Too Hot to Handel

by Sheri Cobb South

  “Look in the bottom of the case, Betsy,” she instructed the little maid. “No, it lifts up, you see? Yes, there.”

  “Ohhh!” breathed Betsy when she saw what lay beneath. “Oh, ma’am!”

  In fact, Julia’s response upon seeing her reflection in the looking-glass adorned with this diadem was much the same. She wondered fleetingly what Mr. Pickett would think were he to see her like this, and decided it would be much better if he did not; he would very likely decide that he was unworthy to kiss the hem of her garment, and insist upon releasing her from the marriage regardless of his own feelings in the matter. He was, as Mr. Colquhoun had noted, a rare one for the grand romantic gesture.

  Her toilette complete, Julia caught the blue velvet train over her arm and descended the stairs with care, accompanied by Betsy following from behind and Rogers hovering solicitously in front, fully prepared to catch his mistress should she trip over her hem and fall. She reached the ground without mishap, however, and allowed Rogers to hand her into the carriage that was already waiting at the door. She was soon settled within, and it seemed no time at all before she was set down in front of Grillon’s Hotel in Albemarle Street. Once inside, she asked for the Princess Olga Fyodorovna and was assured that, yes, the Russian aristocrat was indeed staying there, along with most of her retinue.

  Lady Fieldhurst sent up her card, and was ushered to a chair where she might sit while she waited for a response. She hoped she had not been overly optimistic when she had assured Mr. Colquhoun of her entrée into such rarified circles; in truth (although she suspected her Mr. Pickett would fail to appreciate the distinction), viscounts were fairly low on the ladder of aristocracy: higher than barons and baronets, certainly, but beneath earls, marquesses, and dukes. And then there were the royal dukes, laws unto themselves, who were the Princess Olga’s counterparts among the British aristocracy. Just as Julia would not have marched up to the door of St. James’s Palace and demanded admittance, she hoped she was not overstepping in calling upon the Russian princess at her hotel.

  She need not have worried. The seat of the chair had not yet grown warm beneath her when a servant with a starched apron and mob cap approached. “My Lady Fieldhurst?” she asked in charmingly accented English.

  “Yes,” Julia acknowledged, nodding her head cautiously lest the coronet be dislodged.

  “Her Royal Highness the Princess Olga Fyodorovna will see you,” the woman continued. “If you will please to follow me?”

  Julia did so, and was soon admitted to the most opulent hotel room she had ever seen. She wondered if Grillon’s rooms were always so extravagantly outfitted, or if this room was furnished with the princess’s own belongings. Either way, she had not long to consider the question, for the Princess Olga Fyodorovna sat in a chair before the fire, her gnarled, be-ringed hands resting atop the elaborately carved head of an ebony cane.

  “Your Royal Highness,” said Julia, sinking into the deep curtsey reserved for royalty. “Thank you for your willingness to receive me.”

  “Lady Fieldhurst.” The princess acknowledged Julia with a nod, then gestured toward the vacant chair adjacent to her own. “Pray be seated. I suppose you are here to talk about the theft of my jewels?”

  “I—why, yes, I am,” said Julia, somewhat taken aback by the forthright manner in which the princess raised a subject that Julia had feared might take some exercise of diplomacy to approach. “I was at the theatre that night, as well.”

  “I remember seeing you there,” stated the princess in excellent, if slightly accented, English. “You were sitting in the box opposite, with a remarkably good-looking young man. The Prince of Wales told me your identity—I was a little acquainted with your husband, having met him once or twice over the years through his connection with the Foreign Office—but of your companion, the Prince admitted he knew nothing.”

  “No, His Royal Highness would not have known Mr. Pickett. In fact, my escort that evening was one of the Bow Street Runners assigned to your protection.”

  “I see. Well then, it is a good thing he is handsome, is it not? No, don’t fire up at me, girl,” she added, seeing Julia’s kindling eye and flushed cheeks. “In all fairness, I suppose it would not have mattered how many of your Bow Street Runners were assigned to keep watch over the diamonds. If even the fire was not enough to prevent the theft, what could a mere thief-taker have done?”

