Sheri Cobb South (2 page)

“Rupert,” she said, gripping the sleeve of his coat, “take me home.”

One well-shaped eyebrow arched toward his hairline, but he drew her hand through the crook of his arm without protest. “I am yours to command, my dear.”

Together they retraced his steps across the room, heedless of the curious glances and whispered speculations directed their way. They exited the ballroom, descended the staircase, and paused in the foyer only long enough to collect cloaks, hat, and gloves while waiting for the carriage to be brought round. Neither spoke until the elegant equipage drew to a halt before Lord Fieldhurst’s town house in Berkeley Square. The windows were dark, Lady Fieldhurst noted; clearly, her husband had chosen not to await her return, but had made good on his expressed intention of spending the night at his club.

Without waiting for the coachman to open the door, Lord Rupert did the honors himself, then lowered the step and turned to offer his arm to Lady Fieldhurst.

“Come inside, Rupert,” she said huskily, tugging at his sleeve. “Don’t go.”

Once again he saw the defiant, almost dangerous glitter in her eyes—although whether the danger was to himself or someone else, he could not begin to guess. Nor, at that moment, did he particularly wish to know. The moment he had long waited for had arrived. Who was he to question it? Nodding in acquiescence, he led her up the stairs to the front door.

“Rogers is not here to open the door,” Lady Fieldhurst observed irrelevantly, turning the knob and finding it unlocked. “How very odd.”

“I should rather call it fortuitous,” Lord Rupert replied.

The viscountess could not but agree. The cool evening air had begun to penetrate the champagne haze that had so emboldened her at the ball—Dutch courage, she supposed—and for the first time since leaving the ballroom, she realized the enormity of what she was about to do. She knew she could rely upon Camille’s discretion, but she was less certain where Rogers’s loyalty lay. To be sure, Frederick had done little enough to endear himself to his servants, but she was also aware that the servants rigidly adhered to their own code of honor. In the early days of her marriage, Rogers had shown great patience in dealing with a naïve country girl suddenly thrust in command of a large household; he might, however, look less favorably upon a mature woman of six-and-twenty intent upon cuckolding his longtime employer.

A branched candelabrum on a small table beneath the curved staircase provided the only light. Lord Rupert picked this up, and together they mounted the steps to the first floor. Upon reaching the top, Lady Fieldhurst paused before the first door on the left.

“This is it,” she said, although she could not have stated with certainty whether this simple observation referred to the location of her bedchamber, or the finality of the step she was about to take.

She grasped the knob, turned it, and pushed. The door opened some four inches before stopping abruptly with a muted thud. The sudden halt, together with the quantity of champagne she had consumed, caused her to lose her balance, and she stumbled against the door.

“Something is blocking the way,” she said, steadying herself in preparation for another attempt.

“Allow me.”

Lord Rupert placed the candelabrum on a nearby table, then put his shoulder to the door. It gave only grudgingly, but sufficiently for him to squeeze into the room. A low fire burned in the grate, casting flickering shadows onto a large, dark shape partially concealed behind the half-open door.

“Julia?” said Lord Rupert in a very different voice. “Give me the candelabrum.”

She obeyed, asking as she did so, “What is it, Rupert? What is the matter?”

He raised the candelabrum. “Oh, my God,” he said, his tone curiously expressionless.

“What is it, Rupert?” she repeated impatiently, standing on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder.

She drew a ragged breath, pressing the back of her gloved hand to her mouth. There on the floor lay her husband in a pool of blood.

“Rupert?” Lady Fieldhurst clutched his sleeve. “Is he—is he—?”

“Yes,” Lord Rupert said curtly. “Undoubtedly.”

“Oh. Oh, dear.” They were foolish, inadequate words, but then, what in the world was one supposed to say at such a time? Her head suddenly felt stupid and thick—the champagne, she imagined. How much had she drunk, anyway? “We had best send for the watch.”

“What, and wake the poor fellow?” replied Lord Rupert in a tone that left no doubt as to his confidence in the night watchman. “No, Julia, I think this is a matter for Bow Street.”

“Yes—yes, I daresay you are right.”

She tugged the bell pull hanging beside the door. A short time later, a sleepy-eyed footman, breeches pulled hastily on over his nightshirt, appeared. “You rang, my—? Gorblimey!” he exclaimed at the sight of his recumbent employer.

