aunt, and are all agog to meet the lady who found Elspeth on the beach.”

  “No, Gavin, I haven’t had the pleasure.” She made the stiffest of curtsies to the magistrate. “If you will excuse me, Mr. Colquhoun?”

  “I trust Mr. Colquhoun did not bring upsetting news regarding your mutual acquaintance,” Gavin said as they crossed the room together. “You look perturbed.”

  “Mr. Colquhoun’s news was unsettling, but nothing more,” Lady Fieldhurst assured him, and tried hard to believe it herself. “I am sure he is a loyal friend, but I believe his concerns to be groundless.”

  Whatever Gavin might have said to this assertion was interrupted by a disturbance at the drawing room door. Turning toward the sounds of the commotion, Lady Fieldhurst saw a rough-looking man in homespun attempting to enter the drawing room in spite of the best efforts of the butler and two footmen to prevent him.

  “Where is she?” the interloper demanded loudly. “Where is Elspeth? I must see her!”

  Lady Fieldhurst instinctively turned toward Miss Kirkbride, along with everyone else in the room, and saw that Elspeth had turned quite pale.

  “Elspeth!” The newcomer shook off the footmen holding his arms as easily as he might have swatted away a fly. “I heard you were back.”

  “Who is that?” the viscountess asked, looking back at the man whose unorthodox arrival had clearly cut up Miss Kirkbride’s peace.

  “Oh, just one of the local rowdies,” Gavin muttered. “He used to be employed in our stables, and fancies himself as having a grudge against the family. Depend upon it, Duncan will show him the door quickly enough.”

  As he had predicted, Duncan strode across the room and seized the fellow by his collar. To Lady Fieldhurst’s surprise, Miss Kirkbride left her father’s side and joined the two men, placing a staying hand on Duncan’s arm. Although the viscountess was not near enough to hear their words, Elspeth was apparently intervening on behalf of the trespasser, for Duncan released his grasp (rather reluctantly, Lady Fieldhurst thought) and the three exited the drawing room together. Two of them returned a scant five minutes later, and although Miss Kirkbride’s color was high and Duncan’s scowl was even more pronounced than usual, the uninvited guest was no longer with them. Whatever Elspeth had said to him had apparently persuaded him to leave of his own volition.

  “Well, that will give the gossips something to stew over with their tea tomorrow,” Gavin remarked, dismissing the bizarre incident with a careless wave of his hand. “If you will follow me, my lady, I will present you to my aunt and uncle.”

  She spent the next quarter-hour curtsying and nodding to various friends and relations of the Kirkbride family, remembering with an effort that since she was masquerading as a mere “Mrs.,” she must be presented to even the minor gentry whereas they, as her social inferiors, would have been presented to the Viscountess Fieldhurst. But even as she mouthed the niceties that were de rigueur in polite society, her brain was awhirl. Who was the strange man who had interrupted the gathering, and what was his connection to Elspeth Kirkbride? And then, quite aside from the Kirkbrides (and far more disturbing to her mind), there was Mr. Colquhoun’s accusation to be considered.

  However much Mr. Pickett might respect the magistrate’s judgment, Mr. Colquhoun was, at least in this case, quite mistaken. To be sure, an unlikely friendship had sprung up between the widowed viscountess and the Bow Street Runner, first out of gratitude on her part and, yes, perhaps admiration on his. That friendship, once begun, had been strengthened by their shared experiences in Yorkshire. But to suggest that she would deliberately lead him on was as offensive as it was wrongheaded. They were both well aware of the differences in their respective stations and, with the exception of one kiss born of necessity, had no intention of, nor even any interest in, going beyond the bounds of what Society dictated was proper. Indeed, so careful was Mr. Pickett of the gulf between them that he could not even bring himself to speak her name! To suggest that he had succumbed to her fatal charm (if such charm she possessed) was absurd.

  “What do you think, Mrs. Pickett?”

  Abruptly recalled to her surroundings, Lady Fieldhurst realized that one of the numerous Kirkbride relations, a buxom matron in dark green satin, had asked her a q
uestion and was awaiting a response. While she floundered for a noncommittal answer, Gavin stepped into the breach.

  “I believe we can expect the fair weather to hold for another week, Lady Malcolm,” he said. “What a shame it would be if Elspeth’s homecoming ball were to be spoiled by rain or, worse, an early snow.”

  “How true!” Lady Fieldhurst addressed herself to the matron, who looked rather affronted by her lack of attention. “You must forgive me for my momentary speechlessness, my lady. The idea of Miss Kirkbride’s festivities being spoiled is too terrible to contemplate.”

  This last was said with a smile, which had the happy result of assuaging the lady’s sense of ill-usage. “Indeed, it would be quite shocking if anything were to cut up Angus’s peace, now that he has found peace at last.” Lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, the matron leaned nearer, setting the ostrich plumes in her turban bobbing. “In those first dark days he was quite mad with grief, you know. There were times when we feared for his wits.”

  The magistrate’s accusation was temporarily forgotten as Lady Fieldhurst remembered the original purpose for her call. She glanced at Gavin, and found that his attention had been claimed by Mr. Ferguson, the family’s solicitor. She was unlikely to find a better opportunity, or a more obliging source of information. She turned back to the lady in the green turban.

  “I have not known the family for long, Lady Malcolm, but I confess, I thought it odd that such a fond father and daughter had ever been estranged.” In case the lady needed further encouragement, she added, “I can’t imagine what must have occurred to cause such a rift.”

  “A sad state of affairs, to be sure, and so unnecessary.” Lady Malcolm shook her head with much fluttering of plumes. “Angus hoped his daughter would marry one of her cousins, to keep the estate in the Kirkbride family, you know, for Elspeth is actually his step-daughter.”

  “Indeed?” Lady Fieldhurst raised her eyebrows invitingly, and Lady Malcolm did not disappoint her. “Oh, yes! Elspeth was scarcely more than a babe when Angus married her mother, and when his wife died only a few years later, he raised the child as his own. And to his credit, no father could have loved the child of his own flesh any more. How he doted on the girl! But Elspeth was ever headstrong, and scarcely seventeen years old. She refused to submit to his plans for her future.”