Coate swore, and released Nell. For a moment she confronted him, still unafraid, but white with anger, her eyes blazing. Then she swept past him, and went up the stairs to where her grandfather’s valet stood awaiting her. He stepped aside, bowing politely, and followed her to the gallery off which her own and her grandfather’s apartments were situated.
“Thank you!” she said curtly. “I’m much obliged!”
“Not at all, miss,” said Winkfield, as though such interventions were an accustomed part of his duties. “It was fortunate that I happened to be at hand. If I may say so, I feel that Mr. Coate would feel himself more at home in a different class of establishment. Perhaps, a hint to Mr. Henry—?”
“Quite useless! Don’t disturb yourself, Winkfield! I’ll take good care never to be alone with him again!”
“No, miss, it would be wiser, I expect. But if Sir Peter knew—”
“Winkfield, most earnestly I forbid you to breathe one syllable to him!”
“No, miss, and indeed I have not! But he knows more than we think for, and it’s my belief he’s fretting over it. He keeps asking me things, and wanting to know where you are, and the day he sent for Mr. Henry to come to his room he was too much like his old self—if you understand me!”
“We should not have allowed it. It put him in a passion, didn’t it?”
“Well, miss, he never could abide Mr. Henry, but you know as well as I do that it won’t do to cross Sir Peter. What I didn’t like was the way seeing Mr. Henry seemed to make Sir Peter feel his own helplessness more than he has done for a long time now. Several times he’s said to me that he’ll make us all know who’s master at Kellands before he’s booked. Then he gets restless, and testy, and I know he’s been brooding over it, and raging in his mind because he hasn’t the power to do so much as get up out of his chair without he has me to lift him.”
She said in a breaking voice: “Oh, if he had but died when he had that stroke!”