Chapter 2 #2
“We must stop him now,” declared Annabelle, wringing her hands dramatically, “before he disappears forever!”
Genevieve looked helplessly at Jack.
He regarded her with cold contempt, as if her hesitation was no more than what he expected of her.
And then he turned and marched toward the stairs.
The children needed no further encouragement. They raced after him, flying down the staircase with their pale cotton nightgowns billowing around them like wings.
“Stay back!” barked Oliver, bursting suddenly from the kitchen wielding an ax in his wizened, trembling arms. “There’s an unsavory rascal out there and I’m going to chop him into wee bits and have Eunice grind him into haggis!”
“Now, Ollie, ye should know better than to be scarin’ the bairns with such talk,” chided Doreen, the plentiful lines of her plain, thin face crinkled with disapproval. “However am I to get them to eat their food when ye’re constantly fillin’ their wee heads with such blather?”
“I’m of no mind to make haggis out of some poor, half-starved wretch,” added Eunice, squeezing her bounteous form into the crowded hallway. “He’s bound to be all string and gristle.”
“Oh, Oliver, you mustn’t kill him,” pleaded Charlotte earnestly. “He’s hurt!”
“And he’s Jack’s friend,” Grace added.
“We’re going to invite him in,” explained Annabelle.
“Then could we have some tea?” asked Simon hopefully. “I’m starving.”
“At this hour?” Eunice regarded Genevieve with dismay. “But we’re scarcely fit to receive company, Miss Genevieve—we’re all in our nightclothes!”
“He won’t mind,” Charlotte assured her.
“He’s from prison!” chirped Jamie, as if this were a marvelous endorsement.
Jack threw the front door open. The children surged forward, only to find Haydon’s figure slowly retreating down the street.
“Hello there!” Simon shouted.
“Come back!” cried Charlotte.
“We won’t let Oliver chop you up for haggis!” Annabelle promised.
Realizing that Haydon might not find that particularly reassuring, Jack sprinted into the frigid darkness in his bare feet, catching up to Haydon just before he disappeared around the corner.
“It’s all right,” Jack told him. “You can come in.”
Haydon stared at him in confusion. His vision was blurred by fever, and every step required excruciating effort. Even so, he had no desire to endanger Miss MacPhail and the flock of white-gowned children who were calling to him from the doorstep. This was not what he had planned.
“No.”
“You must,” Jack insisted impatiently. “You’re too weak to walk, and soon all of Inveraray will be lookin’ for you.”
“Didn’t want her to know.” Haydon’s tongue felt thick and clumsy as he labored to form the words. “Didn’t want her to be part of it.”
“She doesn’t mind,” Jack lied. He wrapped a thin arm around Haydon, supporting him. “She wants you to come in.”
Haydon looked over at Genevieve. She was clad only in a creamy nightrail, her tall, slender figure rising above the excited, waving children clustered around her. His vision was too clouded to make out her expression.
In that moment she was as close to an angel as anything he had ever hoped to see.
“Just for tonight,” he mumbled. “No longer.”
Leaning heavily against Jack, he began to stagger back toward the house. Jack helped him through the door and into the hallway, where Haydon stared vacantly at the fascinated audience surrounding him.
And then crashed in a heap upon the floor.
“What’s happened to yer friend, laddie?” Oliver frowned at Haydon over the blade of his ax. “He dinna look so good.”
“He was beaten while trying to help me,” Jack explained. “And he’s sick.”
“Sick, ye say?” scoffed Doreen. “He looks nigh fit to be buried.”
Jamie looked up at Genevieve, his eyes wide with concern. “Is he going to die?”
“Of course not,” she replied, affecting far more assurance than she felt. Even if she managed to nurse him back to health, the man lying on the floor of her hallway was a convicted murderer. If he was captured, as he most certainly would be, he would be hanged.
She pushed the thought from her mind. All that mattered in that moment was that he was badly injured and needed their help.
“Oliver, please help Jack take his friend up to my room and put him on the bed,” she instructed briskly.
“Eunice, kindly warm some of that broth you made earlier, and bring it up with a pot of strong tea. Doreen, please fetch a jug of hot water, a jug of cold water, some soap, and a pot of ointment. Simon and Jamie, bring some wood up to my room and add it to the fire. Annabelle, Grace, and Charlotte, see if you can find an old, clean sheet, and tear it into narrow strips for binding.”
Everyone immediately rushed in all directions to do her bidding.
Genevieve inhaled a slow, steadying breath before hurrying up the stairs to her bedroom.
“We’d best get him out o’ these clothes,” remarked Oliver after he had eased Haydon onto the bed. “Were ye wantin’ me to burn them?” He regarded Genevieve meaningfully.
