Cynthia Bailey Pratt (3 page)

Blood. Blood on her hand. She stared at it for what seemed a long time while her mind raced with panic. She had often comforted the small wounds of her cousins’ childhood. However, when she saw the rich red smear on her palm, she felt shaken, sick, and stupid. The blood seemed to burn like a cinder on her skin. It was all she could think about.

Careful to avoid getting the blood on the lining of her coat, she stripped it off and laid it across the end of the bed. Lifting the water jug, she mechanically noted that it was empty and went out to fill it, not caring if anyone saw her clad in shirt and waistcoat. She wanted to wash the blood away, from her hand and coat sleeve, and she wanted to do it now.

* * * *

Used though he was to sleeping in strange places, it had been a long time since he lay on a bed with a sheet that smelled of ... The man had a sudden vision of his father’s house. Not as he last saw it, with the storm clouds overhead echoing the storms within, but shining, the cream-colored towers rising at the foot of hills, his family’s as long as time itself.

To him, his father’s house stood for the England he fought for, even when barred from the company of Englishmen. He supposed the chateaux he’d seen during the last ten years stood for France to the sons of the families that held them, yet those ancestral seats had been destroyed, trampled under the galloping feet of the steeds of war. He thought of Gray-croft with shattered walls and smoking fields, the people he still considered his lying dead among the ruins.

The thought stabbed hint, and he sat up, ignoring the sickening swirling of the room around him. He opened the strings of his shirt under his cravat and reached inside. His fingers closed around a piece of heavy paper while his dark eyes searched the room for a safe hiding place.

The boy’s coat lay near at hand. Nothing closer suggested itself, and he felt somehow that he did not have sufficient strength to get out of the bed. His heart pounded painfully just from the effort of sitting up. He reached for the coat, and a loose thread on its shalloon lining caught his eye. Slowly he pulled the thread. It came free, unstitching itself. Hearing the boy’s footsteps on the stairs, he thrust the paper between the lining and the blue wool.

When Jocelyn came back with the jug, he lay in the same position as when she left, but his eyes were open. “What’s your name?” he asked dully.

She began to say her own name, bit it off, and said, “Joss.”

“I’m Hammond. It must have frightened you, my going off like that. I’m sorry.” His breath still came in long sighs, but his voice seemed steadier if not strong. She did not like his color. Jocelyn saw his hand move beneath the blanket and a grimace contort his tired face.

“Well, Joss,” he said with a sigh that seemed less involuntary and more like that of a man prepared to face a painful ordeal. “This looks pretty rum, eh?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Jocelyn said brightly and then felt like a fool. “I mean, I suppose so.”

“Do you turn sick at the sight of blood?”

She looked at her coat lying on the edge of the bed and shook her head with her eyes shut. “Not very.”

“I only ask because I need your help. You can see I’ve been hurt. I don’t think it’s too bad. I can’t bandage it myself, though, and . . .I’d rather not have a doctor.”

Despite his evident exhaustion, Jocelyn realized Hammond was trying to encourage her. His voice was bright and bracing, though not very loud. Lifting his arm with an obvious effort, he threw off the blanket.

Although she wanted to run away, Jocelyn fought down her fear and approached the man on the bed. Surprised by the steadiness of her hands, she set the jug of water on the floor. Tenderly she helped him remove his old coat. His simple woolen waistcoat came off easily. Underneath, a wide rusty stain on the left was plain as only blood can be, fresh red glimmering in the center of the stain. His shin stuck to the long wound under his chest, and Jocelyn thought she’d never find sufficient courage to pull the material away.

“Do it quick,” Hammond said before setting his teeth, but he could not stop a cry of pain as she tugged. Jocelyn thought he should have cursed her for being such a clumsy idiot. Her head spun, and she sat heavily on the bare floor.

When she looked up, Hammond was peering down the length of his body at the sluggishly bleeding wound. “That’s not bad at all. Just sliced along a rib. If it went in as far, I’d be waking with the angels by now. As it is, I’ll never know it happened in a day or two.”

He looked at Jocelyn and smiled with a sweetness she did not expect. Her own lips curved in answer. “That’s the worst over, my boy. Now if I can ask for the loan of the bottom of your shirt . . .”

