A gentle hand rested on her shoulder. She knew it was Vicar Trent, but didn’t take her eyes from her father’s face.
“You should rest.”
“I can’t leave him.”
“Perkins will get you if he awakes.”
His awakening wasn’t what scared her. It was what could happen while she slept. “I would rather stay here.”
Vicar Trent said nothing further and returned to his seat in the corner.
She waited and waited but her father didn’t move or flinch. It was almost as if he were gone. But she couldn’t think like that. He had to awaken. He must!
Perkins had moved from his place by the window and now sat in a chair as well, his head dropping in exhaustion. Occasionally he would jerk and looked around. “You should go to bed, Perkins.”
“I would rather remain with Mr. Cooper in case he needs me.”
Grace tried to smile at his dedication but didn’t have the energy to do so and went back to watching her father. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock and her eyes grew heavier with each click. She tried to keep her eyes open but it became impossible until she decided to lay her head on the bed and doze for but a few moments. If her father woke she would be here.
“No,” she screamed. Grace bolted up and looked around. The dawn light filtered into her bedchamber from the open window. Her heart raced and breathing was rapid as she looked around her dim room, trying to make sense of the nightmare. She could only remember snippets but enough to recall the vision of her father locked away, behind a cell, with screams of those carted away to Bedlam surrounding her. Sweat trickled down her neck and she swiped it away.
Her door burst open and Vicar Trent rushed inside, his hair disheveled, sticking out at various angles and his coat was missing and cravat askew. “What’s wrong?” Why was he here, looking as if he had been asleep?
“Father!” How could she have forgotten her father? Grace shoved the covers away and stood from the bed. She still wore her dress from the day before. “How did I get here?” Her last memories were of sitting with her father.
He blinked and shook his head as if to dislodge the remnants of sleep. “I heard you scream.”
“It was a nightmare. Nothing more.” Grace shoved her feet into the slippers beside her bed. “How is father?”
Vicar Trent sighed, his face gaunt. “No change.”
That was good. She needed him awake but at least he hadn’t passed. She couldn’t lose her father. She needed him and he hadn’t deserved everything that had happened to him in the last few years.
She pushed past Vicar Trent. “I need to return to him. I have no idea how I ended up in my bed.”
He followed her out the room. “I carried you up here last night.”
He carried her, to her bed? Even though the gesture was innocent, heat flooded her face at the impropriety. “Thank you, but I wish you would have let me stay by my father.”
“To topple to the floor in your exhaustion?”
Whatever did he mean?
“I barely caught you before you slid from her father’s bed. Perkins and I both agreed you needed to rest in your own bed for your own safety and to avoid any aches and pains from sleeping in such an odd position last night.”
Grace turned away and continued down the stairs, but slowed her steps. Two rungs beneath the banister were broken; there was a deep dent in the wall on the opposite side. A chill ran up her spine. How much of this damage was caused by her father when he fell? Dark stains marred the wood on the last three steps. She knew well enough that it was blood and someone had tried to clean it away, but the deep, almost blackish red would be forever stained into grain.
Vicar Trent’s warm hand settled at the small of her back and he guided her forward. She couldn’t think about the bloodstains now. When she reached the landing, she continued to her father’s room. Please let him be sitting up in bed, alert and only slightly suffering from the effects of his fall. Such was not the case. He looked exactly as he had the night before. She strained to see if he were breathing. His chest barely rose with each breath. “Has he eaten anything?”
Perkins sadly shook his head.
“We have to get something in him.”
“I’ve tried Miss Cooper, but he doesn’t cooperate.”
She stopped at the side of his bed. Her father’s skin had taken on an ashen tone and he developed deep bruising beneath both eyes, as if he had been in a fight. It was to be expected since that is what had happened. There was a bit of dried blood beneath his nose. Why hadn’t she noticed last night? Grace picked up the cloth, dipped it in water and washed the blood away. As she leaned forward she noticed the same by his ear, and washed that away as well. She stopped, her eyes focused on the once white sheet beneath her father’s head. A dark crimson stain had spread beneath his ear. She quickly leaned over to the other side. More blood. What did that mean?
