Pickpocket's Apprentice (7 page)

Pickett had never been even partially unclothed in the presence of a female before, and found the prospect more than a little embarrassing. Still, Sophy’s threat had the desired effect. Fingers shaking, he unfastened the buttons at placket and wrists, then pulled the offensive garment over his head and tossed it into the corner. Sophy made a noise vaguely reminiscent of a purr, and came readily into his embrace. They kissed frantically, trying to erase nine months of separation in the space of a few minutes, until Pickett gradually became aware of her hands fumbling between them. He glanced down, and discovered she had unfastened the front of her bodice, and was attempting to push it off her shoulders.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He took a step backwards and held her at arm’s length. “What are you doing?”

“I should have thought it was obvious,” she said impatiently.

“Sophy, you mustn’t—we can’t—” he stammered, tugging her dress back over her bare shoulders.

“And why not?” She pouted provocatively. “Don’t you want me?”

“Of course I do—you don’t
know
how much I do,” he groaned. “But I—I care too much for you to treat you like a common strumpet. Besides,” he added, seeing this argument had failed to move her, “your father would flay me alive if he ever found out—and who would blame him?”

She regarded him with unconcealed scorn. “John Pickett, are you afraid of Papa?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “Sophy, don’t you see? He’s my master, and will be for the next four years. Until that time, I can’t—I’m not free—”

She sighed and began buttoning her bodice, an operation that to Pickett, fixing his eyes determinedly on her face, seemed to take an unconscionably long time. “John, you’re a fool. Still, I’d rather spend time with you than sit in the drawing room reading that dreary Mrs. More aloud to Mama. Shall we play chess this Sunday, just like we used to?”

“You said you would be able to beat me,” he reminded her, grateful for the change of subject.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” she predicted mischievously as she headed for the door, and Pickett had the feeling, both thrilling and terrifying, that she was not talking about chess.

They fell easily into their old pattern, with Sophy visiting him in his room at night when she could slip away undetected, and losing to him at chess every Sunday afternoon. Much as he hated to agree with the servants’ gossip, he was forced to admit they were right: school had changed her somewhat. Her speech was different, for one thing, and then there was her new and disturbingly carnal interest in him. For her part, she exclaimed that he was even taller than she remembered (and it was true that, at seventeen, he was still growing), all the while making it quite plain that she was far from repulsed by this change in him.

She tried twice more during that summer of 1801 to prevail upon him to consummate what she called their friendship, but Pickett was steadfast in resisting her advances.

“Are you afraid of getting me in the family way?” she asked after being rebuffed for the third time. “There are ways to prevent that.”

“How do you know?” he asked, taken aback not so much by the revelation itself, but by the fact that she should be aware of such a thing.

She shrugged, peeping up at him from under her eyelashes. “You’d be surprised at the things schoolgirls talk about at night, when we’re supposed to be asleep.”

He suspected her parents would be surprised as well. In fact, it had occurred to Pickett that if Sophy were to become pregnant, her father might be willing, even eager, to allow him to marry her. Alas, it was far more likely that Mr. Granger would cast him into the street, while God only knew what would happen to Sophy. She might be thrown out as well, and while there would be no one then to keep them apart, neither would he have any means of supporting her. No, he would not bed her until he had earned the right, and there was an end on it. He only hoped he could survive the next four summers without weakening in his resolve.

As it happened, he need not have feared such an eventuality. The following Christmas saw him just as firmly separated from his love as the previous one had done, and it even seemed to Pickett that Sophy took a certain malicious satisfaction in ignoring him. He wasn’t sure if her feelings had been wounded by his steadfast refusal of her advances, or if the long wait until they could marry was quite as much of a strain on her as it was on him. Then summer came, and with it, the discovery that she would not be returning to Cecil Street at all.

“Gone visiting at the home of some gentleman’s daughter,” confided the housekeeper to the staff at large, as she presided over the servants’ dinner. “They’re supposed to be great friends at school, or so I hear. Depend upon it, the master and missus are thinking to get that girl married into the gentry, and remove the whiff of coal dust from the family name. Well, the trade’s been good enough for Mr. Granger, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be good enough for Miss Sophy as well.”