  “You may be right,” Julia conceded, “but I must protest that Mr. Pickett is anything but a ‘mere thief-taker.’ ”

  “Oh?” The princess’s carefully plucked eyebrows arched toward her hairline. “And what is your handsome Bow Street Runner’s opinion of the theft?”

  Julia sighed. “Whatever he thinks, he is unable to tell us at present. He was gravely injured in escaping the fire, and although he has moments of lucidity, he is in no condition to speak of anything he may have seen.”

  “A pity,” remarked the princess. She glanced at a small table in one corner of the room, where tall white candles flanked a painted icon of a melancholy Madonna and oddly proportioned Christ child. “I shall light a candle for him, yes?”

  “I—yes, thank you,” said Julia, touched by the Russian lady’s thoughtfulness. “I should appreciate that very much.”

  The princess scowled fiercely at her. “I believe your regard for this young man goes beyond the professional, does it not? Take him as a lover if you must, but it will not do for a woman of your station to appear publicly, as you did that night, with such a person. We must hope the fire will drive from the ton’s collective memory your indiscretion at the theatre.”

  Julia felt herself blushing beneath the woman’s too-perceptive gaze. She was not ashamed to own Mr. Pickett as her husband before the world, but she had learned her lesson. The last time she had claimed to be Mrs. Pickett, she had discovered after the fact that she had embroiled them both in a legal Scottish marriage by declaration; she would not do so again without his knowledge, much less his permission.

  “I thank you for your concern, Your Royal Highness, but it is misplaced. I have committed no indiscretion. In fact, Mr. Pickett’s escort was part of the plan for safeguarding your diamonds. My presence was merely to make him appear less conspicuous in a box than he might have been alone and, if necessary, to prevent him from making any glaring errors of etiquette that might have betrayed his incognito.”

  “Ah! I see,” said the princess, and her ready acceptance of this explanation made Julia perversely determined to see that Mr. Pickett was not slighted.

  “On a personal level, however, I must own that I consider Mr. Pickett a very dear friend, and one to whom I owe a great debt. Besides rescuing me from the burning theatre, he once kept me from hanging for my husband’s murder.” Seeing her opportunity to steer the conversation away from so intimate a subject—and back to the purpose for which she had called upon the princess in the first place—she added, “That is why I have every confidence in his ability to recover your diamonds, once he is sufficiently recuperated.”

  “Then we must pray his recovery is swift,” Princess Olga said with a rasping laugh, “for I fear poor Vladimir Gregorovich has no such confidence where your Bow Street men are concerned.”

  “Vladimir Gregorovich,” echoed Julia, weighing the name against the one mentioned by Mr. Colquhoun, and finding them the same. “Would that be the large, bearded gentleman in your box that evening?”

  “Yes, and his wife Natasha was there also. She was the one wearing the diamonds on that occasion. I suppose Vladimir fears it looks bad for him, the diamonds being stolen while they were in his wife’s possession. A venerable old family, you know—he is related to the Tsarina on his mother’s side—but no money at all, more’s the pity.”

  Julia made suitable regretful noises, but her brain was awhirl. Here was motive indeed! She had some idea of how expensive continued association with the royals could be; several of her late husband’s acquaintances had made up part of the Prince of Wales’s profligate Carlton
House set, and were deeply in debt as a result. If this was the case with Vladimir Gregorovich and his wife, then the recent rash of jewel thefts plaguing London must have appeared as a godsend. What better way to recoup one’s finances than by stealing the very jewels one was supposed to be safeguarding, especially when everyone from Princess Olga to Mr. Colquhoun and his Bow Street force expected some such attempt to be made? The fire could only have made the task easier, as it would have been easy to claim they must have been stolen during the chaos surrounding the royal party’s evacuation from the burning theatre. Alas, there was still the question of how they came to end up in the pocket of Mr. Pickett’s coat.

