“Send for Dr. Hughs,” Edmund shouted as they came riding up the driveway, calling loudly for assistance. Calum and his stable boys came rushing to the side of their horses and helped to lift Percy carefully down so that his friends could carry him inside.
“Dear God, Percy!” Diana, who had rushed across the garden from where she had been walking as soon as she saw the strange party returning with one riderless horse, gasped. “Jenson, send a man to fetch Dr. Hughs immediately. Tell him it’s a head injury.”
The butler was already in the doorway, and with a nod to Calum to prepare a fresh horse, immediately dispatched one of the footmen on his way.
“What is this to-do?” Lady Templeton asked, rushing out of Lord Templeton’s sick room with Lady Birks close behind her. When Esther saw the sight of her bleeding son being carried inside through the front door, she screamed then fainted, collapsing on the floor.
Conscious that Percy must now be the priority, Edmund and Jacob continued carrying him to the dining room, guided by Jenson, who walked ahead of them and threw a cloth quickly over the table. Diana shouted for Mrs. Bridge to assist her mother and then ran after her injured brother.
Jenson’s calm and level-headedness were a relief, and Edmund now recalled Percy telling him that the man had spent some years in the army before going into service.
“Put the young master on the table, Your Grace. It’s the best height for the doctor to examine him. Elsie, bring plenty of boiled water, fresh bandages, and old cloths. Jasper, bring warm blankets from the spares box. Susan, stoke up that fire. We’ll need to keep him warm.”
They followed Jenson’s instructions and allowed him to inspect Percy’s head wound as he stirred again, muttering in some agitation, and then falling back again into a stupor. Diana coordinated the servants coming in and out, arranging all the items required on a small table which she pushed over beside Percy’s head.
“What happened?” Jenson finally asked when the other servants were gone.
Jacob opened his mouth to answer, but Edmund silenced him with a meaningful stare when he saw Lady Birks’s ashen face appear in the doorway.
“Lady Birks, can you attend to Lady Templeton?” Edmund asked politely but firmly. “Jenson will help us with Percy until the doctor arrives. We need peace in here until then. Please close the door, Diana.”
Diana closed the door on her aunt without compunction and returned to the table to take one of Percy’s hands.
“You were going to tell us what happened?” she asked, looking between Edmund and Jacob. Jenson nodded beside them.
Edmund pushed the thought of Lady Birks’s son temporarily from his mind, knowing that his anger could only cloud his judgement at this moment. There would be time later to deal with Andrew.
“There was a man at the lakeside with a gun. We think he tried to shoot Percy but luckily missed.” Edmund indicated the graze on his friend’s temple, and Jenson nodded thoughtfully in agreement with Edmund’s surmise. “Percy’s horse was spooked by the gun and threw him. He hit his head on a rock.”
Devastated, Diana bent over her brother and pressed her cheek to his, carelessly getting blood on her hair and face in the process.
“Percy! Why would anyone shoot poor, dear Percy?! He’d never harm a fly. Oh God, why do these terrible things keep happening to our family? We were all so happy only a few weeks ago.”
She stood again, covering her eyes with her hands to hide her distress. Edmund didn’t even notice that he’d automatically put an arm around Diana's shoulders to comfort her until she turned her head at his touch and looked up at him with bewildered but beautiful eyes, making no attempt to move away.
“On Percy’s account, it makes no sense to me either,” Jacob agreed. “Of everyone I know, Percy is the least likely target for anyone with ill intent. But perhaps this was not some personal grudge…”
“Did you see the shooter, Lord Wycliff?” Jenson asked then. “Perhaps we should alert the constables and send out search parties. This sounds like a dangerous man to have roaming around the countryside, whatever his motives might be.”
“I saw him,” Edmund said grimly, keeping his voice low. “That’s why I didn’t want Lady Birks in here. It was the gardener employed by her son at Hayward House. We can only guess his reasons, but it seems unlikely to me that the mind behind the attack belonged to the person whose finger was on the trigger. Who stands to benefit?”
“Well, the Fernside estate is not entailed, Your Grace,” Jenson observed with a thoughtful frown. “If anything were to happen to Lord Greene, it would pass to Lady Diana and her issue rather than directly to Lord Birks. I would not want to speculate further before the gardener has been questioned.”
“With a wedding being forced through at breakneck speed, it doesn’t take much speculation to see that direct or indirect inheritance might be academic,” Jacob said, shaking his head.
“You’re saying that Andrew was responsible for this, aren’t you?” Diana gasped in horror. “How could he? I knew already that he was not an honourable man, but to shoot his own cousin?! And why should he want Fernside? He has Hayward House and the rest of his family’s estate. I just don’t understand.”
“Money, I suspect,” Edmund muttered.
Before there could be further discussion, Dr. Hughs swung in through the door with his medical bag in hand and urgency on his face.
ChapterFifteen
“Thank God I’d decided to come early to see Lord Templeton,” Dr. Hughs said. “The messenger met me on the road and we galloped the whole way back. How is the young man? I hear he had a bad fall and hit his head.”
As he talked, he was already at Percy’s side examining the head wound, taking his pulse, and then reflecting light into his eyes with a small mirror and a candle. He worked quickly and efficiently with the confidence he had lost in treating Lord Templeton’s recent illness. Falls from horses were more familiar ground in his local practice.
Diana held Percy’s hand tightly while Edmund and Jacob described again how he had come to injure his head. When Diana looked up, Edmund met her eyes with a slight but reassuring smile, and she admitted to herself how glad she was again that he was there in yet another family crisis.