Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [137]
“Yes.”
“Then will you pay my fee?”
“I’ll pay you … I’ll pay you anything,” she said, “if you’ll come away with me tonight.”
“Tonight?” asked Lymond, and thoughtfully lifted the hair from her neck. “What will you pay me?”
She kissed his roving hands. “I’ll find a man—someone to swear your dispatch was a forgery.”
“What man?”
“Anyone. A prisoner, perhaps. Or a condemned man. I could get him to do it for the price of his life, couldn’t I? I promise. I’ll make it convincing. Will you come? Oh! my love, will you come?”
Scott had the second’s warning Margaret lacked; saw the face above the felicitous hands; glimpsed the relentless eyes. Margaret Lennox said, “Oh! my love, will you come?” and Lymond slipped from her like a fish, leaving her kneeling, empty-handed, addressing half-mouthed endearments to an empty settle.
“Shall I come? God; no, darling. I like my sluts honest.”
There was a single sound, dragged on the intaken breath; then the woman sank on her heels and Scott saw the blood on her lip where her teeth had snapped shut on it. “Well?” said Lymond, grinning, from across the room, and she flung to her feet, spitting Tudor venom and Tudor fluency into the fair, insolent face.
“Conceited peasant! Gross, degenerate weakling, reeking of ditch philosophy and decay—Do you imagine I’d let you touch me if there was an alternative? I offered you freedom and security—”
“You put me in purgatory, and you are offering me hell,” exclaimed Lymond. “Poor Thomas Howard. Did you offer him life and liberty too?”
“Have you the effrontery to reproach me with lovers? What of your own?”
“Mine all have whole necks and go to bed with me for joy, not for lions on their quarterings and galloon on their underwear.”
“I would have you roasted alive.”
“You would repent it. Who else can give you this brand of excitement? Not our marrowless Matthew, anyway.”
“He doesn’t suffer from—from satyriasis, if that’s what you mean.”
“I can’t help that,” said Lymond brutally. “Take your petty claws out of the prey, my sweet. I want your infant, not you.”
There was silence. Tiger being revealed to tiger, the roaring died and was replaced by a brooding watchfulness. Then Margaret Douglas said, “You will never get my son.”
“I shall, you know.” Lymond was the image of despotic calm. “Unless you get the proofs I ask for. I admire ingenuity, but not quite so much of it. My capture by the French was no accident. King Henry’s decision to make a scapegoat of me was no accident.”
“Very well,” said Margaret. “It was no accident. And because of it, your beggarly deceits were made public property. What can I do about it? What false proofs and pseudo-confessions would convince when the world knows them to be extorted by threat? No, my dear Francis, you’ve closed that door yourself. Your life as a man ended five years ago: your life as a cur depends on how long you please your numerous masters—”
“Or mistresses.”
There were tears of rage in the black eyes. “Can I never forget?”
“No. Why should you? I think of it often, with a certain aged melancholy. Chargé d’ans et pleurant son antique prouesse … Must I send for the boy?”
Margaret Lennox stirred. Walking away from the fire, she lifted her cloak and threw it over her arm with a certain detached grace. “Your antique prouesse was a little better than this. Preserve me from naïveté.”
His eyes were guarded but his voice was blithe. “It’s the simple life. An atavistic return to primitive barter. An instinct to buy things and people with shells, like the French.”
She smiled. “I have no intention of giving you what you want. My son is quite safe.”
Lymond’s expression conveyed qualified warmth. “You want to stay here and mend my shirts. But as I’ve already said, the positions are all filled.”
“On the contrary. You will send me away yourself. Because,” said Lady Lennox, “we have your brother’s wife.”
For a long time, no one spoke. The silence stretched on until Scott’s whole listening body tingled with it; then at