CHAPTER THREE
Feigning a hunger she did not feel, Grace kept her attention firmly upon finishing up the ham and eggs with which Jemima had supplied her as she answered Mab’s query. “Yes, he is a degree better, but nowhere near well enough to be moved. He is excessively weak still.”
Mabel Lamport, trading upon familiarity, had plonked herself down at the table opposite her erstwhile charge, and blessed herself at finding the man upstairs alive.
Her determination to rid Grace of the Frenchman was apparently undiminished.
“Hmph!” she said, disgruntled. “If he’s made it through the night, he must have the constitution of an ox.
Dare say he’ll survive if they take him away. ”
“To where?” demanded Grace. “Who is going to take him in? Henri is not only a Frenchman, Mab, but a gentleman.”
The nurse’s cheeks suffused with colour. “Henri, is it? And how do you come to know his name, I’d like to know?”
To gain time, Grace took a sip of the coffee that, along with tea, was a luxury she refused to abandon. Not even Mab could be trusted with the secret of those papers. Fortunately, though she had heard Henri cry out, he had mentioned them specifically only in French. “He told me.”
Mab’s gimlet eye bored into her. “Thought you said he was weak. Thought you said you hadn’t had no chance to find out anything about him.”
“I haven’t.” Which was true enough. “We exchanged identities in a brief interlude when he woke up in the night.”
Too late, Grace perceived her mistake. Mab exploded.
“Lordy, don’t say as you nursed him through the night!
What will folks say, that’s what I want to know?
Well, I’ll tell you what they’ll say, and so should I, if I didn’t know better.
Of all the mutton-headed things to do, Miss Grace!
Whyever didn’t you call for me, if Jemima couldn’t be left with him? ”
“You can’t think I would make poor Jemima stay up all night, along with everything else she has to do,” protested Grace, ignoring the latter part of this speech. “Besides, you know I feel responsible for his condition. It was the least I could do.”
“Heaven send it don’t get about! It’s already run round the parish that the fellow is here, and Samuel ain’t been slow to tell the world as he looks to be a gennelman born. Dear knows how your reputation is to be kept, Miss Grace, if anyone gets wind of you spending the night in his bedchamber.”
Grace could not forbear a smile. “You had best set it about Henri is not only a gentleman, but excessively handsome to boot. None could then suppose my virtue to be in any danger.”
Her old nurse, veering wildly, became more annoyed.
“Well, and I’d like to know why not, Miss Grace.
It ain’t as if you’re an antidote, nor you ain’t an old maid.
And if you’d only taken a bit of trouble with yourself all them years of your youth, instead of capering about in them horrid dull frocks and pandering to your sainted papa and his finicking ways, you’d have been safe married, and there wouldn’t be no Frenchman in the case to put your reputation at risk.
” She broke off to glare at Grace. “Aye, it’s well for you to snort your head off, Miss Grace, but you know I’m right. ”
“I know nothing of the sort,” said Grace, hiccupping on her laughter. “Far from it, indeed. I have never cherished illusions, Mab. Had I been a beauty, perhaps there might have been some man who would overlook my disadvantages. As it is —”
“Now, don’t you talk silly, Miss Grace! Of all the —”
“Mab, pray stop scolding for one moment. If you will only get it into your head that I am quite content with my lot, we would not be forever arguing. If you truly have my interests at heart, you will be much better employed in putting forth your best efforts to convince people my reputation can be in no danger from a man at death’s door.
And if you have any sense, you will add a strong rider to the effect that a fellow as pretty as Henri, even had he strength or inclination for seduction, must be able to do better for himself than a woman of eight and twenty with a game leg. ”
Pleased to see that she had rendered her old nurse speechless for the time being, Grace finished her coffee and rose from the table, shaking out the petticoats of her green calico gown.
She had been obliged to change, having discovered her blue dimity to be bloodied and soiled from her exertions with the wounded man.
But she had barely got to the door when a sharp rat-a-tat heralded the first of what was to prove a veritable army of visitors.
Joe Piper needed no excuse, for the house at Wonts lay only slightly out of his way upon his route from Rainham to take the mail to the receiving office at the furthest and largest of the local villages at Wennington, and to the few hereabouts who paid for it to be delivered to their homes.
Grace, having few correspondents, saw no need to put her hand in her pocket for this privilege.
And would not have done, she insisted, even had her maid not been the postman’s daughter.
