CHAPTER THREE #5
“It makes no matter. It will serve.”
“Yes, but it won’t. It will be excessively uncomfortable to wear, and it will supply you with scant warmth.” She eyed him narrowly. “From the look of it, one would suppose it had been rolled in the mud.”
Henri was silent. Aware that Grace was watching him with question in her face, he sought in his mind for a diversion. The last thing he wanted was to burden her with knowledge that must endanger her too.
“My boots, they are also in this condition, en effet?”
“No, for Reuben cleaned off the mud and polished them when they were quite dry. I think you will find them little the worse.”
He could not forbear a mischievous look. “A mercy, that. Discomfort to the feet, it is worse than to the body, no?”
Grace did not answer. She was fidgeting with her fingers, not looking at him. When she did, she was wearing a serious look. Henri felt instantly wary. And with reason, as it turned out.
“What happened that night, Henri?”
He hesitated. “You are asking how it is that I am shot?”
“I am not asking how you come to be lying in that bed!”
Henri met the fierce look of the grey eyes. “It is you who ask me not to speak before your doctor, Grace. I have done so, even when he comes again — when? Diable, I have lost the days!”
“It is Monday. The seventeenth, if that matters to you.”
He gave a faint shrug and mischief sparked in his eye. “I have no engagement.”
Grace was obliged to laugh, but she was not to be put off.
She made a play for lightness. “I am thankful for your silence when the doctor was here on Saturday. You are an accomplished actor, Henri. But I am not Doctor Ffrith. Though he at least acknowledged you have more resilience than he could have expected.”
“I have also caution,” said Henri, refusing to be drawn. “You know there is danger, Grace. It is better that I say no word.”
She swallowed painfully. “Have you not learned to trust me?”
“Ah, no, it is not that. I would not make you — how do you say it? Yes, my accomplice.”
“I already am, Henri, can’t you see that? Let me share your secret. I cannot shield you if I don’t know the truth.”
He could not resist reaching out to her again. This time, she gave him her hand and his fingers squeezed hers strongly. “You cannot shield me, Grace. Soon they will know that I am French. How long since he came, the other man?”
“Four days. He will probably come again today or tomorrow. And if Mayberry speaks to Ffrith and receives a good account of you, it will be harder to make him leave you here.”
Henri did not answer, although his gaze remained steady. The silence was clearly deliberate.
Grace sighed and disengaged her hand. She did not look at him as she got up to go. “I will leave you to rest.”
His voice stopped her as she moved to the door. “What is with your legs, Grace?”
She turned her head, and puzzlement showed in her eyes for a moment as if the question made no sense. Then Henri saw light dawn, and a tiny laugh escaped her.
“That? I have one leg shorter than the other. The noise you hear is my boot. It has a thickened sole, so that I may walk more evenly.”
She left the room on the words, and Henri listened to the dot-and-carry tread as the heavy boot thumped its way downstairs, wondering if it was to this misfortune that Grace owed her difficult life. He marvelled at her unconcern. Evidently it was so much a part of her she scarcely noticed it.
As a rule, Grace would have agreed with him. But however used she was to her own disability, she had never been so conscious of it as she was now, in the certain knowledge Henri could not choose but hear every clumsy step she made.
She was thankful to be distracted by finding Joe Piper awaiting her. As she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, he emerged from the kitchen, accompanied by his daughter.
“Why, Joe, I did not know you were here. Have you any news?”
Jemima put her finger to her lips, nodding significantly up the stairs. Then she pulled her father out of the way and bade Grace enter the parlour. “Pa got something to tell you, Miss Grace,” she said, low-voiced.
Grace clumped her way into the parlour, prey to a horrid feeling of apprehension. It came to her that the postman had been looking particularly portentous. That it concerned Henri could not be in doubt. She waited impatiently while Jemima carefully shut the door.
“What is it?”
Joe had his hat in his hands, and he twisted it uncomfortably. “It ain’t my blame as Jemima telled me what you didn’t want no one to know of, Miss Grace, only —”
“Well, I had to, Pa, and so Miss Grace will say too. Tell her, do.”
Joe Piper visibly gathered himself together. “I’ve come from Wennington, Miss Grace, and I heard it from Jack Gibbs the tailor and John Jones the butcher both, so it ain’t nowise a Banbury tale.”
A hollow spread in Grace’s chest. “What is it, for heaven’s sake?”
“Seemingly there’s a set of fellers arsting after a wounded man hereabouts. And, from what Jemima been telling me, the worst of it is, Miss Grace, as they’re Frenchies.”