Sheri Cobb South (23 page)

“Not a bit,” Pickett assured him. “But how did you know I was from London?”

Everyone in the pub seemed to find this question wonderfully funny. “Lord love you, you’ve got ‘City’ written all over you!” said Old Ben, still chuckling. “We can spot ‘em at fifty paces.”

Far from being offended, Pickett took an instant liking to Old Ben and, on the leisurely drive to Fieldhurst village, seized the opportunity to inquire as to the origins of his misleading name.

“Oh, that would be to tell me from my firstborn, Young Ben,” explained the farmer, as if this were the most logical thing in the world. “He’s the wrestling champion hereabouts, and a great favorite with the females, too. But though he could have his pick of the local girls, he’s in no hurry to settle down. He’d be about your age, I’d say. And what about yourself? Be there a London lass pining for your return?”

Pickett could only wish it were so. “No,” he said. Then, painfully aware of the abruptness of his denial, he pointed out over the fields stretching out to both left and right, where tender green plants climbed poles higher than a man’s head. “What’s growing there?”

As a ploy, it worked brilliantly, for Old Ben forgot all about lasses, rural and otherwise. “There’s a Londoner for you,” he said, chuckling. “Them’s good Kentish hops, the finest in England.”

This quite naturally led to the subject of farming. Old Ben enthusiastically cataloged the local crops, along with his predictions for the year’s harvest in each one, and Pickett in return described for him the open-air fruit and vegetable markets of Covent Garden. Having established a rapport, Pickett judged it time to broach the subject most occupying his thoughts.

“Is this Lord Fieldhurst’s land?”

“Aye, all this and more.”

“Is he a good landlord?”

“Can’t rightly say. I work my own place,” the farmer said with simple pride. “He seems to do right by his tenants, though, and her ladyship gives a fine harvest festival round about Michaelmas. I guess there won’t be no festival this year, what with his lordship dead and all.”

“Perhaps the new viscountess will carry on the custom next year,” suggested Pickett, although what he knew of Caroline Bertram made him think it unlikely that she would be eager to spend money on persons unable to advance her social ambitions.

“Aye, mayhap she will. But even so, it won’t be the same.”

Pickett could not dispute this home truth. “You must know just about everybody who lives in these parts,” he observed, steering the conversation in a more fruitful direction.

“Aye, that I do. Country folk are like that. We don’t have secrets from each other here in Fieldhurst—or if we do, we don’t keep ‘em long,” added Old Ben, laughing heartily at his own witticism.

“Is there any family around here by the name of Toomer? Someone connected with the church, perhaps?”

Old Ben scratched his chin while he pondered this question. “Not that I can think of,” he said at last. “The sexton is Tom Tilney, and the curate is Paul Trotter, but I never did hear of a Toomer in these parts. You’re sure of the name?”

Pickett shook his head. “I thought I was, but I daresay I was mistaken. It’s of no importance, at any rate.”

Old Ben accepted this explanation without comment, and soon drew the wagon to a halt before an establishment called the Hart and Hare, where, he said, Pickett might be assured of a room for the night as well as a hot meal in the evening.

“For there aren’t many visitors hereabouts, leastways not this time of year,” he observed. “Harvest time, now, there’s another story. But no one’s staying at the Hart and Hare now, saving a Mrs. Bertram. Now that I think on it, she’s from London, too, so I’ll wager the two of you’ll soon be thick as inkle-weavers.”

Pickett had no confidence in the accuracy of this prediction, but owned himself more than a little taken aback by the presence of Mrs. Bertram in the vicinity. He had no idea the lady meant to accompany her husband to the funeral; still less did he understand why she should be putting up at a public inn, rather than staying at the ancestral home that now belonged to her husband. It would appear that, far from resolving the Bertrams’ quarrel, Mr. Bertram’s inheritance of the title had only served to exacerbate it.

As if reading his passenger’s mind, Old Ben chose that moment to volunteer the further information that if Pickett wanted to have a look-see at the Big House, he should take the right fork at the foot of the High Street and follow it north until just past the bridge. He steadfastly refused to accept payment for the use of his wagon, but as Pickett prepared to climb down, he asked, “So, was it her ladyship what done it?”

