“Because everyone is used to him being irritable and cantankerous.” Adam finished the thought for her.
She sighed. “He’s …” she met his eyes and Adam could see her struggling with the same suspicions. “He’s too proud to show weakness. It was Millie who first saw behind his vicious temper, because …” she looked over her shoulder to see if they were alone. “I think he was lonely and never liked being confined to wheelchair. Then things got better. I mean he and his son can still bicker, but Millie brough a lot of peace to the family, and he’s been happy. Now… I don’t know … could it be … a … tumour?” She lifted helpless eyes to him.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s not overthink this. It may be something simple, but I need a set of x-rays and ideally an MRI scan, which means taking him to Guernsey because there isn’t a suitable hospital here.”
“If anyone can convince him, it’ll be you.” She picked up the tray with its uneaten porridge and made her way back to the kitchen.
Adam was torn between following Laura or going back to his patient. In the end it was something Laura had said – an old man with bellyache.
She was right. It could be pain. A persistent pain that caused such unexplainable ill temper; it would certainly explain loss of appetite. After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed the double doors open and went back into the study.
Du Montfort was slightly slumped in his chair, and although he sat by the window, he took no interest in looking outside.
All around him were the newspapers he usually liked to have read to him in the morning, a small pile of post with an open letter from his old friend, the Duke of Gloucester, which had slid to the side. Behind him was the poetry book he liked. It, too, lay there untouched.
As Adam walked closer, the old man became aware of him and instantly he sat up straighter, lifting his shoulders up and putting on an alert expression.
“If you don’t feel like eating, can you manage fluids?” Adam sat down next to him. “I could ask them to prepare you a yogurt drink.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“Who?”
“The pretty dressmaker who looks like a boy.” Mischief glinted in his eyes.
Adam shook his head. “I was speaking to Nurse Ann. She says you didn’t like any of the breakfast.”
Du Montford gave Adam a speculative look. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Nurse Ann?”
“Don’t play the fool young man. Not when I’ve seen how you look at her. Like a thirsty man looks at fountain in someone else’s garden.”
“Hardly. Although, you seem to hate her.”
“I do nothing of the sort. She is being rather stubborn and I want the wedding to be a success.”
“So how about the yogurt smoothie?”
“We can’t serve that at a wedding.”
The man was being deliberately evasive. Adam decided to take the bull by the horns. “Lord M—”
“Enough of the Lord business.” He waved at the pile of post. “I have to endure enough of it in these, I don’t need to hear it in my own home.”
“I’d like to run some tests.” Adam refused to be side-tracked.
“Young man, if you take any more blood from me, there won’t be any left.”
“Not blood tests. I’d like you to have some x-rays. And since La Cannette doesn’t have a proper hospital, we need to go to—”
“I have nothing broken to x-ray.” Lord M waved him away.
“X-rays can show other things. And you’re not eating. Would you let me palpate your abdomen?”
“I’m saving my appetite for the wedding breakfast. Besides, we have a lot to organize before the big day. That’s everyone’s purpose here, including you.”
Adam had had enough wedding talk to last him a lifetime. “Not me. The wedding has nothing to do me. My job—”
