They retook their old position, with her arm around his waist and one of his across her shoulders, letting her steer him through the trees, with Cantante following on closely behind.
When they eventually got closer to the lawn, Phoebe felt a smile of hope, for she could see people in the distance. In the gardens, the Marquess was walking around, with Mrs Goodman close at his side, both deep in worried conversation.
“Mrs Goodman!” Phoebe shouted. “Lord Dodge!” Their heads whipped around in her direction, trying to see through the last of the trees. “We need a physician!” she called these last words as they stumbled out of the tree line together.
Lord Dodge was the first to move. He ran forward, leaving Mrs Goodman behind him as Hayward came into sight. Phoebe managed to get Hayward through the trees before together they faltered.
“No, Francis,” she pleaded with him to stand straight, but he dropped down at her side, onto his knees.
“God have mercy!” Lord Dodge’s words were spat with a kind of fury as he reached them and dropped down to his own knees in front of Hayward too, using the stance to analyze the wound. “What happened?”
“I was hit,” Hayward said. “I will tell you all later.” He veered a little to the side, clearly exhausted from their walk.
“Mrs Goodman!” Lord Dodge whipped his head round as he took Hayward’s shoulders, keeping him upwards. “Fetch a physician now!”
Mrs Goodman in the distance nodded and ran back toward the house.
“God, they hit you hard,” Lord Dodge said as he stood to his feet again, still with a hand on Hayward’s shoulder. Phoebe placed a hand on Hayward’s other shoulder, unable to stop touching him. He lifted a hand and placed it over hers on his shoulder, apparently needing that touch just as much. “Who was it?”
“I…don’t know. I can’t be sure.” Though Hayward looked up to Phoebe with the words.
“What?” she asked, looking at him.
“It may have been Lord Ridlington.”
* * *
The concussion was prolonged and painful. Francis was watched over by a physician and his assistant for some hours, repeatedly having to lift a chamber pot in order to be sick before the evening came round and his stomach eventually settled. He still had a headache, but the thumping pain had begun to retreat, leaving him to lay in the bed exhausted, with his head back on the pillows as Josiah stood by his bed, accosting the physician with lots of questions.
“How bad was it?” Josiah asked.
“He’ll live.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the question you wanted to ask,” the physician said knowingly. Francis smiled a little and reset himself on the pillows, lifting himself up a little higher.
“Francis, rest,” Josiah said, leaning toward him.
“I am, but I am not on my deathbed just yet,” he said with feeling, watching as his brother-in-law raised both eyebrows.
“You should see how pale you are before you say that.”
Francis ignored him and turned his eyes on the physician.
“How long until I am recovered?” he asked.
“Well, how are you feeling now, Your Grace?” the physician asked as he proffered a small glass bottle forward with a brown liquid in it. Francis screwed up his nose in rejection at first. “It is a tonic. For the pain.” Hearing that, Francis was only too happy to take the bottle and gulp down the liquid.
“I do not feel sick anymore,” Francis said, “but the headache is still there.”
“You will be dizzy for a day or so more I should think, and you may have a lingering headache for a few days afterwards, along with a swelling to your temple. You were lucky, Your Grace.”
“Lucky?” Francis asked, not feeling remotely lucky in his current situation.
“The blood was more from a cut to your skin than the impact the rock made. It could have been a lot worse,” the physician said uncomfortably, shifting between his feet.
“You mean I could be dead,” Francis said, aware that Josiah breathed in deeply at the words, standing on his other side.