Jocelyn knew her face was hot and hoped it might be passed off with her dizzy spell. “I would be glad to give it to you, sir, but it’s my only one.” She was amazed by how quickly she learned to lie, never having practiced.

“Well, then, we’ll have to sacrifice the bottom of the bed-sheet. I’ll pay the landlord for the loan, if he ever discovers it.” The linen at the inn appeared to have been recently washed, a thing Hammond said he’d scarcely expected.

“Is there anything of my shirt that isn’t such an unbecoming shade of red? No, don’t tear anything higher than the middle; I still have to wear the upper half in public. Tear off a piece. Dip it in the water and give it to me.”

He demonstrated cleaning his wound, and when Jocelyn took the makeshift sponge, Hammond lay back and stared at the wall. Though she went as slowly and carefully as she could, once Jocelyn thought she felt him shudder, and she whispered an apology. He shook his head and continued to stare at nothing.

“Good lad,” he said when she finished and put down the pinkish cloth. “I’m afraid this isn’t very easy for you.”

“No, sir,” she confessed.

“We’re nearly done. Rip the bedsheet.” Jocelyn turned back the bottom of the blanket and tried to pull a seam on the sheets. The landlord’s wife was too good a seamstress and her stitches defeated Jocelyn.

“I can’t get it started, sir.”

“There’s a knife in my left boot. Use that.”

Timidly Jocelyn took the knife from the dark leather against his shin. The knife was long and thin with a dangerously sharp edge. It looked more like a wicked weapon from some melodrama than a knife a gentleman might use for slicing fruit. Jocelyn half-expected to see some dark stain on the blade and relaxed when she saw no such mark. Somehow ripping the coarse linen into strips made her feel better about her squeamishness.

“Good,” Hammond said when a small pile of bandages lay on the bed. “Make some of that into a pad, and then I’ll show you how to bandage such an unwieldy thing as the human torso. It’ll be useful to you, no doubt, should you ever join the Army.”

Jocelyn thought that the bandaging went fairly well. At least, Hammond’s face wasn’t set into rigid lines, and he didn’t seem to sigh as much as before. She tried to touch him lightly. Although she’d often seen her cousins without their shirts, she felt the considerable difference between their thin, unformed chests and the smooth muscularity of the stranger’s body. She had to look at him to bandage him, but she tried not to let her eyes wander away from her work.

When she finished, she asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Hammond?”

“It isn’t mister. Just Hammond.” He grasped the blanket and settled himself beneath its itchy warmth. He sighed again, but with contentment not pain. “Do me one more favor before you go, Joss. I’m sure your mother must be growing anxious.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do what I can.”

“Look out into the street. No, not that way, you ass! Cross to the wall, lift the curtain out slowly from the side, and then, showing none of your body, look out.”

“There’s nobody, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Jocelyn said, looking a moment longer, just the same. The alley’s darkness had deepened since they were in it an hour or so before. Now the lengthening shadows obscured all but a small square in the middle. “There might be . . . no, it’s only a stray cat.”

“That’s all right, then. Take that coin out of my pocket. You’ve more than earned it.” Hammond shut his eyes.

Jocelyn came over and picked up her coat from the bed, noticing the blood still upon the sleeve. After what she had been called upon to do, a small smear like that hardly seemed worth noting, and she felt ashamed of her earlier foolishness.

Looking down at him, she thought he slept, but he said, “Joss?”

“Sir?”

His eyes opened slightly, like a child awakened in the night. His voice was softened by approaching sleep. “Don’t. . . don’t say anything to anybody, will you? I can trust you, yes?”

“I won’t say anything,” Jocelyn promised.

A frown passed over his brow, slowly vanishing as if he could not concentrate on his worry. “I’ll come see you, when I’m better. Meet your mother and reward you properly. Where do you live?” She almost missed the last word.

“Um . . .” What had become of the facility she boasted of in learning to lie quickly? She could think of no falsehood, so she settled for half a truth. “We live on the Luckems’ property. Anyone can tell you where that is, sir. You rest now. And thank you again for saving me from that officer.”

