with my shopping. I hope you enjoy your belated breakfast; you deserve no less after sacrificing the morning in a futile exercise.”
“I wouldn’t call it futile, exactly,” Pickett said thoughtfully. “I surprised a fellow scavenging among the ruins—or perhaps I should say he surprised me. I wonder if you may have seen him? Dark, slender, quite young—”
She had to laugh at this description. “If you found him ‘quite young,’ he must have been little more than a babe in arms!”
“I’m not as young as all that!” protested Pickett.
“I seem to recall your once telling me that you were four-and-twenty.”
“And you, I’ll wager, are not a day over thirty.”
“Thirty!” protested Lady Fieldhurst, offended as only a lady can be whose age has been estimated at greater than her actual years. “I’ll have you know I am but six-and-twenty!”
“I stand corrected,” said Pickett with a smug smile. “You are a whole two years my senior, in fact.”
“Oh, you tricked me! Unfair!” cried her ladyship.
“But effective.”
“You are wandering from the subject,” Lady Fieldhurst informed him with a haughty sniff that did not fool Pickett for one moment. “You say he was dark. Do you mean dark hair, or dark complexion?”
“Both. Swarthy skin, black hair worn long, shabby clothes, and none too clean.”
“And so naturally you thought he must be an acquaintance of mine!”
Pickett’s lips twitched, but he resisted the urge to reply in kind. Alone with her, away from the trappings of wealth and rank, it was all too easy to forget the difference between their respective stations and tease her as he might Lucy, the Covent Garden strumpet whose services he gently but firmly declined on a regular basis. He doubted the viscountess would appreciate the comparison. Perhaps he should have taken her money after all, to remind him of his place.
“I didn’t mean to suggest you’d asked him to tea,” he said. “I thought perhaps you might have seen someone who looked like him—a laborer on the estate, perhaps, or a vagrant along the road.”
“No, I can’t say that I—wait! Sir Gerald complained of gypsies in the Home Wood, and Mr. Danvers said they had been stealing his chickens, and he had purchased a gun to frighten them away. Could your dark stranger be a gypsy, do you suppose?”
Pickett regarded her with mingled respect and admiration. “I think it not only possible, but very likely. I thank you.”
“What do you plan to do now?”
“I don’t know. I daresay it will depend on what I find at the church.”
They were now climbing the hill rising up from the opposite bank of the river, and eventually the rooftops and chimneys of the village came into view. Pickett, seeing that the time for private conversation was at an end, fell behind once more to the discreet distance expected of a servant.
To her consternation, Lady Fieldhurst felt strangely bereft without the warmth of his arm beneath her fingers. You had best have a care, she chided herself, or you will turn into one of those pathetic creatures so desperate for male companionship that they will fling themselves at anything in breeches! Yet she could not deny a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that they resided beneath the same roof. And why not? came the inevitable mental scold. You are dwelling among strangers, in a house only a stone’s throw from where a gentle parson met a gruesome death. It would be a very odd woman indeed who did not take comfort in the presence of a Bow Street Runner. The very idea that her pleasure in John Pickett’s nearness might have more to do with his person than with his profession was too absurd to contemplate.
Chapter 5
A Visit to the Church
“What I shall do with it all, I have no idea,” complained Lady Fieldhurst some time later, as they trudged down the road leading away from the village. “One can always use gloves and handkerchiefs, but as for the bonnet, I can’t
“I wouldn’t call it futile, exactly,” Pickett said thoughtfully. “I surprised a fellow scavenging among the ruins—or perhaps I should say he surprised me. I wonder if you may have seen him? Dark, slender, quite young—”
She had to laugh at this description. “If you found him ‘quite young,’ he must have been little more than a babe in arms!”
“I’m not as young as all that!” protested Pickett.
“I seem to recall your once telling me that you were four-and-twenty.”
“And you, I’ll wager, are not a day over thirty.”
“Thirty!” protested Lady Fieldhurst, offended as only a lady can be whose age has been estimated at greater than her actual years. “I’ll have you know I am but six-and-twenty!”
“I stand corrected,” said Pickett with a smug smile. “You are a whole two years my senior, in fact.”
“Oh, you tricked me! Unfair!” cried her ladyship.
“But effective.”
“You are wandering from the subject,” Lady Fieldhurst informed him with a haughty sniff that did not fool Pickett for one moment. “You say he was dark. Do you mean dark hair, or dark complexion?”
“Both. Swarthy skin, black hair worn long, shabby clothes, and none too clean.”
“And so naturally you thought he must be an acquaintance of mine!”
Pickett’s lips twitched, but he resisted the urge to reply in kind. Alone with her, away from the trappings of wealth and rank, it was all too easy to forget the difference between their respective stations and tease her as he might Lucy, the Covent Garden strumpet whose services he gently but firmly declined on a regular basis. He doubted the viscountess would appreciate the comparison. Perhaps he should have taken her money after all, to remind him of his place.
“I didn’t mean to suggest you’d asked him to tea,” he said. “I thought perhaps you might have seen someone who looked like him—a laborer on the estate, perhaps, or a vagrant along the road.”
“No, I can’t say that I—wait! Sir Gerald complained of gypsies in the Home Wood, and Mr. Danvers said they had been stealing his chickens, and he had purchased a gun to frighten them away. Could your dark stranger be a gypsy, do you suppose?”
Pickett regarded her with mingled respect and admiration. “I think it not only possible, but very likely. I thank you.”
“What do you plan to do now?”
“I don’t know. I daresay it will depend on what I find at the church.”
They were now climbing the hill rising up from the opposite bank of the river, and eventually the rooftops and chimneys of the village came into view. Pickett, seeing that the time for private conversation was at an end, fell behind once more to the discreet distance expected of a servant.
To her consternation, Lady Fieldhurst felt strangely bereft without the warmth of his arm beneath her fingers. You had best have a care, she chided herself, or you will turn into one of those pathetic creatures so desperate for male companionship that they will fling themselves at anything in breeches! Yet she could not deny a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that they resided beneath the same roof. And why not? came the inevitable mental scold. You are dwelling among strangers, in a house only a stone’s throw from where a gentle parson met a gruesome death. It would be a very odd woman indeed who did not take comfort in the presence of a Bow Street Runner. The very idea that her pleasure in John Pickett’s nearness might have more to do with his person than with his profession was too absurd to contemplate.
Chapter 5
A Visit to the Church
“What I shall do with it all, I have no idea,” complained Lady Fieldhurst some time later, as they trudged down the road leading away from the village. “One can always use gloves and handkerchiefs, but as for the bonnet, I can’t
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