A Stranger in Mayfair - Charles Finch [88]
“Don’t make jokes,” warned Lady Jane, her face tense with anxiety. “Look at his head, will you?”
McConnell spent the next few minutes gently cleaning the jagged wound on Lenox’s forehead (a third cleaning), prodding around its edges, and asking Lenox what hurt and what didn’t. At last he offered a verdict. “It looks painful, but you’ll be all right, I think.”
“You think?” said Lady Jane, alarmed.
“I should be clearer—you will be all right. The only thing that worries me is whether you might not have some dizziness and lightheadedness in the next few weeks. If that happens you’ll need bed rest—”
“He’ll have that anyway.”
“You’ll need bed rest,” McConnell said again, “and minimal activity. But you aren’t in any danger of long-term consequences, thank the Lord.”
He then took from his battered leather medical bag a length of cloth and set about making Lenox a very dramatic bandage for his head.
“There,” he said when he was done, “now you look like you were in a war, or at least a duel. Walk down Pall Mall on a busy afternoon and it will get all over town that you did some heroic deed.”
Lenox laughed and thanked McConnell, who left, in a hurry to get back to George. Dallington had stayed in the room, at Lenox’s request, but now he left, too.
“Shall we discuss the—” Lenox had said, turning to the lad.
“No, we shall not,” Lady Jane had answered firmly. “John, come back tomorrow if you like.”
When at last they were alone—Lenox feeling much more human, a cup of tea from one of the (again hovering) maids in hand—the pretense of anger and hardness fell away from Lady Jane.
“Oh, Charles! How many more times will I have to worry this way?” was all she said. She hugged him close to her.
McConnell had joked about the attack reaching other ears, but he wasn’t far wrong. In the past when Lenox had been harmed in the line of duty he had never read of it in the evening papers, but now he was a Member of Parliament. After the police had come and gone, offering very little hope to the victim that they might catch his attacker, the newspapers arrived. It was only a small item on two of the front pages, doubtless placed there close to the hour the papers went to press, but it reminded Lenox that he had responsibilities to people other than himself now—and even beyond Jane.
By suppertime he could stand up and move about, and after eating a light bowl of soup in his dressing gown, he went to bed.
In the morning he had a splitting headache and a thousand questions about the case. But he had slept well, and he felt ready for the fight again.
Graham was the second person he saw, after Jane had brought him his coffee and asked how he felt.
“May I inquire after your health, sir?” asked Graham.
“I’m a bit thumped, of course—but no permanent damage.”
“The police have no idea who might have attacked you?”
“None.”
“But you feel quite well?”
“Oh! Yes, not bad.”
Graham coughed discreetly. “In that case might I ask you to discuss parliamentary matters?”
“Of course.”
Lenox came away from the conversation with a stack of fresh blue books (he hated the sight of the things by now) and spent the morning reading them. McConnell stopped in to change his bandage, and Lady Jane brought a pillow or a sandwich or something else useful every half hour, but otherwise he was alone.
He tried—really tried—not to think about Ludo Starling or Frederick Clarke. There was Dallington who could look into it all now.
Nevertheless, as the hands on the clock seemed to slow to a halt and his eyes grew dry from all that unrewarding prose, the questions he had woken up with returned in greater force.
Why had he been attacked? Was it a message, or a true attempt on his life? Did the attacker know that Dallington had the same information Lenox did?
Most importantly, had Ludo been involved?
It was a relief when at noon or so Dallington arrived. He brought with him a few magazines full of crime stories.
“It’s what I always read when I’m sick. Somehow having a fever makes them even more exciting.”
Lenox laughed. “Thank you.