Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
The feeling of a clean pillow beneath his cheek, and of soft linen sheets on his chest, had become so uncommon and were now so strange to Pierre as to confuse him as to his location when he awoke the next morning.
“Où suis-je…” And then the memories flooded back. James arriving at the door, Helena’s face as he refused to reveal his feelings for her, the pain of having his belongings returned to him, honourably, as he should have known…
The clean sheets and silken hangings around the four-poster bed felt too ostentatious after the honest and simple living that he had been able to experience for the previous few days. What need he for such exaggerated wealth? Why did he need so much display of money around him?
Rising, he found that the clothes he had borrowed from Helena’s father – the very clothes that he had stepped out of her house in – were gone.
In their place, a rich and valuable shirt, britches, cravat, and all the little accessories that told the world that this was a man of consequence.
His fingers fumbled around the cravat, accustomed as he had become with leaving his throat bare. Eventually he threw it down, bad temperedly, onto the bed and left the room.
It did not take him long to find James. He had always been the same as a child: his love of the outdoors continued all year around.
“Are you sure it is quite warm enough for this?” He asked with a smile, stepping out of the drawing room doors onto the lawn where the Viscount of Paendly was breakfasting.
James turned, and smiled at him over his newspaper. “Ah, you are finally up. Sleep well?”
Pierre nodded. “Merci, mon ami.”
His friend nodded at the table, covered in delicious food. “Help yourself, do. Cook is eager to feed you up after that dreadful ordeal.”
“Ordeal?” Pierre repeated as he leaned forward to pour some tea into the nearest cup.
James laughed. “My fear fellow, that hovel that I discovered you in!”
Pierre stared at him. “How did you find me.”
With a tap on his nose and a grin on his face, James laughed.
“Ask me no secrets, old chap. Trust me, there is enough of a spy network between here and France to keep relatively good tabs on you, even if you try to give them the slip by throwing yourself into a boat hardly fit for a shallow river, and take it over the Channel!”
“Spy network – give them the slip? What is this slip,” Pierre said defensively, “for I gave it to no one.”
James shook his head as he laughed, and passed him a plate. “I am impressed that you did not starve in the four days that it took me to find you – your stomach must be of iron, if that kitchen I saw was any judge!”
Irritation rose in Pierre’s throat at the casual way that his friend offended Helena’s home. “I survived easily enough, I was well taken care of.”
James raised an eyebrow. “Really? By whom?”
“By Helena – Miss Metcalfe,” corrected Pierre hastily as he drew the cup to his lips and took a long draught. He needed it. “You do not need to concern yourself.”
“Nonsense,” said James flatly. “A man such as yourself, stuck in such a place? ‘Tis a wonder you are still alive – and that reminds me. Stephens!”
A footman appeared at the Viscount’s side, and Pierre could not help but smile, as he reached for some toast, at the way that his friend’s servants had evidently been drilled.
“Doctor Stephens, if you please,” were all the words necessary to be heard, and the footman scurried away to Pierre’s disgust.
“Now, really Paendly, I am quite well, there is no need to get a doctor involved!”
James dropped the newspaper onto his lap, and casually laid his feet upon one of the chairs beside him. “You think so?”
Pierre nodded wearily. The sun was not warm, and he had not dressed for an al fresco breakfast. “Miss Metcalfe is an expert in these matters, and she cared for me most assiduously. I cannot imagine what else a doctor could do for me.”
For a moment, James’ eyes raked over him curiously, and then he shook his head. “No, I am sorry old boy, but your sister would not forgive me if I did not take the absolute best care of you – and you know how afraid I have been of Giselle since infancy, so do not ask me to go against her.”
“Giselle?” Pierre looked about him wildly, but saw only an elderly gentleman move from the drawing room holding a doctor’s bag. “She is here?”
“No, do not be so foolish – good morning Doctor Stephens,” said James smoothly.
“Here is your patient. And really,” he continued in an undertone to Pierre as the doctor bowed, and began removing instruments of examination out of his bag, “do you really think I would leave you in such suspense if she was?”
Pierre wanted to retort, but found his mouth suddenly filled with a wooden stick to force his tongue still.
“Say ‘aaaah’,” said the stern doctor, a little too close for Pierre’s comfort.
