Emmie didn’t pause in her folding of a soufflé mixture. ‘Telephone him at once,’ she suggested. ‘He will wish to know, I think, for he is very interested in this English lady, is he not?’

Marinus looked at his old-fashioned pocket watch. ‘He will be at his rooms, he will have patients…’

His wife began to pour her mixture into a buttered and papered dish. ‘Telephone him,’ she repeated.

Marinus had to wait a moment or two before he could speak to the professor; there was a patient with him, explained his secretary, who would be gone in a very short time; just time enough to give Marinus the leisure to wonder if he was being needlessly foolish. After all, Miss Smith was returning to England that very evening and the professor hadn’t even mentioned the fact; perhaps dear Emmie was wrong.

But she wasn’t, he could tell that by the sound of the professor’s voice when he started asking questions. How long had Miss Smith been gone? Had Mevrouw Veske said anything about searching for her? Had she been warmly clad?

Marinus, being unable to answer any of these enquiries with any degree of accuracy, was told sharply to see that the professor’s horse was saddled and ready for him, together with a torch and blanket. ‘I shall be home almost immediately, and I want the dogs as well.’

‘You know where Miss Smith is?’ asked Marinus.

‘I believe so.’ The professor’s voice sounded harsh as he replaced the receiver.

He was as good as his word. Caesar, his great roan horse, was being led round to the front door as he got out of the Rolls and went indoors. Marinus, hovering in the hall, hurried to meet him. ‘I’ve put out your riding things, Professor—’ he began, to be cut short with: ‘No time. I’ll go as I am. Telephone Mevrouw Veske, will you, and see that there’s a room ready just in case Miss Smith needs to stay the night.’

He had gone again, taking Caesar at a careful trot down the drive, the dogs at his heels.

It was a dark evening and the overhanging trees made it even darker. The professor kept the beam from his torch steady, not bothering to turn its light from side to side of the road, he was so sure where Britannia would be. He urged his horse along now, holding the reins with easy assurance, his face without expression, giving no hint of the mounting impatience he felt. At the crossroads he was forced to slow down, for the ground had become even more treacherous, but he whistled to the dogs and urged them on ahead, watching their progress. He paused for a moment where he and Britannia had first stopped, but there was no sign of her and he went on again, searching the thicket on either side of him until he heard Jason’s deep bark and Willy’s excited yap. He could just make them out by the torch’s light, standing one each side of Britannia, sprawled across the lane.

The professor swung himself off his horse with the agility of a much younger man and knelt down beside her. Britannia was still unconscious. Her white face, with a nasty bruise down one side of it, looked quite alarming by the light of the torch, but the professor wasted no time in exclaiming over her appearance. He took her pulse, found it to be strong and regular, noted her grossly swollen ankle and said briskly: ‘Wake up, Britannia, we have to get you home.’

He repeated himself several times, interlarded with several pungent remarks in his own language although Britannia, recalled to consciousness by the insistence of his voice, really had no idea of what he was saying. She opened her eyes to find him staring down at her, looking so formidable that she frowned and closed her eyes again. She opened them almost immediately though, because there were two dogs looking at her too. She said in a very small voice: ‘The Bouvier and the Corgi,’ and then: ‘You’re wearing a good suit…it’ll be spoilt.’

The professor didn’t smile. He said something forceful in his own language again and Britannia thought it prudent not to ask what it was. She said helpfully: ‘I’ve hurt my ankle. I’m sorry I can’t walk, I crawled for a while, but I don’t think I got very far. If you wouldn’t mind just helping me to the end of the lane, I’d be all right there while you go and telephone Mijnheer Veske. He’ll take me to hospital and they can strap it…’

The professor was busy; he had cut the shoe lace of the sensible shoe she was wearing and was carefully slicing it open so that he could ease it off her injured ankle. He held her foot steady in one large gentle hand and worked with the other, and only when she stopped talking because the pain was so bad did he speak. ‘Stop issuing instructions like a demented great-aunt, Britannia. You must know that I shan’t listen to a word of them, nonsensical as they are. And now grit your teeth, my girl, this is going to hurt.’

It did, but she didn’t utter a sound, only shivered and shook and felt sick, and then, when the shoe was off and she felt the warmth of the blanket about her, so relieved that the tears she had so sternly held in check escaped at last.

Her rescuer turned the torch on her face then and examined the bruise, muttering to himself so that she managed at last: ‘Please don’t be so angry, Jake, I know it’s awkward—I mean meeting again after we’ve said goodbye.’ Some of her spirit returned. ‘And it’s very rude to mutter and mumble so that no one knows what you’re saying.’

‘You want to know what I was saying?’ He picked her up effortlessly, although she was a big girl. ‘That if you had listened carefully, you would know that I didn’t say goodbye.’

He strode over to where Caesar stood waiting and Britannia let out a squeak of surprise. ‘A horse—he’s huge!’ She added apprehensively: ‘I can’t get up there…’

He didn’t even bother to answer; she was lifted and laid across the great beast’s neck and while she was still panicking about holding on, the professor had swung himself up behind her, picked up the reins, whistled to the dogs and had turned for home.

He went slowly and carefully, but all the same her ankle was agonisingly painful. It was quite dark now and the road when they reached it was deserted. She said suddenly: ‘It’s a good thing it’s dark, we must look quite extraordinary.’ She gave a tired little chuckle and when he didn’t speak, she asked: ‘Are you still angry?’

His voice came from the darkness above her. ‘I am not angry.’

She drew a sharp breath as Caesar stumbled on a stone and she felt the professor’s arm, holding her firmly round the shoulders, tighten. After a moment he said quietly: ‘We’re almost home.’

He hadn’t once spoken a word of sympathy, she reflected in a rather woolly fashion. Any other man…but then any other man might have wasted time doing just that, while he had done everything possible with a swift efficiency and a minimum of talk, and he had known where to find her… She was framing a question about that when Caesar came to a halt and she was aware of lights and voices.

Being lifted down was a painful business; Britannia gritted her teeth and kept her eyes shut as the professor carried her indoors, suddenly too tired to mind about anything any more.

CHAPTER SIX

HALFWAY UP the staircase Britannia roused herself sufficiently to say: ‘I’m too heavy,’ but the professor didn’t speak, keeping up a steady, unhurried pace until he reached the gallery above. Emmie was ahead of him, ready with the door open of a room at its end. She had the bed turned down too and a blanket spread on it on to which he laid Britannia, who, feeling its warm security and seeing Emmie’s kind face peering at her, not surprisingly went immediately to sleep.

She didn’t sleep for long, although when she woke it was to find that someone had got her out of her clothes and put her in a nightgown; she vaguely remembered lifting arms and raising her head and Emmie’s voice murmuring comfortingly, and now she lay, nicely propped up with pillows, the bedcovers turned back, disclosing an ugly, swollen ankle. She was frowning at it when Emmie came back with the professor at her heels.