Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [193]
Philippa laughed. It was a little sawtoothed, but she was glad she could manage it at all. ‘Mr Bailey,’ she said. ‘I’ll remind you again. You are pitching yourself against the best-known professional in Europe. If he wants to kill you, he will have it done. What are the Lennoxes paying you?’
He had dropped her sleeves, shifting uneasily on his stool. He did not appear even to have noticed that she had guessed who his employers were. He said, ‘I have ten pounds a month so long as I am in France, and a written bond for six thousand more when I hand over the proofs, quite complete.’
‘I shall give you ten thousand pounds for them now,’ Philippa said.
His eyes shone, and then he dropped his wrinkled lids over them. ‘And have your husband send to kill me tomorrow?’
‘Hardly,’ Philippa said. ‘If, as you say, your death will make everything public. In fact, whatever we arrange, Mr Crawford need know nothing of it. Your pension from him will continue, and you will tell the Countess of Lennox that you cannot help her. Then you will be both rich and safe, so long as you keep perfectly silent. Otherwise you are a dead man, Master Bailey, no matter what the Lennoxes promise.’
She looked at him, without drawing back, and without, she hoped, showing fear or contempt or any of the black rage burning within her. ‘You will have to choose, Master Bailey, which of us to trust. But I can tell you that I should put your chances very low of ever seeing the six thousand pounds the Lennoxes may have promised you. The present Queen of England, we now know, is childless, and her sister has no love for the Lennoxes. When Elizabeth comes to the throne, that family will need all their wealth to keep themselves out of prison.’
He was interested. He said, ‘You could bring me ten thousand pounds without your husband knowing of it?’
‘I have my own resources,’ Philippa said. ‘Give my bankers three days.’
He had stopped smiling at last. He got up, and taking a turn, stood again in front of the fireplace. (Come into our dwelling, in the perfume of the cedars.) He said, ‘It is all very well, madam, but it is a matter of staking one’s life and one’s money on the word of a schoolgirl. I am not going to decide such matters in a moment.’
‘How long does it take,’ Philippa said, ‘to decide whether you want ten thousand pounds in your hands directly or not?’
He walked up and down again, the stiff folds of his coat swinging and buffeting the delicate furniture. ‘It would suit you to know now, hey? Well, it would suit me to ponder the business. There’s no hurry from my point of view, mistress. Every week I stay is twice paid for. And Sybilla and her dear son will be here, won’t they, at least until the royal wedding?’
Philippa got up and said, ‘What, then?’
He walked forward and took her arm, just above the elbow. He was a big man, taller than she was, and broad with it even in age. His flat fingers, the joints bunched and reddened, moved a little, smoothing the silk on her sleeve. ‘You make a good case,’ he said. ‘Considering the Crawfords are no business of yours, and that piece of misbegotten trash is just divorcing you. Why spend your savings on them?’
‘I can’t think,’ Philippa said. ‘My mother always said I had more money than I knew what to do with.’
‘Aye,’ he said. He did not let her go. ‘They have all the old arts of enticement, that family. So my sister Honoria found out, and her son Gavin, although the Crawfords never bewitched me, among them. Is there anything you would not do, Mistress Philippa, for Francis Crawford?’
Courage, Kate always said. Nine-tenths of every attack is bluff. The art is to know when to call it. She did not shake her arm free. She merely said, ‘The offer is ten thousand pounds, Mr Bailey. Nothing more.’
Kate, Kate … This time it isn’t bluff. She felt his other hand rise and settle, first on her arm, then, sliding up, on the bare skin of her neck … and over … and down. Then the broad padded mass of his doublet closed upon her, hard as a bolster, and his breath steamed on her face as his open