Peril by Post

by Sheri Cobb South

  If Julia had hoped to be invited to avail herself of the duke’s frank for the price of a penny, she was doomed to disappointment.

  “At least when you are in London, your first husband’s heir would surely be willing to perform this small service for you,” suggested his grace.

  Julia shook her head. “I fear you cannot be much acquainted with the new Lord Fieldhurst. Even if such a generous offer entered his head—and, I must confess, I think it highly unlikely—I should feel compelled to decline. He is persuaded I have brought shame and disgrace upon the family, and claims no longer to know me. Not, I must admit, that his acquaintance is any great loss.”

  It was clear that the duke had some knowledge of her late husband’s cousin George, by reputation if not in person, for he threw back his head and laughed. Pickett, standing forlornly along the wall, saw that laugh and regretted once more the difference in their respective stations that left him looking on as other men partnered his wife.

  Gradually, however, he became aware that this assembly was not like the private ball they’d attended in London a few weeks earlier. Here the middling classes and their betters intermingled, if not with equality, then certainly with a degree of intimacy that would have been unheard of in Town: Before taking the floor with Julia, the duke of Ramsdale had been partnering the solicitor’s wife, while Lady Marchant was even now going down the dance with Mr. Copley, the stationer. This democratic mix of persons was reflected, too, in the dances being performed, for those members of the merchant class had, like himself, not had the advantage of dancing-masters. Instead, they would have learned by observation, imitation, and, perhaps, trial and error. And the steps did not appear complicated . . .

  Pickett wasn’t aware of having come to any decision, but as the set came to an end, he found himself making his way across the assembly room to where Julia was now besieged by half a dozen men ranging from baronets to bank clerks, all soliciting her for the next dance. Shouldering his way into the crowd, he held out his arm to her and, raising his voice slightly to be heard over the importunities of her various swains, said, “Mrs. Pickett, if you would do me the honor?”

  Her gaze flew to his with a silent question and, finding the answer she sought, she laid her hand on his arm with great ceremony. “The honor is all mine, Mr. Pickett.” Excusing herself to her court of admirers, she allowed him to lead her out of the little group, but once they could be assured of relative privacy, she asked, “Are you quite sure, John?”

  “No,” he replied without hesitation. “So if you ever want to dance with me, you’d best do it now, before I have time to think better of it.”

  She looked up at him, her heart in her glowing eyes. “It’s all I’ve wanted, you know, ever since we left the Hart and Hound.”

  “Is it?” Pickett asked, conscience-stricken by the realization that his primary reason for soliciting her hand was not any desire to dance, nor even to please his wife, but to make it plain to the pack of jackals sniffing about her that she was his. “You never said.”

  “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  He turned to stare at her. “You think I’ve been comfortable, propping up the wall while every man jack in the place makes sheep’s eyes at you?”

  “John! Don’t tell me you were jealous!” Julia exclaimed, not at all displeased by this realization.

  “Let’s just say that playing the fool over you is a privilege I reserve for myself,” he said, and led her into the set just forming.

  While it could not be said that he performed even the simplest country dance entirely without error, only the highest sticklers would have accused Pickett of making a fool of himself. Perhaps more to the point, he actually found himself enjoying the act, and when Julia pointed out (quite correctly) that to dance with no other partner save his own wife would be seen as the height—or, rather, the depth—of bad manners, he solicited the hand of the physician’s young daughter for the next set, supposing that her youth and, presumably, her limited experience might make her less inclined to despise his own efforts. In fact, the unhappy result of this invitation was that that damsel spent the better part of the night sobbing into her pillow after being informed by her father that the partner to whom she had pinned all her romantic hopes was, in fact, a married man; but as Pickett was blissfully unaware of his effect on the young lady, he was in high good humor by the time he and his lady wife returned to the Hart and Hound.

  So, too, was Lizzie. “Oh, is it over, then?” she asked, her gaze darting past them to the door through which Percival Hartsong would no doubt soon enter.

