Too Hot to Handel

by Sheri Cobb South

  She nodded. “Barely, but yes.”

  He closed his eyes. “Thank God! Where is he? May I see him?”

  “Of course. Come in.”

  She stepped back and allowed him to enter, then led the way to the bedroom where Pickett lay motionless, his head swathed in bandages. Mr. Colquhoun drew up short on the threshold.

  “Good God!”

  “He was struck on the head when the roof collapsed.” Her gaze fell on the pile of bloodied clothing on the floor, and she remembered it had been hired for the evening. “He was bleeding heavily. I’m afraid I had to use his cravat to fashion a bandage, and I cut his shirt off rather than try to pull it over his head.”

  Mr. Colquhoun followed her gaze to the blood-soaked garments, but his tailor’s wrath was not uppermost in his mind. “And I told him not to spill anything on them,” he said unsteadily. “I never dreamed the only thing ‘spilled’ would be his own blood!”

  “Mr. Colquhoun, I hope you will allow me to square things with your tailor.”

  He shook his head. “No, my lady, there’s no need for that. Mr. Pickett was injured in the performance of his duty. The department will cover the expenses—although I may be obliged to place a large order with my tailor, if I am ever to be restored to his good graces.”

  She smiled a little at this not entirely successful attempt at humor. “If it will help, you may tell your tailor from me that he outdid himself. Mr. Pickett looked quite splendid.”

  “Aye, he did at that, didn’t he?” His smile faded as he regarded the still figure in the bed. “He’s a good lad. I would hate to lose him.”

  “So would I,” she said softly.

  “It was kind of you to stay with him,” Mr. Colquhoun said. “I’ll arrange for someone to relieve you as soon as may be, and you can return home. I’ll send a hackney for you, shall I?”

  “No!” The word came out more forcefully than she had intended. “That is, I thank you for your generous offer, Mr. Colquhoun, but it is unnecessary. I won’t leave him. Nor will I entrust him to anyone else’s care,” she added, thinking of the surgeon she had so recently routed.

  He opened his mouth as if prepared to argue the point, but apparently thought better of it. “Very well, then, if you insist.” He paused for a moment before adding uncomfortably, “Look here, my lady, I hate to ask, but there’s some fellow at Bow Street claiming a madwoman at this address threatened him with a knife.”

  “Oh.” She gave a shaky little laugh that held more of hysteria than humor. “I’m afraid that would be me. It was the surgeon, you see. He—he was going to shave Mr. Pickett’s head and—and drill a hole—a hole in his skull and—and—”

  They came again, the tears that were never far away. Mr. Colquhoun put his arms around her and patted her awkwardly on the back while she sobbed onto his shoulder. “There, there, my lady, he’s young and strong. He may pull through yet.”

  At length she extricated herself from his embrace and looked up at him, her expression tortured. “Mr. Colquhoun, that surgeon—Mr. Portman—he said if I refused to let him operate, Mr. Pickett’s death would be on my head. Tell me, did I do the wrong thing in sending him away?”

  “I think it much more likely that you saved the boy’s life—although for how long is anyone’s guess.” He hesitated a moment, then added in gruff tones, “I believe I owe you an apology, my lady. I once accused you of toying with Mr. Pickett’s affections.”

  She shook her head and dabbed at her eyes. “No, you were quite right to speak to me as you did. At the time, I had no thought of—I should have scoffed at the notion that—” She broke off and looked down at Pickett’s slumbering form, then bent to brush a brown curl away from his forehead. “He has a way of slipping past one’s defenses.”

  The magistrate followed her gaze to his youngest Runner, and nodded. “He does, I’ll not deny it.”

  There seemed to be nothing to say to this observation, so Lady Fieldhurst reached for the torn and blood-stained gown lying on the floor. “You may sit with him, if you wish. I’ll just go into the other room and make myself presentable.” She wrinkled her nose. “If this garment can be so described.”

  “Pshaw! I’ve daughters older than you, so you need not put that thing back on for my sake. I would like to sit with him awhile, if you’ve no objection, and when I leave I should be happy to deliver a message to your servants with a list of your requirements, if you wish.”