She nodded. Oliver was well acquainted with the ill-fitting moleskin jacket, trousers, cotton shirt, and braces that comprised local prison uniforms. Clearly he didn’t want anyone beyond their household to recognize it as such—not even if it was tossed in the garbage.
“Here, lad, help me to sit him up so we can get these things off,” Oliver said to Jack.
Their patient was an unusually large man, and it took the three of them to lift and turn him as they peeled away the filthy layers of his prison uniform. Finally he was stripped to the waist.
“Dear Lord.” Genevieve stared in horror at the ugly purple and black bruises streaking his muscular torso. “Did that awful warder do all this?”
Jack shook his head. “He was hurt when he came to the prison. Said somethin’ about being attacked. That’s why Sims hit him in the rib cage.” His voice was filled with loathing as he finished, “He knew it would make it worse.”
“They’re a nasty lot, prison warders.” Oliver’s expression was grim. “I’ve known my share, and they’re all the same. Here now, lass, ye’d best look away while Jack and I pull off his trousers.”
“I’ll see what’s keeping Doreen,” said Genevieve, suddenly embarrassed.
She returned a few minutes later carrying a pile of thin towels, to find her bedroom in complete turmoil.
“Ye canna stack logs on a fire like bricks,” Oliver was saying to Simon and Jamie as he poked violently at the hearth, which was merrily spewing thick gray smoke into the room. “Ye’ve got to give ’em room to breathe, or else they’ll make ye sorry for it.”
“Girls, can ye not find elsewhere to do that?” clucked Eunice, nearly tripping over Annabelle, Grace, and Charlotte, who were seated upon an enormous sheet as if they were having a picnic.
“I think we have to get off it if we’re going to tear it up,” reflected Charlotte.
“Nonsense,” Grace said, struggling to start a rip in one corner. “It will be much better if we all sit on it to keep it steady.”
“Look at me—I’m an Arabian princess!” Annabelle stood and draped a length of the threadbare sheet in front of her face. “Where, oh where is my handsome desert sheik?”
“’Tis a shame we can’t just toss him in a bath,” remarked Doreen, staring at Haydon with her work-reddened hands fisted on her hips. “’Tis the best way to get a man really clean.”
“Or to drown him,” quipped Oliver. He gave the fire one final thrust, then handed the poker to Simon, who immediately began to flail it around as if it were a sword. “Especially in his condition.”
“I’ll help to wash him,” offered Jamie, pulling a sopping wet cloth out of the wash bowl and letting it drip water all over the bed. “I know how.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Genevieve set down the towels and scooped up the dripping cloth from Jamie. “Oliver, Doreen, and I will take care of Jack’s friend. The rest of you may go to bed.”
Simon stopped his swordplay to regard her with a crestfallen look. “But we want to help.”
“We won’t make any noise,” Grace assured her.
“And we won’t get in your way,” added Charlotte.
“Please,” chimed Annabelle from behind her makeshift veil.
Genevieve sighed. “I appreciate your desire to help. But there are too many people in this room, and the best way you could help is by going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep. There will be lots of other things for you to do tomorrow.”
“Like what?” asked Jamie eagerly.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Eunice, please take the children back to their rooms and make sure they are nicely tucked in.”
“Come on, then, duckies.” Eunice opened her slack, plump arms and gathered the children together like a flock of little birds. “If ye move smartly, ye each may have a special sweetie at yer plate in the morning.”
Excited by that wonderful possibility, the children instantly abandoned their pursuits and raced from the room.
“Jack, you may also go to bed,” Genevieve said, dipping her cloth in warm water. “We can manage.”
“Are you going to report him to the police?” His voice was low and hard.
Doreen’s aged eyes rounded in shock as she studied the man sprawled on the bed. “Sweet Saints,” she gasped. “He’s the one I went to see, isn’t he? The murderer who escaped from the jail this evening?”
Genevieve wrung out her cloth and calmly began to wash Haydon’s face. “If not for him, Jack would have been brutally beaten today,” she stated quietly. “Isn’t that right, Jack?”
“He had no reason to help me.” His voice was low and fierce, as if he thought she might debate the matter. “But he did. Sick and hurt as he was, he pulled that bastard warder off me. Told him he would kill him if he touched me again. And then he got pounded for it.”
Genevieve eased her cloth down the chiseled contour of Haydon’s cheek. His face had the black growth of a week or more, and there were dark circles bruising the skin beneath his eyes. Even so, he was an uncommonly handsome man. A man convicted of murder, she reminded herself uneasily.
Who would rise to the defense of a helpless boy, when he himself could barely stand.