Hammond did not speak. She didn’t know if he even heard her. Jocelyn stood by the door for a long minute, her hand on the latch, watching the rise and fall of his breathing. She didn’t want to remember about her cousins or the duty owed her aunt and uncle. She wanted, with an intensity that surprised her, to be there when Hammond awoke, to be able to reveal herself as a girl. Perhaps he would be glad of it. Jocelyn remembered and went down the stairs.

Chapter Two

“Oh, oh, you do look funny! Granville said you did!”

With a haughty glance Jocelyn passed Arnold by, trying not to limp on legs and feet sore from the day’s exercise. “I’m not the least bit interested in talking to you, Arnold Luckem. How can you fall into such scrapes? Poaching with Handsome Foyle! A more ill-named man never lived.”

Arnold slithered down from the stone fence that ran along the lane. “Don’t be that way. I was waiting for you to say how grateful I am to you for saving me.”

“I suppose Granville made you wait for me.”

“Well, yes. But I would have thanked you anyway.”

If asked, Arnold Luckem would have admitted that his cousin was by no means the worst girl he knew. That honor belonged to Clarissa Rogers, who never failed to make sheep’s eyes at him in church. Even Jocelyn, however, had ideas about cleanliness and truthfulness that a fellow could not be expected to admire. Arnold prided himself on his fairness, and to be fair, his cousin acted like a brick in coming to rescue him from Constable Regin. It had taken Granville two hours of earnest conversation to make his brother see cause for gratitude.

Jocelyn turned suddenly on Arnold. “What makes me angrier than even your poaching, Arnold, although you should know better by now, is your leaving the house at all. Didn’t Mr. Fletcher send you to bed until supper for not knowing your declensions?”

“Yes, but—”

“Please, Arnold. Spare me. You always have an answer for everything.”

“I know.” Despite the expression of solemnity on his triangular face, Jocelyn knew laughter sparkled in his sharp blue eyes. If the evening light were a little stronger, she would have seen it clearly.

Haughtily she walked away from her cousin. She was glad Arnold was not in truth a mind reader, though at times he seemed to have the facility. If he had been, he would have realized Jocelyn was not as angry with him as she seemed. In a way his ridiculous arrest was responsible for her having met Hammond. A man in his sort of trouble would never have asked a girl to help him.

She could not help wondering what his reaction would have been if he had found out her true sex. Jocelyn thought of his pleasant smile and imagined how it would deepen when he realized ... she sighed. Hammond would more likely feel trapped by gratitude than appreciative of her efforts. He would not find her worth smiling at, a girl with hair that would not grow long and a figure like a boy’s even without a costume. No one, she reflected, ever found her very attractive.

Jocelyn’s mind flinched away from considering his actual wound, its brutal appearance sickening her even in memory. Yet, before reaching her home, she began to feel proud of how she kept her hands very gentle and of how little sick she felt while actually washing and bandaging the wound. And he did seem to be a deal better, falling into a natural sleep instead of that horrid faint.

After a moment in which he watched a bat diving after a moth, Arnold came up beside her and took her hand, peering up at her face with a look of impish comradeship. Jocelyn struggled against giving in to his blandishments, as she well knew he calculated them with cool precision. But Arnold’s personal charm overcame the remains of her anger.

“Oh, stop that,” she said. “We’re going to be late.”

The garden at the rear of their house was deserted. As they came closer, a sweet breeze full of the scent of earth and new growth rushed down upon them. Jocelyn stopped and inhaled deeply. Spring was coming at last. She’d seen the green points rising up for a week, but all at once she felt spring blooming in her heart. It had been such a long and difficult winter.

She warned, “We’d better be careful. Anyone looking out of the windows can see us now.”

The boy sniffed at this girlish timidity. “The housekeeper’s too busy getting supper, and Granville’s fussing in his room. I’ve never seen him look so ... so normal as he did today. Come on.” Arnold went first.

Warily they slipped around the hawthorn bushes to the old chapel, through the priest’s stair, and up to their rooms. They saw only Mr. Fletcher, the boy’s young tutor, who was pacing the upper gallery with his eyes fastened upon a book. Jocelyn shrank against the wall, waiting for him to turn his back.

Arnold walked boldly past him, saying “Good evening” in his most piercing tenor. Mr. Fletcher never looked up, only grunting vaguely under his breath. He had obviously forgotten his earlier decree of punishment for his youngest student, as he often did.