Into Thin Eire

by Sheri Cobb South

  “I’m willing to risk it, if you are.” Suddenly her face crumpled. “Please—I’ve been so frightened—”

  And suddenly she was in his arms, and he was kissing her and murmuring endearments into her ear and calling her his brave, clever girl for thinking to warn him in a coded message, and then kissing her some more, in between words that made no sense.

  “—Should have known—so sorry—ought to have—warned you—”

  “John?” She drew back slightly in order to look him in the face. “Darling, what are you talking about?”

  “He threatened you—that day in the Lake District. He told me he would come for you someday, after I’d let down my guard.”

  “That was why you wanted me to go to Mama and Papa while you were away,” she said thoughtfully, recalling their conversation on the day he’d told her he was being sent to Dunbury.

  “I didn’t like leaving you alone, although at the time I didn’t know—I’m so sorry—”

  She pressed her fingers to his lips, cutting off another round of apologies. “Nonsense! Why should you have warned me about something that was unlikely to occur? For all we knew, he had already been executed.”

  But Pickett refused to receive absolution. “I knew he hadn’t. I asked Mr. Colquhoun to let me know when the thing was done, and he hadn’t said a word on the subject. I didn’t want you to worry—”

  “So instead, you’ve spent the last month worrying about it yourself, all alone.”

  Her tone was pitying, not accusatory; clearly, it behooved him to bring her to some recognition of his sins. “I thought it was the right thing to do, but Claudia said—”

  “Claudia? What has she to do with this?”

  “When I got word that you’d been abducted—Mr. Colquhoun sent a courier to Dunbury with the news—I went to fetch Jamie. I needed a plan, and I couldn’t seem to think—”

  “Yes, I see it now,” she said, nodding slowly. “John, recollect that Claudia spent thirteen years hiding from a dangerous man who was very much alive, and free. It would be imperative that she know as much as possible about where he was, or what he was doing, at any given time. But this was different. You had every reason to believe that Robert Hetherington was locked up awaiting the assizes. To imagine otherwise would merely be borrowing trouble—and so I would have told you, if you had chosen to confide in me.”

  “Then—you think I did the right thing in not telling you?” he asked, almost afraid to hope.

  “Oh, no,” she said, smiling up at him. “I think you should have told me—but only so that you would not have borne such a burden alone. That’s what marriage is, you know—or what it ought to be.”

  In answer, he took her hands in his and pressed a kiss onto the tip of each finger with an intensity that surprised her.

  “John? What are you doing?”

  “Counting them,” was his rather cryptic reply.

  “What?” she asked, utterly bewildered.

  “Never mind.”

  Having completed this exercise (and, presumably, arriving at the correct number), he took her arm and gave her a little tug toward the door. “I think we’d better be going. If I’m going to have to confront Hetherington, I’d just as soon not do it here, in the middle of a powder magazine.”

  Relieved as he was to be reunited with his wife, Pickett was not so lost to the dangers of their situation as to forget all caution. He withdrew the pistol from the waistband of his breeches—he couldn’t remember at exactly what point he had put it there, but he was glad to see he had at least engaged the safety catch, else he might have accidentally put a serious damper on their reunion—then thumbed the catch free and crossed the stable floor with her hand held tightly in his. He paused before the door and listened for any sounds from outside. Finding none, he pushed it open with the nose of his pistol and leaned out to peer around the door. No one moved. Although he knew there were at least three men—his own confederates—on the other end of the house, he and Julia might have been alone on the neglected estate, for all the evidence to the contrary.

  “Let’s go,” he said, lowering his voice to a near whisper.

  They had scarcely emerged from the stable when a familiar figure stepped away from the corner of the house, an elderly man whose pistol hand was nevertheless steady as he aimed his weapon at Julia.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Pickett.” Hetherington’s tone was pleasant, like that of a host welcoming a long-awaited guest, but the light of madness burned in his eyes. “Once again, Patrick Colquhoun’s enfant prodige fails to live up to his reputation. Stupid boy! I might have shot you at any time as you crossed the lawn.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” Pickett’s voice was cool as he released Julia’s hand and would have given her a little nudge, putting himself between her and his adversary, but the twitch of Hetherington’s pistol hand advised against such a move.