  “It must be most distressing to his wife, the fact that the jewels were stolen while in her care,” Julia observed.

  The Princess Olga inclined her gray head. “Yes, she was quite, what do you say, hysterical when she realized they were missing. Of course, all our nerves were on edge, on account of the fire. Thank heaven that young man warned us in time!”

  “ ‘Young man’?” Julia echoed. “What young man was that?”

  Even as she asked the question, she reminded herself that it could not possibly have been Mr. Pickett, as he had never left their box. In fact, given Her Royal Highness’s advanced age, the Princess Olga might have referred to any male under the age of fifty as a “young man.”

  “I regret I never heard the fellow’s name mentioned,” the princess answered. “A great pity, for I should have liked to see that he was rewarded for his efforts on our behalf. I shall certainly speak to your Prince of Wales on the subject.”

  “What did this young man look like, your Royal Highness? What did he do that you consider deserving of a reward?”

  “He entered our box—quite uninvited, in fact, but in light of what followed, we were not inclined to stand upon ceremony—and told us the theatre was burning, and we must get out with all due haste. Which we did,” she added emphatically. “As for his appearance, it was rather, what is the word, undescript?”

  “Nondescript,” said Julia, nodding in understanding. “Unremarkable.”

  “Yes, that is so. He was somewhere between thirty and forty in years, and his hair was neither dark nor fair.”

  A rather unhelpful description, thought Julia, and one that might apply to hundreds, if not thousands, of London’s male inhabitants. Still, she had to wonder if, while he was being so helpful, the “young man” had not also helped himself to the Princess Olga’s diamonds, perhaps with their wearer’s cooperation. It would certainly be safer to enlist an outsider’s assistance than for Natasha or her husband, Vladimir, to be discovered with the stolen diamonds on their persons. Of course, in that event they could always claim to have found them. She shook her head in bewilderment. There were so many possibilities to consider! If this was the sort of thing John Pickett dealt with every day, then he earned every one of his twenty-five shillings a week, and a great deal more besides.

  “And it was after this, er, young man bade you leave the theatre that you realized the diamonds were missing?”

  “It was after we were outside, as we were being hurried into the prince’s carriage.” The princess gripped the head of her cane so tightly her knuckles turned white—reliving, no doubt, the fear and distress of that night.

  “Is it possible, then, that the diamonds were stolen while you were evacuating the theatre?”

  The princess shrugged her frail shoulders. “I suppose so. In all the confusion, any number of gems might have been stolen without our taking the slightest notice. I fear our flight from the theatre was hardly conducted in a manner befitting our rank, but dignity tends to go out the window when one’s life is in danger.”

  Julia, recalling her own skirts hitched above her knees and her legs locked tightly around Mr. Pickett’s waist, could not deny it.

  Too late, she realized she had allowed herself to be distracted by Princess Olga’s anonymous “young man,” and tried to steer the conversation back toward Vladimir Gregorovich and his wife. Alas, the princess appeared to have nothing more to say on that particular subject, and Julia was powerless to press the matter without asking questions that could only be seen as impertinent. They exchanged fruitless speculations as to the cause of the fire, the damage to the theatre and the likelihood of its being rebuilt, and as soon as she could tactfully do so, Julia took her leave. Before she returned to Pickett’s lodgings and reported her findings to Mr. Colquhoun, however, there was one more thing she wanted to do. She might not have a better opportunity, and she was not at all certain she could persuade Mr. Colquhoun to agree in any case. She inquired at the hotel desk and sent her card up to Vladimir Gregorovich’s wife, Natasha.

  Lady Fieldhurst had been gone for perhaps an hour when Pickett began to stir, muttering incoherently and thrashing to and fro beneath the blankets.

  “John?” called Mr. Colquhoun, laying aside the copy of the Times he’d brought and moving his chair nearer to the bed. “John, can you hear me?”

  Pickett’s brown eyes fluttered open. “Sir?” He turned his head from side to side, searching. “Where is—?”

  “Her ladyship will return shortly. Until then, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me. How do you feel?”

