Theo smiled. “I daresay! But come inside now! I will protect you from her, I promise you.”
The answering smile was perfunctory; Theo said, with a glance at the Earl’s face: “You are fagged to death, Gervase! And no wonder!”
“No, not as bad as that,” Gervase said, mounting the stone steps beside him. “I am really very much harder to kill than any of you can be brought to believe.”
“I know well you bear a charmed life, but to be taxing your strength in such a way as this — !” Theo flung open the door into the parlour. “Go in! Let me speak two words to Allenby, and I’ll be with you!”
When he returned to the parlour, some ten minutes later, he found the Earl seated in a chair on one side of the old draw-table, which was littered with papers and ledgers. He shut the door, saying: “Mrs. Allenby is so much vexed that she had no word of your coming that nothing I can say will console her. You mean to remain here for the night, I hope?”
“No, I am returning to Stanyon.” The Earl tossed back on to the table a paper he had been reading. “I never knew, until I came home, how much work you did, Theo. I have you to thank for it that I find my inheritance in such good order, haven’t I?”
“Why, yes!” Theo admitted. “But you did not drive ten miles to tell me that! My dear Gervase, what can have possessed you to behave with such imprudence? When I left Stanyon you had not quitted your room, and here you are, without even Chard to bear you company!”
“I wanted to see you, and alone.”
Theo looked at him with knit brows. “Something has happened since I left Stanyon? Is that it?”
“No, nothing has happened, except that I have regained my strength and my wits. My head still ached abominably when I saw you last, Theo. I found it difficult to think, and impossible to act. I was in doubt, too — or perhaps only trying to believe there was doubt. It is of very little consequence.”