  “Because it would have been too easy a death for you,” Hetherington pointed out impatiently, as if this should have been obvious. “First you shall have to endure the agony of seeing your wife slain before your eyes, as I did. Now, you will oblige me by dropping your weapon.”

  Having no other alternative, Pickett held his pistol out to his side and let it fall to the ground. The gesture left him feeling naked and exposed. “Let her go, Hetherington. Your quarrel is with me, not my wife.”

  His adversary nodded, exclaiming delightedly, “That’s it, Mr. Pickett! Beg for mercy, plead with me to spare her!” Pickett understood the words to be rhetorical, but when he showed no inclination to follow orders, Hetherington’s face turned red with rage, and the hand holding his pistol shook menacingly. “I said, beg, damn you!”

  Pickett swallowed hard. “Please, please don’t do this,” he implored, more than a little disturbed by how easy it was to debase himself, knowing all the while that it would make no difference in the end. “You’re a better man than this—”

  “On your knees!” When Pickett would have obeyed this new command, gauging at the same time whether it would bring his pistol within reach, Hetherington realized his error and abruptly changed his mind. “No, don’t! Stay on your feet!”

  “Please—” Pickett began, but Hetherington’s disturbed mind had already moved on to other things.

  “You have a confederate, do you not? At least one, and quite possibly more, if the footprints I found in the stable this morning are anything to judge by. You will invite them to join us, and tell them to leave their weapons behind.”

  Footprints, Pickett thought miserably. His own and Jamie’s footprints, clearly visible on the stable’s dirt floor. He couldn’t blame his brother-in-law for not thinking to eradicate this telltale evidence of their clandestine visit—it had been Major Pennington’s responsibility in the army to lead cavalry charges, not reconnaissance missions—but he must certainly blame himself. How could he have been so careless? He supposed it was some combination of the darkness, and the feeble light from the lantern, and the fact that he’d just caught a glimpse of Julia in one of the upstairs windows of the house. None of which excused the fact that he ought to have taken such a precaution, and had not.

  But there was no time for self-recriminations. Hetherington, having given his orders, was waiting impatiently for them to be obeyed. Pickett had to summon at least one of his allies to walk unarmed and unsuspecting into a confrontation from which he might not escape alive. Granted, Hetherington could only fire his pistol once, but thanks to his stockpile of ammunition, he could kill the lot of them without firing a shot; he had only to herd them all into the stable and set off the powder.

  “Call them!” Hetherington shouted, waving the pistol he still held aimed at Julia’s head.

  Call who? Pickett thought frantically. He would have preferred to leave Jamie free to design some plan for their rescue, but aside from the fact that his brother-in-law, however capable, could not work miracles, there was the fact that it was Jamie’s footprints, along with Pickett’s, that Hether
ington had discovered in the stable. Would he take the time to compare the prints to the feet of the man who came in answer to Pickett’s summons? Pickett thought it unlikely, but then, who could predict the actions of a madman? No, he would have to summon Jamie, and Thomas as well, since Hetherington suspected more than one, and trust to Harry Carson’s ingenuity. He only hoped Carson was up to the task.

  “Jamie! Thomas!” His gaze never wavered from Hetherington as he raised his voice. “Leave your weapons and come here!”

  After a brief, expectant silence, two men emerged from around the rear corner of the house only to check at the sight of Pickett, disarmed and helpless, and Julia, staring down the barrel of a pistol.

  “Don’t be shy, gentlemen,” Hetherington chided. “Come and join us! You’re just in time to witness an execution.”