  “Not quite,” Julia told her. “It lacks half an hour yet to twelve, but we decided to return before the crush of carriages begins to line up before the inn.”

  “Was it very grand? I can see it must have been, for you look like you’ve had a fine time.” Her voice held a wistful note, but there were none of the tears that had accompanied their departure.

  “Oh, I suppose it was well enough,” Julia said without enthusiasm, not wishing to set her off again.

  But Lizzie seemed not to hear her. “I’ve had a very nice time, too,” she said, blushing becomingly. “Ben Wilson had bought a ticket, but when he saw I wasn’t there, he came to keep me company here instead. And after he’d spent half a guinea on a ticket, too—only fancy! He asked me to go walking along the river, if it wouldn’t distress me too much, being so close to the place where Papa fell, and when we did, he helped me pick wildflowers to throw into the water in Papa’s memory, and he told me all about his new lambs with their sweet little black faces. He even promised to give me one for my very own.”

  “Aye, and where we’ll put it when that sweet wee lamb becomes a full-grown sheep, I’m sure I don’t know,” her stepmother put in, albeit with an indulgent smile. “We’d have to slaughter it, and what you’ll say to that, after giving it a name and raising it as a pet, I can just imagine! Still, I won’t deny it was right kind of Ben. He always was a good lad, and you could do far worse for yourself.”

  “Stepmama—” Lizzie began, and Pickett and Julia made their exit before the inevitable argument began in earnest.

  “I didn’t see Ben Wilson come in, did you?” Julia asked once they had reached the privacy of their own room.

  Pickett nodded. “I believe you were dancing with a certain poet at the time.”

  “What else could I do?” she retorted playfully. “My husband hadn’t yet screwed his courage to the sticking place. But was it you who suggested that he court Lizzie behind Percival’s back?”

  “I didn’t have to,” said Pickett, all innocence. “He’s no fool, you know. Once he realized Hartsong had left him a clear field, no one had to tell him what to do. Although I think he would stand a better chance of success if his prospective mama-in-law would keep her opinions to herself and let him do his own courting.”

  “Yes, very likely.” Her smile faded as a new thought occurred to her. “John, have you considered that perhaps the rock wasn’t intended for me—for either of us—at all?”

  Clearly, it had not. He stopped in his tracks and regarded her with dawning comprehension. “ ‘Go back where you came from,’ ” he quoted the anonymous message. “No name and no mention of London or anywhere else. You think it might have been young Wilson hoping to frighten off his rival and choosing the wrong window by mistake? But anyone who happened to be in the public room the day we arrived must have heard Ned Hawkins say what room he was taking us to. Hawkins had a booming voice, and he was making no effort to be quiet. That would seem to eliminate any possibility of Wilson’s mistaking our room for Hartsong’s.”

  “Not necessarily,” she objected. “I’m not sure Ben Wilson was paying much attention to anything but his intended bride flirting with Percival Hartsong.”

  Pickett could not dispute this observation, but remained unconvinced nevertheless. “It seems, I don’t know, out of character for him,” he said, trying to put his doubts into words. “I can’t picture B
en Wilson sneaking about throwing rocks. It seems to me he’d be much more likely to darken the fellow’s daylights.”

  To Julia, who had no brothers, the cant term was unfamiliar. “Darken—?”

  “Black his eyes,” Pickett explained.

  “Oh. Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “Still, we had best consider the possibility—just to rule it out, if nothing else,” Pickett conceded. “I only wish I could think of a plausible excuse for calling at his farm in the morning.”

  “Lambs,” Julia said promptly.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Lambs,” she said again. “The sweet wee lambs with their little black faces. You have only to tell him how Lizzie waxed rhapsodic about them, leaving your wife with a burning desire to see the dear creatures for herself.”

  Pickett stroked his chin thoughtfully. “That might work,” he said at last. “Of course, if Wilson agrees, I’ll have to take you to his farm, and you’ll have to behave with suitable enthusiasm.”