He obliged as James continued, “I must say, d'épilucon, that I was monstrous glad to find you so soon. I had received word that you had left France, though why you could not tell me yourself by letter I do not know – ”
“It was all too fast for that,” interposed Pierre, finally free of the wooden stick and now being forced to cough intermittently as the doctor listened to his chest. “I had no time to even – ”
“And then you know, the British Isles has rather a lot of coastline,” continued James, raising his newspaper once more and smiling cheekily at his friend.
“I was fortunate to pick that stretch first to search, or who knows how long it would have been before you could have been returned to civilisation?”
Pierre was now having his pulse counted, but it was surely not helping the doctor’s kind ministrations that his temper was rising at James’ words. “Civilisation?”
Without answering with words, James indicated the large house, the gardens, and the parkland that stretched out across into the distance, deer moving slowly as they grazed in the early morning.
“I will have you know,” said Pierre angrily, “that I do not think anyone – even yourself, Doctor Stephens, I am sorry to say – could have taken better care of me than Miss Helena Metcalfe.”
James raised an eyebrow. “I am surprised at your devotion to her.”
Pierre saw Helena’s smile as she kissed him the morning before, the look of pain and hurt when he said he would not marry her, and felt her writhing beneath him in an agony of ecstasy.
He swallowed. “I have not met her equal in kindness and gentleness, and her medical knowledge and ability surpasses all doctors in France whom I have been tended by before – begging your pardon, Doctor Stephens, I mean no offence.”
“None taken,” croaked the old man, who placed his pocket watch back in his waistcoat, and smiled at him. “And I must say I agree.”
That was enough for James to lower his newspaper. “I beg your pardon?”
The doctor nodded. “I would say that it is in my expert opinion that, had this young lady not taken such impressive care of this gentleman, my lord, that he would not have survived.”
“Well now,” murmured James as the doctor made his way back into the house. “Now that is a surprise.”
What was this rush of emotions that now threatened to overwhelm Pierre now: stupidity for not recognising Helena’s worth sooner? Fear that he would never see her again? Lust for her body, love of her soul?
“‘Tis a shame she is so poor,” announced James matter of factly, as he descended back behind his newspaper. “She sounds a good match for you, d'épilucon. Willing to care for the adventurer, the French outcast. Why on earth did you leave her?”
The slamming of the door was the first indication that he was back. Then the shout.
“Helena!”
“Here, Father,” she called back, seated quietly in the garden with a steaming cup of tea in her hands.
The stomping noise increased in volume, and then the back door opened and there he was.
“My word, what are you doing out here?” He asked.
Helena smiled faintly. It was strange indeed, her need for the outside since Pierre had left, but someone she felt closer to him out here. As though somewhere, the same sky that was looking down at her was looking down at him.
“Welcome home, Father,” she said quietly, not turning around to look up at him. “Did you have a pleasant trip?”
He snorted, and dropped his bag on the ground before stepping around to stand before her. “Nothing like as good as I had imagined, of course…but then, that is always the way that it is, I fear. And you? Anything happen while I was away?”
Helena swallowed. This was always how it was when he returned from one of his ‘trips’. More jovial, kinder, more interested in herself. Until he could not wait any longer, and disappeared for another week or so.
But then, who was she to turn away a loving and kind father, when she had so little?
“Nothing much,” she said lightly.
He snorted. “Nothing much?”
Helena had thought through this moment: wondered exactly what it was that she should say to her father, how she could possibly explain what had happened without losing her honour and reputation, and how to explain a man who was so contradictory as Pierre.
The decision that she had come to, she mused as she heard a blackbird sing in a tree a few yards away, was the easiest one.
“No,” she said simply, smiling up at him and gesturing for him to take a seat.
“Well, yes. There is a letter from Teresa that you must read, and I do not wish to reveal the contents, you should discover them for yourself. Mrs Thatcher brought another a letter around, but it was not for us, a mistake only. There was quite a gale, the day that you left.”
“By thunder, so there was,” said her father with a smile. “And I will tell you now, my dear, that I felt it as no one can: there we were, on the road…”
Helena allowed the story to wash over her like a gently encroaching tide. There was no stopping her father, after all; he loved to tell his stories, and it was better to get them all out now, rather than wait for the tale to drip out over five or six days.