CHAPTER TWO #4
Grace shook herself, brushing her fingers across the name as if she would erase its impact upon her.
She refolded the identity paper, and shuffled again through the other two, rereading their contents without making them mean anything more.
Her hand stole to the two sealed letters and she picked them up, turning them over, half tempted to break the seals.
But, no. Henri Rousselle had begged her aid to conceal them, and she would not betray his trust. Instead, she stood up, holding the seals close under the candles in the holders of the three-pronged candelabrum she used for her work.
There was nothing to be read from the mark of the seals, though they were the same.
Sitting down, she folded the open papers and made to pack them up again in the sheet that contained nothing but a little map, thinking of the place where she meant to hide them — a place where they could not be found, for none but she knew of its existence.
Just as she began to fold the sheet over, using the creases to determine where the folds should be, something caught Grace’s attention.
Pausing, she pushed the rest of the papers away and picked up the near blank sheet to hold it up to the light.
A watermark appeared. Grace studied it intently, a growing realisation creating a flurry in her heartbeat. It was unmistakably a coat of arms.
Heaviness lay across his legs, so that he could not move them.
For a moment, as consciousness began to return, Henri wondered whether the numbness was the result of a bullet wound.
He had a memory of having been shot, but what awareness was available to him could not immediately tell him where upon his body the injury had occurred.
Was he still on the marshes? No, it could not be, for he felt too warm and comfortable.
Apart from the deadness at his lower limbs.
He tried to shift them, and it came to him there was rather an obstruction there than a wound.
Possessed of a feeling of lassitude, he did not want to open his heavy eyes, but there was no alternative if he was to discover what was holding him down.
A faint glow pervaded the area, and it came to him that the place where he was lying was a large wooden bed.
Memory crept back. Had there not been a willing young fellow, who had washed and dressed him?
His fingers, feeling towards his body, encountered a sturdy fabric that covered his nakedness.
Someone had found him a nightshirt. Henri had a presentiment there was a debt of gratitude due somewhere, although at this present he could not have said to whom.
He raised his head, and instantly caused a shift of his body that told him, with an acute pang, exactly where he was wounded. Hastily he set his head down again. But he had seen, in that swift look, the unidentified hump that lay across his legs.
With far more care, he tipped his head slightly, peering down the covers.
The shape took on form, and as the recollection of the sleeping face came to him, he could not avoid a shifting of surprise that made the woman start awake.
In one convulsive movement, she threw herself up, and the burden lifted from his limbs.
Henri watched her blink dazedly, first at the dent her body had made upon the covers, and then at his face. She must have seen he was awake, for she leaned towards him, bracing herself with one hand upon the bed.
“I am so sorry! I’m afraid I fell asleep. Did I wake you?”
Henri smiled. “It makes nothing, mam’zelle.”
She appeared agitated. “But it does. You need to sleep more than anything, and you were so peaceful.” She reached out, and he felt the gentle touch of her hand at his brow. “How do you feel?”
“Most comfortable, merci.”
The smile he remembered came, and her hand was removed. “You have no fever, I thank God. Would you like a drink?”
She shifted off the bed as he watched her, accompanied by an odd clunk as she stepped to the bedside cabinet.
Presently a spoon was presented at his mouth.
He drank its contents and obediently swallowed down a few more mouthfuls at her urging.
“There,” she said at last, laying down the implement.
She leaned over him to tuck the bedclothes more securely around him. “Try if you can sleep again.”
This notion found no favour with Henri. He felt as if he had been sleeping for ever. Instead, he brought his good arm out from under the covers and captured her hand. The woman paused, looking down at him in mute question.
“Forgive,” he uttered, “but I desire not to sleep. Will you talk with me a little?”
A faintly anxious look overspread her features. “If it will not tire you too much, sir. You have lost a great deal of blood, and —”
Henri tried to grip her hand, and cursed inwardly at his own weakness. “Do not fear my death, mam’zelle. If the good God thinks to spare me, it is well. If no, I am prepared.”
“But I am not,” came sharply from the woman.
She removed her hand from his slack grasp, and straightened up, so that the light made of her figure a silhouette and threw shadows into her face.
The grey eyes sparkled fiercely, and her voice fairly hissed at him.
“I have not dragged you from the jaws of death, Henri Rousselle, that you should give in to him so tamely!”
His surprise veered. “You know my name?”
Her pose relaxed a trifle, but defiance sounded. “I looked in your papers.”
With deliberation, Henri smiled. “Then you have, how do you say — advantage? You will tell me who you are, mam’zelle, who have so kindly aided me?”
“I am Grace Dovercourt.”
She sounded grudging. Henri perceived he had seriously angered her.
Remorse swept through him, and he unconsciously held out his hand again.
“Pray you, keep me to live, if you can, Mademoiselle Grace. It is not that it is my wish to die, you understand. It is that my life has been with danger many years, and it is well to prepare. Forgive, I beg.”
Grace was not proof against the appeal in the frank green eyes.
The thought flitted across her mind that her name, which he had pronounced with a short “a”, had never sounded so pleasant.
She found herself smiling, and sat down on the bed, taking his outstretched fingers.
They clasped hers lightly and held them so, resting with his on the covers.
“It makes no matter, sir.”
The appeal at his eyes assailed her again. “But no, Grace, if thus I may address you. For you, I must be Henri, no?”
She could not help smiling. “Henri, then.”
She tried to withdraw her hand, but Henri tightened his hold. “Tell me, Grace, where is this place?”