Or so he’d imagined. Instead, they would have rooms in Carlton House, surrounded by the prince and his various sycophants, toadies, and hangers-on. He thought of the previous night, and the first opportunity he and Julia had had to mark their reunion. It had taken some imagination and not a little ingenuity, thanks to her increasing girth and his injured shoulder, and had been accompanied by a great deal of muffled laughter. There would be no such frolics at the royal residence, he was certain; no doubt the very walls of the royal residence would have ears, and however debauched the prince’s own behavior, he would no doubt expect the comportment of those lesser mortals in his sphere to be above reproach. But it would be worth it, Pickett told himself firmly, to please this woman who had given up so much for his sake, and whom he had come so close to losing.
“Wish me luck,” he said at last, drawing her back into the circle of his arm.
“You know I do,” she said, and returned his kiss with feeling.
He had fully intended to walk to Pall Mall—after all, he walked much greater distances every day just going to Bow Street and back—but Julia, Rogers, and Thomas were all united against him: It would not do for him to appear at Carlton House with his cravat wilted and his face shiny with perspiration. And so Pickett, who knew a lost cause when he saw one, consented to be driven. Finding the carriage already at the door, he climbed inside and within minutes was set down in Pall Mall.
John Pickett was a tall young man, but as he passed between the Corinthian columns that fronted the portico, he felt distinctly small—a feeling that increased exponentially as he was admitted first to a foyer flanked by anterooms, then to an entrance hall with a skylight illuminating Ionic columns of yellow marble, and, finally, to an octagonal vestibule with doorways opening onto three of its eight sides, through one of which was visible a glimpse of a staircase. Here he was told he might wait while His Royal Highness was informed of Pickett’s arrival.
As one minute stretched into two, and two into five, Pickett’s curiosity overcame him. He crossed the room to the doorway on his right, any sound from his footsteps swallowed up by a carpet so thick that he would not have been surprised to look down and discover his feet sunk to the ankles. He peered through the doorway, and gazed upon the grandest staircase he had ever seen, a web of risers, treads, and gilded banisters that curved away out of sight in both directions.
“Ahem!” The rather pointed clearing of the footman’s throat recalled Pickett to the purpose for which he had been summoned. “His Royal Highness will see you now. If you will follow me?”
He led Pickett through still more lavishly decorated rooms, glancing back from time to time as if to ensure that the visitor had not wandered off on an exploratory tour of the royal residence. At last they reached a room with crimson wall hangings and gilt-trimmed sofas and chairs. Reposing on one of the sofas was a stout man of middle age wearing a double-breasted blue tailcoat whose wide lapels bristled with medals. Pickett had never met the man, but he’d seen him once, through Julia’s opera glasses, at Drury Lane Theatre, and so had no difficulty in recognizing George III’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales. He took a deep breath and made what he hoped was a credible bow.
And in less than twenty minutes, the thing was done. As the front door closed behind him, Pickett stepped between the Corinthian columns out of the shadows of the portico and into the sunlight shining down on Pall Mall. Eschewing the carriage for the return trip, Pickett made the trek back to Curzon Street on foot, the better to ponder the conversation that had just taken place—and, perhaps, to delay the inevitable.
It was not Rogers who opened the door to him, but Julia, who had clearly been watching for his return.
“John!” she exclaimed, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Back so soon? When are we to begin packing?”
“I—I turned it down,” Pickett said dazedly, as if he could not quite believe it himself.
She stared at him. “You—you—what?”
“I turned it down.” He spoke more firmly this time, as if speaking the words aloud helped him to convince himself that they were true.
And then, to his abject horror, Julia buried her face in her hands and burst into tears—not the silent drops that sprang to her eyes so readily these days, but great wrenching sobs that shook her whole body.
“Julia—sweetheart—please—please don’t cry,” he begged, reaching for her with his good hand before thinking better of this gesture and letting it fall helplessly to his side. “I—I’m sorry—I hadn’t meant to—I had every intention of—but when it came to the point, I just—I’m—I’m sorry.”
Nothing he said had any effect except to make her cry still harder, so he tried a different tack. “I’ll go back and tell him I changed my mind, shall I?” he offered in increasing desperation. Granted, he didn’t hold out much hope for a second chance. By all accounts, Prinny was accustomed to getting his own way; certainly, he hadn’t been at all pleased at having his generosity spurned, and certainly not by a creature of such humble origins as John Pickett, son of a convicted felon. “Maybe if I explain to him that I was overcome by the honor—I didn’t know what I was saying—”
Julia’s head shook vehemently from side to side. She swiped the tears from her face and looked up at him—and, incredibly, she was smiling. And not just any smile, but an expression of joy so radiant that it lit up her eyes and caused her wet cheeks to glow. “No—I’m sorry—it’s just that—I’m just so glad!”
