Too Hot to Handel

by Sheri Cobb South

  She flung herself across Pickett’s recumbent form. “No! I won’t let you!”

  “Mrs. Pickett—”

  “Mr. Colquhoun said you would be different, but you’re just like that other one! Now, get out!”

  His brow puckered. “What ‘other one,’ ma’am, if I may ask?”

  “Mr. Portman, the surgeon who saw him first. He wanted to shave his head and drill a hole in his skull, and—and—and I wouldn’t let him, and I won’t let you, either!”

  “I should think not!” exclaimed the doctor, appalled. “It sounds barbaric! Mrs. Pickett, I have no intention of drilling any holes in anything, least of all your husband’s head. I merely wish to get a good look at the injury, and to do this, I must cut away some of the hair covering it. It may need to be sutured, and I have found that if hair is caught inside, the wound is more likely to become infected, which is always the greatest danger in cases where the skin is broken. I assure you,” he added, seeing her beginning to waver, “I will cut no more than is absolutely necessary.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and studied Pickett’s expressionless face as if searching for answers there.

  “All right,” she said at last, brushing the long brown curls back from his forehead with gentle fingers. “But may I—may I have the lock of hair you cut?”

  The physician smiled kindly and proffered the scissors. “Ma’am, you may wield them yourself, if you wish.”

  She thanked Mr. Gilroy but declined his offer, well aware that her hands were shaking far too badly to attempt so delicate an operation. Instead, she watched as the doctor snipped away a lock of Pickett’s hair, leaving a shorn spot about the size of a shilling on his scalp. When he had finished, she accepted the lock of hair and tied it with one of the ribbons from her ruined blue dress. While the physician continued his work, she fetched a handkerchief from Pickett’s linen drawer and folded the token inside, then tucked it into her bodice.

  When she turned back toward the bed, the doctor was just straightening up, having cleaned Pickett’s wound and wrapped his head in a smaller and rather neater bandage.

  “Well, Mr. Gilroy?” she prompted him. “How—how is he?”

  The physician did not answer at once, but gestured toward the door leading to the outer room. Julia followed him, and once they were out of the bedroom, the doctor closed the door.

  “Can he hear us?” she asked.

  “It is difficult to say. There have been cases where the patient awakened and was able to recount in great detail conversations that had taken place while he was apparently insensible. In other cases, the newly awakened patient seemed unaware of anything that had taken place, not even the passage of time.” He hesitated a moment before continuing in quite a different tone of voice. “And in others, I fear, the patient never woke up at all or, perhaps worse, awoke only to live out the rest of his life in an infantile state, unable to speak or even to care for himself in the most basic ways.”

  Feeling suddenly ill, Julia groped for the nearest chair and sank down heavily upon it. “And—and is this what you believe will be the case with Mr. Pickett?”

  “Not at all,” he assured her hastily. “In fact, it is far too early for me to make any such prediction. But while we must certainly hope for the best, I must caution you to be prepared for the worst.”

  She made a little whimpering noise and, hugging Pickett’s coat more tightly around her, began rocking back and forth.

  “On a more positive note, I could introduce you to a colleague of mine who believes that in cases such as this, where the patient is apparently unresponsive, there is a great deal taking place inside the body that we cannot see. He claims the body is actually rallying its defenses to fight its way back to health, much as an army might beat a strategic retreat in order to regroup and go on the attack.”

  “Like our own army at Corunna a month ago?” asked Julia with a skeptical twist of her lips. “That retreat, as I recall, did not end so well.”

  “Alas, too true,” he acknowledged with a sigh. “And in just the same way, the body may or may not be successful in its fight. I do not wish to distress you, Mrs. Pickett, but I wonder if you will tell me exactly what befell your husband. I believe he was injured in the fire last night?”

  “Yes.” She forced herself to speak, and found that the effort of framing a coherent reply served to calm her. “It was when the roof fell. Something struck him in the head. I suppose a board or something must have been thrown from the burning building by the force of the crash.”

  The physician frowned thoughtfully. “How very odd! God knows I am no expert, but I should have thought that the force would have been directed inward, rather than outward.”