As it was, what letters did come her way were invariably delivered free of charge, Joe claiming that if he chose to take a moment or two out of his day to see his girl, it would be a rare waste of opportunity not to drop off any mail that happened to have come for Miss Grace.
On this occasion, however, he had nothing for her. “Only I’d not be doing me dooty, Miss Grace, as a father, hadn’t I come to see if my Jemima were in no sort o’ danger from this here marauder as stumbled into the house.”
It was not to be expected his daughter would take his interference tamely. “He ain’t no marauder, Pa. A gennelman he is, and as handsome as a picture. Nor he ain’t no danger to nobody, being as he’s as near turning up his toes as makes no matter.”
Piper, a wiry man of no great stature, with a sharp-featured face under the peaked cap that proclaimed his calling, shot a questioning glance at Grace.
“Dead, is he, Miss Grace? From what Clem told us, that don’t surprise me none.
I had ought to fetch Mr Holwell to you so’s he can fix up a funeral. ”
“Thank you, Joe, but you are previous,” said Grace. “He is certainly alive, and I have every hope he will grow stronger by the day.”
Joe, hovering in the parlour doorway, cast a look up the stairway. “Reckon he’ll be moving, then? Mr Mayberry is saying as how he might take the feller to his place, seeing as it’s nobbut a half mile to carry him.”
Jemima gave vent to a scoffing snort. “Aye, and have him breathe his last when he ain’t but halfway there. In no fit state to shift, he isn’t, Pa, and so Miss Grace will tell you.”
And anyone else who presumed to remove the Frenchman, in no uncertain terms. But Grace did not say it. To her surprise and relief, Mab took a hand, belligerent in defence of her nurseling.
“He’ll be moved when the right time comes, Joe Piper, and without your say-so. Meanwhile, our Reuben come over to spare Miss Grace and Jemima what they ain’t fitted for in nursing the feller.”
This intelligence appeared to afford Joe no satisfaction. Setting his arms akimbo, he squared up to Mab, tilting his head in a pugnacious fashion. “If that there Reuben Lamport is in the house, he’d best not be taking his chance to make up to Jemima.”
“Oh, Pa!”
“Don’t you Oh, Pa me, my girl! I won’t have that great lummock for a son-in-law, as I’ve told you often and often.”
“And I’ll have you know, Joe Piper,” returned Mab, fuming, “as Mr Lamport ain’t nowise fitted for our Reuben to marry no flippertygibbet like Jemima here, and so I tell you.”
“Flippertygibbet indeed,” huffed Jemima. “And I’ll have you know as I don’t have no wish to marry your Reuben. It’s Pa as has a bee in his bonnet.”
Grace intervened. “Hush, all of you! I will not have my patient disturbed by your absurd quarrelling. Come into the parlour, Joe, while I fetch the accounts from my bureau. I forgot about them in all this excitement, and perhaps you may pass them on to Mr Mayberry, for he should have had them yesterday.”
Following her in, Joe brushed past Mab, who thrust her nose in the air and shifted back to the table, while Jemima took the opportunity to escape to the kitchen. As Grace opened the bureau, Piper began upon a subject that instantly caught her attention.
“I dunno as Mr Mayberry will be home, Miss Grace, for he said as he were going to Rainham to confer with Mr Wooferton, seeing he’s excise officer and this here feller come from outside the parish seemingly.
Mr Mayberry had men out on the marshes yesterday, hunting for to see if he could find no sign of them as shot yon feller.
Clem and Sam went, along of Billy Oaken and most of the able-bodied men out at South Hall. ”
Recalled to the danger in which Henri stood, Grace was conscious of a hollow feeling within her. She turned with the neatly copied pages of accounts in her hand. “Did they find anything?”
“Nowt to speak on. ’Cepting blood and footprints as come up from the creek to the lane.”
“Mercy me!” exclaimed Mab.
A chill crept into Grace’s chest. “His blood and footprints?”
“Seemingly. Faded out after, and trampled by others on the crossway, likely made this morning by folks on their way to work. Mr Mayberry thinks as how they could ha’ led in this direction.”
“And what of his pursuers?”
Joe shook his head. “Ain’t nothing thereabouts. Mr Mayberry said as how it were pointless hunting less’n the feller can tell him more. No saying where anyone might be in them marshes. Nor if he’d best look Rainham Marsh way or Wennington Marsh.”
“No, indeed,” agreed Grace, unaccountably afraid all at once. “And there is Avely Marsh further east. They could be anywhere.”