Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The gale had dissipated long before Helena opened her eyes again, but it was yet another loud crash that awoke her.
She sat up bolt upright, and listened eagerly for a continuation of the noise, but all was silent. Bright sunlight was pouring through the gaps in her curtains, and there was an unnatural stillness in the air.
Then, “Merde. Why cannot they keep this place in better order?”
Helena’s eyes widened. For a brief moment, she had almost forgotten the adventures of the night before: the hunger that had driven her outside, the unexpected bounty the sea had offered, the struggle to get him home, the knife wound, the rum –
The criminal.
“Why can’t I walk, stupide!”
Another cry echoed through the house, and Helena sighed. There was no use in her staying her, in her warm comfortable bed, even if the clock had not just struck six.
Throwing off her bed covers and grabbing a dressing gown to cover her nightdress, Helena pattered down the well-worn stairs, and almost screamed at the sight that met her eyes at the bottom.
Pierre d'épilucon, wearing no shirt and barely keeping his britches up, was covered in what looked like blood, and was staggering around the room with a dazed look on his face, mumbling under his breath.
“Pierre!” She breathed, staring at him with concerned eyes. “Monsieur, are you hurt?”
The stumbling figure stopped, and turned to face her. It smiled vaguely.
“Bonjour,” he muttered quietly, not quite looking at her but at the mantlepiece to her right. “Et qu’elle beau jour il était!”
Helena took a step forward. He did not seem to be in a violent mood, just a strange one: he could certainly not be overly hot for it was cold in this room now that the fire had died down in the night – and yet perspiration seemed to pour from every inch of his body.
“Monsieur, why do not you sit down?” Helena said quietly as she took another step into the room. “You must be tired after your ordeal, after all, and you should rest and gather your strength.”
Pierre smiled at her. “Giselle?”
It was difficult not to feel a slight irritation here, but Helena took another step forward, and peered at the gentleman closely.
It was not blood. It was rum. Somehow, the stupid man had managed to pour rum all down himself, and when it met the dark brown coarse britches of her father that she had lent him, it had crusted and dried, and looked remarkably like his wound had opened up again.
“Giselle, why so quiet?”
Helena tried desperately not to roll her eyes. Well then, he was drunk: though how he managed to be so intoxicated at this early hour was anyone’s guess. Was this typical for a Frenchman? Did they have rum for breakfast?
Something touched her arm, and she jumped, looking wildly into Pierre’s face. There were beads of sweat on his brow, and his eyes looked mazed.
“I think I am dreaming,” he whispered darkly. “For I know that I am in France, and yet this does not feel like France, n'est-ce pas?”
His hand was burned around her wrist, and yet it was not the fervent heat of love, but the toxic heat of fever. Helena placed her other hand on his forehead: yes, he was burning up, and almost certainly delirious from the fever.
It still did not explain the rum, but it was a start.
“Come now, monsieur,” she said gently, taking his hand from her arm and retaining it as a sort of rudder, attempting to steer him. “Let us take you back to the sofa, and you can lie down.”
“But the butler is waiting for me,” complained Pierre in dazed tones. “I am required to approve the latest shoot, and without me nothing can begin.”
Helena almost tripped over the small table as she tried to move him forward, and he took two jaggedy steps, and then stopped.
“Giselle, is this a dream?” Pierre stared at her with confused and hurting eyes, but there was a glaze across them that told Helena she had been right: it was a fever. “It feels so real, and yet, tu sais, you cannot be here. So what is it?”
“It is a dream,” said Helena firmly as she gently forced him to sit on the sofa.
First things first. Poor soul, it was impossible to know just how long he had spent in that boat trying to find the shore: dehydration, exposure, and fever all whirled through her mind.
“But in this dream, you have to wear a shirt. Where is yours?”
Pierre gazed up at her with a content expression on his face. Apparently, being told that you were in a dream was rather comforting.
“I see no reason to exert myself any further,” he remarked lazily, in almost a complete return to his old self.
He lay back on the sofa, and slowly raised his legs, stiff as his injured one was, onto the sofa.
“After all, this is a dream, n’est pas? So nothing I do here has any real consequence. Therefore, I can do nothing.”
