For Deader or Worse

by Sheri Cobb South

  Now her ladyship—no, Julia, he reminded himself—gave her footman instructions for the hiring of a post chaise while the butler stowed her portmanteau on the boot of the magistrate’s carriage. Pickett looked on, suddenly self-conscious and a little embarrassed at being for the first time in public (and fully clothed) with the lady who had occupied his bed in a delightful state of undress only thirty-six hours earlier. It was a relief when he climbed up into the vehicle behind her and Jervis closed the door, leaving the two of them in relative privacy.

  “How did you sleep last night, John?” Julia asked demurely as the carriage lurched into motion. “I hope your injury did not pain you overmuch?”

  “I slept well enough,” he said, although in truth he had been obliged to dose himself with laudanum, less for relief from the dull headache that still troubled him from time to time than for help falling asleep in a bed which suddenly seemed much too empty. “And you?”

  “My dear John, surely you jest! For the first time in a fortnight, I had a large, well-heated room and a nice thick mattress all to myself.” She tucked her hand into the curve of his arm and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I hated it.”

  The trip to Mr. Colquhoun’s residence did not take long, and soon they entered the magistrate’s house, where the guests were already assembled. These were of necessity few, as Pickett had no family save for a ne’er-do-well father in Botany Bay, and the only relatives of Julia’s who resided in London were actually her late husband’s kin and vehemently disapproved of the match. Although Lady Dunnington could not entirely applaud Julia’s choice, she was there to stand up with her friend nevertheless, along with Lord Dunnington, and of course Mr. Colquhoun, Pickett’s magistrate, who along with his wife was hosting the wedding breakfast. Julia’s parish priest, whom Pickett had met while investigating Lord Fieldhurst’s murder, was to perform the ceremony, and had arrived just ahead of the bridal couple.

  What can be said about a wedding that has not been said before? It was exactly like every other wedding with its vows to love, honor, and obey, and yet uniquely their own. There was an awkward moment when Pickett stammered blushingly over the line that states “with my body I thee worship” (just as if he had not been worshipping quite devoutly for the past week), but save for Lady Dunnington, who was obliged to hide her smile behind her gloved hand, it is doubtful that anyone but the bride and groom noticed.

  Then, too, when the priest instructed the bridegroom to put the ring on her finger, Julia tried her best to frown him down, determined to spare Pickett the embarrassment of confessing the lack of a wedding ring. But it was perhaps just as well that she failed to catch the clergyman’s eye, for to her great surprise, Pickett reached into the inside pocket of his coat and withdrew a small circlet of gold.

  And suddenly the thing was done. The company repaired to the dining room for the wedding breakfast, and amidst the confusion of congratulations Mr. Colquhoun drew Pickett aside and handed him a folded paper which, when opened, proved to be a bank draft made out for a sum that made Pickett’s eyes all but start from his head.

  “I—I can’t accept this, sir!” he protested.

  “And why the devil not, pray?” demanded the magistrate, scowling fiercely.

  “You’ve done so much already—”

  “Let me be very clear. This is not a personal gift, but your share of the reward promised by the Princess Olga Fyodorovna for that little business at Drury Lane Theatre.”

  “Then everyone on the Bow Street force received cheques in this amount?”

  “Everyone received something, but yours is rather larger than the others’.”

  “But why should it be? If you will recall, I was unconscious during most of the investigation.”

  “Oh, I recall—better than you do, I daresay! I recall that you were very nearly killed for your part of the investigation, and if it hadn’t been for that, we might still be trying to solve the thing. Take it, John. God knows you’ve earned it.”

  Pickett struggled with himself. He didn’t like the idea of being paid for work he hadn’t really done (and he did not believe getting himself coshed over the head counted, no matter what Mr. Colquhoun might say to the contrary), but he could not deny that he needed the money. He had reluctantly allowed his wife to pay for the post chaise that would shortly convey them to Somersetshire, telling himself this was an acceptable use of her money since the entire purpose of the trip was to allow her to introduce him to her parents, but the fact of the matter was that he didn’t have a choice. The purchase of her wedding ring had severely depleted his meager savings, and although he certainly did not begrudge that expenditure, it had left little to spare for a wedding trip.

