Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [22]
‘Perhaps she is,’ said the Governor’s wife, and saw, with some disappointment, that her footmen had arrived to take the young lady home to her lodging.
‘Catherine, or someone else suitable.’
*
Lymond was still up when Adam returned, very late, from his evening’s freedom. He saw the light under the door, and, after flinging his cloak on the bed beside Danny, returned to the master suite to tap for admission.
From the curtness of the reply, he guessed Lymond was working; and on entering, the first thing he saw was a candle-lit table loaded with papers, with more in boxes stacked on the floor. The campaign had been relegated, he observed, to a side desk, whose neat piles of maps and plans and papers and folders bore witness to the rest of the evening’s work. Half undressed under a sleeveless over-robe, Lymond was standing over one of the heavy boxes, sealing it. He said, ‘How was Jerott?’
‘Unhappy,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve just paid two tavern servants to come with me and see him home safely.’
Lymond blew out the taper and, lifting a ring, pressed the cartouche into the soft wax and held it there. ‘Thirst, the devil of the desert. He didn’t invite you into his house?’
‘He was unconscious,’ said Adam shortly. ‘No. He chose to take me in the first place to an inn. We had supper and wine there.’
Lymond slid the ring on to his fourth finger and lifting the box by its handles, placed it with the rest on the floor. Then he straightened, and walked to a cupboard. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I am going to have a cup of Charnico. What will you have?’
Adam shuddered. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I am still going to have a cup of Charnico,’ Lymond said. He showed no fatigue. The demands of his profession seldom seemed to weigh on him, Adam knew from the past. Even after that long address to the burghers he had been perfectly fresh; and since Douai, noticeably, he had deferred not at all to the weaker flesh of his captains.
Now he poured his wine and sat down in the chair next to Adam’s, the silver goblet held poised on his fingertips. He said, ‘Aut nulla Ebrietas, aut tanta sit ut sibi curat. Under stress, Jerott always took refuge in drink.’
Adam said quietly, ‘Not only Jerott. But this is a habit of very long standing.’
There was a little silence. Then Lymond said, ‘Is it affecting his commerce?’
‘No,’ said Adam. ‘The company is flourishing: he has a good business head and is well thought of. His wife deals in antiques. They trade from the house Marthe was brought up in. The old couple died.’
Lymond savoured his wine. The pounced gem-cut seal on his ring flashed as he let the cup rest on his chair-arm. It was incised, Adam saw, not with his coat of arms, but with Russian characters. Lymond said, ‘Marthe is a bastard. The couple who lived in that house were a usurer-dealer called Gaultier, who called himself uncle. And his patron, an elderly woman who dabbled in mysticism. When they died, the house and fortune were both left to me.’
Adam was silent. Jerott had told him that, ramblingly loquacious before the weeping had started. The Dame de Doubtance, the old woman who had made mad prophecies for Francis Crawford, and dying had left him everything, no one knew why. Unless it was because Marthe, brought up nameless and parentless, was sufficiently like him to be his twin sister.
Lymond said, ‘Naturally, I offered both to Jerott’s wife, since the Dame de Doubtance had virtually reared her. But though as you may have observed we are as twoo buddes of the same tre, we do not always see eye to eye with one another. She refused.’
‘But accepted the house?’ Adam said.
‘Jointly with Jerott,’ said Lymond. ‘The Dame de Doubtance’s own rooms she kept intact for me. If the marriage founders, one or other will have to give up his tenancy.’
Naturally, he had guessed. He knew Jerott. And presumably, in the four years since he had discovered her existence, he had come to know Marthe