Patrick O'Brian - The fortune of war

She sat there rigid, her toes warm upon his neck. Quiet footsteps on the balcony. 'No, that is Johnson's woman's room. Try the next but two.'

A long, silent pause; and at last a knock on the door. Madame Franchon's voice: she was extremely sorry to disturb Mrs Villiers, but it was thought that a thief had taken refuge in the hotel: had Mrs Villiers heard or seen anything? No, said Diana, nothing at all. Might Madame Franchon look at the inner rooms? Mrs Villiers had the keys.

'Certainly,' said Diana. 'Wait a moment.' She slipped out of bed, threw some gauzy things over it, opened the door and returned to the deep rumpled nest of eiderdown and countless pillows. 'The keys are on the table there,' she said.

It took Madame Franchon only a few minutes to decide that the inner rooms, with their closed, unbroken windows and their unviolated doors, contained no flying thief, but in that time Stephen thought he must die of cramp and suffocation. The worst was the flood of apologies, and he felt an infinite relief when Diana cut them short, closed the door on Madame Franchon, and shot the bolt.

He came out into the air and gradually the drumming in his ears died away. 'You should have a drink, Maturin,' she whispered, reaching for a pretty little decanter by her bed. 'You don't mind drinking out of my glass?'

She poured him a stiff tot and mechanically he drank it off: the fire spread in his vitals. He recognized the smell, the same smell that mingled with Diana's usual scent there in the bed. 'Is it a kind of whisky?' he asked.

'They call it bourbon,' she said. 'Another drop?'

Stephen shook his head. 'Is your maid here? The tall one, Peg? Send her away, right away, until tomorrow.'

Diana went into another room. He heard the distant ringing of a bell and then Diana's voice, telling Peg to take Abijah and Sam to Mr Adams's house in the dog-cart and to give him this note. There seemed to be some low murmuring objection, for Diana's voice rose to a sharp, imperious tone and the door closed with a decided clap.

She came back and sat on the side of the bed 'That's done,' she said 'I have sent them all off until Monday morning' She looked at him affectionately, hesitated, poured herself a finger of bourbon, and said, 'What are you at, Maturin? Flying from an angry husband? It is not like you to bound from one bed to another. Yet after all you are a man. You spoke to me from the other side of the window just like a man - just as though we were already married. You called me a fool. But perhaps I am a fool. I was truly desolated, hearing you with Johnson yesterday, and not seeing you after all. My God, Stephen, I was so glad to hear your voice just now. I thought you had deserted me.'

He turned his face to her, and her smile faded. He said, 'I was escaping from Pontet-Canet and his band. They mean to kill me if they can. They waylaid me in the street yesterday - that was what I was speaking to Johnson about - and they made a far more determined attempt just now. Listen, honey, will you dress at once and go to the British agent? Tell him I am beset and cannot stir from here. Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil live in this hotel, do they not?'

'Yes.'

'Any others?'

'No. But all the Frenchmen, officers and civilians, haunt the place. There are always half a dozen of them in the hall.'

'Sure, I saw them myself. Now Andrews may not be in Boston on a Sunday; there was no light in his house this morning. But he has a cottage by the sea, somewhere this side of Salem. Herapath knows it; he has been there. Could you see Herapath without Wogan?'

'Very easily. Louisa is in the country with Johnson.'

'Ah. Then if Andrews is not here, take Herapath with you to the cottage. Tell Andrews that if he can gather a party of our officers to cover us, all will be well. Dubreuil will never risk the flaring public scandal of an attack on the Asciepia, and by tomorrow I shall have raised such a noise that private murder will be out of the question. Call a chaise and wear a veil: there is no danger, but it would be as well for you not to be seen. Is there any likelihood of the people of the hotel coming to clean the room?'

'No. Johnson always insists upon his own house-slaves doing everything; but if you like you could go into his rooms. They do not open on to the corridor, and we have the only keys. There, on the table.'

She bent down, kissed him, and hurried out of the room. He heard her order the carriage - was it more than two posts to Salem? - and in less time than he had ever known a woman take to dress she was back in a travelling habit and a broad-brimmed veiled hat. They embraced. He said, 'I never doubted your courage, my dear. Tell the man to drive slow, in this wicked fog. God bless.'

She said, 'I will lock you in,' and she was gone.

He walked into the big drawing-room next door, unshuttered, and by contrast fairly light. The fog had thinned a little more, and standing on a chair he could see the dim form of her chaise move out into the roadway, turn to the right and right again, down the side-street he had so lately traversed, towards Mr Andrews's house. If he were there she would be back in twenty minutes, if not, then in perhaps two hours or three. She had all the spirit in the world, all the courage, for this kind of thing, for a physical emergency; guts, as the seamen said; it was impossible not to admire her, impossible not to like her.

A French clock on the mantelshelf struck eleven, twice. He sat down, and while deep within himself he went on musing about Diana his medical side, his medical hands moved about his painful ribs, his far more painful head. He felt curiously exhausted, and his mind did not focus well but moved vaguely round and round the central point. The physician was in better shape, stating that the eighth and ninth ribs were probably cracked, no more; but that there was something very like a crepitation along the coronal suture, a little above the temporal crest, while the main seat of pain was on the other side, a clear contrecoup effect. 'I wonder that there was no concussion,' he observed. 'But no doubt nausea will ensue.' This was all the physician had to say since there was no remedy but rest, and Stephen's thoughts returned wholly to Diana. A glance at the clock showed him that she must by now have gone on to the Andrewses' cottage, and he pictured her haranguing the anxious, worried little man.

The half hour roused him to a sense of his duty. He returned to the bedroom, picked up the keys, and passed through the long suite of rooms to Johnson's private quarters, unlocking and relocking the doors as he went. The last true room was evidently his closet, with a large roll-top desk, a strong-box, and a quantity of files and papers: a door in the far corner led to a privy, which also contained a hip-bath. It was just as well, because at this point the nausea that he had foreseen came on, and he knelt there, vomiting for a while.

Recovered now, and washed, he walked back into the study: the difficulty, was to know where to start. On the scientist's principle of dealing with the easiest first, he went through the open files and papers. Most were the private records and accounts of a very wealthy man, but there were some interesting French documents with translations in Diana's dashing hand. These dated back to before the war: the more recent were in hands he did not recognize, except for Louisa Wogan's. Even so, Diana would possess useful knowledge about the background of the French connection. Memoranda about the military position on the Great Lakes and the Canadian land frontier: a coded list, presumably of agents there. A note about himself: 'Pontet-Canet confirms that Maturin has an inclination to retire to the States: a grant of land in a district of unusual interest to a naturalist might swing the scale.' More accounts and official correspondence, lists of prisoners, with remarks and interrogations. Nothing of the first importance, but useful material among the dross.