  “Yes, sir,” he said with a sigh, and tucked the cheque into the inside pocket of his coat where Mrs. Pickett’s ring had so recently resided.

  “Good man,” Mr. Colquhoun said, nodding his approval. “Now, tell me about this honeymoon. How long do you expect to be in the West Country?”

  “Two days to get there, and another two for the journey back to London—as far as how long we stay in Somersetshire, I suspect it depends on the reception we get from Sir Thaddeus and Lady Runyon.” He grimaced. “I may be back at Bow Street within the week.”

  “I won’t insult your intelligence with assurances that your mama- and papa-in-law will be thrilled with the match; still, I don’t doubt they’ll find that you improve upon closer acquaintance. But take as much time as you wish. You need not hurry back to Bow Street.”

  “Oh, but I must. After all,” he added with a rather fatuous smile, “I have a wife to support.”

  Mr. Colquhoun cleared his throat. “Look here, John, I know the two of you haven’t had much time to talk about the future, but I think you should ask your wife—”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” the butler murmured discreetly, tapping Pickett on the shoulder, “but the post chaise is at the door.”

  “Thank you,” Pickett said, grateful to the man for having the tact to inform him—rather than his wife, who had paid for its hire—of the vehicle’s arrival. Turning back to the magistrate, he said, “Well, I guess I’d best collect Mrs. Pickett, and we’ll be on our way. As for everything you’ve done, sir, I can’t thank you enough—”

  “Never mind that,” protested Mr. Colquhoun, waving away Pickett’s half-formed expressions of gratitude. “Only be happy, and that will be thanks enough for me.”

  A burst of feminine laughter drew Pickett’s attention to the opposite corner of the room where Julia stood, engaged in lighthearted conversation with Lady Dunnington and Mrs. Colquhoun. “Be happy, sir? How can any man who is loved by such a woman be otherwise?”

  “How, indeed?” grumbled the magistrate some minutes later, as he and his wife stood on the front stoop with the other guests, waving their handkerchiefs as the yellow-bodied post chaise bowled away.

  “Beg pardon, love?” asked Mrs. Colquhoun, a plump, good-natured woman who, having reared four children and buried three others, had accepted without question her husband’s deep and fatherly affection for the young man he’d rescued from a life of crime a decade earlier.

  “I was only thinking of our newly wedded pair,” he said with a sigh. “I hope they will be happy.”

  By “they,” of course, the magistrate meant “he,” and Mrs. Colquhoun knew her husband well enough to understand the concerns he did not express. “Why should he not?” she countered. “One has only to see them together to recognize the depth of their affection for one another.”

  “Yes, but I’ve only just discovered that Mr. Pickett expects to support his bride on his earnings.”

  “And so he should do! What is wrong with that?”

  “While he lay unconscious, I learned from the lady herself that her widow’s jointure will not end with her remarriage. In fact, if she intends to live in the manner to which she is accustomed, it is she who will be supporting him, not the other way ’round.”

  “Oh,” said Mr
s. Colquhoun, rather daunted by this revelation. “But surely you must have misunderstood, my dear. If, as you say, they have lived together as man and wife for the past week, they must have talked about it by now.”

  He turned to regard her somewhat sternly, but beneath his bushy white eyebrows, his blue eyes held a twinkle. “My dear Janet, has it really been so long since we were first wed? Whatever they may have done for the past week, I can assure you that talking has not been a priority.”

  * * *

  As the post chaise rattled westward, Julia held out her left hand, the better to admire the simple gold band on her third finger.

  “You didn’t have to do this, John.”

  “Yes, I did.” There would be many, many things that her first husband had given her which he would never be able to match, but he had no intention of conceding defeat before the ink on the marriage lines was even dry. “Believe me, I did.”

