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By Root 2463 0

insistent that I should not go, that I fell into the trap. So Jerott, Adam, Richard and I arrived at Dumbarton to take counsel with Thompson. Joleta was already there, and able to insert herself into my room before I got there myself. How did she know I should be there? Richard left after she did. But it was Gabriel who relayed to me the message that Thompson was waiting. Gabriel could have told her, well in advance. Gabriel could also have paid the Turnbulls to make their cattle foray at precisely the right time, so that Bell’s arrival at Dumbarton with the news interrupted the happy union between myself and Joleta. That was, in fact, precisely what happened. But for Adam, who hid her for me, the whole sordid business would have been exposed there and then, and to Jerott, Gabriel’s adoring disciple: poor bloody Jerott, torn in two.… He was to be Gabriel’s Baptist and oust me before he came, did you realize that? Luckily Jerott is an intelligent man as well as an honest one, and it didn’t happen. One of the things I have promised myself is to get Jerott out of this safely.’

Lymond paused. Often before, at St Mary’s, Adam had seen this kind of marathon. Properly projected, Lymond’s voice did not tire, and his concentration was sustained with no obvious effort. Even now, when what he was saying was both disagreeable and emotional in content, and so momentous for his own future, he talked as if giving them yet another of his precise, coldly documented briefings. Adam wondered where in the Culter family had gone all Sybilla’s vast store of warmth. Wit was there—yes, when it suited him; as the whipping-post was there also. If the tale about Joleta were true—and Adam, more than anyone there, had cause to believe it might be true—he pitied, if he pitied either of them, the promiscuous bitch which was Joleta.

The door clicked. Such had been the pressure that no one there had noticed Margaret Erskine rise and go out. Now she came back, and behind her the Moor Salablanca bore into the room a tray of pewter cups and a flagon. Silently he distributed them, and in the little release from tension they scraped back their chairs and stretched, and uttered commonplaces among themselves.

At the head of the table Lymond did not move, staring down at his hands; nor did he lift the cup when it was put at his side. Margaret, pausing at his chair, said crisply, ‘Yours is water.’

Then he turned round, and the blue eyes, alarmingly, blazed into laughter. ‘My dear, my dear. You are the queen of women,’ he said. ‘For this, you are right, I need to be either entirely sober or very drunk indeed.’

On his left, Sybilla had heard. ‘I think, on the whole,’ said the Dowager, looking levelly at her son, ‘I should prefer that you kept sober and we got exceedingly drunk.’ And that, Adam on his other side noticed, effectively silenced Francis Crawford.

After that, there were no more interludes. Thompson, brisk after his third cup, began it again, jocularly, by remarking, ‘And so ye bedded the lassie at Dumbarton and left me on my lainsome, ye rat. But why, now, if ye jaloused a trap? There was a loon on the watch in the courtyard that night who was gey interested in your window. Did ye not see him?’

‘The Master of the Revels. Yes, I saw him,’ said Lymond. ‘Look, the moment that girl walked into the inn, never mind my room, I lost the chance of preserving my laughable reputation. The damage was done. I didn’t see why she shouldn’t pay for it. And there was always the chance, an unlikely one, I admit, that I might have converted her.’

‘And did you?’ It was Lord Culter, bitterly disingenuous.

For a second, the line of anger between Lymond’s fair brows showed; then his face smoothed, controlled again. ‘Obviously not,’ he said. ‘From her performance when you walked in and afterwards. You didn’t spread the rumours about my conduct that night, Richard; nor did I. And Gabriel was in no position to appear to know what had happened—not yet. It must have been done, in some artless-clumsy way, by Joleta herself.’

‘It was,’ said Lady Jenny brightly. ‘For a clever