No, Pickett thought desperately. It wasn’t true. Even if her parents wanted her to make such a match, she would never agree to it. He was the one she loved, the one she wanted to marry, although they had never spoken of such an outcome. Still, he decided, he was done with waiting. Pushing his plate away untouched, he went to his room and counted the heap of coins under the mattress, then set his jaw, climbed the stairs unbidden, and requested a word with Mr. Granger.

In Which John Pickett Hatches a Scheme

“Yes, John?” Elias Granger lifted an inquisitive eyebrow, puzzled at his apprentice’s uncharacteristic invasion of the family’s residence on the upper floors. “What is it?”

“I was just wondering, sir—” Pickett swallowed hard. “I was just wondering how much it would cost to—to terminate my apprenticeship.”

“Are you thinking of leaving me, then?” Mr. Granger asked in some consternation.

Pickett hesitated a moment before deciding that it was better, surely, not to declare his intentions until he was certain he could afford to do so. “I—I was just—just wondering. In general, you might say.”

Mr. Granger frowned thoughtfully. “How old are you, John?”

“Eighteen, sir.”

“And your apprenticeship will end when you are twenty-one. Three years, then. Let us say ten pounds per year, then, for a total of thirty pounds.”

Pickett was left speechless, gasping for breath as if his master had just punched him in the stomach. His savings amounted to only seventeen shillings, a tiny fraction of that amount. He could never raise thirty pounds, not if he ransacked every pocket in Covent Garden—which he couldn’t do in any case, since he’d promised Mr. Colquhoun he wouldn’t steal again.

Mr. Colquhoun . . . For some reason he had never really understood, Mr. Colquhoun seemed to take an interest in him. Pickett wondered if the magistrate might be willing to make him a loan; he had been giving him money every week anyway, and although these contributions in no way approached the amount Mr. Granger required, surely Mr. Colquhoun would accept their return as his first payment, and an indication of Pickett’s good faith. Filled with renewed purpose, he stammered his thanks to his master (although exactly what he was thanking the man for, he could not have said) and returned to his own room.

There was nothing else he could do to further his courtship until the next week, when he, Tom, and Bob made their regular stop in Bow Street. When Mr. Colquhoun tossed him a penny for his pains, Pickett surprised the magistrate by giving it back.

“If you please, sir, I would rather you kept this until—I should like to talk to you about a—well, never mind that. I can’t do it here, sir—” A furtive glance toward the door, where at any minute Tom was likely to appear, bellowing for him, lent veracity to this assertion. “—and so I was wondering if I might—”

Mr. Colqluhoun took pity on him. “You are free on Sunday afternoons, are you not? If you will call at my house this Sunday, you will find me at home.” He gave Pickett his direction, and had him repeat it back to make sure the boy had heard him correctly.

“Thank you, sir,” Pickett said breathlessly, and hurried outside to the coal wagon, where Tom and Bob waited.

The week dragged on interminably, as time always does when one is awaiting an eagerly anticipated event, but Sunday arrived at last. Upon returning to Cecil Street after church, Pickett did not follow his usual habit of changing immediately out of his good clothes (in fact, the only ones he owned which were not permanently stained with coal dust, and which comprised his most recent Boxing Day gift from his master), but wore these on his visit to the magistrate, determined to present as much as possible the appearance of a young man who might be counted on to repay—eventually, if not immediately—a loan of thirty pounds sterling. He reached the house whose direction Mr. Colquhoun had given him, then set his shoulders and marched up the stairs.

The door opened to his knock, and although Pickett fancied the butler looked askance at him, he was shown in at once; apparently Mr. Colquhoun remembered that he was to call, and had given instructions that he was to be admitted. Much heartened by this realization, Pickett let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and followed the butler inside.

