No one moved or spoke until the voices had died away. Then Eustacie caught Sir Tristram’s hand, and pressed it to her cheek, saying simply: ‘I will do anything you wish. I will even marry you!’
‘Oh no, you will not!’ exp
loded Ludovic, struggling to sit up. ‘If this last don’t beat all! What the devil did you mean by telling that long-nosed tidesman that I’m one of Sylvester’s by-blows?’
‘But no, Ludovic, no! I find that was very clever of him!’ protested Eustacie. ‘Did you not think so, Sarah?’
Miss Thane said gravely: ‘I’m lost in admiration of so quick a wit. You never told me he was such an excellent conspirator.’
‘Well, truly I did not think that he would be,’ confessed Eustacie.
Sir Tristram, ignoring this interchange, said: ‘In God’s name, Ludovic, what are you doing here?’
‘Free-trading,’ replied Ludovic, with complete sang-froid.
Shield’s face darkened. ‘Are you jesting?’
‘No, no, he really is a smuggler, Cousin Tristram!’ said Eustacie earnestly. ‘It is very romantic, I think. Do not you?’
‘No, I do not!’ said Shield. ‘Hasn’t your name been smirched enough, you young fool? Smuggling! And you can lie there and blandly tell me of it!’
‘You see!’ Eustacie made a disgusted face at Miss Thane.
‘Yes, he seems to have no feeling for romance at all,’ agreed Sarah.
Ludovic said savagely: ‘You may be thankful I can do nothing but lie here! Do you think I care whether I’m hanged for a free-trader or a murderer? I’m ruined, aren’t I? Then, damn it, I’ll go to the devil my own way!’
‘I don’t want to interrupt you,’ said Miss Thane, ‘but you’ll find yourself with the devil sooner than you think if that wound of yours starts bleeding again.’
‘Ah, let be!’ Ludovic said, his right hand clenching on the coverlet.
Sir Tristram was looking at that hand. He bent, and grasped Ludovic’s wrist, and lifted it, staring at the bare fingers. ‘Show me your other hand!’ he said harshly.
Ludovic’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. He wrenched his wrist out of Shield’s hold, and put back the bedclothes to show his left arm in a sling. The fingers were as bare as those of his right hand.
Sir Tristram raised his eyes to that haggard young face. ‘If you had it it would never leave your finger!’ he said. ‘Ludovic, where is the ring?’
‘Famous!’ mocked Ludovic. ‘Brazen it out, Tristram! Where is the ring indeed? You do not know, of course!’
‘What the devil do you mean by that?’ demanded Shield, in a voice that made Eustacie jump.
Ludovic flung off Miss Thane’s restraining hand, and sat up as though moved by a spring. ‘You know what I mean!’ he said, quick and panting. ‘You laid your plans very skillfully, my clever cousin, and you took care to ship me out of England before I’d time to think who, besides myself, could want the ring more than anything on earth! Does it grace your collection now? Tell me, does it give you satisfaction when you look at it?’
‘If you were not a wounded man I’d give you the thrashing of your life, Ludovic!’ said Shield, very white about the mouth. ‘I have stood veiled hints from Basil, but not even he dares to say to my face what you have said!’
‘Basil – Basil believed in me!’ Ludovic gasped. ‘It was you – you!’
Miss Thane caught him as he fell back, and lowered him on to his pillows. ‘Now see what you have done!’ she said severely. ‘Hartshorn, Eustacie!’
‘I would like very much to kill you!’ Eustacie told her cousin fiercely, and bent over the bed, holding the hartshorn under Ludovic’s nose.
He came round in a minute or two, and opened his eyes. ‘Tristram!’ he muttered. ‘My ring, Tristram!’
Shield brought a glass of water to the bed, and, raising Ludovic, held it to his lips. ‘Drink this, and don’t be a fool!’
‘Damn you, take your hands off me!’ Ludovic whispered.
Sir Tristram paid no heed to this, but obliged him to drink some of the water. He laid him down again, and handed the glass to Miss Thane. ‘Listen to me!’ he said, standing over Ludovic. ‘I never had your ring in my hands in my life. Until this moment I would have sworn it was in your possession.’