Peril by Post

by Sheri Cobb South

  “And what did Julia think about her unexpected wetting?” he asked, entranced by this glimpse of the early life of not only his wife, but his sister- and brother-in-law as well.

  Julia smiled. “I was delighted at the chance to swim without Mama present to insist that I behave like a lady! I don’t remember it very well, but I’ve been told that I refused to climb back into the boat once it was righted, and eventually Lord Buckleigh’s head groom was obliged to threaten to come in after me and remove me by main force—or, worse, to send word back to Mama. But I paid for my little act of rebellion in the end, for I contracted a horrid cold and had to stay in bed for a week.”

  Pickett had been engaged in fastening the oars in the locks, but at this interesting prospect, he looked up from his task and regarded her speculatively. “In bed for a week, you say?”

  “Yes, but I suffered fits of sneezing, and my nose was all runny and red. So if you have any idea of following Jamie’s example, I give you fair warning that it will profit you nothing, and I should very likely stop speaking to you as well.”

  “Oh, in that case—” He dismissed the notion with a shrug, and took up the oars.

  He had been given brief instructions from the man who hired out the boat, and although he tried to bear these in mind, the business of rowing proved more difficult than it appeared. It seemed somehow wrong, sitting with his back to the direction in which he wished to go, and when he drew his hands down to lift the oars from the water, the one on the left shot up with such force that both he and Julia were showered with spray.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as she wiped a drop of water from her cheek with the back of one hand, “but I did warn you.”

  Eventually Pickett was able to achieve some sort of rhythm, and soon they were bobbing pleasantly over the water, leaving the pier farther and farther behind. The lake was long, narrow, and slightly bowed in shape as it curved around the foot of the fell. As they rounded the bend, the village disappeared from view, leaving the impression that they were completely alone in the wild and picturesque landscape. Pickett decided his wife might have had the right idea after all.

  “It is nice, isn’t it?” Julia said. Safely out of sight of the inn, she had slipped her arm free of its quite unnecessary sling, and now idly trailed her hand in the water.

  “So says the lady who sits under her parasol while her husband does all the work.” He arched a skeptical eyebrow in the direction of her dripping fingers. “Isn’t that arm supposed to be injured?”

  “I daresay the cold water will be good for it. I expect I shall be quite recovered by tomorrow morning.”

  “Somehow I thought you would be.”

  “Sarcasm does not become you, darling. Are your arms growing tired? You can always stop and let us drift a bit. We can discuss the case here, where we need not fear being overheard.”

  “Have you remembered something, then? Keep your voice down,” he warned her hastily. “Sound does carry over the water, you know.”

  “How do you know?” she asked in some surprise. “I thought you hadn’t been on the water before last autumn in Scotland.”

  “I hadn’t been on the water, but that’s not to say I’d never been around it. I used to haul coal, Julia, loading it onto the wagons from the lighters that brought it to the quay from the ships anchored in the Thames. Even before that, I mudlarked along the river at low tide.” Seeing the blank expression on her face, he explained. “It’s a form of scavenging. When the tide went out and the water went down, I searched through the mud for anything that could be sold. I remember hearing quite clearly the men on the ships calling to each other, and wondering about them—who they were, where they were coming from, and where they were going.” His gaze grew distant at the memory of wading barefooted in the cold mud at the river’s edge, poking with his toes in search of some bit of scrap metal or bone to take back home to his father even as he watched the men on the ships and dreamed of stowing away on voyages to India or China.

  “Those days are gone, John,” Julia said softly. “You never have to go back there again.”

  He dismissed the memory with a shake of his head, but his smile was a bit forced. “But you wanted to tell me something about the case,” he reminded her.

  “Yes!” she said eagerly, leaning forward and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial near-whisper. “It concerns Ben Wilson.”

  He shook his head. “I suggested to Wilson that he might be forgiven for wanting to frighten off his rival with a rock through the window, and he told me in no uncertain terms that playing such tricks without looking his enemy in the face would be the work of a coward—and I’m not sure but what I don’t think he’s right. No, Julia, if you’re pinning your hopes to Ben, I’m afraid you’re fair and far off.”

  “Oh, the rock!” she said impatiently, dismissing this act of vandalism as a thing of no importance. “I’m talking about the murder of Ned Hawkins. Suppose Ben had hoped Ned would take his part and encourage Lizzie to marry him instead of setting her cap for Percival Hartsong.”

  “But he did,” Pickett objected.

  “Mrs. Hawkins did,” Julia corrected him. “But I can’t recall anyone saying what Ned’s views on the matter were.”

  “Surely any man would rather his daughter marry a farmer with his own land than become the mistress of a mediocre poet!”

  “Yes, but no matter how indifferent his poetry, Mr. Hartsong—or perhaps I should say Mr. Gape—is the son of a gentleman,” Julia pointed out. “You can’t deny that Lizzie Hawkins is a very pretty girl—”

  “Oh, is she?” asked Pickett with a marked lack of interest. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Wise man!” Julia said approvingly. “But purely as a matter of scientific observation, I shall allow you to acknowledge the fact. Suppose Ned Hawkins thought Mr. Hartsong—or Mr. Gape, if you prefer—might be so taken with her charms as to offer her marriage? Might he not see the poet’s interest in his daughter as an opportunity to improve his own family’s social standing by marrying into the gentry?”

