“Newspapers?” I said.
“I have fended them off,” Mr. Wilde replied. “No reporter will be bothering either you or Mrs. Forsyth. They’re still running stories, of course—what happened at Wych Elm House is prominent news. I’m hoping that with no statement from the family, the interest will eventually die down.” He set his teacup in its saucer and pushed my untouched cup across the table toward me with unmistakable meaning. “I have also seen to the servants’ wages and arranged to have the house cleaned. It should not be distressing for you and Mrs. Forsyth to return to Wych Elm House.”
With the tea, the fog cleared from my brain and it started to work again. “What about Martin?” I asked him.
“He is under a doctor’s care in London,” Mr. Wilde replied. “I have spoken to both him and Mrs. Forsyth—Mrs. Cora Forsyth, that is. He is not well enough to travel here. He goes under surgery in two days. I have kept the reporters away from them as well.”
I thought you might have murdered Frances, I nearly said aloud. What a fool I had been. “Mr. Wilde, I am so sorry,” I said.
He thought I was apologizing for the trouble he’d gone to. “It’s my job, Mrs. Manders,” he said in his calm, competent voice. “The family is going through an exceptionally difficult time.” He spoke more gently. “How is he?”
“They tell me he’ll live.”
“Then you must get back to him.”
I returned to the hospital room to find Alex awake in his bed. A nurse had propped a pillow behind him and given him a sip of water. I stood in the doorway for a moment, feeling a wild beat of disappointment because a nurse had been here instead of me. And then I was at his bedside, taking his hand in my shaking one and most certainly not crying.
“Come here,” he said after a moment, and I leaned onto the bed, my arms around his neck, as he put his arm around me and let me sob quietly.
“Sorry about that,” he said, his voice choking a little. “He took me by surprise. Stupid of me.”
“I hate you,” I said into his neck.
“Yes, I know.” He rubbed my shoulder and my upper arm through my cardigan, his grip weak but determined. “How long have I been out?”
“Four days.”
Alex swore softly.
“I’m sorry. Does this hurt?” I asked, trying not to grip him quite so tightly.
“Stay where you are, if you please. I have you exactly where I want you.”
“It’s been horrible. I am a blotchy, overwrought dishrag,” I said, turning my head on the pillow next to him and running my fingers over his four days’ beard. It looked handsome on him, of course.
“You are gorgeous,” Alex replied, his thumb weakly rubbing the back of my neck beneath my hair. “Now tell me everything that’s going on.”
“You just woke up.”
“Yes, and the police have probably been informed already. They’ll be by for a chat anytime. So tell me everything, Jo.”
I did, surprised at how much I could recall through the haze of my panic. He stayed awake long enough to say it was all a bloody mess, and he would make everything right, and that he’d be out of bed in no time; it was just one bullet. Then he drifted off to sleep again. I disentangled myself from him and went to the women’s ward to see Dottie.
? ? ?
“Alex is awake,” I told her.
Her head was still bandaged, but she was sitting up, her hands folded on top of the coverlet. Her gaze was alert, but there was something different about it, something not quite Dottie. There was no sign of her usual sharpness. Instead, she looked at me from her dark-ringed eyes with an expression tinged with confusion.
“I have just spoken with David Wilde,” she said.
I nodded. He had visited her after his conversation with me, then. “He told you about Martin?”
“Yes.” Her hands twitched on the covers. “Manders,” she said, though the word was spoken softly, with none of its old sting. “I have been thinking.”
I sat and waited. Her thinking seemed to have slowed.
“I have told David everything,” Dottie said, ignoring my surprise at her use of his Christian name. “Everything that I heard . . . Robert say to you. Though I did not repeat what he said about Alex.”
She meant the part in which Robert had spoken of Alex coming home to investigate treason. “Dottie, there is an explanation—”
“Stop,” she said weakly. “I don’t wish to know more than I already heard. Alex’s doings for the past three years, whatever they were, are his business. It’s David I want to talk about. He has apologized to me.”
“Apologized?”
“There is a woman living in the village,” Dottie said. “A former servant of the family. Over the time we’ve been gone, David and this woman have formed a personal attachment.” A flash of her old sharpness crossed her glance. “I hope I do not shock you, Manders.”