“Glad?” he echoed, stunned. “Do you mean—sweetheart, did you not want me to take it?”
“No—I should hate living at Carlton House! It is no place to raise a child, surrounded by the prince and his cronies—to say nothing of his mistresses! Then, too, the lack of—of privacy—” She colored slightly, giving Pickett to understand that she, too, had been thinking of the previous night’s activities.
“But if you didn’t want—Julia, why didn’t you say so?” he asked, still struggling to take it in. “I told you any reward I received from the business in the Lake District was yours to do with as you pleased; did you not believe me?”
“Yes, but how could I ask you to refuse such an honor? You may say you don’t deserve it, but I know better!” She added, more hesitantly, “I know, too, how much you hate being my—my pensioner.”
“It bothers me, if I allow myself to dwell on it,” Pickett admitted, “but if you want to know the truth, I haven’t thought of it in a very long time.”
Julia cocked one eyebrow skeptically. “Not even when you were offered five hundred per annum?”
“No. Well, perhaps a little,” he confessed. “But it had nothing to do with my no longer being dependent on your jointure from your first husband. It was more about the baby, and the fact that if we were able to live on my salary, then we could save your money for the baby’s schooling if it’s a boy, or dowry if it’s a girl.”
“Then—you never really wanted to accept the prince’s offer?”
“No! Oh, I was flattered, I’ll not deny that, but my only reason for even considering it was the prospect of giving you back some measure of the position in society that you lost when you married me.”
She thought of the disastrous tea party, and the guests who had snubbed her, and how unimportant it all seemed, in the light of everything that had happened since then. “Emily Dunnington once told me that the ladies of the ton don’t snub me because I married you; they snub me because I’m happy with you, that I remind them of the fact that they made compromises by marrying for the sake of a title, or a fortune, or an exalted connection, and now have to live with the consequences. I don’t know if she’s right or not, but I know that as long as I have you, I don’t care about anyone else—certainly not the sort of people who would be impressed by my close proximity to the prince’s Carlton House set!” For a moment she feared that she had said too much, that he would remember he’d left her on the brink of hosting a tea party, and would ask about it.
But she need not
have worried, for he was lost in thoughts of his own. He wrapped his good arm about her waist and drew her close, bending his head to rest his cheek against her golden curls. He had declined the position offered by the Prince of Wales, but he would have to leave Bow Street all the same. His duties there as a principal officer made it almost inevitable that there would be angry, resentful men looking for retribution against the one responsible for their own incarceration, or the transportation or even the execution of their friends or family members. What better revenge against him than to harm or even kill those he loved? He had managed to save her this time, but what about the next time? Or the next?
No, he would not put Julia in danger again. And so, as soon as his shoulder was healed and his arm was free of its confounded sling, he would find a new situation, something reasonably respectable—a bank clerk, perhaps, or undersecretary for an insurance firm. Deadly dull, perhaps, but undeniably safe.
And, after obtaining such a post, he would resign his position at Bow Street.
About the Author
At the age of sixteen, Sheri Cobb South discovered Georgette Heyer, and came to the startling realization that she had been born into the wrong century. Although she probably would have been a chambermaid had she actually lived in Regency England, that didn’t stop her from fantasizing about waltzing the night away in the arms of a handsome, wealthy, and titled gentleman.
Since Georgette Heyer died in 1974 and could not write any more Regencies, Ms. South came to the conclusion she would have to do it herself. In addition to the bestselling John Pickett mystery series (now an award-winning audiobook series!), she has also written several Regency romances, including the critically acclaimed The Weaver Takes a Wife.
A native and long-time resident of Alabama, Ms. South now lives in Loveland, Colorado.
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COMING IN 2020:
Brother, Can You Spare a Crime?
Another John Pickett Mystery
by
Sheri Cobb South
WHEN JOHN PICKETT DISCOVERS he has a young half-brother among London’s criminal element, he resolves to find the boy, reasoning that he can do no less for his own flesh and blood than his magistrate, Patrick Colquhoun, did for the scrawny fourteen-year-old thief that was that was Pickett himself a decade earlier. But can he rescue the boy without being sucked back into his old way of life?
Want more John Pickett?
Read all the John Pickett Mysteries:
Pickpocket’s Apprentice: A John Pickett Novella
In Milady’s Chamber
A Dead Bore
Family Plot
Dinner Most Deadly
Waiting Game: Another John Pickett Novella
Too Hot to Handel
For Deader or Worse
Mystery Loves Company
Peril by Post
Into Thin Eire
Other Regency Novels by
Sheri Cobb South:
The Weaver Takes a Wife
Brighton Honeymoon
(Weaver #2)
French Leave
(Weaver #3)
The Desperate Duke
(Weaver #4)
Of Paupers and Peers
Baroness in Buckskin
Miss Darby’s Duenna
Into Thin Eire Page 20