Helena rolled her eyes. How incredibly like a wealthy man to assume such things.
“Fine,” she said, irritably, remembering that she had not eaten in almost fifteen hours. “I will find it myself – and then it is breakfast for me, and cold water for you.”
He began to murmur something on the lines that surely in a dream, his butler could send over a brace of partridges, but Helena had already departed to the kitchen.
She had almost completely buttered a thin slice of bread, not a truly arduous task, when a shout rent the air.
“What is it – what has happened?” She gasped as she ran through into the parlour, dressing gown flapping open in her haste.
Pierre was huddled at one end of the sofa, pointing at nothing at all, and shouting wildly, “L'anglais! Quick, men, to your pistols, the enemy is upon us!”
Helena rushed forwards, and he started, eyes wide.
“Giselle? Mon Dieu, what are you doing here, this is no place for a lady?”
She stared at him helplessly. When a fever took over a mind, she knew, it could take it to the strangest of places, but usually it drank all strength from the person too, so their delirious wanderings were quiet, still, unobtrusive.
Not so with Pierre d'épilucon, obviously. His strength had remained, had fought back from the muddles of the mind, leaving her with a man unsure of where he was, but still strong enough to knock her down, if he chose.
Helene had not looked in on her father’s bedroom when she had rushed down to attend to the first noise that had awoken her, because she did not need to.
She knew the moods that her father talked himself into, and besides, if he had come home last night, he would probably have discovered Pierre asleep on the sofa.
Even if he had been missed, the shouting of this morning would have been enough to wake up.
So then, she was alone. Alone with a Frenchman who seemed convinced that he was about to be attacked by the English.
Well, he was not wrong.
“Sit down soldier!” She barked, glaring at him with the best military look that she could muster, and probably approximating something more like constipated.
It did not matter, however: it was what Pierre thought that mattered.
“I have never seen such a raggedy man in all my life. Where is your shirt, soldier?”
For a moment, Helena was unsure whether it had worked. There was so much confusion in his eyes, his poor overheated mind telling him so much, that she was not sure exactly whether her words would even reach him.
And then he sat up straight on the sofa, and tried to salute. His hand went flying behind his head, but it was evidently clear what it was supposed to be.
“Shirt – shirt lost, monsieur,” he said smartly, eyes not quite focused on her.
Helena grabbed at one of her father’s old shirts, sat in the corner on the mending pile. “Then place this over your head, monsieur, and lie down. You are injured.”
It took twenty minutes to get Pierre to lie down calmly, and a further ten to sit with him quietly to send him into the land of sleep. She watched his eyes flutter madly underneath their lids, even when his breathing had slowed to a gentle pace.
It was only now, in the light of the new day, that she was able to take a proper look at him. Last night she had only gained impressions, ideas of what he looked like, but now that she could examine him with leisure, she could see that most of her ideas had been correct.
Strong. Strength was almost chiselled into every piece of him, and if she had not been sure of that, all she had to do was take her memory back half an hour, when he was wandering the house without a shirt on.
Hair cropped short, shorter than any English style. Perhaps it was the French one. A jawline that was strong, but a mouth that seemed kind.
Helena blushed. She may not have said a word, but the thoughts were enough.
She sat with him for another five minutes, and saw with relief that his breathing did seem to have slowed to a gentle sleep.
Her stomach rumbled. It was time for food, but no sooner has she risen from the chair that she had pulled to the sofa, did he stir.
“Giselle? Do not leave me, mon petit…”
Helena sighed, and dropped to the seat once more.
It appeared that she was going to go without food for the present; the longer that he slept, the quicker the fever would break, and she could not be sure that she would be quite able to restrain him with words next time he was convinced of falsehoods again.
The hours drifted by. Helena seemed to move beyond hunger and out the other side, and the few times that she attempted to rise and get herself a drink, a hand would shoot out and try to keep her there.
Whether he was asleep or not, she concluded, her presence was clearly felt, and she could do no more than remain with him.
Around one o’clock, feelings of quiet resentment started to grow in her heart, ignore them though she might. It was all very well, she thought, for Pierre to wish her to stay, but she must eat at sometime! It was nigh on an entire day that she had been without sustenance, and –
“Mama?”