CHAPTER TWO
Grace hurried to the bedside and found the green eyes staring up at her. She read confusion in their depths, and apprehension. She made haste to reassure him.
“No one is coming here. Hush now, there is nothing to fear, sir. Pray be calm.”
“Mes papiers?” Anxiety in the thread of a voice.
“Safe, I promise you,” Grace soothed, laying a hand to his brow. It was cool to the touch, and she sighed with relief, her glance returning to the eyes that watched her warily. Grace smiled at him. “I believe you were dreaming, sir. Truly, there is no cause for alarm. Rest now, if you please.”
The green eyes dulled again, and his head shifted on the pillow slightly, as if he would nod. “Merci.” The faint murmur reached her as his eyes were closing, and in a moment he was sleeping again.
Grace looked up to find her old nurse parked on the other side of the big bed, arms akimbo and a martial light in her eye. Her tone became ominous.
“A Frenchie?”
Grace put a finger to her lips and shook her head, frowning Mab down.
Then she moved to the door, gesturing to Mrs Lamport to follow.
Drawing Mab out of the room, she half closed the door.
“I will not suffer you to disturb him, Mab. Yes, he is French, but I wish you will keep it to yourself for the moment.”
Mab sniffed. “There won’t be no need for me to say nothing once the feller opens his mouth.”
“But that may not be for some little time. I wish to avoid the awkwardness that must attend such a revelation for as long as possible, do you understand?”
“I understand as you’re in danger from mor’n what I supposed, that’s what I understand,” grumbled the nurse.
“Don’t be absurd!”
“What Mr Constant will have to say, I’m sure I don’t know!”
Which remark served to remind Grace of one matter of good fortune.
Constant had taken his family to the coast for several weeks, in the hope that sea air might do his wife good.
Serena had been sickly off and on for some years, and Grace was moved to offer up a silent prayer of thanks to her sister-in-law.
The Reverend Mr Dovercourt would undoubtedly disapprove of her activities.
Changing tack, she seized her nurse’s hands, squeezing them hard. “Pray, Mab, keep faith with me! I need your help, my dear.”
It was a deliberate ploy, for she knew well the creature could not resist such an appeal.
Nor was she mistaken. Drawing herself up, Mab declared that no matter her own misgivings, Grace would not find her lacking in loyalty.
If she was determined upon her own downfall, far be it from the nurse to hasten it with any undue words in the wrong quarter.
Discovering that in all the excitement her nurseling had not had time to break her fast, she broke into fresh scolding.
“It ain’t no manner of use starving yourself for that feller. You’ll be no use to him if you don’t keep up your own strength, Miss Grace. I’ll watch him for you while you have your breakfast, never fear.”
Reluctant, but aware that for all her complaints, Mab would care for her Frenchman as well or better than she could, Grace allowed herself to be shooed downstairs.
Jemima no sooner heard Grace’s dot-and-carry step than she erupted from the kitchen to bid her mistress sit down to the table in the parlour, which was ready laid, and she would bring in tea and whip up a couple of poached eggs and set them on toast. “For I’ve not had time to bake rolls, and that loaf ain’t fit for nothing else. ”
Realising she was indeed extremely hungry, Grace thanked her as she obediently entered the parlour.
Glancing at the case clock on the mantel, she discovered it to be nearly eleven.
Was it three hours already since Jemima had found the Frenchman?
Neither Doctor Ffrith nor Mr Mayberry had put in an appearance, which suggested neither had readily been found by the messengers sent to them.
The intelligence that a wounded man had been discovered in Miss Dovercourt’s lean-to and been taken up to her spare bedchamber was enough, Grace knew, to bring both down upon her in a hurry.
What their reaction would be upon discovering his nationality, she dreaded to think.
This thought put her in mind of what the man had said upon waking, and she remembered the existence of the papers in her pocket.
Dared she remove them now? No, for the news, in the way of villages, must be rapidly spreading, and she could not hope to remain undisturbed.
It was imperative she was alone when she looked at them.
She blenched a little at the thought of what those papers might contain.
What had he said? Ils arrivent! “They are coming.” And they — whoever “they” might be — would kill for the papers.
Dear Lord, into what dread secret had she stumbled?
A spare man, with a habit of peering over a pair of pince-nez perched on the end of his nose, Dr Ffrith stood a little upon his dignity.