It wasn’t much, a few drops and they were dry, but a man should not bleed from his ears. She assumed the nose was from his injury and everyone knew noses bleed horribly when struck, but she had never seen an ear bleed.
Her face and body suddenly grew cold and her father’s deathly face swam before her. She must have swayed or stumbled because Vicar Trent was at her side instantly, a warm, soothing hand on her waist, another on her arm as he assisted her into the chair she sat in the night before.
“Why are his ears bleeding?”
Nobody answered her and she tore her gaze away from her father to Vicar Trent and then Perkins. He only shrugged. “We don’t know Miss Cooper.”
“When did it start?”
“Last night. Perkins was wiping it away when you weren’t looking,” Vicar Trent answered.
“I hope the doctor gets here soon. I am sure he has a reasonable explanation.”
“It has stopped,” Perkins assured her and Vicar Trent’s hand gently squeezing her shoulder. Grace bit her bottom lip to keep from crying. It would do no good to become emotional now, even if all she really wanted to do was pull Vicar Wake close and be held by him so she could cry like a child.
His heart ached for Miss Cooper. Though Matthew didn’t have a vast amount of experience when it came to ill or injured people, he knew well enough that bleeding from the ears was not a good sign. But he wasn’t sure what it meant exactly, or how serious. The man looked close to death if his shallow breathing and grey pallor were any indication, but could one really be certain? Miss Cooper would be lost if her father died and Matthew was at a loss as how to comfort her.
He straightened once she was settled into the chair and stepped back. Her face was pale as well, hair mussed from rising directly from bed and coming here. He wished he could comfort her but didn’t know how. He thrust his fingers through his hair. He was a minister, a vicar in the community, her vicar, but he had no idea what to do. Shouldn’t a vicar automatically know the right words to say in a situation like this? The first crisis in this vocation and he was at a complete loss. Far from the perfect vicar his father always planned for him to be.
Disgusted with himself, Matthew turned on his heel and walked from the room. “I will get you a cup of tea.” If Miss Cooper responded, he did not hear her. He should not be thinking of his failings but of how to help her and Mr. Cooper. But how could he? He wasn’t a doctor. All he had was prayer.
Matthew paused in the center of the dimly lit kitchen and looked around. The silence in this house was deafening, as if death waited at the door for admittance. No. He could not allow Mr. Cooper to die. Grabbing a chair from the table he sank down into it before leaning forward and placing his head in his hands. He searched deep into his soul and tried to find the perfect words to petition to Lord to save Mr. Cooper’s life, but he was at a loss for words. As his frustration mounted Matthew blew out a breath and leaned back, looking up to the ceiling. “Please, Lord, save him.”
It was so simple, so easy, yet Matthew was disappointed in himself for not being able to pray with more eloquence. If his father was here he would tan his hide for not being better. How many years had he spent writing and practicing the perfect prayer to be delivered at dinner time? How often had his father criticized those same prayers during dinner? One would think that after so many years of practice he would know what to say, but when it really, truly mattered, those words and years of preparation failed him. When this crisis passed, he would once again strive for perfection, to be what he must. Otherwise, what else was there for him to be?
Matthew filled the kettle with water and placed it on the stove to be heated before rummaging through the pantry for foodstuff. He had few cooking skills, if any and the sacks of flour and other ingredients overwhelmed him. He had to get Mrs. Thomas back here to cook for Miss Cooper. Grace, no he couldn’t and shouldn’t think of her by her Christian name, it wasn’t proper and it wasn’t the first time he had slipped into the familiarity. At least it had been in his own thoughts and not said out loud.
Miss Cooper wasn’t in a state to cook for herself and Matthew couldn’t provide anything more than a cup of tea. They didn’t even have any bread. All of it had been eaten last night when he warmed the soup from earlier in the day. They would surely starve at this rate and Miss Cooper needed all the strength she could get for the days to come.