Lady Fieldhurst, though still alarmingly pale, had by this time regained some modicum of composure. “As you see, Thomas, his lordship has—has met with an accident,” she explained, quite as if the viscount had suffered no greater inconvenience than a stubbed toe. “Go as quickly as you can to Bow Street, and summon a Runner.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Thomas, reluctantly tearing his gaze from the gruesome sight.

Lord Rupert waited until the footman carried out the command, then asked harshly, “Do you really think that is what happened here? That Fieldhurst suffered an accident?”

“He must have!” Lady Fieldhurst cried somewhat wildly. “What else could it be?” She knelt down and reached for her husband’s shoulder, but Lord Rupert held her back.

“No, Julia, don’t touch him.”

“It—it seems barbarous to just leave him here,” she protested.

“Believe me, my dear,” Lord Rupert drawled, “barbarity is the least of his troubles.”

* * * *

Having received his weekly wages shortly after coming on night patrol duty, John Pickett counted out the coins in the palm of his hand, mentally calculating where they would have to be spent. When he had first been promoted to the Bow Street Runners from the foot patrol, twenty-five shillings a week had seemed like untold riches. It had taken only a few months to discover that this was still barely enough to keep food in his belly and a roof over his head. Furthermore, as his new position occasionally made it necessary for him to testify in court, he was obliged to refurbish his wardrobe by exchanging the distinctive red waistcoats of the foot patrol for clothing more suitable for appearances in the Old Bailey. These did not come cheap, particularly the cutaway coat of black worsted he wore on this particular evening, as the washerwoman was currently striving to remove bloodstains (not his, thankfully) from his workaday brown serge.

To be sure, there was always the opportunity for a Runner to supplement his earnings with lucrative private commissions, but it was unlikely that anyone wishful of hiring private detecting services would seek out a neophyte of four-and-twenty years, with scarcely six months’ experience on the Bow Street force. As he looked about the bustling police office, he was forced to acknowledge that he was unlikely to receive any such commissions from his present company. In one corner, a juvenile pickpocket protested his innocence in a high-pitched whine that turned abruptly to a howl as his victim, impatient with the ponderous workings of the law, boxed the boy’s ears. Near the magistrate’s desk, a fellow Runner struggled to interpose himself between two inebriates whose quarrel showed every sign of escalating into a bout of fisticuffs. Pickett could sympathize; in just such a way had his brown serge coat become bloodstained, after one of the drunken combatants pulled a knife. By the window, a dark-haired doxy loudly bewailed the trials and tribulations of a woman trying to earn what she very loosely termed an honest living. Pickett, recognizing the voice, pushed his way across the crowded room to tap the woman on the shoulder.

“At it again, are you, Lucy?”

She turned and smiled saucily, giving him ample opportunity to admire the full effect of flashing eyes and low-cut bodice. “Aye, and what if I am, John Pickett? A girl’s got to eat, you know. Else what’ll happen to my womanly curves?”

She leaned closer, exposing still more of the curves in question. It was, for Lucy, a rare tactical error. Quick as a flash, Pickett thrust his hand down her cleavage. When he withdrew it, the strings of a small coin purse dangled from his fingers.

“Well, Lucy, I’d no idea you counted purse-nabbing among your talents,” he remarked. “That’s a new lay for you, isn’t it?”

“He was going to stiff me, he was!” Lucy protested, snatching ineffectually at the purse. “He promised me five shillings, God’s truth, and would have left without paying. So I lifted his purse, I’ll not deny it, and all for what? Why, there weren’t no more’n a couple o’ bob! Now, I ask you, whose crime is worse, mine or his? A fine thing it is, when a woman who’s just trying to earn a living the only way she knows how—”

She might have run on indefinitely in this vein, had not a distraction occurred in the form of a new arrival, a rather pale young man clad in the blue and silver livery of a noble house.

“Now, he’d be good for more’n a bob, I’ll be bound!” pronounced Lucy, the coin purse forgotten as she set off in the young man’s direction, hips swaying provocatively.

“Lucy, don’t you dare— “ began Pickett, hurrying after her.

He caught up to her just as she reached the young man, who was by this time being questioned by William Foote, a fellow Runner some years Pickett’s senior who acted as unofficial head of the night patrol.

“Berkeley Square, eh? Very well, I’ll be right— ‘ Foote broke off abruptly at the sight of Lucy. “Well, well, what have we here?”