  Her face fell. “But won’t you take me with you tomorrow?”

  “I wish I could, but Wilson might be more inclined to talk to me if I come alone.”

  “Yes, and if he were to say anything useful in my hearing, well, one never knows when I might be seized with an urge to indulge in a good gossip with Lizzie or her stepmama, does one?”

  He gave her a reproachful look. “I didn’t mean it that way. But as for Ben Wilson, we don’t know him well enough to be sure how his mind works, do we? He’s tight-lipped even at the best of times.”

  “Very well, leave me to mope about the inn all morning on my own. I shall have my revenge tomorrow afternoon, when I will require you to row me about on the lake in one of those boats Mr. Hetherington assures us we may hire.”

  “You drive a hard bargain,” he said, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “I’ll take you out on the lake, if that’s what you want, but if I end up tipping us both into the water, just remember you have only yourself to blame. I’ve never rowed a boat before, you know.”

  “I have every confidence in you,” she assured him.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, suddenly serious. “I shouldn’t be—I should have put you on the mail coach to London and left you there, never mind your tears. What kind of man knowingly exposes his wife to danger rather than deprive himself of her company?”

  She slipped her arms around his waist. “My kind,” she said, and lifted her face for his kiss.

  12

  In Which John Pickett Visits a Sheep Farm

  PICKETT DARED NOT ASK Mrs. Hawkins for directions to the Wilson farm, lest Lizzie overhear and beg to accompany him. After all, Percival Hartsong had returned from the Golden Feather quite late, and was unlikely to emerge from his room before noon; in his absence, Lizzie might well decide that her former favorite was better than no suitor at all. And so, instead of inquiring directions of his hostess, Pickett went to the inn’s stables, where more than one groom grinned knowingly at his approach. As these grins also held more than a trace of envy, they troubled him not at all; in fact, he suspected his very public demonstration of affection for his wife—or, rather, her affection for him—might well improve his standing among these men whose birth and breeding, however humble, was very likely better than his own.

  In this assessment he was quite correct. “The Wilson farm?” echoed one, a brawny redhead who had been engaged in repairing a harness prior to Pickett’s entrance. “Aye, I know the place. It’s naught but a few miles’ walk. Or, if you can wait ’til I finish here, I can give you a ride—if you’ve no objection to riding in a wagon, that is.”

  “Never mind, Tom,” put in a new arrival, “I’m going to old Allanby’s place to fetch some cabbages for Ma. I can take you up with me for part of the way,” he told Pickett, “provided, as Tom says, that you won’t mind taking a seat in a wagon.”

  Pickett would have assured him this would not be necessary, but upon realizing the speaker was none other than Jem Hawkins, only son of the deceased, he hastily revised his plans. He accepted the offer with alacrity, and soon the wagon was rattling out of the inn yard with Jem at the reins and Pickett seated on the box beside him. Pickett waited until Jem had navigated the traffic choking the High Street—a mixture of farm wagons and tradesmen’s gigs, along with the elegant equipages of the Lake District’s fashionable visitors—and emerged into open country before expressing once again his condolences and concluding, “I daresay most of the expressions of sympathy are directed toward your stepmother, but I suspect much of the day to day operation of the inn has fallen on you.”

  “Aye, that it has,” Jem confessed, surprised and gratified to meet with one who, on very slight acquaintance, had such a firm grasp of the awkwardness of his own position. “Not that I don’t know all about the running of the inn, mind you. Growed up here, I did, for I was always running back and forth between the inn and the stables. But I won’t lie to you, Mr. Pickett. I had ideas about making it more profitable—still have, for that matter. It’s those assemblies, see—we’ve been losing patrons every year since Tyson started hosting them. Oh, first-time visitors to Banfell usually stay with us, since the stage sets them down in our yard. But then they go to one or two of those assemblies, and if they come back to the Lakes next year, or the year after that, it’s the Golden Feather that gets their business, not us.”

