“My mistake,” Pickett murmured by way of apology. “You’ll have to pardon my ignorance. Remember, my birth is not as good as Lady Buckleigh’s.”
“For which I am profoundly thankful!”
They returned to the Runyon house smelling strongly (as the butler later confided to the housekeeper) of April and May. This idyll was soon shattered, however, for while Julia went in search of her mother in order to deliver the pins, the butler approached Pickett with a folded and sealed paper.
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Pickett, but in your absence, a letter arrived for you from London.”
“What, already?” Pickett exclaimed in some surprise. “The mail is faster than I had any right to expect.”
“The letter did not come by post, sir, but was brought by a messenger on horseback.”
Pickett’s eyebrows rose, but he did not satisfy the butler’s curiosity by offering any suggestion as to why such a means of transportation might have been deemed desirable. He merely accepted the letter with thanks and then took it up to the bedchamber he shared with his wife, taking care to shut the door before breaking the seal and spreading the single sheet.
“My dear John,” it read, “I am pleased to know your introduction to your wife’s family is going well, although I could selfishly wish you had found them less welcoming, if that would hasten your return to London. I have fulfilled the commission you laid upon me, and although I can’t imagine the reason for it, I am taking the liberty of sending a reply by fast courier, assuming that your need is urgent and not trusting to the reliability of the post.
To answer your question, Major James Pennington has indeed been accompanied on the Peninsula by his wife, who has followed the drum since first he purchased his commission in 1796. I regret that I could find no date for the marriage, nor any information on Mrs. Pennington’s maiden name.
If you need anything else, please do not hesitate to ask. In the meantime, I look forward to the explanation which I trust will be forthcoming upon your return to Bow Street. Until then, I remain
Affectionately Yrs,
Patrick Colquhoun, Esq.
Post Scriptum: I don’t know if it will be of any use to you in whatever mischief you have got up to, but Mrs. Pennington’s given name is Claudia.
Pickett stared for a long moment at this last line.
“By Jove,” he breathed, unconsciously echoing the favorite oath of his mentor, “I’ve got you.”
Chapter Thirteen
In Which John Pickett Confronts the Major
“My lady, I must go out for awhile,” Pickett told Julia when he met her going up the stairs as he was hurrying down. “I shall be back in plenty of time for dinner.”
“John, what is the matter?” She had the distinct impression that he would have slipped out without telling her, had their encounter on the stairs not prevented him—indeed, that he would have preferred it so. “Is something wrong?”
His hand went instinctively to the pocket of his coat in which his magistrate’s letter resided. “Not wrong, exactly. I can’t discuss it at present, but I will tell you as soon as I return.” He sealed the promise with a quick kiss, and made his escape before she could question him further.
“Coward,” she muttered affectionately to his retreating back.
Upon arriving at the vicarage, Pickett asked for Major Pennington and was told, rather disappointingly, that the major was out.
“Ever since he has come back from the Peninsula, he has been out more than in,” Mrs. Pennington fretted. “Still, if you would care to wait, he always returns before dinner.”
“Now, now, Mary,” the vicar chided his wife, “James’s whole aim in coming home was to see to his inheritance, and I don’t doubt there is a great deal of work to be done there. With my sister’s health so uncertain in her last years, I fear the place must be sadly in need of repair.”
Pickett had a very good idea of where Jamie Pennington had gone, and he suspected the condition of the Layton estate had very little to do with it. Still, he resigned himself to making small talk with the vicar and his wife until the major returned. Thankfully, he had not long to wait until Jamie arrived, checking in the doorway at the sight of Pickett sitting in the drawing room.
“Ah, there you are, James!” exclaimed his father. “Here’s Julia Runyon’s young man been waiting for you this age.”
“Not an age, surely,” Pickett protested. “No more than ten minutes.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pickett.” In spite of his conciliatory words, it seemed to Pickett that Jamie regarded him rather warily. “How may I be of service to you?”
