“Where is she?” he demanded of the guard. “Is she still in there? Let me in!”
With maddening slowness, the guard inserted a key in the door and pushed it open. “Won’t do ye any good,” he said with a philosophical shrug.
Pickett, blinking in the unaccustomed darkness, very quickly came to the same conclusion. The cell was empty of all save for a small rectangle of folded paper lying on the dirty cot. He crossed the room in three strides and picked it up.
“So you’re Mr. Pickett, are ye?” the guard asked with no great urgency. “She said ye’d be comin’ back. Left that for ye.”
Pickett did not have to be told twice. Before the words were out of the guard’s mouth, he had unfolded the paper with hands that shook, and squinted to make out the words in the dying light of the brazier.
Dear Mr. Pickett, she had written, I am truly humbled by your sacrifice, but I must not allow you to make it. By the time you read these words, I will have departed this world for the next, where I know I will be exonerated of the crime of which I am judged to be guilty. I shall meet my fate with more courage, knowing that I had with me at the end the truest friend any person could ask for. Whatever the fate of your own Julia, I hope she knew what a treasure was hers.
It was signed Julia Fieldhurst.
“If you want a place with a good view, you’d best be getting out there,” the guard said. “Won’t be long now.”
Pickett didn’t wait to ask whether the time of the execution had been changed, or to inform the man that a good view of the proceedings was the very last thing he wanted. The note slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor as he raced back down the corridor and out of the prison. The crowd had grown, if not larger, then certainly louder, shouting jeers and catcalls at the slight, pale figure who slowly mounted the steps to the scaffold. Her hands were shackled together at the wrists and held before her, so that when the guard escorting her stepped on the hem of her gown and caused her to stumble, she had no way of righting herself. The guard hauled her upright just before she landed in the arms of an eager spectator, whose neighbors offered bawdy suggestions as to what he might have done with her had her escort not intervened. The same shackles that had prevented her from breaking her fall also denied her any way of protecting herself from the rotten fruits and vegetables hurled at her by various persons in the crowd, some of whom had come armed with overripe produce for just such a purpose, while others were obliged to purchase their missiles from an apple seller who somehow contrived to move freely amongst the mob in spite of the press of humanity all around her.
An apple seller...
“You!” Pickett shouted, pushing his way through to her. He gripped her shoulder and pulled her roughly around to face him. “You told me she was in no danger!”
“I said she was in no immediate danger,” she corrected him. “You were worried about her being out on the street without a roof over her head, and I told you she was in no immediate danger. And nor was she. Few places are more secure than a prison cell, don’t you think?”
“You lied to me!” he insisted. “You knew very well what I—and now it’s too late—” He glanced at the bundle of clothing he still carried, uselessly, under his arm.
“It wouldn’t have worked, you know,” she told him, not without sympathy.
“Very likely not. But I had to try.” He looked up at the scaffold, where Julia stood, still as a statue and just as white, while the hangman fitted the noose over her head. “I still have to try.”
The apple woman shook her head. “You won’t change anything. How could you? You were never born.”
“I have to try,” he said again, shoving the bundle of clothes at her and turning away to reach up and grip the edge of the scaffold floor with both hands.
“But why should you bother, when you know you’ll fail?”
It made him angry, that, after lying to him about Julia’s safety, she would delay him now with stupid questions when at any moment old Jack Ketch would give the signal and the platform would drop, Julia would fall, and the rope would tighten about her neck.
“Because if I don’t do it, no one else will!” he shot back, and hoisted himself up onto the scaffold.
“Correct answer, Mr. Pickett,” she murmured with a nod of approval, as a shriek went up from the crowd at the appearance of a new player upon the scene.
If Pickett heard her at all, he had no time to respond, for he had all he could handle defending himself against the guard’s attempts to push him off. Having gained a foothold, he scrambled up and rose to his feet just as the toe of the man’s boot connected with his chin, cracking his teeth together with enough force to make him see stars. Although he stood on the scaffold, Pickett had not yet straightened to his full height, and now he turned that inferior position to his advantage, driving his shoulder into the guard’s belly and lifting the man right off his feet. He turned back to the edge of the scaffold and dumped the guard off and into the arms of some of the same men who had so crudely expressed their willingness to receive the prisoner in just such a way.
Pickett didn’t wait to see if they were equally eager to bestow their attentions on the guard, for he now had the hangman to contend with. This individual had been pulling a white cloth hood over Julia’s head, but upon hearing the fracas behind him, he abandoned the job half-finished and rushed to the aid of the vanquished guard.
Although the executioner’s job no longer required the brawn of the axe-wielding headsman of days past, his contemporary counterpart proved himself more than equal to the task, pummeling Pickett about first the belly and then the head, driving him back until the only escape from the onslaught was the edge of the scaffold and the mob below. Their enthusiastic shouts of encouragement informed Pickett that, if he were to jump, he would find a sympathetic welcome. Still, it was an action he refused to take; his withdrawal would leave Julia alone with the hangman, who would no doubt pick up his interrupted task exactly where he had left off.
