Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [170]
‘There won’t be,’ Philippa said.
Adam glanced over his shoulder and then returned his eyes to her face. ‘How can you be sure? Philippa, would you go to Dieppe?’
She had guessed it was coming. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ The thin scar, as always when he was anxious, lay starkly over his face.
She didn’t glance, as he had done, to her woman. She said, ‘You heard Marthe. To have me there would only add to his burdens. By now the damage will have been done, or they will be reconciled. And I trust his ultimate good sense more than you do. Richard will never hear of Marthe through him, or anything else that discredits the family. Is Jerott worried?’
‘Jerott doesn’t know I am here,’ Adam said. ‘The last thing he wants is to see you in Francis’s company. You know that.’
‘In case I become corrupted. Jerott and I wish the same thing, for different reasons,’ Philippa said. ‘But you don’t object to throwing Mr Crawford and myself together?’
‘I know your upbringing,’ Adam said. ‘And I know something else. Francis has his divorce and his freedom in prospect, but the headaches have come back. Archie was worried last night. Philippa, this family business has to be laid bare and thrashed out with Sybilla. Not before Richard in a storm of stripped nerves, but with Sybilla, in calm and in privacy.’
‘He won’t,’ Philippa said. ‘And I can’t help. I don’t know the truth and I can’t see any way of finding it. I think F … Francis has reached it by guesswork and it is quite unacceptable. All I can suggest is that with time, the unacceptable usually becomes accepted.’
‘We haven’t got time,’ Adam said.
The blood left her heated face. She said, keeping her voice steady, ‘You spoke only of headaches at Christmas.’ And knew from his face that, like herself, he was recalling London.
He said quickly, ‘That is all it is. He has nothing worse than headaches, Philippa; although God knows they are annihilating enough. No. I meant … He will leave for Russia.’
His eyes were level and anxious. The woman in the windowseat looked up. Philippa said, ‘I can only think of one thing that would do any good, and that is to prove or disprove what he has found out about Sybilla.’
‘You said you couldn’t,’ said Adam.
‘So the impossible has to become the possible as well,’ she said. ‘Adam, can you …?’
‘We watch him,’ Adam said. ‘We watch him all the time, and Archie is with him. The other thing he needs is someone … anyone at all … to lift some of the strain.’
It was, of course, the conclusion that she and Marthe had already reached. ‘You mean, to sleep with? I don’t think,’ said Philippa, ‘that professional ladies are adequate. The trouble is, he doesn’t seem to have considered Catherine. In any case, she might well hold out for marriage.’
A faint smile, for the first time, crossed Adam’s perplexed face. ‘Wise girl,’ he said. ‘But you know, I don’t think we can wait till April.’
‘No. Then I think,’ said Philippa, ‘I had better have a word with her mother. The Vidame is very engaging and I’m sure Condé is delightful but really, at this moment we want something quieter … What on earth are you laughing at?’
‘You,’ said Adam. ‘Are you as objective about Austin?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Don’t you think we should suit one another?’
‘Philippa, I can’t think of anyone you wouldn’t suit,’ Adam said. ‘It depends what, in return, they can offer.’
‘I see that. But love, you know,’ Philippa said, ‘is a very considerable inducement.’
*
She had dinner in her room after Adam had gone and later sallied forth, laden with handkerchiefs, to seek the Maréchale de St André. From there she walked the short distance, in extreme cold, to the rue Marie-Egyptienne, passing the Séjour du Roi as she crossed into Montmartre from the old wall’s turreted gate towers.
She did not stop, because Marthe was there, but her heart still sickened, remembering Austin.
Adam, when she asked him, had been