‘Is … is she …’ He found that he couldn’t say the words.

After feeling for her pulse, Sunday gave a small sigh of relief. She knew what he had been thinking and she had feared the same.

‘There’s a pulse but it’s thready,’ she told him in a shaky voice, then pulling herself together with an enormous effort she ordered, ‘Go and fetch me a bowl of hot water and some towels. We must get her out of these wet clothes and cleaned up a little. And while you’re in the kitchen ask one of the maids to run up to my room and fetch one of my clean nightgowns.’

George was trembling so much that he barely heard her and she had to bark the orders at him again before he sped away to do as he was asked.

‘Who could have done this to her?’ he groaned miserably as later he helped Sunday to strip the sodden clothes from his wife’s inert body.

‘She might just have fallen over a tree root or something and banged her head,’ Sunday pointed out. ‘But never mind that – we must stop this bleeding. Hold that towel over the gash while I wash her.’

Sunday gently undid Cissie’s blouse and slid it down her arms – and it was then that they both saw the bruises forming there, black and purple against her pale skin.

‘That’s a hand-print if I’m not very much mistaken,’ George ground out as anger coursed through him. ‘She’s been attacked, the poor lass! And look at her chin! Someone has thumped her, I can tell. There’s another bruise forming there and her lip is split. She’ll be black and blue in a few hours’ time.’ He wept, and didn’t care who saw him.

‘But who would want to hurt Cissie?’ Sunday asked him. ‘She never did anyone any harm in her whole life, bless her.’

George clamped his lips together as a thought occurred to him. Hugh! Could it be that he had waited for her yet again – and turned nasty when she refused to give him any more money? If it was him I’ll find him and kill him with my bare hands, and sod what happens to me, George silently vowed. Then he and Sunday, having done all they could for her for now, sat and built up the fire, waiting for the doctor as George prayed for his wife to survive.

Chapter Forty-Four

‘Next train leaving is bound for London, sir,’ the ticket clerk told Hugh as he stood before the booth at Trent Valley railway station. He was soaked to the skin and shivering with fear and cold, but there was no time to think of that now. He must get away. Pushing the wet coins across the counter, he waited impatiently while the clerk got his ticket.

‘Should be here in ten minutes or so,’ the friendly clerk informed him. ‘You timed that nicely, sir.’

Hugh ignored him and strode away, intent on getting onto the platform. He had literally a few pence left in his pocket now, not even enough to buy a meal let alone anywhere to stay when he got to the capital. Still, it was only for one night, he consoled himself. He’d book into a hotel then slip away without paying first thing in the morning. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done it and he doubted it would be the last.