Mr. Colquhoun received him in the study, a well-appointed room that smelled vaguely of old leather. Granted, the furnishings were not so new as those in Mr. Granger’s house, and the bindings of some of the books in the shelves lining the walls were rubbed from repeated reading, but Pickett decided he liked the magistrate’s house better than that of his master; though less grand, it looked more comfortable somehow, more lived in. He shook himself, reminding himself sternly that he had not come for the purpose of inspecting the furniture. He returned Mr. Colquhoun’s proffered handshake and, at the magistrate’s invitation, sank into the nail-studded chair facing the large mahogany desk.

“Now, Mr. Pickett, what can I do for you?”

It was now or never. Resisting the urge to squirm in his seat, Pickett took a deep breath. “I wonder, sir, if you would be willing to—to make me a loan.”

Mr. Colquhoun’s bushy eyebrows, more salt than pepper now, lowered. Pickett did not consider this a good sign.

“I see,” the magistrate said, and Pickett had the uncomfortable feeling that he did. “Just how much were you hoping to borrow?”

In for a penny, in for a pound, Pickett reasoned, and threw caution to the wind. “Thirty pounds.”

The eyebrows shot up so high, they all but disappeared into the magistrate’s hairline. “And what, pray, do you intend to do with such a sum?”

“I would like to buy out the remaining three years of my apprenticeship.”

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Colquhoun. “But why, boy? Are you being mistreated?”

“No, sir, but as you know, Mr. Granger gives me only room and board. I need to find a job that pays regular wages.” Seeing the magistrate appeared unmoved, Pickett added, “I need to be able to support a wife.”

Mr. Colquhoun scowled fiercely. “Got some girl in the family way, have you?”

“No, sir!” exclaimed Pickett, very much on his dignity.

The magistrate regarded him in silence for a long moment, drumming his fingers on his desk in a way that made Pickett very nervous. “How old are you, John?”

“Eighteen, sir.”

“A bit young to be thinking of marriage, aren’t you?”

“But I must! If I don’t—that is, it’s her parents. They want her to marry—well, never mind that. I have to marry her now, and there’s an end on it.”

Mr. Colquhoun sighed. “It’s Sophy Granger, isn’t it?”

“Well—yes, sir.” The magistrate made no response, and Pickett stiffened. “I see what it is! You don’t think I’m good enough for her.”

In fact, it occurred to Mr. Colquhoun, regarding the earnest young man seated on the other side of the mahogany desk, that perhaps it was Sophy Granger who was not good enough for John Pickett. But he knew her parents would not see it that way, and no amount of persuasion would convince them, were he to lend the boy ten times thirty pounds. And, in the meantime, young Pickett would have thrown away his best chance at making an honest living, all for misplaced adoration of a silly little flibbertigibbet who would no more marry him than she would plight her troth to the man in the moon. Unfortunately, there were no words with which to present this argument that would not come across as, at best, patronizing, and at worst, insulting.

“Your being good enough has nothing to say to the matter,” Mr. Colquhoun said, sacrificing truth to diplomacy. “The fact is, you are much too young to be thinking of getting married. Even if I were to lend you the sum you require, there would still be the matter of finding a paying position, you know, one that would allow you to support Miss Granger in the manner to which she is accustomed.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Pickett said eagerly. “I was thinking maybe I could persuade her father to take me on as a partner.”

“If you are pinning your hopes on Mr. Granger’s patronage, you would do much better to serve out your apprenticeship, and demonstrate your worthiness for such a position.”

“But—but
three years
, sir!”

“I know it seems like a long time now,” conceded Mr. Colquhoun, not without sympathy, “but if she truly loves you, she will be willing to wait.” He did not for one minute believe it—he doubted that Elias Granger’s flighty daughter was capable of such a degree of devotion—but he trusted the ensuing years would give John Pickett time to fall out of love with his master’s daughter, and fix his youthful affections on a more suitable object.

In this assumption he had much mistaken his man, for never was a lover more faithful than John Pickett. If working for Sophy’s father was indeed his last, best hope of winning her, then work he would. And so he did, shoveling the coal and hauling the heavy sacks with such enthusiasm that Tom wondered, more than once, what had got into the boy.