  “I should be most grateful, Mr. Colquhoun. I shall make out a list at once.”

  The magistrate returned to the outer room to fetch a chair, while Lady Fieldhurst cast about in her mind for where in the small flat she might find paper and pencil for writing out a list of her immediate needs. She recalled that Pickett carried a small notebook—an occurrence book, he called it—in the inside breast pocket of his coat, and she picked up the ruined blue coat he had worn the previous night and reached into its pocket. Her fingers located both notebook and pencil, as well as something else that her mind immediately rejected as impossible. She drew it out, and found herself staring at a necklace set with the largest diamonds she had ever seen.

  “Oh, John,” she breathed, glancing from the diamonds to the still figure on the bed. “What have you done?”

  CHAPTER 7

  WHICH INTRODUCES MR. THOMAS GILROY, PHYSICIAN

  A moment’s reflection was sufficient to convince Julia that, appearances to the contrary, Mr. Pickett had done nothing at all, at least insofar as the Princess Olga’s diamonds were concerned. Granted, she knew all about his past as a juvenile pickpocket; Mr. Colquhoun had told her some months earlier, while practically in the same breath accusing her of amusing herself at Mr. Pickett’s expense. But whatever Mr. Pickett had been forced to do in his younger days, whether to keep food in his belly or to please a father who was apparently a habitual ne’er-do-well, she knew what sort of man he was. And she knew—she knew— he never would have resorted to theft now, not even to make himself a wealthy man and, therefore, a more acceptable husband to a woman above his station . . .

  Stop it, she told herself firmly. Mr. Pickett had not stolen the diamonds, and that was the end of it. Unfortunately, there remained the question of how they had come to be in his pocket. Had they been stolen already and had he, perhaps, already recovered them? She dismissed this hopeful notion at once. They had been together the entire time, except for the few minutes she had been in the cloak room, and that hadn’t been nearly long enough; to be sure, John Pickett was good at his work—as she had reason to know—but no one was that good.

  There was only one thing to do. She would give the diamonds to Mr. Colquhoun, and let him sort it out. She let the ruined blue coat fall to the floor and rose to her feet with the diamonds in her hand, then turned to the magistrate.

  She froze where she stood. Mr. Colquhoun had drawn up a chair next to the side of the bed and sat there holding Mr. Pickett’s limp hand in his. The magistrate’s shoulders were slumped, and it seemed to Julia that he had aged years since she had seen him in Scotland the previous October. It seemed almost indecent to witness the man’s silent grief. Feeling like a voyeur, she began to back quietly from the room.

  But apparently not quietly enough.

  “In my profession,” Mr. Colquhoun said, his gaze never leaving the unconscious young man in the bed, “you learn very quickly that you can’t save them all. Still, if I could save only one, I’m glad it was this one.”

  She could not add to his burden by introducing the possibility that his reformed pickpocket was perhaps not quite so reformed, after all. She slipped the diamonds into the inside breast pocket of the brown coat she still wore, and crossed the room to stand beside him.

  “You are much attached to Mr. Pickett, are you not?”

  “I could not love the boy more if he were my own son.”

  She laid her hand on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze of silent sympathy. If he noticed the gesture, he gave no sign.

  “He looks so v
ery young,” the magistrate continued. “Scarcely older than when I sent his father to Botany Bay.”

  Lady Fieldhurst could not agree. Yes, he was young, but it had been no boy who had carried her down a makeshift rope on his back while fire raged all around them. Nor, for that matter, had it been a boy whom she had stripped and bathed, but she could hardly make such an observation to Mr. Colquhoun.

  Almost as if he had read her thoughts, the magistrate turned away from Pickett to ask, “If I may be so bold, my lady, who undressed him and put him to bed?”

  She lifted her chin and said with a hint of defiance, “I did.”

  To her surprise, Mr. Colquhoun smiled. “He’s going to hate that, you know, when he wakes up and finds out.”

  She could have kissed him for saying “when” and not “if.”