  Now that Julia thought of it, she did not recall any such charred plank or timber lying on the ground nearby. Surely any piece of wood capable of striking a man with sufficient force to render him unconscious must have been large enough to be easily seen and identified.

  “In fact,” the doctor continued, “if you had not told me otherwise, I would have assumed—but I must not speculate.”

  “You would have assumed what, Mr. Gilroy?” asked Lady Fieldhurst, her curiosity by now thoroughly engaged.

  “Look here, Mrs. Pickett,” he said reluctantly, as if the words were being dragged from his unwilling throat, “when I cleaned your husband’s wound, I removed several black splinters embedded in the flesh.”

  She nodded. “I see. From the board, or whatever it was that struck him.”

  “That is just it, ma’am. The black color was not that of charred timber, but of wood, which at some time had been painted.”

  Julia, picturing the opulent interior of the doomed theatre, recalled a great deal of cream, crimson, and gilding, but little if any black. “What are you saying?”

  “If I had not heard an accounting of your husband’s injury from your own lips, Mrs. Pickett, I would have sworn that he had been deliberately struck in the head.”

  CHAPTER 8

  IN WHICH LADY FIELDHURST CONFRONTS TWO VERY DIFFERENT ADVERSARIES

  The doctor left her with instructions to try and get water or broth down Pickett’s throat, should he awaken, along with a tall black bottle containing laudanum, which she might administer should he appear to be in great pain. And yet these were not the words that filled Julia’s thoughts long after the physician had gone. Had I not heard an accounting of your husband’s injury from your own lips, Mrs. Pickett . . . But what if her accounting had been inaccurate? It was true that she had been present when the accident—if accident it was—had taken place, but she had been tucked safely under Mr. Pickett’s arm and had seen nothing. In fact, she had been unaware that anything untoward had occurred until he had fallen, bearing her to the pavement beneath his weight. Was it possible she had been mistaken, and the blow to Mr. Pickett’s head had been the result of a deliberate attack? But who would have done such a thing?

  The answer was obvious: The same person who had planted stolen diamonds in his pocket. Which raised another disturbing possibility: Mr. Pickett had said his presence at the theatre that night—had it really been only twelve hours ago?—was supposed to be inconspicuous. In fact, his entire reason for inviting her to accompany him was so that he might be less likely to attract attention, either by committing some faux pas or simply by occupying a box in solitary splendor. And yet it appeared that someone must have recognized him, someone who had reason to do him harm.

  Who could it be? To be sure, Mr. Pickett had achieved a certain notoriety during his investigation into her husband’s murder, but even the caricatures that had appeared in the windows of the Oxford Street print shops would not have been sufficiently accurate to allow a stranger to identify him in a crowd. The first examples of the caricaturists’ art had been deliberately insulting, presenting Mr. Pickett as a lecherous buffoon in the familiar red waistcoat of the Bow Street foot patrol (from which he had been promoted almost a year earlier—an inaccuracy that, to her mind, spoke volume
s about the artists’ integrity); the later prints, published immediately after he had cleared her name, had depicted him as possessing all the more heroic physical characteristics of a Greek god. In fact, in the days following the trial she had donned a veiled bonnet and traveled incognito to Oxford Street to purchase one of these prints for herself, and it was even now discreetly tucked away in the bottom drawer of her writing desk. She had not been entirely certain at the time of her own reasons for making this clandestine purchase; looking back, she wondered if she had been rather more taken with her rescuer than she was willing to admit. Still, she doubted that anyone unacquainted with Mr. Pickett could have successfully identified him from a likeness that even she must admit was excessively flattering.

  No, someone at the theatre that night had seen Mr. Pickett and had recognized not only the man himself, but also his purpose in being there, as evidenced by the appearance of the diamonds. Perhaps she had been wrong not to turn them over to Mr. Colquhoun at once; clearly there were forces at work here far beyond her power to understand.