  Pickett could not agree. “I’d rather see my daughter marry a farmer with brains than a fool with a genteel bloodline.”

  “I shall remind you of that statement in, oh, about twenty years,” Julia promised.

  He might have objected, might have told her that the lower classes did not think like hers, prizing lineage above all else, but he was not sure he could make her understand; class standing was second nature to her, taken in with her mother’s milk. Then again, he amended mentally, there had probably been no mother’s milk involved; she had no doubt had a wet nurse, and would very likely expect to engage one for their own child. Moreover, he was afraid she was right, at least where his own views were concerned: If the baby should prove to be a girl, he would hope she could someday marry back into the class her mother had deliberately abandoned in order to be with him—although he hoped little Miss Pickett would have the good sense not to choose a poet who possessed neither talent nor intelligence.

  “You disagree,” she observed, watching the play of emotions over his face. “What are you thinking?”

  “Jem Hawkins has apparently heard rumors to that effect, but he doesn’t set much store by them,” Pickett remarked, improvising rapidly. “Besides, Ben Wilson is what Mr. Colquhoun would call a ‘braw, strapping lad.’ Surely you would have noticed if it had been a fellow his size who pushed Ned Hawkins over the cliff.”

  She sighed. “You would think so, but the more I try to remember, the less I can recall. Consider, too, that they were standing some distance away, and uphill from our picnic spot. Surely that would have distorted my perceptions of—John, you’re splashing me!”

  “It’s not me, at least not this time.” He had been aware for some time of the gray clouds behind her, which seemed to be moving nearer even though he was rowing away from them. Now the rain was here, and although Pickett was London born and bred, he had the sense to recognize that the middle of a lake was not the safest place
to be, should a thunderstorm develop.

  Julia, in the meantime, had made the same discovery, and raised her parasol to cover her head. Alas, this ruffled and frilled confection was designed for protection against sun, not rain. “Do you want to get underneath with me?” she asked doubtfully. “I’m not sure it’s big enough for two, but we can try.”

  “Both of us on one end of the boat?” Pickett asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Now who’s going to tip us out? No, I’m trying for that spot along the near shore, where the trees are. Not perfect, I’m afraid, but it’s the best I can do.”

  He put his back into his rowing, but although his strength was not lacking, his fledgling navigational abilities left something to be desired. It took some doing to steer the boat into the little inlet protected by overhanging limbs. Once this was accomplished, however, it proved to be well worth the effort.

  “John, look!” exclaimed Julia, pointing at something over his shoulder. “A cave!”

  He turned, and saw that she was right. Beneath the trees, a dark hole opened up in the rock just above the surface of the water, an opening almost as high as Pickett was tall. While he had no desire to intrude on some wild animal (what sort of animals might one expect to find in the Lake District, anyway?), sheltering in the cave certainly seemed a better option than cowering under the trees.

  The bottom of the boat crunched against the shingle, and Pickett pulled off his boots, leapt out into cold water that came halfway up to his knees, and dragged the boat up onto the shore.

  “Stay here,” he told Julia. “I’ll make sure it’s safe.”

  “And in the meantime, I have only to worry about being soaked to the skin.”

  Pickett knew this for an exaggeration, as the leaves of the trees diverted all but the most determined raindrops. Still, he took the hint. Holding the boat steady with one stockinged foot on the gunwale, he held out his hand for Julia, who scrambled over the center thwart to the end he had just vacated. Once she was within reach, he swung her over the side and into his arms, then set her on the dry shingle.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking up at him, “for not leaving me behind.”

  He knew she was not talking about leaving her in the boat—at least, not only about leaving her in the boat—but about his not sending her back to London while he continued the investigation alone. He still was not entirely convinced he’d made the right decision, but she, at least, seemed to have no doubts at all on that head. He took her hand and gave it a little squeeze, and together they entered the cave. Pickett had to duck his head, but beyond this minor inconvenience, it appeared to be an excellent place to wait out the rain, provided one had no objection to inky blackness.

  “I wish I’d brought a lantern,” he said, his voice bouncing eerily off the rock walls.

  “You had no reason to think you would need one,” Julia pointed out. “I daresay it will not be so very bad, once our eyes begin to adjust.”

  Even as she spoke, he was able to make out more of their surroundings: a rock jutting out of the wall to their left, which appeared an excellent place for his wife to sit, and just beyond it something pale, something about the size of a man’s head—

  Julia gasped. “John—” She pointed one trembling finger in the direction of the pale object he had just noticed. He stepped toward it and squatted down for a closer look

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he assured her. “It’s only a sack.”

  “Oh,” she said tremulously. “I thought it was—was—” She broke off, shuddering.

  “A body,” he said, nodding. “I know. It did look a bit like a head, didn’t it?”

