Page 11 of The Count’s Charade

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 Grâce. 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, Grâce, 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, Grâce, where is this place?”

“It is called Wonts, sir. That will mean nothing to you, I dare say, for it is little more than a hamlet. It consists of this house, and a few cottages down the lane belonging to the farm that originates at South Hall. That is a proper village, if you like, perhaps a half mile from here. Beyond it, at another half mile, is East Hall, from where came the apothecary Dunmow, who took the bullet out.”

A recollection came into Henri’s mind. “It was you, Grâce, who made him.”

“Yes, for he would have left you to die.”

The fierceness was back, and he thought he read challenge in her eye. He sought a way to deflect it. “But where is it that you found me?”

“You had made your way into my lean-to downstairs.” Puzzlement showed in his face, and Grace amended her words. “An outhouse? It is attached at the back.” He nodded his understanding. Wanting to make him realise the narrowness of his escape from death, she said more than she might otherwise have done. “There is a stove there, for we use it for a laundry, and I am convinced it was the left-over warmth that saved you. Had you remained upon the marshes, you must have been dead by morning. Not,” she added severely, “that you were far from death when my maid discovered you. And for that, Henri, I have only myself to blame.”

Startled, Henri stared at her. “You, who have saved me, Grâce? This I do not believe.”

“You will believe it soon enough,” came the reply on a note of deep regret. “I heard you come in, though I did not know it. I thought it was a cat. Indeed, I heard one cry out, and was glad enough to be convinced. You may imagine how I felt when I realised your death might be laid at my door, had you not survived the night.”

Was that why she had done all she had? It was logical, if ridiculous. It was not she who had shot at him on the marsh. He did not ask the question, but only squeezed her fingers, changing the subject.

“You have said, I think, that you have looked at my papers?”

Grace made haste to reassure him. “Only those that were open. I did not break the seals. Nor could I make any sense of those I did examine — except your identity paper, and I was glad to find out who you were at least.”

Curiously, this aspect of the matter seemed not to interest Henri. “Where is it you have put the papers?”

“They are perfectly safe, I promise you, though I’m afraid the damp has smudged the writing here and there. I have a secret place none knows of save myself. Since no one knows of the existence of your papers, it will occur to none to look for them.”

Henri sighed his relief. Had they been lost, Grace had as well have left him to die, for he could have no future. He sank a little into the pillow, abruptly aware of tiredness. He let go her hand at last and slid his arm back under cover.

“I find you are in the right, Mademoiselle Grâce. I have not strength enough to converse more.”