  Pickett gave a shaky laugh. “I’ve been better.”

  “You’ve looked better, too, if I may say so,” observed the magistrate. “Does your head hurt? I can give you some laudanum, if you have need of it, and I’ve been instructed to brew you a willow bark tea for the fever, if you feel you can drink it.”

  Pickett made a moue at the memory of the bitter tea, but nodded.

  “Very well, then, I’ll start some water boiling.” Mr. Colquhoun left the room long enough to put the kettle over the fire, then returned to the bedroom and administered the promised laudanum.

  “What day is it?” asked Pickett, leaning back against the pillows once the medicine was down.

  “It’s Tuesday, the last day of February.”

  “Then—the annulment—”

  “Don’t fret yourself over the annulment, lad,” counseled the magistrate, patting him on the shoulder. He believed her ladyship had been quite serious when she’d declared there was to be no annulment, but, as much as he would have liked to set Pickett’s mind at ease, that was a conversation for the two of them, and one in which he would play no part. More in the hope of diverting the boy’s mind than in the expectation of getting any new information, he asked, “Do you remember anything about the theatre? Anything before the fire, I mean. Did you notice anything suspicious, anyone acting strangely?”

  Pickett grimaced with the effort of remembering. “Before the fire—the royal box—”

  “Hold on, I believe the water for your tea is boiling,” said the magistrate, heaving himself up from his chair.

  But by the time he’d removed the kettle, added the dried willow bark, and carried the brew back to Pickett’s room, the laudanum had begun to take hold, clouding Pickett’s mind and slurring his speech.

  “Yes, John, you were saying about the theatre?” prompted Mr. Colquhoun, in between trying to coax sips of willow bark tea down his throat.

  “—The box—shouldn’t have been there—”

  “No, you shouldn’t have been there,” the magistrate said with a sigh, setting aside the willow bark tea as a lost cause. “None of you should have been there. I hold myself entirely to blame.”

  Pickett, lapsing once more into unconsciousness, made no reply.

  Lady Fieldhurst had not long to wait before she was summoned to the Russian lady’s presence.

  “Madame Gregorovich?” she asked, recalling from some long-ago lesson with her governess that Russian aristocrats used the honorifics of the French tongue, French being, she supposed, the language of diplomacy.

  “Nyet,” the woman said with raised brows. “I am Natasha Ivanova.”

  “I—I beg your pardon,” stammered Lady Fieldhurst. “I was given to understand that you were the wife of Vladimir Gregor
ovich.”

  “Da, I am Madame Dombrowskaya.”

  Lady Fieldhurst shook her head in bewilderment. “I—I’m afraid I don’t understand, Madame.” The madame part, at least, she seemed to have got right.

  The Russian lady, whatever her name was, bestowed upon her a rather condescending smile. “Our Russian names are not like your English ones. We have the patronymic, what you call the surname, da, but it is different for men and women. My husband, he is Vladimir Gregorovich Dombrowsky because he is the son of Gregor Dombrowsky. Me, I am Natasha Ivanova Dombrowskaya. Ivanova because I am the daughter of Ivan, and Dombrowskaya because I am the wife of Monsieur Dombrowsky.”

  “I see,” murmured Lady Fieldhurst, although in fact she was thoroughly confused. She supposed it must be easier for the Russians, as they would have been taught these distinctions from childhood. She wondered if the unspoken rules governing the British aristocracy were equally baffling to Mr. Pickett, who would have had no governess or tutor to instruct him as a youth; she decided they must be, recalling his small yet undeniable missteps at the theatre. And while there was no one to know of her own errors except for Madame Dombrowskaya (or whatever her name was), he had been obliged to enact his rôle as a gentleman in full view of over three thousand people—and save for one or two minor miscues, had carried it off as one to the manner born. The realization made her admire him all the more. It could not have been easy for him to navigate such unfamiliar waters, and for the first time she realized she was asking a great deal of him, to give up the familiar in favor of a more privileged yet alien way of life. She made a private vow that she would never give him cause to regret it.