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stretcher.
    ‘Sturridge, what is it? Who is hurt’ she cried
breathlessly.
    ‘The master is not injured—but, still, it is as bad
as can be, your Grace. Poor Mr Wilkinson is down under the tree, and the master
holding the weight of a great branch off his chest with his own back.’
    ‘Oh, good God!’ She clasped her palms to her cheeks, forcing back panic by sheer will
and constraining herself to think. ‘We must have props to take the weight off
the Duke. What can we use?’
    The old man looked around vaguely. ‘Aye, that is
what I was thinking. There’s logs in the back for the
fires, but I doubt they’re long enough or strong enough.’
    ‘No, no, that would not do,’ she cried impatiently.
‘Besides, there is no time. There, use one of those.’ She pointed at two marble
columns about three feet high, which stood one on either side of the door, each
surmounted by an urn filled with hothouse blooms.
    ‘What? The master’s marble pillars that he brought
back from Greece!’
    ‘I daresay they have been put to stranger uses in
the past two thousand years—and in worse weather, too!’ She snatched the urn
off the nearest column and beckoned to two footmen standing nervously by the
door. ‘You, John and—and—Robert, is it not? Can you each take an end of this
pillar and run with it as fast as you can to the Duke?’ She turned on Sturridge.
‘Rope, we must have rope! Find some and follow.’
    The two hefty young footmen did as they were bid,
staggering a little under the weight at first but making good time. Minette,
her cloak wrapped around her and her hair streaming unheeded in the wind and
rain, followed them.
    Fortunately, they had not far to go, for the Duke
and his agent had almost reached shelter when the disaster struck. Wilkinson
was unconscious, lying upon his back with one leg stretched out before him and
the other twisted beneath him at an unnatural angle with jagged bone protruding
through the torn and bloody cloth of his breeches. Rochford was crouched across
the man’s chest, with his own weight carried upon his elbows and knees while,
with his back, he held clear a half-splintered branch heavy enough to crush a
man’s ribs. A group of men hovered uncertainly around them but, even as she
came up to them, she heard Rochford’s voice. ‘For God’s sake, take care! This
branch is just balanced enough so that I can hold it clear. One wrong move and
it could crush us both.’ Even as he spoke, the trunk of the fallen oak rolled a
little, and the bulk of the branch shifted. An involuntary grunt of pain was
wrenched from the Duke, but he braced himself and, with a prodigious effort
that cracked the muscles of his back, he eased the weight off the injured man
once more. He shook the wet hair out of his eyes and saw Minette standing beside
him. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here? Get back to the house at once!’
    Minette took absolutely no notice of this command.
Instead, she calmly directed John to angle the front end of the pillar so that
it was just under the branch. It was at too low an angle to take any weight,
however. Then Sturridge came staggering through the storm with a coil of rope.
‘Good. Give that to me.’
    ‘Eugenie! I forbid you to— Here, one of you men
take the— Eugenie, are you listening to me?’
    ‘No.’ Carefully, Minette stepped to Rochford’s side
and tossed the end of the rope across the base of the branch where it joined
the fallen trunk. Then she knelt in the mud and scrabbled blindly in the hollow
beneath until she found the rope end. With the greatest care, she repeated this
procedure three times and then tied a knot. ‘There, I think that will hold.’
Rising, she tossed the free end of the rope across the trunk to the two
footmen. ‘Sturridge, when the men pull on the rope, push that pillar upright
while I hold it steady.’
    ‘Yes, your Grace,’ the old servant said,
determinedly avoiding the Duke’s fulminating eye.
    ‘Now, on the count of