He adhered to his wig, in defiance of the coming fashion for gentlemen to wear their own hair, and insisted upon addressing Grace correctly despite her being known among the locals as Miss Grace.
As sister to the local vicar, and daughter of a gentleman, Grace stood a step above him in station, but she was used to his practice of adopting an inclusive air towards her, as of belonging with her in an elite among lesser men.
Grace took pains not to appear high in the instep, and treated everyone in the same friendly manner, but she was capable of exerting the authority of her status when, as upon the present occasion, she felt it to be necessary.
Especially since the doctor had thought it proper to discuss the matter with Mr Mayberry, whom he had brought with him into the bargain, before answering her summons.
“It is as well that I sent also for Mr Dunmow,” she told him, “or the poor man must have died waiting for your arrival.”
“Yes, Clem told me you had done so,” stated the doctor, giving her one of his austere looks over the spectacles, “or I should have come at once. From Clem’s description —”
“Pray do not quote me the doom-laden remarks made to you by Clem,” Grace cut in. “I presume it is not your practice to base your diagnoses upon the lurid details supplied to you by a farmhand?”
Ffrith drew himself up and shoved the spectacles further up his nose.
“I did no such thing, ma’am. Only I thought it expedient, assuming Dunmow would do his best for the man, to embark immediately upon arrangements to relieve you, Miss Dovercourt, of what must be both a burden and a frightening responsibility. ”
“It is not a burden, I am not in the least frightened, and I take full responsibility.”
“I take leave to doubt the Reverend gentleman your brother will be similarly sanguine.”
Fury flared in Grace’s breast, but she quelled it, trying for a calm note. “Since you saw fit to advise him to take Mrs Dovercourt to the coast, Doctor Ffrith, it is useless to trouble ourselves with what Constant might or might not agree to.”
She read further argument in the doctor’s eye and could only be glad when Mr Mayberry intervened.
“If I might make so bold, Miss Grace?”
Grace turned to him. He had been standing a little apart, near her bureau, while she confronted the doctor in the middle of the parlour. A burly fellow, with ruddy features under a shock of autumn hair grizzled at the temples, Mayberry fairly dwarfed the room as he stepped forward.
“Yes, Mr Mayberry?”
“I’d say, Miss Grace, as there’s a deal of question in the matter, seeing as this here feller were shot at in this parish.
If it should come to a case of murder, it might be as we had ought to bring in the constables.
So, if it’s all the same to you, Miss Grace, I’ve my duty to think for, and I had ought to see the feller at least.”
A rise of apprehension caused a flutter in Grace’s bosom.
There could be no doubt of Mayberry’s rights, and it was likely politic to let him into the bedchamber.
She could only hope the Frenchman would remain unconscious.
Concealing her dismay, she adopted her best authoritarian manner.
“You may see him, Mr Mayberry, but remove him from this house you will not!”
“My dear Miss Dovercourt, if Mayberry considers it to be his duty —”
“It is not his duty to complete the work of whoever it was who tried to murder the victim,” interrupted Grace with some heat. “And you, Doctor Ffrith, will admit that to move a man who has lost a deal of blood already is a dangerous proceeding.”
The doctor pursed his lips, and removed his spectacles, evidently declining to answer. Triumphant, Grace brushed past him towards the parlour door.
“I shall take you both up to him, but I must request you not to disturb him beyond what you must.”
“If you wish me to examine the wound, ma’am, I’m afraid I must disturb him.”
Grace turned as she reached the stairs. “I do wish you to examine it. I am merely asking you to have a care.”
Ffrith chose to ignore this. “Who is with him now?”
“Mrs Lamport.”
He was visibly relieved. “Ah, then you are not nursing him yourself.”
Grace stumped on up the stairs as if she had not heard him.
She was not going to embark upon a fruitless argument, which would undoubtedly end in her losing her temper.
Let him think it, if it would appease him.
All she cared for was that neither of the two men would attempt to take the Frenchman away.
He was lying in the same death-like state, but his breathing was easier.
Grace was conscious of an urge to stand at the bedside to guard him from the onslaught of the unsympathetic Doctor Ffrith.
Forcing herself to go to the foot of the bed, and carefully keeping out of the light from the window, she signed to Mab to move aside and allow the two men access.