  Julia, having a very fair idea of the direction his thoughts were taking, bent a keen gaze upon him and said, “You’re not in competition with Fieldhurst, John. It wouldn’t be fair.” She laced her fingers through his and gave his hand a squeeze. “Poor Fieldhurst wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  He smiled at that, as she had intended, so she pressed on. “But how did you manage it?”

  He shrugged. “I had a little money put back from that business with Sir Reginald Montague.”

  “No, I mean how did you manage it? You never left the flat!”

  “Oh, that. Mr. Colquhoun acted as my deputy.” He grinned at her. “It made a welcome change.”

  “I do like your magistrate.”

  “He thinks very highly of you, too.”

  It was another unexpected benefit of his being injured, the discovery that while he had lain unconscious, the two people he loved best in the world, who had previously regarded one another with mistrust (if not outright hostility) had apparently bonded over his inert body.

  They broke their journey for the night at a posting inn at Reading, which was not as romantic an experience as might have been expected in a newly wedded couple; six hours of being bounced over bad roads in a poorly sprung chaise had caused Pickett’s half-healed injury to make its presence felt with a vengeance. Julia waited only long enough for him to procure a room from the innkeeper before bearing him off to this chamber, dosing him with laudanum, and putting him to bed.

  They set out once more at first light, and although Pickett was in agony after three hours, he resisted her efforts to medicate him as long as possible, determined to be awake and alert when he made his bow to the squire and his lady. Julia at last prevailed by offering to slide to the end of the seat and let him rest his head on her lap. It made for a tight fit, with his bum wedged against the outer wall of the carriage and his long legs stretched out on the seat opposite, but he rather liked the warmth of her thigh beneath his cheek, and there was something wonderfully soothing about the rhythmic caress of her fingers as she stroked his hair...

  Thus it was that, when the post chaise turned off the road onto the long drive to Runyon Hall, Julia was obliged to shake her husband by the shoulder in order to rouse him.

  “John? Wake up, darling, we’re almost there.”

  “What?” Pickett sat up, frantically straightening his cravat and raking his fingers through his untidy curls. “You should have wakened me an hour ago!”

  “Nonsense! You needed the rest,” Julia insisted.

  And so it was that Pickett descended the post chaise a short time later flushed and disheveled from sleep. Furthermore, as he helped Julia disembark, he noticed on her skirts a small damp spot which he very much feared was his own drool.

  “The squire is going to kill me,” he muttered under his breath.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind.”

  She sailed up the front stairs with the ease of long familiarity, then raised the iron door knocker and let it fall.

  “Good evening, Miss Julia,” said the butler who answered, opening his eyes wider at the sight of the recently widowed daughter of the house arriving with a tall young man in tow.

  “Good evening, Parks,” she replied. “I trust Mama and Papa received my letter?”

  “Indeed they did.” The butler inclined his head. “Your lady mother ordered dinner to be held back for your arrival.”

  “Excellent! Are they in the drawing room, then? We shall go to them at once. You need not announce us.”

  Since he could not have announced them in any case without first being informed as to her companion’s designation, Parks merely bowed his acquiescence. Julia took Pickett’s arm and steered him across the hall, stopping in the doorway of a cheerful salon decorated for comfort as well as fashion, with a sofa and two overstuffed wing chairs arranged about an Adam fireplace over which hung a rural landscape executed by the hand of a skillful amateur.

  “Mama! Papa!”

  At the sound of her voice, the squire (whom Pickett recognized from their brief meeting in London almost a year earlier) cast aside his sporting journal and rose to welcome his adored child, his jovial greeting dying on his lips as he realized she was not alone. In the chair adjacent, a frail little woman laid down her embroidery and regarded her daughter with an expression of bewildered disbelief that exactly mirrored her husband’s.

  Julia took a deep breath. “Mama, Papa, I should like you to meet Mr. John Pickett—” Her fingers, which had been tucked into the curve of Pickett’s elbow, slid down his forearm to cling tightly to his hand. “—My husband.”