  She returned to the bedroom where Pickett lay, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Mr. Pickett?” She shook him by the shoulder as firmly as she dared, not wishing to jostle or otherwise disturb his abused head. “Mr. Pickett! John, you must wake up. Something is happening here, something frightening, and I don’t know what do. Please, darling, please wake up!”

  There was no response. She rose from the bed with a sigh and turned away. As she reached the door, however, a slight sound caught her attention. She whirled back toward the bed. The blankets stirred with the movement of Pickett’s legs beneath them.

  “John!” She flew back to his bedside and perched on the edge of the mattress. “John, can you hear me?”

  “Foot . . .” he rasped, shifting his shoulders from side to side. “Foot . . .”

  “Which foot, darling?”

  She knew he had landed heavily upon their descent from the box; in fact, she rather suspected she had landed on his ankle, and he had been too gallant to say so. But which foot was it? She remembered him limping heavily, but could not recall which side he had favored. She pulled up the blankets at the end of the bed to expose his bare feet. There was no obvious injury, nothing like the wound on his head, but was his left ankle perhaps just a bit swollen? She closed her fingers around it and began to massage it gently. There was something disturbingly intimate about the act, and it occurred to her that in six years of marriage she had rarely seen Lord Fieldhurst’s bare feet; certainly she had never handled them in so familiar a manner.

  “Foot . . .” Pickett breathed, and slipped back into whatever nether world from which he had come.

  “John? John!”

  She received no response, but she felt hope for the first time since the dreadful moment when he had fallen. Surely the doctor’s worst fears, those of a man still living yet trapped in an infantile state, were proven groundless! While she would do much to spare Mr. Pickett pain, she was convinced the fact that he could feel it at all, much less express it, was reason to be encouraged.

  A knock sounded on the door, and she went to answer it with a much lighter heart.

  “Thomas! Thank heaven you’ve—”

  It was not her footman at the door, however, but a sharp-faced young woman with dark curls beneath a ghastly purple bonnet. Both women stared at one another for a long moment before the newcomer demanded in far from refined accents, “Who are you, and what are you doing in John Pickett’s flat?”

  Lady Fieldhurst recognized the caller at once, having seen her at Drury Lane Theatre on an earlier occasion—and in the company of Mr. Pickett, at that—but she refused to give the girl the satisfaction of knowing this. “I might ask you the same thing,” she responded at her aristocratic best.

  The visitor lifted her pointed chin. “I’m Lucy Higgins. You might say as how I’m his dolly-moppet.”

  “Indeed?” responded Julia in a voice that could have frozen water. “Julia Fieldhurst Pickett. You might say as how I’m his wife.”

  Lucy, however, was less than impressed with this revelation. “Oh, I know all about that,” she said, dismissing the fact of Pickett’s “marriage” with a wave of her hand as she brushed past the viscountess into the room. “Say, where is he? I wanted to know what he thought about the fire last—gorblimey!” She drew up short on the threshold of the bedroom door, staring within at the still form lying in the bed, his head swathed in bandages.

  “I should have liked to know what he thought about it, too, but it appears our curiosity will go unsatisfied, at least for the nonce,” said Lady Fieldhurst, joining her at the bedroom door.

  “What—what happened to him?” Lucy asked softly, as if fearful of waking him.

  “He was at the theatre last night when the blaze broke out. We both were. He was struck in the head during our escape.” There was more, of course—much more—but she had no intention of confiding in the girl, no matter how sincere her attachment to Mr. Pickett.

  “And you?” Lucy regarded her incredulously. “You’re nursing him?”

  “Can you think of anyone better entitled to do so? I am his wife, so far as the law is concerned.”

  “His wife!” Lucy gave a snort of derision. “Well, that’s as may be, your ladyship, but I don’t mind telling you, I don’t think much of any woman who would make a fellow claim his little soldier won’t stand to attention, so to speak, just for the sake of letting her wriggle off the hook!”

  To Julia’s mind, that was the worst part of the annulment procedure, but she was not about to discuss the matter with a girl of Lucy’s stamp. In fact, she was surprised and more than a little disturbed to know that Mr. Pickett would confide in the girl on a matter of such intimacy.

