I stared at the worn grey door with its tongues of peeling paint and wondered if running away would be better.
Harry knocked sharply and then again for longer when no oneanswered. I was beginning to think the worst when it opened; and a pair of familiar beady brown eyes, half hidden by a straight fringe, peered out at us. Maurice!
‘Master Harrington, Mrs Fitzroy, thank goodness you’rehere! Please come in. Quickly.’
I assumed by the hasty way that Maurice was urgently beckoning us inside that Dorian was nearing his last gasp.
‘Where is he?’ asked Harry.
‘This way. Please excuse the skins. There’s a tanner living in one of these rooms. He’s not supposed to use the hallway to dry them, but he does.’ Maurice shook his head disparagingly.
We followed his shuffling form down a dingy hall and ducked under several dripping cowhides. A droplet of something foul splashed on my glove, and I shuddered. Maurice entered the last door, and we stepped into a sparsely furnished room with an empty easel, a table, and two wooden chairs. A rush mat covered the floor. The room was in fact a ‘parlour’, but it did not deserve the name because it was a squalid space and not one that you would want to spend any amount of time relaxing in. The one consolation to the space was that it had a fire to ward off the chill. There was a pot hanging from an iron bar across the top, which seemed to have soup or stew bubbling it. Mauricewasa connoisseur of the one-pot meal, and I had enjoyed his meals at the castle.
I looked around and spied a makeshift bed in the corner of the room, with a mattress, blanket, and pillow. ‘Maurice’, I said, shocked, ‘please tell me you do not sleepthere.’
I could not believe that Dorian had sunk so low that he could not even afford two bedrooms.
Maurice hung his head and would not meet my eyes. ‘You get used to it,’ he said.
I made up my mind then and there that he would come back to Godmersham with us after Dorian’s funeral. There was room enough in the carriage, and he could help me with the child when it arrived. Maurice had many skills, and I hoped that calming a squalling baby was one of them.
Harry sighed. ‘I suppose we should see him now?’ He sounded about as enthusiastic as I myself was feeling.
Maurice pointed to the door in the far corner. ‘He’s in there. I’ve done my best for him, but ... Well, you’ll see.’ He shrugged his lopsided shoulders.
I looked at Harry. ‘Perhaps you go in first. I’ll stay out here with Maurice. I want to speak with him.’
Harry’s jaw tightened with resolve. ‘Very well.’ Looking like he was going to the gallows, he crossed the room, knocked on the door softly, and went in. There was no ensuing yell of ‘Oh my god, how ghastly!’ issuing forth, so I relaxed for the time being.
Hospitable as ever, Maurice dragged the chairs from the table over to the fire. ‘Please sit down, Mrs Fitzroy. You must have had a long tiring journey from Derbyshire.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, taking off my gloves and stretching my hands to the fire. ‘But I’ve actually come from Kent. Do you remember my friend Jane? Well, I have been staying with her relations, the same ones that my niece and I visited in Bath.’
‘Oh,’ said Maurice, considering this. ‘But without your husband?’
‘Yes. Max is at home.’
He stared at my rotund belly, then at the door that Harry had gone through, and seemed to be putting one and one together and making three.
‘It is not what it looks like,’ I said hastily. ‘The child is my husband’s. I am there for my confinement.’
‘I see.’
Blast, how can I explain why I am with Harry?I could not. All I could do was change the subject for now.He would find out the whole story soon enough if he came back with us.
‘Maurice’, I said gently, ‘the offer I gave you at the castle still stands. Afterwards, if you would like to come with me to Kent and then onto Derbyshire ... when the baby is born ... then you would be most welcome.’
He turned his face towards the fire and stared into the flames. I couldn’t fathom what he was thinking. His life had certainly been made ‘difficult’ by living here. Whatever wasDorian holding over Maurice?
‘Thank you, Mrs Fitzroy. I think I would like that,’ he saideventually, glancing at me with a rueful smile. ‘If there is an ... afterwards.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but did not have time to press him as the door at the far end of the room creaked open. Harry came out, rubbing his temple and looking exhausted, but content, as if he had done his duty and was glad it was over with. He nodded at me, and my stomach dropped like a stone. It was my turn now.
I was about to face the man who had professed his love for me, then trapped me in a room. The man I had tried to stab with a letter opener and who was now haunting my dreams. But he couldn’t hurt me now, could he?
Chapter 11
I tiptoed into the dimly lit room and saw Dorian in a nightshirt, lying in bed. His eyes were closed, and his arms lay still on a grey blanket that was tucked around his chest. A bandage wrapped around his head had a patch of blood near the temple, and his face was sweaty and pale. But he was still devastatingly handsome even close to death.Oh Lord!