  It didn’t any longer, for he had picked it up by the drawstring that held it closed and raised it up to the light that penetrated into the cave from the entrance, and suddenly it was nothing more than a bulging bag made of some pale gray cloth. “Still, it’s a strange thing to find in a cave, isn’t it? Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  He stepped forward to the mouth of the cave, where the light shone in but the rain was kept out. He tugged at the drawstring, then dumped out the contents of the bag. A dozen sheets of folded and sealed paper littered the ground at their feet.

  “Letters,” he remarked, kneeling down to examine them. “Either the Royal Mail has taken up some very odd practices, or we’ve stumbled across the smuggling ring Mr. Hetherington mentioned.”

  “Smuggling?” Julia echoed in some surprise.

  Pickett looked up at that. “You had reached that conclusion yourself, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I’d been thinking of kegs of brandy, or ropes of tobacco, like one finds along the coast. But this”—she gestured toward the little hoard—“you think someone is smuggling letters?”

  “I can’t imagine what else they would be doing here,” Pickett said, turning back to leaf through his find. “These aren’t going to France, though. They all seem to be headed for London or other points south. Then, too, there’s the bag they’re in.”

  “What about it?”

  “It doesn’t look like the sacks the Royal Mail uses. You were on the mail coach, Julia,” he reminded her. “Do you remember when they threw the mail sacks down and took up the new ones?”

  “I didn’t notice. I had other things on my mind.”

  She meant, of course, that she’d been crying her eyes out. Pickett did not remind her of the fact, but his expression softened as he lifted his head to look at her. “They were a dark brown, and they had the mark of the Royal Mail.”

  “It’s gratifying to know that while I was agonizing over going back to London without you, you were making note of what the mail sacks looked like!” she retorted with mock indignation.

  “Only because I was wondering how much it was going to cost to write to you every day like you asked, for however long this case might take, at a shilling per letter.”

  “Oh, but you wouldn’t have had to pay that much. The stable lad told me I could—” She broke off abruptly, her horrified expression evident even in the dim light.

  “Julia,” he said, regarding her with narrowed eyes, “what have you been up to?”

  “I—I wrote a letter,” she confessed guiltily. “To Claudia.”

  “Is that all? Sweetheart, you don’t have to have my permission to write to your sister!”

  “No, but it’s what I wrote. You—you won’t like it.”

  “Try me,” he suggested.

  “I asked her if, in case I should die in childbirth—”

  He dropped the letters and stood up, then seized her almost roughly by the arms. “You’re not going to die in childbirth,” he insisted. “I won’t let you.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to stop me,” she pointed out reasonably.

  “You dragged me back from the point of death, after the fire,” he reminded her. “Do you think I would do less for you?”

  “I don’t expect you will have to,” she assured him. “Dr. Gilroy says he sees no reason why I should not be able to safely deliver a healthy child, but—well, women do sometimes, you know, in spite of everything. And if I should, the jointure that is paid to me—to us—from the Fieldhurst estate would die with me. So I asked Claudia if, in such a case, she and Jamie would—would help you.”

  “Would give me money, you mean,” he said in a flat voice.

  “John, there is no doubt in my mind that you will someday be rewarded with a magistracy, and be able to support me and any number of children,” she hastened to assuage the blow to his pride which she had known would be the result of this revelation. “But I find it hard to believe that even you could accomplish the feat by December, and at only twenty-five years of age! I only wanted to be sure that, if the worst should come to pass, you would have the means to bring up our child as a gentleman—or a lady, as the case may be.”

  He was silent for such a long time that she began to wonder if he intended to answer her at all. “I want this baby to be raised as any child of yours deserves,” he said at la
st. “If my agreeing to accept assistance from Jamie and Claudia if necessary will ease your mind during the next six months, then by all means, send your letter.”

  She stepped over the pile of letters and wrapped her arms about his waist. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “But”—he took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake—“you’re not going to die in childbirth, you know. I’ll be sponging off the Bertrams for many years to come.”

  He spoke lightly enough, but she knew it troubled him that he could not support her on his wages, at least not in the manner to which she was accustomed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if it turns out to be a boy?” she said in the same playful tone he had used. “George will be furious with me for being so obliging as to bear you a child when I would not do the same for Frederick—as if the fault were mine!—but if it’s a boy, he can’t utter a word of reproach, for if I had given Frederick a son, then that child, and not George, would now be Lord Fieldhurst.”

  “ ‘George will be furious,’ ” he quoted her thoughtfully. “Have you not told your family, then?”

  “Oh, my family knows. In fact, Mama is quite prepared to acknowledge that in some ways you are actually superior to Frederick as a husband—which means she is secretly over the moon at the prospect of having another grandchild to dandle on her knee. But as for my first husband’s family, no, I haven’t told them.”

  He cocked a knowing eyebrow at her. “Afraid of Cousin George ringing a peal over your head?”

  She gave him back look for look. “Have you any idea how much he hates it when you call him that?”

  “Of course I do! Why do you think I do it?”

  “Wicked man!” she scolded, laughing nevertheless. “But no, I’m not ‘afraid,’ exactly, although I’ll admit I’m not looking forward to the harangue I know will follow the announcement. For now, I’m content to just let it be our little secret—you and me, and our family and close friends. Oh, and Mrs. Hetherington.”