  He waited with barely contained impatience as the new arrivals slowly made their way to the little group standing on the bare patch of ground before the stable. Their hands were empty, Pickett noted; he’d been hoping that Jamie would somehow surmise what had happened, and would ignore that particular behest.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Hetherington continued, turning back to Pickett, “have you any last words for your wife before I kill her?”

  It was now or never. Pickett raised his hands to the level of his shoulders in a gesture of surrender, then, after one uncertain glance at his adversary, turned slightly toward Julia and lowered himself very slowly to one knee. “My lady,” he addressed her with great formality, “if you could so far demean yourself as to agree to bestow upon me your hand in marriage, I promise I will do my utmost to see that you,”—his voice shook slightly—“that you will never live to regret it.”

  “Oh, John,” she breathed, and it seemed to Pickett as if all the stars in the heavens shone from her eyes. “I’d rather have four months with you than forty years with anyone else.”

  “Well, I like that!” grumbled Harry Carson, emerging from the front corner of the house. “I suppose the three of you have been having a fine time, while I—”

  Pickett lunged for his pistol. Immediately Hetherington’s gun was trained on him.

  “I said drop it!” he shrieked, his face contorted with rage.

  But the balance of power had shifted. Now that Julia was no longer the immediate target, Pickett was willing to take chances he would not have risked before. For the second time, he held the pistol out to his side, but instead of letting it fall, he looked Robert Hetherington squarely in the eye and fired—not at his adversary, but straight through the gaping door into the stable.

  And then everything happened at once. A second gunshot followed the first in quick succession. Pickett grabbed Julia’s arm and dragged her to the ground, flinging himself on top of her.

  “Nooo!” Hetherington screamed, throwing down his weapon as he ran through the stable door into the darkness beyond.

  “Get down!” Pickett shouted, and in the next instant the building erupted in flame, raining splinters and straw down onto his back.

  He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, shielding his wife with his own body. He supposed it could not have been more than a minute, two at the most, but it seemed like an eternity before he rose stiffly to his feet and held out a hand to assist her.

  “You’re all right?” he said breathlessly. “I didn’t hurt you?”

  “No, but”—she glanced toward the burning stable, or what was left of it—“John, he—”

  “Shouldn’t we—I don’t know—try to find him, sir?” Thomas, slower to react than the others and as a consequence blown off his feet by the blast, picked himself up and dusted himself off.

  “I doubt there’ll be much to find,” Jamie said, raking his fingers through his hair to rid it of any burning cinders. “A timely arrival, Mr. Carson. Well done.”

  “Yes—I’m obliged to you, Harry.” Pickett looked up from brushing smoldering embers from Julia’s skirt. “Julia, this is Harry Carson of the Foot Patrol. Harry—my wife, Mrs. Pickett.”

  Julia extended her hand. “How do you do, Mr. Carson? I’m sorry we should have to meet under such circumstances, but given the outcome, I can’t complain. I don’t like to think about what might have happened if you hadn’t distracted Mr. Hetherington when you did.”

  Even in her disheveled condition, Julia was a far cry from the wealthy, middle-aged woman Carson had envisioned. He supposed he ought to tell her that his appearance on the scene had been nothing more than a happy accident, that he’d resented being left out of whatever action had apparently taken place, since firearms were no longer needed. But his prowess with the fairer sex seemed to have deserted him, and he could do no more than stare at the lady and stammer, “I—I—I—”

  “I daresay the neighbors will soon see the smoke and come to offer assistance in putting the fire out, or at least stopping it from spreading,” Jamie said, eyeing the heap of burning boards and splintered beams. “I think we’d better agree on what, and how much, to tell them about what took place here.”

  “Flynn is still free!” Julia exclaimed in sudden recollection. “Bohannan is dead—Mr. Hetherington shot him when he spoke up in my defense—but Flynn has gone to procure a wagon and team. They were to deliver the powder to Dublin today. I think—I think they intended to blow up Dublin Castle, and then the wharves along the Liffey.”

