An Indecent Gambit

Chapter Fifteen: No Indifference

When Grace came down to breakfast the next morning she discovered to her relief that Demery was absent from the table. James was already innocently eating fried eggs. Despite the poultice she had given him last night, his left eye was purple and swollen.

"Will you look at what happened to Mr Redwood!" Ellen said to Grace. "It's horrible!"

"Oh dear," Grace said, trying to look shocked. "What did happen? How did you do it, James?"

James was engaged in a mouthful of egg and made mute gestures with his head.

"Your heart must flutter to look at him! I certainly should not like Mr Montague to look like that! Like he's been in a brawl!"

James managed to swallow his mouthful. "Mrs Montague," he said reproachfully. "You know I would countenance no such thuggery. Of all things, violence is quite the anathema to me."

"I cannot doubt you," said Ellen. "I must put an extra candle in your room tonight so that you do not walk into the bedpost again."

Then that was how he had spun it. It was not, thought Grace, very believable.

"Though I am having my lady-friends to tea today," Ellen continued, "and I'm scared that Mr Redwood's face will frighten them all away."

"Now, my dear," Mr Montague said through a large mouthful of pork chop, "Mr Redwood will be hunting with us all day. The ladies will not see him."

"Yes," James said reluctantly. "And I daresay we'll be all bloody and muddy by the time we come back, and in no fit state to see you either, Mrs Montague."

Hunting did seem at odds with James's neat, rather over-groomed character. Grace could not imagine him pulling a dying partridge from the bloody mouth of a terrier or spurring a horse through muddy forest paths after a fox. That rather appealed to her; she had always had some sympathy for the fox.

"A pity Demery had to go off like that," Montague added musingly. "He's a damn good shot — beg pardon, Mrs Montague, a very good shot. Those military men always are."

"He has gone away?" Grace said quickly.

"Mr Demery left us abruptly this morning," Ellen said. "Said he had no heart for hunting after all. A very odd man, Mr Montague, a very odd friend of yours indeed. I do not like guests who make such abrupt changes to their plans."

"Now, now, dear," Mr Montague soothed. "You need not worry. None of our other guests will desert us, I am sure."

Ellen pouted. "But even one is enough to put me out. I am quite harassed."

Mr Montague abandoned gnawing at a pork chop for just long enough to pat Ellen's hand. "Do not fret about it, dear. We have company enough to make for a very good party."

Ellen seemed to want to fret. She bit her bottom lip. "And with Mr Redwood's face — everything is conspiring to upset me today!"

"There, there," Mr Montague said, turning his attention back to his pork chops. "It will be quite alright, you'll see."

Ellen's pouts and complaints lasted throughout breakfast, interspersed with Mr Montague's uninterested words of comfort. As soon as the men left for their shooting, however, Ellen's infantile manner dissolved and her usual composed matter-of-factness returned.

"I do not suppose Mr Redwood really walked into a door," she said, starting to clear up the breakfast things. "Someone must have hit him. My money is on Mr Demery."

Grace had not expected the truth to be uncovered so quickly. "Oh no." She shook her head. "No, that is not what happened."

"Then you do know how he got that black eye."