  “I wonder,” she said, answering the magistrate’s smile with a mischievous one of her own, “would it make things better or worse if I were to assure him that I saw nothing to give me a disgust of his person?”

  “Oh, decidedly worse,” he said, chuckling. He heaved himself up from the chair. “I’d best be getting back to Bow Street. It promises to be a busy day, but I’ll look in on him again as soon as I’m able.”

  She nodded. She hated letting the Bow Street force labor in ignorance, but she dared not reveal John Pickett’s possession of the diamonds until she’d had time to consider the matter more carefully.

  Mr. Colquhoun glanced down at the still figure on the bed. “I’ll have my own physician stop by to take a look at him, shall I? Besides being an old friend, Thomas Gilroy trained in Edinburgh in both medicine and surgery.” Seeing rejection writ large on her expressive countenance, he added, “He needs medical care, my lady, and I promise you he could not be placed in better hands.”

  She considered the offer with obvious reluctance before reaching a conclusion almost against her will. “Yes, please.”

  “You will not regret it, I assure you. Now, if you’ve finished with that list, I’ll see that it’s delivered.”

  It took her a moment to remember that she was supposed to be making a list of anything she needed her servants to send. The discovery of the diamonds in Mr. Pickett’s coat had driven everything else out of her mind. “I’m afraid I haven’t even started it,” she confessed. “I haven’t any paper, and don’t know where he might keep it.”

  “Pray allow me.”

  Mr. Colquhoun reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a notebook similar to the one Mr. Pickett carried. He offered it to her, and she detached the tiny pencil and jotted down her immediate needs. Clean clothes, of course, and a toothbrush. A brush for her hair, as well as hairpins to replace the ones she’d lost. Decent tea would be nice, along with something to eat. Last but by no means least, a warming pan for Mr. Pickett’s bed.

  Having completed her inventory, she handed the list back to the magistrate. “Thank you, sir. It is good of you to take the trouble.”

  He waved away her thanks. “Not at all. The least I can do, under the circumstances.” He looked down at Pickett, still unmoving. “You’ll take care of him?”

  “I will.” The two simple words carried the weight of a solemn vow.

  He subjected her to a long, searching look, then, apparently satisfied with what he saw, gave a nod and took his leave.

  Left alone to wait for the doctor, she decided the first order of business was finding something to do with the diamonds. It would not do for them to be found in Mr. Pickett’s possession before she’d decided how to handle the situation. She glanced around the small room in search of a hiding place, and settled on a rickety chest of drawers in one corner. She pulled open the top drawer (grimacing at the screech of ill-fitting wood on wood) and found herself looking at Mr. Pickett’s linens. Two folded shirts held pride of place in the center of the drawer, with as many cravats on the left and several pairs of stockings on the right. She slipped the diamonds underneath the pile of stockings, noting as she did so the hole in the toe of one and the ladder in another.

  She bent a stern gaze upon the still figure in the bed. “Your stockings are in a deplorable state, Mr. Pickett,” she scolded. “You need a woman to take care of you—and I don’t mean Mrs. Catchpole!”

  Nor, for that matter, did she mean the brazen creature in the bilious purple bonnet who had accompanied him to the theatre on that earlier occasion, while as for Emily Dunnington’s former housemaid, Dulcie—well, the less said about her, the better. Really, thought Julia, the man had an absolute genius for attracting women who weren’t good enough for him.

  Having disposed of the diamonds, at least temporarily, there was nothing for her to do but await the doctor’s arrival. She tugged Pickett’s brown coat more closely around her, noting the early-morning chill in the room; the fire had died in the night. She instinctively looked ’round for a bell pull, then remembered that Mr. Pickett would not have the luxury of summoning a servant. If she wanted a fire, she would have to build it herself. She had seen her servants perform this task a thousand times, but never paid particularly close attention to how it was done. She knew how to light her own bedside candle, however; how different could it be?

