Page 8 of The Count’s Charade

A patriotic Englishwoman ought, in all conscience, to hand them over to the parish officer without delay. But even had she not entered into complicity with the foreigner when she assured him of their safety, the thought of betraying her Frenchman to the authorities filled her with repugnance.

Realisation hit her. Her Frenchman? Was that how she regarded him? Absurd. As if, having found him, she had acquired a property. Besides, it was Jemima who had discovered him. But the maid was as far from reconciled to his presence as Mab, giving vent to a fervent hope, as she served Grace’s eggs, that the man would not long occupy the spare bedchamber.

“I’m that sorry for the feller, Miss Grace, only I can’t like him cluttering up the place like he is. I’m afeard of his dying in there. I shan’t know how to go in that room again, if he does.”

Was it any wonder Grace had chosen to champion him? Alone in a foreign land, as close to death as made no odds — who else was there to take his part?

Her ruminations, which had not prevented her attending closely to what Ffrith was doing, came to an abrupt end as he straightened up, leaving the wound open.

“Well?” Grace could not help the sharp note.

The doctor looked round briefly and then addressed himself to Mayberry, glinting at the parish officer over the spectacles. “I must support Miss Dovercourt, if with reluctance. You cannot move him.”

Grace’s breath slid unevenly between her teeth. Inordinately relieved, she shifted to join him at the bedside. “What must we do for him?”

“There is not much you can do. Keep him warm. The day is clement, but the loss of blood will keep his temperature down.”

“I should have set Jemima to make up a fire in here,” Grace fretted, wishing she had thought of it earlier.

“You would do better to wrap up a couple of hot bricks and lay them beside him. A hot room might be suffocating to him in this weather. Keep the window open a little if it becomes necessary to light a fire. Give him barley water if he wakes, even briefly. As much as he can take, but a little at a time. And if he should recover consciousness for some little while, you may try him with a light broth — chicken or rabbit. No red meat, and no indigestible solids. But you may dip a trifle of bread in the soup, if he will swallow it.”

Grace nodded, cherishing the words as she committed them to memory. “Hot bricks. Barley water, and perhaps a light broth. Excellent. And his wound?”

The doctor lifted his bag to the bedside cabinet and opened it. “Dunmow has done his work well, if a trifle clumsily. The flesh is a good deal torn, but I dare say the ball was in deep.”

“It was.”

“He washed it with alcohol, I surmise.”

“With something, I don’t know what.”

Ffrith nodded, digging in his bag. “I will give you a powder. Clean the wound again at night, dry it carefully and apply the powder. A fresh bandage is advisable.”

Grace regarded him anxiously. “Will you not come again tonight to see how he does? What if he should run a fever?”

“You may send for me if his condition deteriorates. Otherwise I shall call again tomorrow. There is no fear of fever, unless the wound becomes inflamed. We must hope Dunmow’s application of his remedy has nipped that in the bud.”

Watching his deft handling of the wound as he swabbed it clean and applied the recommended powder, Grace forgot her earlier annoyance with him and wished he might have been the one to remove the bullet. Her Frenchman would certainly have suffered less. On the other hand, had she not insisted upon the apothecary’s co-operation, he might by now be dead.

She did not escape a further interview with the two men downstairs. The doctor was preoccupied with assuring himself Grace was not herself going to nurse the fellow, while Mr Mayberry was intent upon hearing the precise details of the man’s advent, which he copied laboriously into a pocketbook.

Grace then brought up the question of the doctor’s fee, saying, to his shocked disapproval, that she would take care of it herself. Here Mayberry broke in before it could all end in a further quarrel.

“Don’t you concern yourself with that, Miss Grace. It had ought to be taken care of by the parish, no question. Me and Doctor Ffrith here will work that out. Meantime, I’ll set about a search of the marsh, though it’s ten to one them as done the deed are long gone.”

Grace would have been glad enough to encourage him in this theme, were it not for the doctor returning to the vexed question of nursing. “There will be things even Mrs Lamport cannot do for the man,” Ffrith stated, directing his minatory frown upon Grace over the top of his pince-nez.

This matter had already exercised her mind. Whether the doctor had divined the patient’s nakedness under the bedclothes, or whether his imagination boggled as Grace’s did at the performance of certain necessary tasks, she did not know. But she was glad to have already hit upon a solution to the difficulty. “You are right,” she conceded, taking him aback, “and I intend to ask Mab to send her stepson in a couple of times a day.”

“Reuben Lamport?” said Mayberry. “Aye, he’s a big lad, is Reuben. Seemingly he could manage the feller, for he’ll have to lift him, no question. If I were you, Miss Grace, I’d tell him to bring his razors. There’s a fair growth already, and if he don’t get rid of it soon, it’ll take a tidy bit of work to hack it off.”

“Let it go a day or two,” said the doctor. “No need to put him through any unnecessary exertion. The best remedy is sleep.”

“You think he’ll live, then?” asked the parish officer.

To Grace’s dismay, Ffrith shook his head. “I think it highly likely he will succumb. By Miss Dovercourt’s account, he was shot on the marshes late last night.”

“Aye, and his clothes were damp, so he likely fell in the mire.”