Waiting Game Read Free Page A

son a pair any time, while we have you with us for this one day only.”
    Pickett smiled up at her, grateful for her honesty. “In that case I owe thanks to James as well as to you. But did you say you made them?”
    “My dear Mr. Pickett, every good Scotswoman can knit!”
    “Everyone except Fanny,” put in that lady’s husband, to hoots of laughter and the maligned Fanny’s indignation.
    At last Isabella nudged her husband and pointed toward their youngest, the little lad who had claimed Pickett’s lap during snapdragon, now fast asleep on the carpet in spite of the noise generated by his older siblings and cousins. The Colquhoun ladies rose as one, declaring the need to see the children put to bed. Pickett, recognizing his cue, followed suit.
    “I’d best be going, too,” he said, “I’ll have to be back at Bow Street in the morning. My employer, as you may know, is a harsh taskmaster,” he added, feeling on sufficiently solid ground with the family to make a joke at their patriarch’s expense.
    He was not disappointed. Isabella chided her father for his cruelty to poor Mr. Pickett, with whom (she said) she had fallen quite madly in love, and both Mary and Fanny insisted that their father invite him to dinner again very soon.
    Ironically, having been hesitant to accept the invitation, Pickett now found himself reluctant to leave. But duty beckoned, and so he thanked Mrs. Colquhoun for her hospitality, shook hands with his magistrate, and, after reclaiming his hat, muffler, and gloves from the butler, stepped out of the warm and well-lit house into the cold December night. It seemed strangely quiet outside after the cheerful din of the Colquhouns’ Christmas celebration, and while it was certainly more peaceful, he did not anticipate with any eagerness his return to the dark and lonely flat in Drury Lane. In truth, a few hours spent with his magistrate’s large and lively family had left him longing for things he’d never even known existed. At that moment he craved nothing so much as an evergreen-bedecked home of his own—not two shabbily furnished rooms over a chandler’s shop, but a house, certainly not so grand a house as Mr. Colquhoun’s, but something—something—
    Something to which he would not be ashamed to bring a bride. And if he were honest, the bride of his rosy imaginings bore a striking resemblance to Lady Fieldhurst. He heaved a sigh of frustration, suddenly impatient for the same annulment hearing he’d spent the last month dreading. The sooner the thing was done, the sooner he would stop hoping for things that could never be.
     
Chapter 3
     
In Which Is Seen More Private Celebrations
     
    Silence fell over the Colquhoun household, all the children having either departed for their London homes with their parents or, in the case of those visiting from Scotland, been tucked away upstairs in the nursery beneath the attic. Alone with his wife, Mr. Colquhoun removed a half-empty mug of wassail from her hand and set it down on the nearest available surface.
    “Leave it, Janet,” he said. “You have servants for that.”
    “Yes, I do,” she responded, regarding him with a baleful eye as she picked up the mug again. “And what use you think they’ll be after you gave them a bottle of the best brandy is a mystery to me.”
    He chuckled. “Aye, well, it’s Christmas. They’re entitled to a bit of celebrating, too. Besides, once the bottle is divided amongst all the staff, no one will have enough to get thoroughly disguised, just pleasantly elevated.”
    “It’s kind you are to think of them, my love. Just as it was kind of you to invite young Mr. Pickett to join us for Christmas dinner.”
    “He’s a good lad. I just hated to think of him all alone on Christmas. I only hope I didn’t throw your numbers off, inviting him at the last minute.”
    “Nonsense! What do numbers matter at a family dinner?”
    “True, but Mr. Pickett is not family. Speaking of which, I suppose you’d