And then, just when it appeared that Pickett would be forced off the scaffold will he or nill he, a pair of slender black-clad arms, hands shackled together at the wrists, looped themselves over the hangman’s head and jerked back, digging the chain links into the fleshy part of his neck. The executioner uttered a strangled cry and began clawing frantically at the garotte about his throat.
“My lady?” Pickett panted, staring in stunned disbelief at this hitherto unsuspected penchant for violence on the part of his gentle bride.
“Run, Mr. Pickett!” she urged. “I don’t know how long I can hold him!” Even as she spoke, his attacker fell to his knees, red-faced and gurgling.
Pickett showed no sign of having heard her entreaties, much less obeying them. “I think—I think you’d better let him go now.”
She did, and the hangman lurched over onto his side, hitting the floor of the scaffold with a hollow thunk.
Pickett didn’t know how long the man would remain unconscious, and didn’t wait to find out. “You’ve got to get away from here before he comes ’round,” he said.
Already footsteps pounded on the stairs, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before reinforcements were upon them. He grabbed Julia’s arm and pulled her to the edge of the scaffold—not in the same spot where he had dispatched the guard, but to an adjacent side, where a cluster of blowsy women cheered this unexpected turn of events, no doubt filled with admiration and envy for one who had not only rid herself of an unsatisfactory husband, but who also appeared to be about to cheat the hangman.
“But—the mob—” Julia protested, glancing down at the sea of upraised faces.
“They’re on your side now,” he assured her. As the boards beneath his feet trembled with the approaching menace, he picked Julia up by her arms and held her out over the void. “Remember, Denmark Street. Number seven.”
“But—you—”
“I love you, Julia,” he said, and dropped her neatly into the crowd.
She looked up at him as s
he fell, and her wide, startled gaze was the last thing he saw before a cudgel struck him on the back of the head. Everything went dark, and Pickett knew no more.
15
In Which All Is Restored
“Easy, now,” a voice cautioned in a pronounced Scottish brogue. “Stay back. He’s coming ’round.”
“Mrs. Pickett is on her way, sir,” a second voice added.
“No,” protested a slurred voice Pickett dimly recognized as his own. “She...won’t come. Don’t want...my father...t’know.”
A hand patted his shoulder. “You just lie quiet, now,” admonished the Scottish voice. “You’ve taken a nasty spill, but you’ll come about.”
Pickett opened his eyes, and discovered that he was no longer on the scaffold outside Newgate prison. In fact, he was no longer outside at all, but stretched out full length on the floor of the Bow Street Public Office. Mr. Colquhoun was bending over him, his thick white hair neatly brushed, and his keen blue eyes bright and clear. Beyond the magistrate, several Bow Street Runners, as well as a couple of men from the Foot Patrol, regarded him with varying degrees of concern.
“Sir?” Pickett struggled to sit up, but the hand on his shoulder pressed him firmly back down. “What—? Where—?”
“You’re back at Bow Street with a broken head,” Mr. Colquhoun informed him, adding with a twinkle in his eye, “Just like old times, in fact.”
“Yes, but—but what happened? Julia—did she get away?”
Mr. Colquhoun and the others exchanged wordless looks.
“Don’t fret yourself over Mrs. Pickett,” the magistrate chided. “She’ll be here shortly, bringing the doctor with her.”
“Yes, but Julia—”
“As for what happened,” continued Mr. Colquhoun, ignoring the interruption, “Mr. Carson here would be the one to tell you about that, as he witnessed the whole thing.”
“Damn fool drayman can’t control his team,” Harry Carson informed him bluntly, and for once there was no trace of the mocking humor that Pickett so deplored. “He ran you down right in the middle of the piazza.”
That wasn’t quite the way Pickett remembered it, but then, given the way his head felt at the moment, he probably wasn’t the best man to judge. Aside from the pain in his head, however, he felt better than he had in two days—due, no doubt, to the fact that he was warm for the first time since he’d abandoned his coat to an angry watchman. He realized with some surprise that the coat must have been discovered and returned to him, for he was wearing it—and it appeared very little the worse for whatever adventures it might have experienced in the interim.
Before he could voice this interesting observation aloud, the door flew open and Julia burst into the room. But this Julia was very different from the one he had left only—when? Not today, surely, for her cropped hair had grown long enough to be dressed in her usual style. Her hollowed cheeks had filled out, but as she approached, he realized that her face was not the only thing that had filled out: Her belly was rounded with child, to the point that the skirts of her velvet pelisse would not quite meet in the front. He realized with dismay that he’d never told her she wasn’t barren, never cautioned her not to succumb to Lord Rupert’s advances—or anyone else’s —unless he first put a ring on her finger.
“I should have warned you,” he muttered thickly. “I’m sorry—I—”
“John!” she cried, ignoring this half-formed apology. “Darling, what happened? Are you all right?”
“Easy now, Mrs. Pickett,” cautioned the doctor, a tall, thin man just opening a worn leather bag. “I never knew of any man whose condition was improved by having a woman weeping all over him.”
Pickett might have disputed this claim, but his attention was all for Julia. “You—you know me?” he asked, afraid to hope.
She smiled and laid a hand on the swell of her abdomen. “I believe we are a little acquainted.”
