Page 51 of The Count’s Charade

Watching him, Grace noted the worn look in his features as the light fell upon them. She had missed it before, preoccupied with her own emotions. She recalled, with a riffle of distress, how he must have spent the day.

“Was it difficult, keeping ahead of them all?”

Henri reached for the bottle with his right hand, his left resting in his lap. “Many times they came close enough to trap me.” His eyes met hers, the wine poised over one of the glasses. “I had no intent to leave, Grâce, but to try if I am strong enough to escape Jean-Marc. I do not have trouble, tu sais, with these English.” He laughed, pouring wine. “They make a noise to wake an army! Jean-Marc, he is quick and silent, like a cat.”

The familiar stirring of fear for him threaded through Grace’s breast. “Was he out there too?”

Henri nodded. “All three I have seen. They search alone that they can cover more ground. I must use my head and my legs both together.”

He passed the glass across and began to pour for himself. While he talked, playing for time, he was revolving the situation in his mind. The game had altered, and he must take a new direction. How to attain it he did not know, but there was a goal to be aimed at, though his future remained in the lap of the gods. There was one precaution he could take. He leaned down and rubbed at his leather-encased shins.

“It is with the feet more than the wound where I have the ache. I could wish that Reuben was here, for I think I will not get these off alone.”

“Let me do it,” said Grace at once. Getting up, she obliged him to raise one leg so that she might tug at the offending boot. It was a struggle, and she almost fell over when it came off at last. Their shared laughter lightened the atmosphere, and Henri advised her to turn her back and straddle his leg when it came to the other boot. This method proved easier, and Henri expressed his satisfaction and comfort as he took the boot from her.

“There is perhaps a stone inside,” he mused, feeling into the depths of the boot.

Grace thought it took rather long for him to decide there was no obstruction after all, and withdraw his hand. She had resumed her seat in the meanwhile, and it was only out of the periphery of her vision that she thought she saw him slip something into his pocket before he set the boot next to its fellow. But in a moment, he picked up the bottle again and the notion slid from her mind as she watched him pour the remaining wine into his glass. How well she could like it, were he to assume a position at the top of the table forever. Ironic, that the first man to tempt her to relinquish her independence had to be unattainable.

As if he read her thought, Henri posed a question. “How is it that you have not been married, Grâce?”

Shocked out of her abstraction, Grace let out a self-conscious laugh. “Need you ask?” She took refuge in a sip of wine, and threw it back at him. “I might ask you the same question.”

He shrugged in the peculiarly Gallic fashion. “It was not in France a situation suitable for marriage.” An intent look came into his face. “But you. Is it that you think a man will not marry with a woman who has a leg not normal?”

It was doubly painful to discuss such a subject with the very man she must have chosen, had she a choice. She shifted uncomfortably. “I never put it to the test. Oh, if I’d had money, I dare say any number of gentlemen might have overlooked it.”

“Ah, ma chère, you have a view of the nature of mankind that is well proven in France.” He shook his head. “There are those who will do much for money. But not all, Grâce. Could you find not one honest man?”

Grace had recourse to her wine again, while she searched for a suitable reply. She chose evasion. “By the time I was old enough to think of marriage, I had in any event chosen to care for Papa.” But the bitterness would not be entirely suppressed. “It suited me not to put myself in the way of rejection and mockery.”

For a short time, Henri did not speak. His grave regard did not waver, and Grace felt unable to meet it. He finished his wine and set down the glass. “Will you permit that I look at the boot?”

Taken aback, Grace stared at him. “Why?”

A faint echo of his mischievous look flitted across his face. “If I may be in comfort with no boot, why not Grâce also?”

She had to laugh. “To tell the truth, it is excessively awkward to walk without it.”

Henri nodded. “I have seen. Yet I desire to look. It is interesting, no? To find how the boot is made.”

“Oh, if that’s all,” said Grace, feeling foolish.

She leaned down and began to undo the laces. But Henri was immediately on his knees, moving her fingers out of the way and completing the operation. Grace sat mumchance, peculiarly touched, as he prised the leather apart and gently eased her foot out of the boot. Setting it aside, he took her foot between his hands and steadily massaged the sole with his thumbs. Grace winced. “Ouch!”

Henri looked up at her, stilling his hands but keeping them cupped about the foot. “It is painful?”

She grimaced. “A little, yes. The doctor who first arranged for a boot to be made told me the muscles become stiff with the effort of lifting it. It is very heavy.”

Reaching for the boot, Henri weighed it in his right hand. Rising with it, he sat down again, and pulled the candelabrum closer. Vulnerable, Grace surveyed him as he subjected the boot to a closer examination, feeling inside and out, measuring its height, and apparently checking its balance. Impelled, Grace shuffled into explanations.

“This one was made for me here. A fellow called Billy Oaken did it, and I must say it is much better than the one I had before. Billy checked and measured my foot carefully, and had me walk about, both with and without the boot. I don’t know what he did that was different, but it is certainly very much more comfortable to walk in. And I don’t experience nearly as much trouble with my hip.”

Henri had lowered the boot below her sightline, but he looked up at this. “What is it with the hip?”

“There is a drag to the right when I sit, and it affects my hip. But when I am standing or walking, with this pair I don’t feel it at all.”

She once more sought relief in her wine. It was decidedly strange to sit with her stockinged foot bared while Henri of all people took time over examining her boot. Did he do it to show her affliction did not affect him? Or was it because she had served him in his injury that he felt at ease enough to indulge a natural curiosity? She had just plumped for the latter reason when Henri dropped down to the floor again, holding out the boot.