Selwyn Place by Shelley Adina

Author:Shelley Adina [Adina, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939087843
Publisher: Moonshell Books, Inc.

The doctor pronounced Snouts unharmed save for several scrapes and contusions on hands and legs, and bruises on his back, for all of which Mr. Silver sent up a healing salve he had compounded from herbs in the garden.

“No activity for the rest of the day,” the doctor said sternly. “You have sustained a severe shock—indeed, a life-threatening one—and you must have time to recover. I recommend a light meal this evening, and a tot of brandy before bed.”

No activity? “But my coat,” Snouts protested. “I paid a good sum for it. It will be ruined if it stays out in the woods all night.”

The doctor was having none of it. “A coat is not as important as your health,” he said, the lamplight glinting off his bald head and backlighting the tufts of hair in his ears. “Do you want to succumb to an infection if these cuts are exposed to the air again?”

Meekly, Snouts shook his head, though any numpty could tell that the salve would take care of exposure to air. His glance met that of Chad, who slid soundlessly from the room. He was a good lad. Though the sun was setting, the distance to the base of the tor was only a mile or so. He could make it to the meadow and back with the herringbone tweed coat before the dew fell.

While Lord Selwyn saw the doctor out, the Lady stopped Lady Selwyn’s anxious fluttering by promising she would be downstairs in time for dinner. “I must just be sure he will not disobey the doctor’s orders, dearest.”

The door closed gently, and she returned to her chair next to Mr. Andrew.

“Now,” she said, leaning toward the invalid and keeping her voice low, “tell me what really happened. For I do not for a moment believe that story about a rock turning under your boot.”

Snouts had been called many things in his day, but clumsy was not one of them. “I was pushed,” he said succinctly. “I didn’t see the blighter, but I feel the blow from his hands even yet.”

“Your bruises were caused by his hands?” Mr. Andrew’s face darkened in a way that told Snouts the slow burn of his temper had just been ignited. “That is two attempts on your life in a single day. Are you sure you saw nothing?”

“Believe me, I spent an hour clinging to that tree thinking of nothing else. It was that or imagining the plunge to earth.”

“Snouts.” The Lady choked and turned her face away.

He clasped her slender hand in his knobby paw. “I’m sorry, Lady. But it’s the truth. The only thing I saw was an arm in a dark coat. Out of the corner of my eye, like, as I went over.”

“Practically every man on the excursion wore a dark coat,” Mr. Andrew said. “Except Chad, who wore none, and Lord Birtwhistle, who wore an appalling yellow-and-black plaid.”

Snouts’s face crumpled in disgust at such poor sartorial taste. Then something else flashed in his mind’s eye.

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