Page 12 of The Count’s Charade

Grace was obliged to crush down a stupid feeling of disappointment. She saw that the secret papers were all in all to him, and determined they should not find their way into the hands of the parish officers. At the remembrance of the danger in which Henri stood, a sense of urgency engulfed her. She leaned closer.

“One thing before you sleep, Henri.”

He had closed his eyes, but at this they fluttered open again. “Oui?”

“When Doctor Ffrith comes tomorrow, you must pretend to be weaker than you are, do you understand?” She read puzzlement in the green eyes, and the rhythm of her pulse altered. “Pray, Henri, do as I ask. They will try to take you away from here. Ffrith and Mayberry, who is the parish officer — and I don’t know who else besides.”

Infuriatingly, he appeared not to share her disquiet. “It is better so, perhaps. For you, it is encumbrance, no? Let them take me.”

For the second time, Henri witnessed her fierceness under the calm exterior. “I will not! Don’t you see, Henri? We are at war with France. The moment they know your nationality, they will be at pains to imprison you. What should they take you for but a spy? That, or an émigré. Your arrival in such manner can only make them suspicious. Besides, they all entertain the foolish notion that my reputation is endangered. How they suppose you could do me harm in your condition, I cannot imagine.”

A faint laugh escaped him. “You are correct in this, I think.”

“Of course I am. Only these are country people, good though they are. And you, I make bold to suggest, are not of their number.” Grace saw a wary look come into his eye, and she sighed. “You need not fear me, Henri. Surely you know that? I should by rights have passed your papers to Mr Mayberry, or indeed to the excise officer, Mr Wooferton. But I shall not.”

“Why, Grâce?”

A choked sob escaped her. “Because you are a gentleman, and I dread the moment they realise it. Because I blame myself for your condition. Because —” She broke off, took a breath, and spoke more calmly. “There are many reasons. But let this suffice: I do not know who wanted you dead, but someone did. And if they come after you, I prefer to guard you myself than to trust in men who will be contented enough to let you die, only because you are French.”

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.”