Lucy, never one to miss an opportunity, batted her dark eyes, which now sparkled with tears. “La, sir, I’ve been cruelly used by a shameful rogue!”

“Have you, now?” inquired Foote, eyeing her heaving bosom with interest. “Well now, we can’t let that happen, can we, missy? Here, Pickett, go with this young fellow to Hanover Square—

“Berkeley Square, sir,” put in the footman.

“Yes, yes, wherever. I’ll see what I can do to help this poor chick.”

“Mr. Foote, sir,” said Pickett with some asperity, “this ‘poor chick’ just nabbed a cove’s coin purse—

“What? Oh yes, I’ll take that. Move along now, Pickett, and report back to the magistrate in the morning. Here, now, missy, what’s your name?”

Pickett opened his mouth to protest, realized it would be useless, and shut it again. With some resignation, he dropped the pilfered purse into Foote’s outstretched hand, reasonably certain that it would be back in Lucy’s possession by morning—along with several other shillings, he had no doubt—and set out with the footman for Berkeley Square.

Chapter 2

John Pickett of Bow Street

“Mr. John Pickett, my lady,” announced Thomas somewhat breathlessly, “from Bow Street.”

Having never had dealings with Bow Street, Lady Fieldhurst was not quite certain what to expect: perhaps a stout fellow past his prime, befuddled with sleep or spirits, with a bulbous red nose—the same sort as might be found in any number of watchmen’s boxes across the metropolis. The individual who entered the room in Thomas’s wake, however, was very nearly her own age. To be sure, his nose was somewhat crooked, as if it had been broken at some point, but it was far from bulbous, and it was certainly not red. He was quite tall, almost gangly, with curling brown hair tied at the nape of his neck in an outmoded queue. He wore an unfashionably shallow-crowned hat and a black swallow-tailed coat of good cloth but indifferent cut; indeed, his only claim to fashion lay in the quizzing glass which hung round his neck from a black ribbon, and which he now raised, the resulting magnification revealing his eyes to be a warm brown. Julia might have been much reassured as to his competence, had it not been for the fact that his mouth hung open as from a rusty hinge.

As if aware of this unflattering appraisal, the Bow Street Runner abruptly shut the offending orifice and cleared his throat.

“Mrs. Fieldhurst?”

“You will address the viscountess as ‘your ladyship,’ “interposed the tall, formally attired gentleman at her elbow.

“This is hardly the time to stand upon one’s dignity, Rupert,” the lady chided him before turning to the Runner. “Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr. Pickett. As you can see, my husband has—has met with an accident. We—we think he must have fallen and struck his head on the corner of the dressing table.”

Mr. Pickett found it very difficult to concentrate on anything but the ethereal beauty standing before him, candlelight picking out her features in gold while the dying fire at her back lit her pale hair like a halo. With an effort, Mr. Pickett dragged his gaze away and focused his attention on the dressing table she indicated. He raised his quizzing glass—an affectation, he knew, but one which frequently proved useful in his line of work—and examined the corner of the table. There was no blood, no hair—nothing, in fact, to suggest that anyone had struck his head there, fatally or otherwise. He dismissed the dressing table as irrelevant, then knelt to examine the body. The late Lord Fieldhurst lay facedown in a heap, his form-fitting blue coat pushed off his shoulders, his starched cravat askew. Both, as well as the carpet beneath him, were stained crimson. A lace-trimmed handkerchief bearing an embroidered crest covered the viscount’s head, the fine white lawn incongruous against the drying blood.

“The handkerchief is mine,” the viscountess explained, as if reading his thoughts. “I thought it best to—it didn’t seem right, just leaving him—”

“Quite all right, my lady,” Pickett assured her. “Has he been moved at all?”

“No,” said the man she had called Rupert.

“Yes,” said her ladyship at the same time.

The two exchanged glances, then Lady Fieldhurst plunged into explanation. “The door was blocked, so we— Lord Rupert, that is, since I couldn’t get it to budge—had to push it open. We didn’t know what—what was on the other side.”

Mr. Pickett made no reply, but removed the handkerchief so that he might look for a wound. As the neck had already grown stiff, he could not turn the head, but was obliged to push the shoulders, rolling the corpse onto its back. On the side of the viscount’s neck, bright red blood congealed along a short but ugly gash. Where the body had lain, a small metallic object gleamed. Pickett picked it up, and Lady Fieldhurst gasped as he held it up to the light.