“Don’t want the villagers gossiping.”
For the first time it occurred to Delia they must present a sight to elicit a good deal of talk. If she looked half as dishevelled as Giff, who knew what anyone might make of their unconventional arrival, with her up before him on the horse?
A break in the cemetery wall came up. Giff turned into it. Was he in the habit of coming in by this route?
“Are you staying here?”
“Where Piers may find me in a heartbeat? I’m not such a fool.”
Tiger picked his way along a row of graves to the back of the church and followed a curving path that led around it and across to an enclosure. Delia saw gabled roofs beyond the ivy-covered surrounding wall with a closed gate at the end of the path.
A horrid necessity leapt to mind. “One of us is going to have to dismount. And I think it had better be me.”
Giff did not argue. She was convinced he was only able to stay in the saddle by sheer force of will.
It proved as difficult as she’d anticipated. She managed to get her leg out from its position about the pommel, but her gown caught and she heard it rip as she slid to the ground. Giff had done his best to break her descent by holding her, but his strength was gone and Delia very nearly slumped to the ground. She staggered to the gate and grabbed hold of it, stamping her foot to bring life back into it.
By the time she was able to turn, Giff had swung his right leg over and was cursing as his weight came onto the left. He landed heavily, and stood panting, the left foot still in the stirrup.
Delia went quickly to his side and slipped her shoulder under his arm. “Lean on me, Giff.”
She took little weight until he tugged his left foot free. He gave a grunt of pain as it came to the ground and he was suddenly heavy, using Delia’s support while he hissed his breath. “Damn it to hell!”
Delia braced every muscle. “Let’s get you inside.”
His arm tightened briefly. “I said you were plucky. Didn’t know the half of it.”
A glow lit in her breast, but the urgency of the moment would not allow of savouring it. Urging him onward, she unlatched the gate and led through it into a neat patchwork of a vegetable garden with a clear path to two back doors.
As they limped unsteadily towards the nearest one, it opened and a stout dame in a voluminous apron stepped out and stopped, staring.
Delia had no time for the niceties and called out. “We need help. Where is your master? Please fetch him at once!”
“And then Giff rode hell for leather down the road and we made it at last to your back gate,” Delia finished breathlessly, dismayed to feel a trickle of tears down her cheeks.
The Reverend Gaunt, a spare and gentle creature with wispy grey hair, cast her a reassuring glance. “You did well, my child, but rest now and drink your tea.”
He was kneeling by Giff’s prone and unconscious body, laid on a cot in a servant’s room in the back premises of the rectory. The plump woman who’d led them in through the kitchen hovered, ready with a selection of cloths over her arm and bandages in her hand while the rector worked on Giff’s wound.
His breeches had been cut away to expose the damage and Delia’s improvised and bloodied bandage lay discarded on the floor. The bowl of warm water was red with Giff’s blood, but the wound, ugly if clean now, bled only sluggishly. The bullet had cut through the thigh, but was not embedded, the reverend had said.
“For which we must be thankful. But he’s lost a deal of blood for all that.”
“Yes, he did, because we rode for ages before I had a chance to tie it up.”
Which proved the trigger for Delia to begin upon her story. She’d refused to leave Giff, who’d passed out the moment he’d been helped to the bed by a footman who’d been in the kitchen when they got there. But the hurried arrival of the elderly rector, who took immediate charge, sending his servants on flying errands, was reassuring enough that she agreed to vacate her place by Giff’s side and allow him to attend to the injury.
The plump woman had given her tea, which Delia sipped in between blurting out the tale of their adventures from where she sat on a stool by the only window in the small room. With the danger passed— if those horrid creatures were not even now hunting through the village — her overwrought nerves were taking hold.
She must not give in to them. Until she knew Giff was truly safe, she could not afford to crumple. Sniffing, she wiped the wet from her cheeks and took up her cup again. The china edge clattered against her teeth and she realised she was shaking. Grasping the cup with both hands, she managed to sip the hot, sweet liquid, and found it soothing.
Her eyes strayed to Giff’s pale face, remembering the bright of his azure eyes, now distressingly veiled. She wanted him to wake, but yet hoped he would not do so until his uncle had finished with the wound. The rector was pouring a powder over the pink flesh. Basilicum? Delia felt relieved when no trace of pink was visible. It had made her decidedly squeamish as she had not been when she’d bandaged it herself. The urgency of the moment had allowed no such missishness. But now, with Giff so unnaturally pale and silent, it was perfectly horrid to be obliged to see what had affected him so badly.
She watched the rector lift Giff’s leg at the knee.
“Hold the leg steady, Aggy, while I apply a bandage.”
Instinct urged Delia to leap up to perform this office, but she was afraid to try and stand. Her legs felt as if her bones had melted and every muscle was stiff and sore.