“I would not want to bore your parents,” Pickett said, although he felt certain the vicar and his wife would find the conversation anything but dull. “If there is somewhere we may speak privately—?”
“Of course. The garden is very pleasant this time of day, if you would care to take a turn?”
Jamie gestured toward the door at the rear of the house, and Pickett followed him outside into a sunny quadrangle bisected with stone-paved pathways along which herbaceous borders blossomed in a riot of spring color.
“Now, Mr. Pickett, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
“I was wondering when I am to have the pleasure of being introduced to your wife.”
Jamie regarded him with an arrested expression. “I fear you are laboring under some misapprehension, Mr. Pickett. I am not married.”
“Quite so, Major. Perhaps a better question would be, when do you intend to tell the squire and his wife that their daughter is alive and well, and has spent the last thirteen years as your camp follower?”
In answer, Jamie Pennington doubled his fist and planted it squarely in Pickett’s jaw, knocking him backwards into one of the flowering shrubs.
“I’ll take that as a ‘never,’ ” Pickett muttered, rubbing his chin.
“I suppose I must beg your pardon,” Jamie conceded grudgingly, offering a hand to pull Pickett to his feet. “I am not in the habit of assaulting guests, but to hear the sweetest creature who ever drew breath described in such sordid terms—”
“Then you do not deny that Claudia Runyon—or, rather, Lady Buckleigh—is very much alive, and living under your protection?”
“No, damn you, I do not deny it! Nor, for that matter, do I owe you an explanation.”
“Not me, perhaps, but what of my wife? What of Sir Thaddeus and Lady Runyon? You must be aware that they have mourned Claudia as dead for more than a decade.”
Jamie grimaced, kneading the knuckles of his right hand in the palm of his left. Pickett took some satisfaction in the knowledge that he had in some measure given as good as he’d got. “I am aware of it,” Jamie admitted. “Believe me when I tell you there was no other way.”
Pickett glanced about him, taking in the neat house and its pleasant garden. “Your father seems to enjoy a comfortable living here, yet you gave up the opportunity to succeed him for the rigors of a military campaign on the Continent.”
The major’s lips twisted in a humorless smile. “I daresay the church would frown on one of its servants living in adultery with another man’s wife.”
“And in the meantime, Lord Buckleigh and that little Gubbins girl believe themselves to be legally wed,” Pickett observed.
“If you expect me to sympathize with his lordship’s plight, Mr. Pickett, you are wasting your breath.”
“A divorce, then—” Pickett suddenly recalled a chance remark of Julia’s earlier that afternoon, and drew in his breath as the truth dawned. “He was beating her, wasn’t he? She told people she tripped over the carpet on the stairs, when in fact Lord Buckleigh was beating her.”
“Yes. If she’d asked him to petition Parliament for a divorce, he very likely would have killed her.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Are you picturing a romantic elopement by moonlight? It was nothing of the kind, I assure you. When I carried her away, she had a black eye, a fat lip, and a couple of cracked ribs. I ask you, Mr
. Pickett, what would you have done in my place?”
Pickett thought of the dark days following Lord Fieldhurst’s death almost a year earlier, when it appeared that Julia—Lady Fieldhurst, as she was then—would hang for her husband’s murder. “I know a little of what it’s like,” he said slowly, “seeing the woman you love in danger and being powerless to protect her. If your actions had been an option for me, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
“It’s those Runyon girls,” Jamie said with a rueful grin. “They look up at us with those big blue eyes, and we poor devils are putty in their hands.”
Pickett returned his smile, finding nothing to dispute in this observation. “I can only wonder that you brought her back to Norwood Green at all.”
“I hadn’t planned on doing so, but then my Aunt Layton died, and I was obliged to see to my inheritance. I could hardly leave Claudia alone in Spain, so—” He shrugged.
“So you put her up in the gamekeeper’s cottage, where no one would know of her presence.”
Jamie inclined his head. “As you say. And it would have been sufficient, had her sister not chosen the worst possible husband, so far as my purposes were concerned.”