  Chapter Two

  In Which John Pickett Fails to Impress

  A moment of stunned silence greeted this pronouncement. Pickett, finding himself the object of two penetrating and far from admiring gazes, addressed his beloved under his breath.

  “You didn’t tell them?”

  “I thought it would be better done in person,” Julia murmured.

  “But you wrote a letter—”

  “I told them I was bringing a surprise,” she offered, half hopefully and half apologetically.

  Pickett sighed. “I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”

  Lady Runyon, whose cool composure few circumstances had the power to disturb for long, found her tongue at last. “Well, Julia, this is very sudden,” she said in a voice that shook only slightly, as she crossed the room to kiss her daughter’s cheek.

  To her new son-in-law she offered her hand, and Pickett, correctly surmising that any attempt to raise it to his lips would be seen as either toad-eating or impertinence, contented himself with pressing her fingers with what he hoped was the correct degree of respectful deference.

  “Damme, I know who you are!” exclaimed Sir Thaddeus, who up to that point had been puzzling over where he might have seen this vaguely familiar young man before. “You’re that fellow from Bow Street!”

  “Yes, sir,” Pickett said, sketching a bow. He would have expressed his pleasure in meeting Sir Thaddeus under happier circumstances, but his tongue was bridled by the realization that Sir Thaddeus was unlikely to view his daughter’s unequal marriage in such sanguine terms.

  Whatever his bride’s parents might have said in response to the squire’s discovery was forestalled by the arrival of Parks with the announcement that dinner was served.

  “Oh, but we aren’t properly dressed,” Julia protested, glancing down at her elegant traveling costume, its skirts now sadly creased. “Perhaps just a tray in our room—”

  “I daresay we can dispense with dressing for dinner, since you’ve only just arrived,” Lady Runyon said with the air of a monarch granting an undeserved dispensation. “Mr. Pickett, if you will be so good as to give me your arm?”

  He did so, albeit not without a glance at Julia which held more than a little of stark terror. Julia accepted her father’s escort, and they fell in behind as Lady Runyon led the way to the dining room on Pickett’s arm. For the first several minutes, while footmen proffered dishes and filled wineglas
ses, the conversation was limited to platitudes regarding the weather and the state of the roads. Once the last of the servants had withdrawn, however, Lady Runyon turned to regard her daughter.

  “Now, Julia, perhaps you will explain to us how this ‘marriage’—” She all but shuddered as she spoke the word. “—came about.”

  And so Julia did, beginning with their first meeting over Lord Fieldhurst’s dead body and continuing through their further acquaintance in Yorkshire, their fateful sojourn in Scotland and, finally, the visit to Drury Lane Theatre that had almost put a period to Pickett’s existence. On one step in their journey to the altar, however, she remained determinedly silent. She said nothing of the night in Pickett’s flat when they had abruptly abandoned the annulment proceedings into which so much effort had already gone. That night was theirs and theirs alone, an experience far too precious to offer it up for her parents’ condemnation.

  “But enough about John and me,” she said at last, seeing at last an opportunity to turn the subject. “You must tell me all the news from Norwood Green! How are Mr. and Mrs. Pennington? Do they ever hear from Jamie?”

  “The vicar and his wife are both quite well. As for James, it is a curious thing that you should ask, for he has only recently returned from the Continent. It seems he has inherited Greenwillows from his Aunt Layton, and has come to inspect it and meet with an estate agent about putting it on the market. It is quite a pretty property, so he should be able to get a good price for it.”

  “He doesn’t intend to return for good, then?” Julia asked, her brow creasing.

  Lady Runyon shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I fear I am not in his confidence. You may ask him yourself, for we are invited to dine at Brantley Grange, and I am sure he will be in attendance. Oh dear, I suppose I must let Mrs. Brantley know that you are not alone, so that she may prepare for an additional guest.”