  “What do you plan to do about it?” Pickett asked, intrigued.

  Jem sighed. “Well, we don’t have room to host assemblies, even if we wanted to—which I don’t, me not wanting to give Jedidiah Tyson the satisfaction of thinking we’ve got no new ideas of our own, so to speak, but can only copy him—but no matter how many assemblies and lectures and poetry readings and what-all he may offer, he’s still on the wrong side of the street from the lake and the river and the best views of the fells, and there’s not a thing he can do about that. So I’ve been telling Da that we need to knock out that back wall—not the whole thing, mind, but holes to put in big windows from floor to ceiling—so as to make the best of what we do have, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know nothing about running an inn, but it seems like a sound plan to me,” Pickett said.

  “Aye, and I always thought that whenever I inherited the Hart and Hound, I’d lose no time in putting it into practice. But now that Da’s gone and I’m in charge, I don’t know whether I ought to change things up, or run it Da’s way. In honor of his memory, you might say.”

  “I should think your dilemma is not an unusual one,” Pickett said, bethinking himself of a certain weaver he had met in London just after Christmas. “Not long ago I met a fellow about your age, the foster son of a mill owner, who said he and his foster father were forever at loggerheads over the running of the business. Like you, he had—has—his own ideas about how things ought to be done, but his foster father is an old-fashioned sort, and won’t hear of changing anything.”

  “Aye, I know the feeling,” put in Jem.

  “Yes, but listen: His foster father knows of his sentiments—from what I saw of the fellow, I can’t imagine him keeping his thoughts on the matter to himself—but the old man has made no attempt to bring another business partner on board, or arrange for the mill to be left to someone else. And he could easily do so, especially since this fellow is only a foster son and not his own flesh and blood. But even knowing what will happen to his mill as soon as he’s underground, he still intends for this young man to inherit it. I should think that suggests he trusts the fellow more than he might care to admit.”

  Jem turned to stare at him, much struck. “You mean,” he said, finding his voice at last, “that if Da really didn’t want me to knock holes in that back wall, he would have made sure to leave the Hart and Hound to someone else? But I’m his only son, you know.”

  “Yes, but surely you have cousins. He might even have left it to Lizzie as a dowry. Although,” Pickett added, “between you and me and the lamppost, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the fu
ture of the Hart and Hound if Percival Hartsong should get his hands on it.”

  “Lud, no!” exclaimed Jem, grinning. “He’d very likely sell it to publish a book of his poems. Or else he’d use the public room to read them aloud, and put all our patrons right off their dinners. What Lizzie sees in such a namby-pamby fellow, I’ll never know. But,” he continued in a more serious vein, “you think by not arranging to leave it to someone else, Da was sort of giving me permission to try my ideas? Giving me his blessing, you might say?”

  “I think it very likely,” Pickett said. Of course, there was the fact that Ned Hawkins was still relatively young, and had had no reason to think that his death might be imminent, but he saw no reason to burden Jem with this observation. One might even take Ned Hawkins’s anonymous letter to Bow Street as evidence that the innkeeper suspected his life might be in danger; if that were so, then it stood to reason Hawkins would also have taken the opportunity to put his affairs in order, just in case his worst fears came to pass.

  “There’s still that one table against the back wall,” Jem said, his mind obviously still on his plans for the Hart and Hound. “The one where King Charles sat. Da was always right proud of that, and his da before him.”

  “Can you not commemorate the king’s visit in some other way?” Pickett suggested. “A plaque on the wall, perhaps?”

  “There’d be no wall there anymore, nothing but glass overlooking the fells and the path to the river. I don’t see how—no, but wait! Not on the wall, but on the table itself. Better yet, a plaque set into the floor,” Jem continued, warming to this theme. “That way if the tables were moved, or if we were to buy new ones someday, the plaque would still be there, and in the proper place.”