“There was no thought of pleasing you when we were wed,” Pickett retorted with a grin. “But Claudia herself must shoulder part of the blame. My suspicions were aroused by a certain ghost prowling about the premises.”
“I told her it was a bad idea,” Jamie grumbled. “But having come this far, nothing would do but that she must see her parents and sister again. You gave her a rare turn when she opened the door of Julia’s bedroom and found her little sister with a man in her bed!” He chuckled at the memory.
“No more than she gave me,” Pickett said, recalling a somewhat later encounter in the nursery. “Who saddled the horses?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“When you made your escape with Claudia. Who saddled the horses?” Pickett asked again.
“Lord Buckleigh’s stable hand, Tom—” He frowned. “Look here, Mr. Pickett, what are you suggesting?”
“There is considerable evidence that Tom Pratt was blackmailing someone—someone who killed him rather than continue to buy his silence. I’ve been at a loss to know what secrets a groom might have known that would be worth paying, or killing, to keep.”
“It’s true that I paid Tom rather handsomely for holding his tongue thirteen years ago, but he never made an attempt to extort more—and had he done so, I would have told him he might go to the devil! I am not ashamed of what we did. Besides,” he added darkly, “if I were inclined to kill anyone, I would not have waited thirteen years—and believe me, Tom Pratt would not have been my victim of choice.” Jamie bent and yanked up one of his mother’s flowers by the roots, then began stripping it of its petals one by one, giving Pickett the impression that, given half a chance, he would gladly perform a similar operation on Lord Buckleigh’s hide.
“Have you inspected the Layton stables recently?”
“No,” admitted Jamie, blinking at this seeming non sequitur.
“I have,” Pickett said. “I found a man’s greatcoat drenched in blood.”
“That in itself means nothing,” Jamie pointed out. “Have you ever seen a mare give birth, Mr. Pickett? It’s a messy process, I assure you.”
Pickett shook his head. “Aside from the fact that the blood was fairly fresh while the Layton stables have been empty for years, the greatcoat was the sort that would be worn by a gentleman, not a stable hand.”
“I see,” Jamie muttered as the significance of Pickett’s discovery began to dawn on him. “And he’s planted it on my own property to try and incriminate me. Damn him!”
“ ‘He’?” echoed Pickett, certain that he already knew the answer.
“Look here, you must see that if I didn’t kill Tom—and I promise you I didn’t—there can only be one other person who would have reason to want the man dead. Here’s his lordship just returned from his honeymoon and in need of an heir, only his first wife is still alive, so his new marriage is invalid and any children he has with the woman now calling herself Lady Buckleigh will be illegitimate, and thus unable to inherit. If you’re Tom Pratt, with a wife and five children to support, who are you going to blackmail: me, or Lord Buckleigh? Who has the deeper pockets or, perhaps more importantly, the most to lose if the secret should come out? No, if you ask me, Claudia’s clandestine presence in the vicinity is no more than an unfortunate coincidence. It was his lordship’s return, not hers, that spawned this whole scheme of Tom’s.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Pickett said with a sigh, “but I’m afraid you’re probably right.”
“You hope I’m wrong?” demanded Jamie. “If you had seen Claudia that day, as I had, you would know hanging is too good for his lordship. Are you really so dazzled by a man’s rank that you can’t see his true worth—or lack of it?”
Pickett bristled in indignation. “I am hardly dazzled by rank! Remember, I’m married to a viscountess,” he added for emphasis, conveniently ignoring the fact that he was only just beginning to feel comfortable addressing his aristocratic bride by her given name. “But I’m not at Bow Street anymore, and no longer under my magistrate’s authority. When I have sufficient evidence, I’m going to have to apply to the local Justice of the Peace for an arrest warrant.”
“Yes, what of it?”
“I daresay you’re unaware of it, having been absent for so long,” Pickett acknowledged, “but the local Justice of the Peace is Lord Buckleigh.”
