“He just fell on grass,” Piers said.“Unless he was moved.There are no trees on that side of the track...Could he have been hit with a wooden club of some kind?”
“More likely,” Fosterson said, still cleaning the wound with some care.“Something certainly struck him with force enough to dent his skull.”
“Will he recover?”April asked, placing a neat pile of cloths and bandages on the table beside the water.
“I don’t know.Even if he lives, there could well be damage to his brain.I’ll need to stitch this...”
When the wound was dealt with, and Edward’s hands and face washed, Piers persuaded April to go up to bed while he helped Fosterson to wrestle Edward out of his clothes and into the clean night shirt Fosterson seemed to carry in his bag for such emergencies.
“What were you doing out there?”Fosterson asked.“A romantic marital tryst?”
“There are strange noises in this house, either from inside or out.We went to investigate the out.”
“The puzzles you spoke about,” Fosterson remarked, rising and pulling the covers properly over his patient.“It’s as well you’re incurably inquisitive.If he hadn’t been found before morning, I think he’d be dead.”
“Can you tell when the injury occurred?”
Fosterson shrugged.“Not very long ago, I’d say.I suspect you didn’t miss his assailant—if assailant there was—by very long.”
The implication of danger to himself and, more importantly, April was not lost on Piers.The guilt was already wrapped around him.
“We have got into some bad habits, April and I,” he said vaguely.
Fosterson gripped his shoulder for a moment.“Go to bed, Withy.You saved his life.I’ll sit with him now until the servants get up.If he survives until morning, we might need to consider a nurse.”
Piers nodded.“Thanks,” he said and left the room.
Since his boots had been hurting his bare feet, he had already removed them and now carried them up the servants’ stairs with him.He was so absorbed in his own speculations that he almost ran into the girl at the top of the stairs.
She gasped, smothering a shriek with her free hand.The other was carrying a tiny stump of candle in a cracked saucer.
“Oh, my lord, you scared the wits out of me!”she whispered.
It was one of the maids, fully dressed.She was the taller, plumper one.
“Becky,” he said.“What are you doing up?”
“Couldn’t sleep, my lord, and there’s so much to do that...Is everything well, sir?Are you ill?”
“No, I’m fine.There’s been an accident, though.Edward is hurt, and Dr.Fosterson is with him.”
The girl’s eyes were huge in her white face.“Hurt?Badly?”
“The doctor will tell us tomorrow.You should go back to bed and rest.Now,” he added as she continued to stare at him unmoving.
She swallowed.“Yes, my lord.”
She turned and walked back toward the attic door.Piers watched her until he heard the door close, and the tiny glow of her candle vanished.As he dragged himself and his boots along the corridor to his and April’s rooms, he paused to blink at the alcove table, which now boasted two tall, silver candlesticks.Complete with candles.
“This is a madhouse,” he said, closing April’s bedchamber door behind him.“No one ever sleeps.The candlesticks are back, and the maid Becky is up and dressed at...”He picked his watch off the dressing table.“Ten minutes past three in the morning.”
“Had she dressed?”April asked from the bed, where she was sitting up, looking warm and pretty by the glow of the lamp.“Or had she just notundressed?”
“Good question.”Piers thought about it.Even in the dim candlelight, her cap had not been crisp, and there had been a stain of some kind on her apron.“I think she hadn’t been to bed.”He frowned.“Neither had Fosterson.”
“Nor Edward, nor his attacker, I suspect.”
Piers dropped his boots, took off his robe and cast it in the vague direction of the foot of the bed.Then he climbed under the covers and drew April down beside him.“We’ll think about it in the morning.”He caressed her cheek softly, then slid his hand downward to rest on the small bump of baby.“Are you both well?”
