I am completely insane.”
“You’ve a very kind heart, me lord,” Tom Byrd said reprovingly. “Not the same thing at all.”
“Oh, I am reasonably sure that it is—at least in this instance. Kind of you to give me the benefit of the doubt, though, Tom.”
“Of course, me lord. Lift your chin a bit, if you please.” Tom breathed heavily through his nose, frowning in concentration as he drew the razor delicately up the side of Grey’s neck.
“Not as I know why you said you’d do it, mind,” Byrd remarked.
Grey shrugged one shoulder, careful not to move his head. He wasn’t sure why he’d said he’d do it, either. In part, he supposed, because he felt some guilt over not having made an effort to return Lister’s sword to his father sooner. In part because the Listers’ village was no more than an hour’s ride from his brother Edgar’s place in Sussex—and he anticipated that having some excuse to escape from Maude might be useful.
And, if he were honest, because the prospect of dealing with other people’s trouble was a welcome distraction from his own. Of course, he reflected, none of these considerations proved that he was not insane.
Tom Byrd’s considerations were of another sort, though.
“Brutal occupation, is it?” he muttered. Lister’s words of the day before had clearly rankled. “I’ll brutalize him and he don’t mind his manners summat better. To say such a thing to you, and half a minute later ask you a bleedin’ great favor!”
“Well, the man was upset. I daresay he didn’t think—”
“Oh, he thought, all right! Me lord,” Tom added as an afterthought. “Reckon he’s done nothing but think since his son was killed,” he added, in less vehement tones.
He laid down the razor and subjected Grey’s physiognomy to his usual searching inspection, hazel eyes narrowed in concentration. Satisfied that no stray whisker had escaped him, he took up the hairbrush and went round to complete the chore of making his employer fit for public scrutiny.
He snorted briefly, pausing to work out a tangle with his fingers. Grey’s hair was like his mother’s—fair, thick and slightly wavy, prone to disorder unless tightly constrained, which it always would be, if Tom Byrd was given his way. Actually, Tom would be best pleased if Grey would consent to have his head polled and wear a good wig like a decent gentleman, but some things were past hoping for.
“You’ve not been sleeping proper,” Byrd said accusingly. “I can tell. You’ve been a-wallowing on your pillow; your hair’s a right rat’s nest!”
“I do apologize, Tom,” Grey said politely. “Perhaps I should sleep upright in a chair, in order to make your work easier?”
“Hmp,” Byrd said. And added, after a few moment’s strenuous brushing, “Ah, well. P’r’aps the country air will help.”
Tom Byrd, always suspicious of the countryside, was not reassured by his first sight of Mudling Parva.
“Rats,” he said darkly, peering at the charmingly thatched rooves of the cottages they passed. “I’ll wager there’s rats up in them thatches, to say nothing of bugs and such nastiness. My old granny come from a village like this. She told stories, how the rats would come down from the thatch at night and eat the faces off babies. Right in their cradles!” He looked accusingly at Lord John.
“There are rats in London,” Lord John pointed out. “Probably ten times more of them than in the countryside. And neither you nor I, Tom, are babes.”
Tom hunched his shoulders, not convinced.
“Well, but. In the city, you can see things coming, like. Here…” He glanced round, his disparaging look taking in not only the muddy lane of the village and the occasional gaping villager, but also the tangled hedgerows, the darkly barren fallow fields, and the shadowed groves of leafless trees, huddled near the distant stream. “Things might sneak up on you here, me lord. Easy.”