  With this argument to give her confidence, she identified the coal scuttle next to the hearth, and was thankful to find it full; she would have had no idea how to obtain more, had it been empty. She dumped a pile of coals over the ashes of last night’s blaze, sending up a cloud of dust that sent her into a fit of coughing. Having accomplished this small feat, she struck the flint, but by the time she set it to the coal, the spark was extinguished. A second attempt fared no better, nor did a third. Clearly, lighting a candle and starting a fire were not so similar as she had supposed.

  Lighting a candle . . .

  Inspiration dawned. She rose and lit the candle on Pickett’s bedside table, then picked it up and, sheltering the tiny flame with her cupped hand, carried it across the room to the hearth. Here she knelt and held the candle to the coals, snatching her hand back as soon as the flame caught. Or such had been her intention. In her determination to avoid singed fingers, however, she had not held the flame to the coals long enough. Worse, her abrupt movement in withdrawing the candle had caused its flame to go out. Heaving a sigh, she relit the candle and repeated the process. Gingerly, she tried again, and again, and on the fourth attempt the coals finally ignited.

  She stood up and dusted her hands, congratulating herself on achieving this minor victory, then glanced about the small flat. It was surprising to discover that, although she had no doubts about John Pickett’s integrity—even to the point of exonerating him of jewel theft in the teeth of all evidence—she really knew very little of the minutiae of his life. She supposed he must do the same things any other man would do: there on the washstand, for instance, was the bowl and pitcher from which he must wash every day, and she supposed the spotted mirror that hung above it from a rusty nail would reflect back his face every morning as he shaved. She glanced back at him, and saw the faintest shadow on his jaw. His beard was not heavy—little more than peach fuzz, in fact—and for this she was grateful. The poor man had suffered enough without having his throat slit by her inexperienced attempts to shave him.

  She wandered from the bedroom into the larger outer room, and here too she found fodder for her growing curiosity. The mismatched cups hanging from hooks above the table, for instance: Did he ever entertain visitors to tea? She rejected the mental image of the purple-bonneted girl from the theatre sitting at Mr. Pickett’s table, sipping tea with her pinkie finger extended. Perhaps, Julia told herself hopefully, he owned three cups simply to spare himself the constant washing of one. To give her thoughts a happier direction, she turned her attention to the little collection of books over the mantel. Were they worn from repeated readings, or had they been purchased at secondhand? She took down a volume at random and opened it.

  “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding,” she read aloud. “Why, Mr. Pickett, you wicked
man!”

  She returned the scandalous tome to its shelf and chose another. The Vicar of Wakefield, one of her mother’s favorites. Would he be able to hear her, she wondered, if she were to read aloud?

  Her explorations were interrupted by a knock at the door. She opened it to discover a man with a black leather bag, a tall, lean man with a lined face and mild blue eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles. “Mr. Thomas Gilroy, physician,” he said, offering his card. “My longtime patient and friend, Mr. Patrick Colquhoun, sent me. I hope I have the right place, Mrs.—?”

  “Mrs. Pickett,” Julia said without hesitation. “Mrs. John Pickett. Yes, you’ve come to the right place. Won’t you come in?”

  As she stepped aside, she recalled her unorthodox costume. If she were truly Mrs. Pickett, and lived here with him as his wife, she would surely have had other garments readily to hand. “I apologize for receiving you like this, Mr. Gilroy. The fire, you see—I’ve had no time to change—”

  The physician nodded in understanding. “I have seen worse in my years of practice, Mrs. Pickett, I assure you. And the patient?”

  “My husband.” Strange, really, how easily the words came. “If you will come this way?”

  She led him into the bedroom, wondering a little at the physician’s easy acceptance of them as husband and wife. Had Mr. Colquhoun cautioned him to expect an unequally matched couple, or had the fire and its aftermath eradicated the most obvious indicators of their difference in station? Somehow this possibility was not as distressing as it should have been.

  She watched as the physician deftly unwrapped the bloodied cravat from Pickett’s head, frowning as he exposed the injury. “How—how bad is it, Doctor?”

  “It is difficult to say, at least until I can have a better look.” He opened the bag and began taking out instruments. Among the more easily identified of these were a scissors and a straight razor.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Julia, wide-eyed with apprehension.

  “First I am going to cut the hair away from the wound, then shave—”