“That is their loss—and, as for training, I think Rupert has proved it fairly right.”
“Well, yes. But I hate wounds, Royd, and all the sickroom messiness. It’s an ill business, tending men you’d rather see lying snugly in their graves.”
Sir Jasper laughed, not boisterously at all, but with the tranquil gaiety that comes of sadness. “There was a worse business, friend, at Derby. I went through it; and, I tell you, nothing matters very much—nothing will ever matter again, unless the Prince finds his battle up in Scotland.”
And by and by they fell to talking of ways and means. Sir Jasper was pledged to rejoin the Prince, and would not break his word. Neither would he leave his son at Windyhough a second time, among the women and old men. And yet—there was his wife, who needed him.
The red-faced squire, blunt and full of cheery common sense, resolved his difficulties. “Cannot you trust us, Royd? There’ll be six men of us—seven, counting Simon Foster, who is getting better of his hurt—and only wounded prisoners to guard.”
“What if another company of roving blackguards rides this way?”
“Not likely. By your own showing, the hunt goes wide of this. Besides, we shall get a new doorway up. Rupert held the house with two to help him—seven of us could do the like.”
Sir Jasper began to pace restlessly up and down. “You forget,” he said sharply, “it will be my wife you’re guarding—my wife—and she means so much to me, old friend.”
“We know, we know. D’ye think we’d let hurt come to her? Listen, Royd. When these jackanapes who groan in German are fit to look after themselves, we’ll leave them to it, and take all your women with us to my house at Ravenscliff. And word shall go round that Lady Royd—the toast of the county to this day—needs gentlemen about her. She’ll not lack friends, I tell you.”
The squire’s glance fell as it met Sir Jasper’s. His conscience was uneasy still, and he fancied a rebuke that was far from Royd’s thoughts. So had the Prince been the county’s toast—until the Prince asked instant service.