Pickett, taken by surprise by this question, missed the step and landed rather heavily on the ground. “Beg pardon?”

Old Ben laughed aloud at his confusion. “Lord love you, I knowed you was Bow Street the minute I clapped eyes on you! We had a couple of Runners come to Maidstone a few years back, looking to break up a gang of highwaymen. All the same, the lot of you—not but what you’re a mite younger than I would’ve expected. So, what do you think? Was it her ladyship?”

Pickett knew he should deny any knowledge of the case, but something about the man’s candor demanded the same sort of honesty. “Some think so, but I don’t believe them.”

Old Ben nodded. “That’s all right, then,” he said, and with this benediction, drove away.

* * * *

Pickett spent the better part of the afternoon combing the churchyard for deceased Toomers. When this yielded no new information, he returned to the Hart and Hare for the evening meal, where he questioned everyone he could find, from the old men lingering over foaming tankards of ale to the comely village lasses who dispensed it. Alas, here too his efforts were fruitless: no one had heard of anyone by the name of Toomer, dead or alive, deacon or no. The only bright spot in a wasted day lay in the fact that he managed to avoid an encounter with Mrs. Bertram; it seemed to Pickett that she could do him considerable harm if she took exception to his presence and set up the locals’ backs.

On the second day, he followed Old Ben’s instructions and walked to the Big House, as the Fieldhurst mansion was known locally, and requested the housekeeper to show him about the place. He had no very clear idea of what he hoped to learn from this exercise, but by this time was quite frankly grasping at straws. He did discover two facts, neither of which had any bearing on the case: first, that the destruction of Lady Fieldhurst’s beloved rose garden in favor of a Gothic ruin would indeed be a travesty; and second, that any lady who had once been mistress of such a majestic pile as Fieldhurst Manor would be unlikely to spare a thought for a man who lived in two hired rooms above a chandler’s shop.

He kept these observations to himself, however, responding to the housekeeper’s litany of the house’s history, furnishings, and past and present inhabitants with suitably admiring or regretful noises, as the commentary dictated. They mounted the stairs to the second story and, as they entered the long portrait gallery running along the back of the house, he was much startled to find Lady Fieldhurst herself awaiting him at the other end. Abandoning the housekeeper in the middle of a long anecdote about crusading Bertrams in the Middle Ages, he hurried forward to meet the viscountess, unmindful of the disapproving eyes of earlier generations of Fieldhursts looking down on him from their framed canvases on the wall. He was halfway down the length of the gallery before he realized, to his chagrin, that it was not her ladyship at all, but a very skillfully executed likeness.

“That’s the most recent viscountess when she was still Miss Runyon,” explained the housekeeper, unaware of the pang of disappointment piercing the Runner’s breast like a pair of nail scissors. “It was painted by Thomas Lawrence just before her marriage. It’s held to be very like her, as most anyone who has ever seen her ladyship will tell you.”

Pickett, at least, could not argue the point. The artist had portrayed his subject seated in a flower-filled bower, her white skirts (slightly fuller than the current fashion) billowing about her. He thought she had not changed much over the intervening six years, at least not physically, yet there was something different. He could not have said exactly what it was, but he could see it in her eyes. The wide-eyed girl on the canvas smiled at him with all the eager innocence of youth; the lady in Berkeley Square concealed her innermost self beneath a sophisticated veneer. The girl possessed great charm and beauty, but Pickett found the woman infinitely more alluring.

“Very—very nice,” he told the housekeeper, then quickly inquired as to the identity of the dour-faced Cavalier on an adjacent canvas.

Thus applied to, the housekeeper immediately launched into the checkered history of Sir Roderick Bertram, Baronet, leaving Pickett free to steal furtive glances at the youthful viscountess to his heart’s content. He could not help wondering whether the critical gazes of her husband’s distinguished relations preyed upon her spirits; he knew that, were he to be subjected to them for any length of time, they would prey upon his.

“There’s also a picture of Sir Roderick’s lady, if you’d care to see it,” said the housekeeper, coming at last to the end of her narrative. “She defended this house against invading Roundheads, all by herself. Her portrait is near the other end, if you’ll just step this way—

“Perhaps,” suggested Pickett as they traversed the length of the gallery, “Sir Roderick would look less bilious if his lady were not so far away.”