It wasn’t real, then, thought Pickett as comprehension began to dawn. None of it had been real. And yet, it had seemed so very...
“What day is it?” he asked, looking from Julia to Mr. Colquhoun.
“What day?” echoed Julia, bewildered. “Why, it’s Thursday.”
“No, no.” He started to shake his head, then decided it hurt too much and stopped. “What day is it?”
“The nineteenth of October,” Mr. Colquhoun said.
The very same day, then. Pickett almost turned to look at the large clock over the magistrate’s bench, but remembered his sore head and thought better of it. “And—and what time?”
Mr. Colquhoun consulted the clock mounted on the wall above his bench. “A quarter to two.”
Not much time at all, in fact. And yet it seemed like days since he’d first found himself in a world he didn’t recognize—or, rather, that didn’t recognize him—and only an hour or two since his botched attempt at rescuing Julia, who, it now appeared, had never really been in danger at all.
He struggled to wrap his brain around the abrupt change in his circumstances—no, for they had never changed in the first place—while the doctor poked and prodded, and observed jocularly that it appeared his primary duty to the growing Pickett family would be keeping its patriarch’s head intact.
In fact, he remained so aloof during Dr. Gilroy’s ministrations that Julia, in spite of the physician’s assurances, was not at all convinced he was capable of making the long walk back to Curzon Street, and expressed her intention of procuring a hackney—a pronouncement that had three members of the Foot Patrol falling over each other in an attempt to provide this service for her.
“John, are you quite certain you’re all right?” she asked when they were alone in the vehicle. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
She gave a self-conscious little laugh. “Like you’ve never seen me before in your life.”
“The shoe’s rather on the other foot,” he muttered under his breath.
“Meaning?”
He didn’t answer the question, but instead asked one of his own. “Look here, do you mind if we make a—a short detour?”
“Of course not, if you’re quite certain it won’t tax your strength.”
Pickett reassured her on this point, then put his head out the window and gave instructions to the driver. Within minutes they were drawing up at a modest dwelling in Denmark Street.
“I’ll only be a minute,” he promised Julia, then exited the carriage, giving instructions over his shoulder for the driver to wait.
He stepped up to the front door of number seven, noting that the cheap lace curtains were gone, and the front stoop would have been much improved by the vigorous application of a broom. He took a deep breath and rapped on the door. It was opened a moment later by a stout woman in a stained apron and mobcap.
“Well?” she prompted impatiently when her caller showed no inclination to speak. “What d’ye want?”
“Nothing,” Pickett said, backing away. “I have the wrong—I beg your pardon—so sorry—”
He returned to the hackney and gave the driver the signal to start, then swung himself inside and sat down beside Julia, pulling the carriage door closed behind him.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said again. “I knew she wouldn’t be there, but—but I had to try.”
“ ‘She’?” Julia echoed warily. There was no doubt in her mind that she possessed his whole heart, but she was well aware that there was about him a certain gallantry toward ladies in distress. She had reason to be thankful for that particular quality—in fact, it might be argued that she owed her life to it—but she was aware that an unscrupulous female might take advantage of it in order to manipulate him for her own ends.
He shook his head. “Never mind.” He had not really expected to find her there. And yet... The fourth of April, 1783, she’d said. If you have any doubts, you have only to go to St. Giles-in-the-Fields and look in the church registry. He would do
that someday, he decided. In the meantime, there was another lady about whose fate he had cause to wonder. “Tell me,” he said thoughtfully, “do you remember a young woman named Catherine Braunton? Daughter of Lord Gerald Braunton?”
“Why, yes,” Julia said in some surprise. “What about her?”
“Do you have any idea what became of her? After the business with Sir Reginald Montague, I mean?”
In fact, Julia did not like to think of those dark days a year earlier, when John Pickett had declared his love for her and then walked out of her life, seemingly forever. But since he seemed troubled by it, she cast her mind back. “There was an announcement in the Morning Post of her marriage to Mr. Martin Kenney.”
He let out a sigh. “That’s good,” he said, and the subject was dropped, leaving Julia to wonder why he had brought it up at all.
It wasn’t until they entered the Curzon Street town house and Pickett looked about at the familiar surroundings that he began to put the strange incident into perspective. There was no sign of the Dowager Countess of Wakesworth or her heavy, gilded furnishings; the room was exactly as he remembered it. His life and everything in it had returned to normal, and he could finally go back to the way things were before.
No, he amended mentally, not quite the way things were before. There was one thing that needed to change.
“Perhaps you should go upstairs and lie down for a bit,” Julia was saying, tucking her hand into the curve of his elbow and steering him toward the stairs just as a loud thump sounded from somewhere over their heads. She cast a quick glance up at the ceiling. “I’ll tell Kit to play quietly for an hour or two so you can rest. Surely the investigation can wait until—”
“There isn’t any investigation.” He hadn’t meant to state it quite so bluntly, but perhaps it was better that way.
“What did you say?” she asked, looking up at him with an unreadable expression on her face.
“There isn’t any investigation,” he said again. “There never has been.”
Nowhere Man Page 9
