CHAPTER TEN
The maid rushed to the table and stared at her. “What is it, Miss Grace? Are you hurt? What happened?”
Grace shook her head. “Nothing.”
“But you screeched something horrid, Miss Grace!”
“I’m sorry.” She tried to explain. “It’s the silence. I can’t bear it!”
Jemima was frowning in perplexity. “Silence?”
“Pay no heed to me,” said Grace wearily. “I am not myself.”
“No, and no wonder!” The maid stood biting her lip for a moment. Then she nodded with determination. “I’d best go to East Hall and fetch Mrs Lamport to you.”
Grace put out a hand, apprehension flooding her. “Don’t leave me here alone!”
Jemima began to look frightened. A reminder of duty came tapping at the walls of Grace’s mind. She drew a shuddering breath and took hold of the maid’s fingers.
“Jemima, I need a little time. I can’t — I can’t get used to him not being here.”
The maid’s hand tightened around hers. For the first time in their dealings, she plonked herself into a chair at the table in a companionable way. Compassion sounded in her voice.
“There, there, dearie. I won’t go nowhere. And don’t you fret none, Miss Grace. He ain’t gone for long, you mark my words. Mister Henry will be back, and that right speedily.”
A faint sob caught in Grace’s throat. “If only you may be right!”
“You’ll see. There ain’t no Englishman going to hand him over to them murdering Frenchies, I’m telling you.”
But what if the Frenchies got to him while he was in custody? But Grace did not say it. Expressing her fear had lessened the frozen feeling that had held her in thrall. She disengaged her hand, and summoned up a smile. “Thank you, Jemima, you comfort me.”
“So I should hope, miss.” The girl stood up.
“Now, I’m going to poach a couple of eggs and put them on toast for you, and I won’t hear of you refusing to eat them.
You ain’t had nothing inside you all morning ’cepting tea, and I’ll warrant it’s hunger as is making you downhearted.
” She started off, and then appeared to think better of it.
“You come along o’ me, Miss Grace. It’s that warm in the kitchen, and noisy enough for anyone.
What’s more, I can see you eat it all up, and no argy-bargy. ”
Grateful for the maid’s gentle bullying, Grace allowed herself to be ushered into the kitchen, where she sat at the deal table and listened to Jemima’s inconsequent chatter as she threw eggs into a pan of boiling water and set a slice of bread to toast on the grate.
The sense of isolation, together with the icy feeling in her limbs, began to leave her.
By the time she had been cajoled into eating nearly all the food, Grace felt a good deal more her usual self, and able, when Mab put in an appearance later in the afternoon, to hold her own against the barrage of motherly concern, couched as ever in the form of groans and complaint.
“I’d have come over long since, did I know as the wretched fellow were still here. Reuben said as he were intending to leave two days since. And when I heard as that search party didn’t find hide nor hair of him, I suspicioned as he’d made his way elsewhere, and good riddance!”
“Don’t say that, Mrs Lamport,” begged Jemima, who had brought coffee to the parlour and was hovering, one anxious eye on her mistress. “Miss Grace didn’t want him to go, and no more did I. He’s a good man is Mister Henry.”
Mab gave the maid a withering glance. “It don’t make no difference how good he is, Jemima Piper. As long as he’s a trouble to Miss Grace, in my book he ain’t welcome.”
The maid tossed her head. “Oh, and I s’pose as you wouldn’t know what kind o’ trouble she’d be in if’n he did go off and leave her?”
Grace intervened swiftly, before her old nurse could interpret this remark in the only way possible. “Do be quiet, Jemima!”
Mab’s eyes grew round as she turned them on Grace. “What in the world —?”
“Never mind it, Mab. Nothing matters beyond Henri’s safety.”
“But she said —”
Jemima grew jumpy, clearly realising her mistake. “No, I never, Mrs Lamport! I didn’t say no word as you could take amiss.”
“Listen to me, both of you,” cut in Grace as the nurse showed signs of argument. “Whatever may have happened in this house is no longer relevant. What does concern me is that Henri is being held at the Black Horse, where the Frenchmen are staying.”
“What, them as dared to come here and search this house?” Mab’s belligerence veered. “They’d best try anything under Sir James Levisham’s eye, that’s all I can say.”
Jemima’s features reflected something of Grace’s anxiety. “But Mister Henry will be under Mr Wooferton’s eye, miss. Maybe Mr Mayberry’s too.”
“Besides, didn’t them Frenchies purpose on taking him back to France?”