The housekeeper blinked at this suggestion, then chuckled richly. “And so he might, at that! Lord bless you, Mr. Pickett, I think you must be a romantic!”

“Who, me?” said Pickett, taken aback by this candid (and, had he but known it, uncannily accurate) reading of his character. “Not at all, I assure you!”

They came at last to the long windows overlooking the rear of the house, and Pickett stopped for a moment to study the extensive grounds. In the distance, an ornamental lake gleamed blue and gold in the sunlight, while nearer, Lady Fieldhurst’s rose garden added splashes of pink and scarlet to the vivid green of the hedges. A movement among the blossoms caught Pickett’s eye, and a moment later a man and woman stepped arm in arm out of the shrubbery and onto the gravel path.

The housekeeper, following the direction of his gaze, spied the couple in the rose garden. “That’s the new viscount,” she explained, “come down from London yesterday for the funeral.”

“And the woman?” Pickett asked.

The housekeeper shook her head. “I haven’t been properly introduced, but I should think it was her new ladyship—although why she wants to put up at the Hart and Hare, instead of staying in the big house with his lordship, I don’t understand and never shall.”

Pickett made no reply beyond a noncommittal grunt. From his second-story vantage point, he easily recognized Mr. Bertram, but as for the woman, he could be certain of only one thing. She was not the lady he knew as Mrs. George Bertram.

Chapter 17

In Which Pickett Makes a Surprising Discovery

While the housekeeper conducted him through those rooms open on certain occasions to the public, Pickett wrestled with the meaning of his latest discovery, and wondered how and when to confront Mr. Bertram. The latter decision, at least, was taken out of his hands. For when he left the housekeeper and returned to the hall at the end of his tour, the front door opened and George Bertram entered the house, along with his fair companion. At the sight of the Bow Street Runner whom he had supposed to be more than forty miles away in London, Mr. Bertram froze on the threshold and stared at Pickett with mingled horror and guilt.

“You here?” he demanded, when at last he found his tongue. “Good God, is there no escaping you? What are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question,” said Pickett, glancing at the woman. Seen at close range, she was perhaps forty years old, with the sort of bland prettiness which rarely survives beyond the first blushes of youth. Still, the expression on her plump face was sweet, and she possessed a surprisingly genteel manner.

“As you are no doubt well aware,” said Mr. Bertram, fairly bristling, “my cousin will be buried upon the morrow. I am here to represent the family.”

“And carrying on the fine old family tradition, apparently,” observed Pickett. “Tell me, how did you persuade Mrs. Bertram to stay home?”

“It wasn’t difficult; I just gave her a hundred guineas for refurbishing her wardrobe,” said the new viscount, casting an apologetic glance at his companion. “Look here, Henrietta, I must talk to this fellow alone. If you will excuse me, I shan’t be above a moment.”

“Of course, George,” she said serenely.

George Bertram led Pickett into one of the formal drawing rooms he had toured earlier with the housekeeper, and closed the door behind them.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mr. Bertram said as soon as they were alone, “and let me tell you, you’re wrong.”

“Am I?” asked Pickett, carefully noncommittal. “I know only that your, er, companion is lodging at the Hart and Hare under an assumed name.”

“You are impertinent, sirrah, as well as mistaken! The name she gave at the Hart and Hare is her legal name. She is my wife.”

Pickett was momentarily bereft of speech. Fortunately, Mr. Bertram apparently recognized that some explanation would be required of him, and thus continued his narrative.

“I met Henrietta when we were both quite young,” he said, his gaze unfocused, as if seeing again that long-ago meeting. “I was an ensign in the Army, stationed near Bath. Henrietta was making her come-out there, as her parents lacked the funds to provide her with a London Season. We loved at first sight.”

“But your families disapproved?”

George Bertram gave a snort of derision. “My family disapproved! Not only was Henrietta penniless, but also the daughter of a curate—not a suitable match for the second in line to a viscountcy. My cousin had not yet come into his title in those days, but still there was much speculation about when he would marry and beget an heir. It was hammered home to me that until he did, I must conduct myself in a way appropriate to a future viscount. But we fooled them all, my Henrietta and I! We married in secret. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that we were so successful in keeping our secret that no one suspects to this day.”