  “He—he told you?”

  Lucy shrugged. “He had to unburden himself to someone, didn’t he?”

  Julia supposed she should be glad he’d apparently chosen to confide in Lucy rather than Mr. Colquhoun, who until quite recently had believed her to be amusing herself at Mr. Pickett’s expense. If the magistrate had known what she was asking of his protégé in order to procure an annulment, he would never forgive her. And she wasn’t sure she would blame him.

  She sighed. “I don’t like it either, Lucy, but there are no other grounds by which we might obtain an annulment.” Seeing Lucy was not convinced, she added, “I don’t make the laws, you know. I’m bound by them just like everyone else.”

  Lucy sniffed derisively, and Julia was annoyed at her own urge to defend her actions to this impertinent female.

  “I should have thought you would be happy to see the marriage annulled by whatever means possible,” she said tartly. “After all, that will leave him free for you.”

  Lucy gave a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, I couldn’t have him, even if he was to be free tomorrow.” She glanced back toward the bed, and her expression grew wistful. “Not that I blame him, mind you. He’s too good for the likes of me.”

  Julia knew she should not ask. She had no right to discuss his most intimate affairs with a relative stranger. Still, it was the question on which the annulment hung, so it might be argued that she had some right to the information. Besides which, she might never have a better opportunity to hear the answer from someone who would have every reason to know. “Lucy, is it true that he’s never—that is, that he—that he’s—”

  “That he’s a virgin? It’s true so far as I know—although I’ve tried my best to change that. I would’ve done it for free, too, but he wouldn’t take me up on it, not even to put a stop to the annulment once and for all.” She bent a sharp look upon Julia. “He said he was tempted, but that he didn’t want to trap you.”

  Julia was conscious of a profound sense of relief, one that had little to do with the annulment. “Believe me, Lucy, if there were any other way to annul the marriage, I would be quick to seize upon it. I am fully aware of the debt I owe him.”

  “And yet you’re too fine a lady to marry a
man who thinks you hung the moon.” Lucy’s tone made it clear that the words were not a compliment to Julia’s breeding.

  “Who are you to judge me, you insolent girl? You know nothing about my life, nothing at all!”

  After all, how could Lucy possibly understand? If she were to marry Mr. Pickett, her status in the world would take an enormous leap forward. Besides becoming a respectable woman, she would have a husband to support her, a husband whose twenty-five shillings a week must seem like vast riches compared to Lucy’s own dubiously derived earnings.

  Julia, on the other hand, would be ostracized from Society and given the cut direct by all her friends. Surely no one would expect her to make such a sacrifice; Mr. Pickett, at least, did not.

  It was perhaps fortunate that a knock on the door interrupted a conversation that had become uncomfortably personal. Julia hurried to answer it, and found Thomas standing just outside with a wicker basket in one hand and a large paper-wrapped parcel under his arm.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady,” he began, looking over her shoulder at Lucy. “I can come back later—”

  “Not at all,” she said hastily. “Miss Higgins was just leaving.”

  Lucy tossed her head and swept from the room, leaving Thomas to follow the sway of her hips with an appreciative gleam in his eye.

  “Thank you, Thomas—Thomas!”

  His mistress’s voice recalled him to the task at hand, and he surrendered his burdens. “Mr. Rogers asked me to say on behalf of the staff that we’re all glad you were unharmed by the fire, my lady, and we hope Mr. Pickett is soon restored to health,” he said with the air of one reciting a prepared speech.

  “Please convey my thanks to the staff,” she responded. “I fear I may be asking a great deal from all of you over the next several days. I promise you will be well recompensed for the extra work.”

  Thomas left her with assurances that all the staff were willing, even eager, to do their bit. After he had gone, she tore into the parcel in search of something to wear. Great was her indignation when she discovered that every gown inside was the unrelieved black of deepest mourning; Smithers, it seemed, had not forgiven her lapse of the previous evening. Well, Julia thought, she would not have it! If—no, when— Mr. Pickett awoke, he would not imagine himself to be attending his own funeral!