The Colonel thought it over, and then said in a firmer tone: ‘I’ll be shaved first.’
‘My dear fellow, why worry?’ Worth said.
‘By all means let him be shaved,’ said the Duchess, frowning at him. ‘He will feel very much more the thing.’
When Barbara came in with her grandfather to be met by the news that Colonel Audley was in the valet’s hands, being shaved, she exclaimed: ‘Shaved! Good God, how came you to let him disturb himself for such a foolish thing?’
‘My love, when a man begins to think of shaving you may take it from me that he is on the road to recovery,’ said the Duchess. She took her husband’s hands, and squeezed them. ‘Bab has told you, hasn’t she, Avon? My dear, we must be very proud of our boys, and try not to grieve.’
He put his arm round her, saying: ‘Poor Mary! Depend upon it, we shall soon get news of that scamp George being safe and sound. I have been to Stuart’s and learned from him that the Duke is in the town. Our losses have been enormous, by all accounts, but just think of Bonaparte completely overset! By God, it makes up for all!’
The arrival just then of the surgeon put an end to any further conversation. The Duchess and Worth accompanied him upstairs to the Colonel’s room. He admitted that he had not expected to find his patient in such good shape, but pulled a long face over the leg wound, which, from having been so roughly bound upon the battlefield, and chafed by continued exertion, was in a bad state. He took Worth aside, and warned him that he should prepare the Colonel’s mind for amputation.
Worth said, with such an icy rage in his voice that the surgeon almost recoiled: ‘You’ll save that leg: do you hear me?’
‘Certainly I shall do my utmost,’ replied the surgeon stiffly. ‘Perhaps you would like one of my colleagues to see it?’
‘I should,’ said Worth. ‘I’ll have every doctor this town holds to see it before I’ll permit you or any other of your kidney to hack my brother about any more!’
‘You are unreasonable, my lord!’
‘Unreasonable! Get Hume!’
‘Dr Hume has already so much on his hands—’
‘Get him!’ snapped Worth.
The surgeon bowed, and walked off. The Duchess, who had come out of the Colonel’s room, nodded approvingly, and said: ‘That’s right. Don’t pay any heed to him! We will apply fomentations, and say nothing at all to the poor boy about amputation. I wish you will ask my granddaughter to find some flannel and bring it to me.’
‘I will,’ he said, and went downstairs in search of Barbara.
He met, instead his wife, who informed him that the Comte de Lavisse had that instant entered the house and was with Barbara in the back-parlour.
He looked annoyed, but she said: ‘He came, most kindly, to enquire after Charles. Only fancy, Worth! It was he who had Charles carried off the field! I declare, I could almost have embraced him, much as I dislike him!’
‘I will see him, and thank you. Will you get the flannel for the fomentations?’
‘Yes, immediately,’ she replied.
Downstairs, the Count faced Barbara across the small room, and said, gripping a chairback: ‘I did not think to find you here! I may know what I am to understand, I suppose!’
She said abstractedly: ‘He is better. He has even desired to be shaved.’
‘I am delighted to hear it! You perhaps find me irrelevant?’
‘Oh no! I am so glad you are safe. Only my mind is so taken up just now—’
‘It is seen! By God, I think you are a devil!’
She said rather listlessly: ‘Yes, I know. It does no good to say I’m sorry, or I would.’
He struck the chairback with his open palm. ‘In fact, you made a fool of me!’
She replied with a flash of spirit: ‘Oh, the devil! You at least were fair game!’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Touché! I might have known! I cut an ignoble figure beside your heroic staff officer, do I not? You have doubtless heard that my brigade fled—fled without firing a shot!’
‘I hadn’t heard,’ she replied. ‘I am sorry.’ There did not seem to be anything more to say. She tried to find something, and added: ‘It was not that. I always loved Charles Audley.’