Jamie let out a long, low whistle and collapsed onto a nearby bench. “In other words, he’ll get off scot-free. Some things never change!” he added bitterly.
Pickett shook his head. “Not if I have anything to say to the matter. I told Sir Thaddeus I would look into Tom’s death since the murder touched my wife’s family. Given Claudia’s involvement, my sense of obligation has increased exponentially. Unfortunately, Lord Buckleigh knows of my interest in the case. In fact, I asked his permission to pursue it.” He slapped his forehead at the realization of his own naïveté. “Of all the idiotic—I even agreed to keep him informed as to my progress!”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. Pickett. After all, you had no reason to suspect him at the time. The question is, what will you do now? It seems to me you’ll have to tell him something.”
Pickett pondered for a long moment. “It is a constant irritant to me that I’m often assumed to be incompetent because of my age, or lack of it. I wonder if I can turn it to my advantage.”
“How so?”
“I’m going to question his lordship regarding Tom’s murder. No, not about Claudia—I think it best if I don’t betray my knowledge of her existence, at least for the nonce—but I can ask him about his acquaintance with Tom, and have him account for his movements on Saturday night after the Brantleys’ dinner.”
Jamie did not hold out much hope for this examination. “What do you think to accomplish by that, other than setting up his back?”
“Exactly that. He may berate me as an imbecile—in fact, I expect he will—but it’s always possible that, finding himself under suspicion, he’ll become rattled and betray more than he intends.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you,” Jamie predicted grimly, idly lashing his boot with the denuded flower stem he still held. “Lord Buckleigh is a cool customer, I’ll grant him that much. I only hope you don’t turn up under a tree with your throat slit.”
Pickett shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. He’ll not want to do anything that might lend credence to my suspicions, and my death would only attract the sort of attention he would most wish to avoid. No, better from his perspective to give me a sharp set-down for my pretensions and put it about that I’m incompetent.” In a more serious vein, Pickett asked, “You do realize, don’t you, that I have to tell Julia? I refrained from doing so until I was certain, but now—” He shrugged. “I can’t keep such a
secret from my wife.”
“I suppose it can’t be helped,” Jamie acknowledged without enthusiasm, “but I would be obliged to you if you’ll say nothing to her parents just yet.”
“You need have no fears on that account,” Pickett said with feeling. “I wouldn’t have that task if you paid me! I don’t envy you when Lady Runyon finds out. But if I know anything at all about Julia, she’s going to insist on seeing her sister.”
Jamie nodded. “Claudia, too, for that matter. If you’ll bring Julia to the gamekeeper’s cottage tomorrow morning, I can promise the pair of you a warmer welcome than you received today.”
“Very well, but will that give you time to remove her from Miss Milliken’s house without anyone being the wiser?”
“Now, how the devil did you know about that?” Jamie demanded.
“I’m sure Miss Milliken is a very nice lady, and genuinely attached to her former pupils, but as a co-conspirator, you could hardly do worse! Her every word betrayed her, while as for her demeanor, let’s just say that even if I had not already been suspicious, her agitation alone would be enough to make me so. Best get Claudia away from there with all possible speed. Oh, and you may tell her that I found her earring.”
Jamie shook his head in bewilderment. “I confess, I’m rather glad to have you on our side, Mr. Pickett. And to think,” he added, with a hint of regret for what might have been, “under different circumstances, you might have been my brother.”
Chapter Fourteen
In Which Two Sisters Are Reunited
The walk from the vicarage was accomplished all too quickly, as Pickett tried to form some sort of plan for the inevitable conversation with his wife. How did one break the news that a beloved sister, presumed dead for more than a decade, was alive and well and living in sin with the vicar’s son? My lady, I have some good news and some bad news ... No, that wasn’t it. He was still groping for the right words when he reached Runyon Hall. He darted a furtive glance into the drawing room (letting out a sigh of relief at finding it empty), then went upstairs to put off his hat and gloves.
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