When the child had gone, she lay down on the bed. The straw crinkled and rustled. An occasional stem poked through the thin ticking and the sheet. She reached up, put out the light and cuddled under the two blankets.
Although the bed in Northbury Manor had been more comfortable, this small room at least had the advantage that she was not sharing it with Sophie.
But what had happened to Percival? Who stabbed him? The person must not have been strong or skilled, because the old knife was sharp. Tiffany knew she had certainly not done it. The guilty person had to be someone who lived and worked at the manor house. More than that, it had to be someone who knew about her father’s knife and where she kept it.
Could Sophie have done it?
Tears of weakness and fatigue leaked from her eyes and dripped onto her pillow. The words of the nursery rhyme Percival had sung to her threaded their way through her mind.
“Oh, if this be I, then my little dog will know me.”
I have abandoned my petticoats, and run from the nearest thing to home that I have had since Father died. My love thinks I have tried to kill him. Will I ever see him again? Oh, what will become of me?
In the lonely darkness, Tiffany cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 33
Percival woke to find that he was lying on his stomach with his chest and head carefully bolstered so that he could breathe. His head throbbed abominably, and his left shoulder ached as well. Nearby, people were arguing.
“No, I tell you,” Smithers said in a harsh whisper. “You’ll give him no more of that abominable stuff. I saw it a-plenty during the war. You do not give a gentleman who has been coshed on the head, laudanum. Willow bark tea, that’s the stuff.”
“You will follow my directions or I will have you removed,” said a plummy voice. “He must not be troubled by pain, or he will develop a fever. He should have a bloodletting, as well, to help relieve the pressure of all the swelling.”
McClellan cut in. “I think he has had blood letting a-plenty, what with the butchering on his shoulder. You let much more out, and I’m thinking you’ll be letting out his life.”
Percival pushed himself up with his right arm, and swung his feet to the floor, using the weight of his legs to lever himself the rest of the way into sitting position. “Will you all stop gabbling?”
“My Lord!” Smithers rushed to his side. “You should not be up.”
“Of necessity, I must be. Could you clear the room, that I might have some privacy?”
McClellan stared meaningfully at the physician, who glowered back at him. Lucas stepped up beside the butler, and folded his arms.
McClellan said, “Our duty is to the Marquess. He has requested privacy, and privacy he shall have.”
“Upon your head be it if he takes a fever,” the physician declared.
“I will endure the responsibility,” McClellan said stolidly. “Meanwhile, unless you moderate your tone with Lord Northbury’s man, you will not return. You are not the only physician available.”
Confronted with McClellan’s solid bulk and Lucas’ wiry strength, the physician withdrew to the hall.
Percival accepted Smithers assistance, but was glad enough to sit in the wingback chair when he was done. “Tea,” he requested. “Yes, it can have willow bark added. But no more laudanum. The stuff gives me nightmares. In fact, I dreamed that Tiffany was standing over me screaming fit to wake the dead.”
“That was no dream, My Lord,” Smithers said. “Miss Tiffany claims to have found you. When I came running, you were alive, even though you had taken a wicked blow to the head and an old clasp knife was sticking in your back.”
“Something isn’t right about that,” Percival said.
“No, how could it be, My Lord? I will ring for your tea, and have one of the maids bring it up. No telling what that blatherskite Michaels might put in it.”
“Michaels. What happened to Tiffany?”
“No one knows, My Lord. She was in the hall when the constables came, and she seems to have left soon after. If anyone knows where she is, they aren’t talkin’. When we went downstairs to deliver your message, she was already gone.”
“My God. I think I told someone to send her away, and for her not to come back. What was I thinking?”
“Doubtless, you were either thinking that she did it, or that she would be accused and taken up by the Watch.”
“I don’t know, Smithers. It is all a jumble, and trying to think about it makes my head hurt.”
