Marianne could hardly believe her ears. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to wipe the blood from her employer’s leg with the rag she had just used to clean his shoes? Indignation sparkled in the normally quiet depths of her dark brown eyes. She turned to the pitcher of water she had brought upstairs and poured some into a clean bowl.
‘Of course, sir,’ she told him. ‘I’ll just wash my hands first, shall I?’ she suggested quietly, not waiting for his permission but instead rubbing her hands fiercely with the carbolic soap. She poured some water over them, before putting some fresh water in a clean bowl and then dipping a new piece of sheeting into it.
The only wounds she had cleaned before had been small domestic injuries to her aunt’s servants, and none of them had involved her touching a strongly muscled naked male thigh. But Marianne forced herself to ignore that and to work quickly to clean the blood away from the wound, as gently as she could. She could see that the pin had punctured the master’s flesh to some depth, and a width of a good half an inch, leaving ragged edges of skin and an ominously dark welling of blood. Even though he was still semi-conscious he flinched beneath her touch and tried to roll away.
‘Looks like we’ll have to tie him down, Jenks,’ the doctor told his servant. ‘Brought up the ropes with you, have you?’
‘I’ll go down and get them, sir,’ the servant answered him.
Marianne winced once again, moved to unwilling pity for her ‘new employer.’
‘Perhaps a glass of spirits might dull the pain and quieten him whilst you examine him, sir?’ she suggested quietly.
‘I dare say it would,’ the doctor agreed, much to her relief. ‘But I doubt you’ll find any spirits in this household.’
‘Surely as a doctor you carry a little medicinal brandy?’ Marianne ventured to ask.
The doctor was frowning now.
‘Brandy’s expensive. Folk round here don’t believe in wasting their brass on doctor’s bills for brandy. Hmm, looks like the bleeding’s stopped, and it’s a clean enough wound. Knowing Denshaw as I do, I’m surprised that it was his own machinery that did this. Cares more about his factory and everything in it than he does himself. Your master is a foolish man at times. He’s certainly not made himself popular amongst the other mill owners—paying his workers top rate, giving them milk to drink and special clothes to wear in the factory. That sort of thing is bound to lead to trouble one way or other. No need for those now, Jenks,’ he announced to his servant, who had come into the room panting from carrying the heavily soiled and bloodstained coils of rope he held in his arms.
‘Best thing you can do is bandage him up and let nature take its course. Like as not he’ll take a fever, so I’ll send a nurse up to sit with him. She’ll bring a draught with her that will keep him quiet until the fever runs its course.’
‘Bandage him up? But surely, Doctor—’ Marianne began to protest, thinking that she must have misheard him. Surely the doctor couldn’t mean that she was to bandage the Master of Bellfield’s leg?
‘Those are my instructions. And make sure that you pull the bandage tightly enough to stem the bleeding, but not too tightly. I’ll bid you good day now. My bill will be five guineas. You can tell your master when he returns to himself. You may feed him on a little weak tea—but nothing more, mind, in case it gives rise to a fever.’
Five guineas! That was a fortune for someone like her. But it was the information the doctor had given her about the Master of Bellfield’s astonishing treatment of his workers that occupied Marianne’s thoughts as she escorted the doctor back down the stairs, and not the extortionate cost of his visit. Her heart started to beat faster. Did this news mean that the task she had set herself before she arrived at Bellfield could be nearer to completion? If only that might be so. Sometimes the weight of the responsibility she had been given felt so very heavy, and she longed to have another to share it with. But for now she must keep her own counsel, and with it her secret.
As soon as she had closed the heavy front door behind the doctor she headed for the kitchen, where to her relief the cat was curled up in front of the fire whilst the baby was lying gurgling happily in his basket.
He really was the sweetest-looking baby, Marianne acknowledged, smiling tenderly at him. He was going to have his father’s cowlick of hair, even though as yet that cowlick was just a small curl. His colour was definitely much better, and he was actually watching her with interest instead of lying in that apathetic stillness that had so worried her. She was tempted to lift him out of the basket and cuddle him, but her first duty had to be to the man lying upstairs, she reminded herself sternly. After all, without him there would be no warm kitchen to shelter them, and no good rich milk to fill the baby’s empty stomach.
Bandage him up, the doctor had said. He hadn’t even offered to leave her any bandaging either, Marianne reflected, her sense of what was ethically right in a doctor outraged by his lack of proper care for his patient.
She would just have to do the best she could. And she would do her best—just as her aunt would have expected her to do. Now, what was it that boy on the bicycle had said his name was? Postlethwaite—that was it.
Marianne had seen the telephone in the hallway, and now she went to it and picked up the receiver, unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder up the stairs. Not that it was likely that the Master of Bellfield was likely to come down to chastise her for the liberty she was taking.
A brisk female voice on the other end of the line was asking her what number she required.
‘I should like to be put through to Postlethwaite’s Provisions,’ she answered, her stomach cramping with a mixture of guilt and anxiety as she waited for the exchange operator to do as she had requested. She had no real right to be doing this, and certainly no real authority. She wasn’t really the housekeeper of Bellfield House after all.
‘How do, lass, how’s t’master going on?’
‘Mr Postlethwaite?’ Marianne asked uncertainly.
‘Aye, that’s me. My lad said as how he’d heard about t’master’s accident. You’ll be wanting me to send up some provisions for him, I reckon. I’ve got a nice tin of turtle soup here that he might fancy, or how about…?’
Tinned turtle soup? For a sick man? Marianne rather fancied that some good, nurturing homemade chicken soup would suit him far better, but of course she didn’t want to offend the shopkeeper.
‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite,’ she answered him politely. ‘I shall be needing some provisions, but first and most important I wondered if you could give me the direction of a reliable chemist. One who can supply me with bandages and ointments, and quickly. The doctor is to send up a nurse, but in the meantime I am to bandage the wound.’
‘Aye, you’ll be wanting Harper’s. If you want to tell me what you’re wanting, I’ll send young Charlie round there now and he can bring it up.’
His kindness brought a lump to Marianne’s throat and filled her with relief. Quickly she told him what she thought she would need, before adding, ‘Oh, and I was wondering—would you know of anyone local who might have bee hives, Mr Postlethwaite. Only I could do with some honey.’
‘Well, I dunno about that,’ he answered doubtfully, ‘it not being the season to take the combs out of the hives. But I’ll ask around for you.’
‘It must be pure honey, Mr Postlethwaite, and not any other kind.’ Marianne stressed.
Her aunt had sworn by the old-fashioned remedy of applying fresh honey to open wounds in order to heal and cleanse them.
‘A word to the wise, if you don’t mind me offering it, Mrs Brown,’ Mr Postlethwaite was saying, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. ‘If the doctor sends up Betty Chadwick to do the nursing you’d best make sure that she isn’t on the drink.’