  “I suppose that would make sense, from the revolutionaries’ perspective,” Jamie said, nodding. “Move on the castle, then take out the wharves and prevent any troops from landing to put down the revolt.”

  “They won’t do it with this powder, anyway,” Pickett observed breathlessly, glancing at all that remained of the stockpile. “Still, I don’t doubt Flynn will find himself a new band of conspirators. Who knows? Someday they just might succeed.”

  “You think Ireland will become a separate country someday, like America?” asked Thomas, regarding his employer curiously, as if wondering whether the stresses of the previous days had been sufficient to disorder his senses.

  “They keep—coming back,” he pointed out, panting. “No matter how many times they rebel—how harshly the rebellion is put down—they keep coming back.”

  “What I’d like to know,” Carson put in, returning to the subject at hand, “is why the devil didn’t you shoot him, when you had the chance?”

  Pickett looked at Julia, and although his face white and strained, his eyes were filled with love. “I didn’t want to be like him.”

  “John!” she cried, her gratitude and relief quickly turning to dismay. “You’re bleeding!”

  “Yes—he got me—in the shoulder.” Pickett observed with detached interest the blood that ran down his fingers and dripped onto the ground, collecting in a bright red pool at his feet. “It’s all right—I’m perfectly fine—I’m—perfectly—”

  Jamie caught him as he fell.

  20

  In Which John Pickett Must Make a Decision

  “Well, I suppose this is it,” Pickett said, turning away from the mirror with one last look at his reflection—or as much as he could see of it over Thomas, who hovered about giving one last-minute tweak to his cravat, brushing an imaginary speck of lint from the collar of his plum-colored coat, and, finally, straightening the folds of the cotton gauze looped about Pickett’s neck, in which his left arm reposed. “The sling rather spoils the effect, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” protested Julia, to whom this query had been addressed. “You look quite heroic. And when one considers that you sustained the injury in uncovering a treasonous plot, well!—His Royal Highness can’t help but be impressed. Am I not right, Thomas?”

  “Aye, ma’am, that you are.” There had been no further talk of putting his name forward at Bow Street, for since Pickett had been injured, Thomas had been in his element, having seized the rare opportunity to perform those tasks for his master that Pickett could not, at least for the nonce, perform for himself.

  “Thank you, Thomas, that will be all,�
� Pickett said in a voice that brooked no argument. Alone with Julia at last, he wrapped his good arm about her waist. “You’re wrong on one point, you know. I sustained the injury in rescuing my wife,” he said, punctuating this statement with a kiss.

  “You know that, and I know that, but if the Prince of Wales chooses to believe otherwise, who are we to point out his error?” Her flirtatious smile faded, and she continued hesitantly, and in a more serious voice. “John, do you remember when we were in the Lake District, and you promised that whatever reward you received for the case would be mine to do with as I wished?”

  “Yes, what of it?” She didn’t answer at once, so he forced a smile and continued. “Although I’ll admit that I was thinking of pounds sterling at the time. I never expected the reward to be anything like this.”

  “No.” She blinked back the tears that never seemed to be far away these days, now that she was in the family way. “Nor did I.”

  “What’s all this?” he asked in some alarm, releasing her in order to fumble in the breast pocket of his coat for a handkerchief. Finding what he sought, he shook it out and made an awkward, one-handed attempt at drying her tears.

  “It’s nothing.” She took the handkerchief from him and finished the job properly. “I’ve become a veritable watering-pot lately! Please, pay me no heed. It’s only that—John, darling, I’m so terribly proud of you. You know that, don’t you?”

  He knew, although he had no illusions as to his own worthiness to be held in such high regard. But because he loved her, he would do his best to try to deserve it, even if it meant giving up this place where they had been so happy. It was odd, in a way. Only a few months ago, he’d been intimidated by this tall, narrow house in Curzon Street, and wanted nothing more than to return to the shabby two-room flat in Drury Lane where they had spent the first week of their marriage. But at some point it had become home—their home, where they’d lived and loved and where, someday, their child would be born and would grow up.