Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [216]
Someone was saying vehemently, “That’s a lie!”
Lymond seemed undisturbed. “Don’t be simple. Didn’t you know that Margaret spent her sojourn in Scotland with me?”
The woman raised her brows. “Haven’t we had enough of this? When I was captured, I was taken to Lanark. Matthew knows that. The offer of exchange came from Lanark, not from you.”
Lymond replied gently. “I naturally covered my mediator by giving him good credentials, but he did not, I’m afraid, come from Lanark. How deceitful of you not to have told your spouse. I wrote my offer of exchange, I remember, on the back of a letter from Lord Lennox to his wife which in itself was a thing of joy. I recall, for example …”
Lord Lennox shot a pale glance at his wife. “There is no need to go on with this nonsense.”
“… I recall, for example, a good many things, but don’t excite yourselves. I shan’t embarrass the dynasty. Didn’t you know she was using the war as a fulcrum for her fishing line with myself as the prey? I was to be driven into the nets since, unlike the beaver, my self-defence stops short of unserviceable gestures. Do you find that objectionable? Pitiful? Even a little ludicrous, perhaps? A self-interest so insanely exclusive that it includes even murder?”
Now Margaret as well was on her feet, her eyes burning. Lennox was pale; around the table the others looked angry and uncomfortable, as if mesmerized into allowing the intolerable scene to go on.
The man Acheson stirred again.
“Murder?” repeated Lord Grey. “Oh: the Stewart girl? She was killed riding.”
“She was killed riding, by an arrow. She was threatened, pursued, her young guide killed, and done to death herself as surely as if the arrow had been directed at her.
“If your eyes burned from their sockets now you would be lost and terrified and appalled as she was—and you are men. You’re not in enemy country, in the hands of a cruel and bitter woman; or galloping blind on a frightened horse over unknown fields with a dead body behind you and a pack of the hounds who killed him baying at your heels. That isn’t only murder: it’s murder of a very special and damning kind, and there is a name for those who engage in it …”
The admirable voice was stripped, as was Lymond’s whole bearing, of his normal pleasant negligence. He went on.
“I have no very gratifying memories of Crawfordmuir. I offered myself for sale, as I remember, in exchange for the truth. Your wife was eager to buy, Lord Lennox; but she also deals in adulterated coinage. She told me something was unprovable which I knew could be proved, and she told me a man had been killed whom I knew to be alive—so I withdrew my offer. But to save Christian Stewart from these attentions, believe me, I should have honoured it at any cost.”
There was a grandeur in Margaret Douglas’s fury. “Stop your foul tongue! You paltry, conceited liar!”
“Did Christian Stewart die? How did she die?”
Lady Lennox stepped before him, shaken with rage. “She died of a fall from her horse. It was no fault of mine. She’s better off than she ever was as a mistress of yours! Only you won’t blacken my name from revenge in front of these people!”
The answer was implacably hard. “Look at your husband’s face. Look at Lord Grey. Blacken your name! Are you known, do you imagine, as Zenobia?”
She whirled on Grey. “Take him away! Can’t you stop this?”
“And al was conscience and tendre herte,” said the clear, forbidding voice. Grey cleared his throat. Wharton’s eyes were fixed on the roof corbels and their coats of arms; his son, standing sulkily by Grey, was biting his lip. The Earl of Lennox looked hard at his wife, his eyes glancing white like pale, sea-washed pebbles. Lymond addressed him, not looking anywhere near Acheson; not allowing anyone’s attention to stray to the white marble and the uneasily stirring body.
“Oh, you haven’t been cheated.