Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [147]
Molly shrugged. “Nothing much to tell. Hunter spent nearly a week with us, for no very good reason, and seemed to have a lot of questions to ask on some curious subjects. Joan saw Scott speaking to him the night he came for me.”
“Did she hear?”
Molly smiled. The Ostrich’s entrails were drumskins and sounding boards, as they both knew. She gave him a verbatim account of the talk between Scott and Hunter, and he listened without comment. At the end she said, “Take care. Hunter is a lot wiser than the child. It could mean trouble.”
The fair face did not change. “It means trouble, of course: what else? Without trouble, how could we live? There the thorne is thikkest to buylden and brede.”
“Yes; well … Watch that the thorns don’t get too thick.… This is damned awkward for you, isn’t it?” she asked, suddenly. “The brat’s dead, and there’s an inheritance in the wind, and the girl talks of nothing but Crawford of Lymond.”
There was a brief silence, then he said, “Does she? I hope you preserved the myth: I shall enjoy being worshipped. In any case, it was good of you to come, my orchard of jewels. Can you stay for a little yet?”
“For you, I will,” said Molly comfortably. “I never bring you trouble, do I?”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “No. And by God, I think you’re the only living person who doesn’t. Come along, my hinny, and I’ll take you below to a worthy supper.”
He held open the door and Molly, her eyes as bright as her diamonds, sailed downstairs like a whole cloudy sunset stooping to the sea.
* * *
Mariotta had heard his voice. But it was nearly a week before, sitting wrapped in a chair by the window, she heard his footsteps cross the inner room and knew that at last he was coming to seek her.
For some days now, the pain had gone; and the feverish dreams. Coming out of the racking darkness she had no idea at first where she was; then the fat, soft-voiced woman with the jewels had told her, and her empty body and numbed mind became inhabited with only one idea: to bathe her hurt pride and rejected love in the warm tides of Lymond’s admiration.
The child was dead. It had never been anything to her but the final proof of Richard’s marital philosophy, and she found a bitter pleasure in thinking that in this, at least, she had thwarted him. When she needed help, it was Lymond who had come, and not Richard. Lymond …
And on the thought, he knocked, and opened her door. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.
He was meticulously dressed: not at all as she had first seen him; his hair crisp and neat, his linen immaculate. But the half-hidden eyes and flying mouth were the same.
“I am generally tidy when sober,” he said, answering her eyes instead of her voice. He walked over and leaned on the wall beside her. “I’m not a very good doctor, I’m afraid. I’m sorry about the child. But I hear you are better.”
She was perplexed, then her brow cleared. “But didn’t you know I had left Richard?”
For an instant his surprise showed. “Left Richard? Why?”
“We quarrelled,” she said. “He’s obsessed with the idea of hunting … of … “Her fumbling fingers touched the brooch of her night robe, and she ended incoherently. “And I told him about the jewels. They took them at Annan. I’m sorry. This is all I have left.”
Lymond’s eyes were on the diamonds. He said slowly, “I see. When you were captured, were you trying to find me?”
“Not quite—but—but I thought Dandy Hunter might look after me until you—if you found out where I was, or sent me any more—” She stopped, exhausted by the difficulty of gracefully shaping a surprisingly awkward situation. Then she added more firmly, “I don’t at all want any more jewels. You must understand that. I would have made you take them all back in any case. But I thought—” Again she stopped.
“What did you think?”
“That you are so much cleverer than Richard, and I could talk to you. I used to talk to Dandy,” she went on, her eyes overbright, “but he wasn’t at Ballaggan, and I was wondering what to do when the English came, and then your men came for me, and the pain came on—I’m sorry,