Grace brought her hands flat down to the table with a bang. “You don’t understand, either of you! Do you think it was an accident that they shot Henri? They want him dead!”
Both women looked at her dazedly. Jemima was the first to recover, addressing the nurse. “She’s right, Mrs Lamport. You never seen them come in here searching for Mister Henry. A set of murdering beasts, they are, who wouldn’t stop at nothing.”
Mab looked from one to the other, consternation gathering in her eyes. “Does Sir James know this?”
Grace shook her head. “No one knows, except Henri and I, and now the two of you. But Sir James will not believe it, even were he told. He thinks they mean to take Henri to France to stand trial.”
Jemima made a derisive noise. “We all know what them Frenchified trials is like. Pa told me as they ain’t nothing but a sham. If Sir James give Mister Henry over to them Frenchies, he might as well kill him hisself.”
“And if he keeps him here,” said Grace bitterly, “he will be obliged to put Henri on trial as a spy, since it must by now be common knowledge he was working for the Revolutionary Government.”
It was apparent this was news to Mab, for she grew pink, staring at her erstwhile mistress in horror. “That’s all we need! To have all the world think as you’ve been and got yourself a lover who ain’t nothing more than a nasty murdering revolutionary!”
“Mister Henry ain’t never one o’ them! He wouldn’t have nothing to do with that there horrid machine as is made for chopping off of folk’s heads.”
Grace sighed. “Yes, but the fact remains he was one of them, Jemima. He admitted as much to me last night.”
After a stunned moment, the maid burst into tears, flinging her apron up over her face. Mab pushed her into a chair, and the two of them spent several moments petting and soothing her into hiccupping sobs.
“To think you’ve been nursing a snake in your bosom, Miss Grace,” she said in broken accents. “To think I’ve let meself be fooled and all. And I thought to see him get to be master here, and you to be so very happy, Miss Grace.”
Grace let out a painful laugh. “There was never any hope of that, Jemima.” She caught her nurse’s astounded gaze, and got up from her chair. “You need not look like that, Mab. You cannot suppose a man like Henri Rousselle could be persuaded to marry such a creature as I am.”
Jemima was on her feet. “But he could, Miss Grace. I ain’t no jobbernoll, and I seen the way he looks at you.
What’s more —” Here she broke off, reddening, and Grace could only be thankful, remembering how the maid had taken in the rumpled bedclothes this morning.
She made haste to deflect Mab’s attention.
“This is all beside the bridge. Mab, I wish you will go home at once and ask Reuben to go to the Black Horse and glean what information he can.”
The nurse bustled out of her chair. “There ain’t no need to fret, Miss Grace, for I’ve already sent him. He’s to come through here on his way back.”
Moved, Grace thanked her, but kept to herself the notion she might pen a note for Henri to give to Reuben.
He could deliver it the next day, if Wooferton would permit his prisoner to receive letters.
She suspected that if he knew it came from her, he would bend the rules.
If he could, Henri would write back, she was sure.
She refused to let herself dwell on the possibility it might be the last communication between them.
When the nurse left them, the unnatural quiet closed once more around her.
It was augmented on this occasion by Jemima’s retirement into dismal sulks, alienated by the revelation about Henri’s activities in France.
The maid, though evidently fond of Henri, had not the consuming self-interest of love to overcome her revulsion.
Had she the truest acquaintance with Henri, Jemima would know there must be extenuation.
Caught up in subsequent events, Grace had forgotten her own conviction.
It came back to her as question now, and she found her mind dwelling upon it as she clumped slowly back from seeing off Mab and seated herself at the bureau.
Henri’s papers were still secreted behind the false shelf.
Why had he not asked her for them? He had given himself up. Surely he had a plan? Unless —
The thought snaked through her mind, startling her.
He knew she was wholly on his side. He knew that she loved him.
Was it his intention she should seek the truth in his documents?
Henri knew they were safe here. Either he meant to keep them so until he had need of them, or he was entrusting them to her care.
Was she to read them? She tried to think back to the moment of parting.
Distraught, and in shock, she had been in no condition to receive meaningful messages.
Henri had been taken outside while Mayberry searched his room.
Wooferton would not let Grace out until they were ready to leave.
She had floundered down the path, almost tripping in her haste.
When she had reached the lane, Henri had been looking back at her from where he sat on Mayberry’s horse.
He had raised a hand in salute, and then had turned his head to the front, without again glancing round.