Page 3 of The Count’s Charade

“Papers,” he muttered in accented English. “Hide…” The green eyes fluttered open once more, a pleading look within them. “I beg you … ces papiers … they have danger.”

Grace took his unquiet fingers within her own. “Where are the papers? In your pockets? Be calm, pray. I will find them.”

He lay quiescent while she searched, with quivering hands, trying not to disturb him. A vague gesture indicated his uninjured side, and Grace felt inside his coat. A crackling sound rewarded her. Not without difficulty, she removed from some inner pocket upon his person a small stack of folded papers, moist on the outside.

“I have them. You may rest easy now.”

A hand flew up, as if in salute, and then he sank once more into unconsciousness. Grace stared at the white face. Who was he? Was he genteel? The clothes he wore suggested it, together with the timbre of his voice. A Frenchman, shot last night on the marshes — for had she not heard it? — and anxious for the safety of his papers. Her first thought was wholly unpalatable. Likely a spy? England was at war with France. Only why did he suffer her, an Englishwoman, to take away these dangerous papers?

Handling them gingerly, afraid of transferring to them the blood that clung to her hands, Grace opened the pack of papers and peeped at its contents. Seals showed within, and what writing she could see was in French. She would have to find a private moment to lay them out and try to decipher their contents.

Running footsteps penetrated her awareness: Jemima, returning with the farmhands. Quickly refolding the package, Grace thrust it through the slit in her petticoats, stuffing it into the pocket beneath. Not a moment too soon, for even as she withdrew her hand, Clem and Samuel thudded into the yard, Jemima in close pursuit.

Seated beside the bed in the spare chamber, Grace contemplated her uninvited guest with a good deal of concern. It had been no easy task for the two farmhands to extract him from his position in the lean-to, entailing the removal into the yard outside of the washtub, the jugs and a number of implements liable to get in the way. Even then, the exigencies of accommodating two large men who had to lift an inert body and bring it forth proved a labour of Hercules. Much argument and trial had produced a fear of renewed bleeding in the victim, and a rubbing at Grace’s temper. She had been obliged to take a hand and direct operations before the poor Frenchman died from Clem and Samuel’s well-meaning but disastrous efforts.

Once the lean-to had been negotiated, it thankfully proved a good deal simpler to carry the man upstairs and set him down upon the bed, ready prepared by Jemima. Bidding the farmhands strip the Frenchman to the waist, Grace sent the maid for a bowl of warm water and went herself to fetch scissors from her bedchamber, before removing an old sheet from the linen press kept in this spare chamber.

With the wound laid bare, she found fresh blood induced by the recent exertions. Using cuttings from the sheet, she swabbed it clean as gently as she could, and gazed with dismay at the gaping hole just above the heart, in the Frenchman’s left shoulder. Instructing Jemima to rip strips from the sheet, she took a square of linen and fashioned a pad to lay to the wound. With an improvised bandage in place to hold the pad stable, Grace had felt ready to grapple with the next step.

Jemima had brought up a jug of cold water and a glass. “He’ll be thirsty when he wakes — if he does.”

But Grace would tolerate no ifs. “He has lost a great deal of blood, but he must have a strong constitution to have lasted the night. Only it is vital he is seen as soon as may be, for I strongly suspect there is a bullet in him.” A little argument had broken out upon the subject of who to call.

“Don’t see as how even Doctor Ffrith can help him,” was Clem’s verdict. “Seemingly he’s done for, Miss Grace.”

“We had ought to bring in Mr Holwell to him instead, so’s he can measure him for a coffin,” came from Samuel.

Grace dealt summarily with these gloomy prognostications, and decided to send Clem for the doctor a mile away at Rainham, and Jemima to the marginally nearer East Hall for Dunmow the apothecary. “Mr Dunmow is also a surgeon and he may at least extract the bullet. And he will certainly be found at home, whereas there is no saying when Doctor Ffrith may be called out upon an emergency.”

“Clem had best tell him this is an emergency,” said Jemima. “If the poor feller live long enough for him to get here.”

“Don’t say that,” Grace scolded. “Off you go to Mr Dunmow now, Jemima, and don’t come back without him. Clem, do you start for Rainham at once, and I will square it later with Mr Mayberry that you are not at your work.”

Jemima sped away, but Clem hesitated in the doorway. “Seemingly Sam could tell master, seeing as Mr Mayberry is parish officer. Parish business is this.”

“Sam may tell him presently. For the moment, I need him here.”

Samuel was shocked when Grace insisted upon removing the lower half of the patient’s garments. Grace overbore him.

“They are damp, Samuel, like the rest of his clothes. Now we don’t want him dying of pneumonia, do we?”

“But it ain’t seemly, miss. ’Sides that, he’s good as dead anyhow.”

Scolded for the last remark, he at last consented to do as Grace asked. To assuage his sensibilities, she consented to turn her back when it came to the fellow’s drawers, the farmhand warning her not to look until he had drawn the covers up over the man’s nakedness. Requesting him to remove all the man’s clothes from the chamber and take them down to the lean-to, where Jemima might later attend to them, Grace at last dismissed him, giving him a message — albeit with reluctance — for Mr Mayberry. Then she settled down to wait for the arrival of the apothecary.

While Grace knew there was no keeping this affair secret, she sighed at the certainty the local figures of authority would descend upon her. If one thing was more certain than another, it was that officialdom would attempt to wrest the Frenchman from her care. Grace determined to resist them to the utmost of her power, for she could not but blame herself that the poor man had come to this.

Had she investigated the noise last night, she would have found him at once. Instead she had ignored it, and as a result, he had lost enough blood to kill any ordinary man several times over. She felt little better than a murderess. That he had survived was a miracle, and Grace could only suppose him to be possessed of superhuman strength. She had at least the consolation he’d had the benefit of the residual heat from the fire in Jemima’s makeshift laundry. Had he remained out upon the marshes where he was shot, he would undoubtedly have died in the night.

She eyed the lean cast of his white-featured face where he lay on the pillow, abnormally motionless. Grace clung to the certainty he was breathing, watching intently for the slightest lift and drop of his chest. She reached under the covers and sought for his wrist, trying to find a pulse. Relief shot through her, and tears started to her eyes. It was very faint, but it was there.

Releasing him, she withdrew her hand, smoothing the covers about him. The pale countenance drew her and she rose from her chair, leaning over him. Like a marble statue, and as classically beautiful as any god of the ancient world. She remembered the green eyes, and wondered if she would ever see their colour again. An unbidden sob shook her.

“Live, pray! You must live,” she besought him in a voice of throbbing need.

But no flicker came to relieve the staining guilt. She had not shot him, but if he died, Grace could not acquit herself of complicity. Which led her to a realisation, and a breathless question. Who had wanted him dead?

He was running, the breath tight in his chest. Behind him in the darkness, the blundering progress of his pursuers threatened. When he turned, the light carried by one of them bobbed like a dancing firefly, a harbinger of doom. If they caught him, his life was not worth a moment’s purchase.