Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [242]
The white teeth flashed again. “I hope you won’t. My people tell me, when I come home, of the little commissions they are offered. I seldom interfere. If it were not that I am at the mercy of the shrewdest of your relatives …”
Richard straightened suddenly. “My brother?”
The other was already wheeling his pony to the Edinburgh road; he laughed as he went and shook his head. “No, no. Not at all. Devil take it, not at all.” The pony’s hoofs, gently pattering, dropped into rhythm and faded, leaving the echo of wry laughter on the air.
Richard slowly gathered Bryony’s reins and put his left hand on her neck. A half-smile lifted his mouth, so that for a moment he looked astonishingly like the Master.
“Mother! What now?” he said, and lifting himself into the saddle put the mare, fast, along the Midculter road.
* * *
Patrick opened the gates to Lord Culter long past midnight, with incoherent words of welcome. He sent his chamberlain back to bed without rousing the household, and taking a candle, went alone up the main staircase and along the dimly lit corridor to his wife’s room.
There he hesitated. He had removed all traces of his adventure: he had no idea of posing as a brave but battered warrior. Was it equally unfair to take her unaware like this? He wished he had kept Patrick. He could have roused Mariotta’s maid; have sent her in to ask if she would receive him.… And if she refused? What a scene for the women, that.
He pulled himself together. If she didn’t want him she should say so, directly, to him. He hesitated only a moment longer, and then put out his hand and knocked.
Through a welter of necromantic, smoke-ridden dreams Mariotta became aware of the light tap. When after a moment it was repeated, she sat up, fencing with the supernatural, and called, “Yes? Who is it?” The answer took her by the throat.
Silence had fallen again. Her breathing had become erratic. Unable to talk with this chaos in her lungs she was quiet, trying to control the disorder.
“Mariotta?” He was speaking again, very low. “May I come in?”
It didn’t occur to her to refuse. She pulled a bedgown over her ruffled linen, gave a despairing thought to her hair, and called to him levelly. “Come in if you wish.”
She was paralysed by the change in him; because she had expected time to have stood still for him, as it had done for her. He was brown-skinned and light-haired with the sun, the corner of his eyes seamed with white. He was thinner and harder, and his quietness had a quality of power and repose in it which was new to him.
Coming no nearer than the foot of the bed he said, “I wakened you. I’m sorry. I couldn’t leave until sunset, and I thought it might be better to speak now, in private.”
Mariotta’s eyes were unchanging violet in the glimmer of the candle. “What is there to say?”
You may know the devil by the inverted image in his eyes. The candle flame in her husband’s showed her, sanely, herself twice over. He dropped abruptly on the low chest below her bed and taking the fringe of her coverlet in his fingers, twisted and plied it with his eyes on his hands.
He said, “I was brought up to distrust talkers. A foolish thing which recoiled, naturally, on my own head. I was taught to judge people by their actions, and I do—and it works—except sometimes, when it matters most. I probably haven’t learned much, but I’ve learned that people don’t always say what they mean, for good reasons as well as bad.”
“People don’t always say what they mean for no reason at all,” said Mariotta lightly. “Especially feminine people.” She saw he was troubled by this vein and watched him, her chin cushioned on her updrawn knees. She went on in the same deceptive voice. “But you accused me of being Lymond’s lover before I claimed I was.”
The trouble in his eyes deepened as she brought out, irresponsibly, the difficult thing he had to discuss. He rolled the tortured fringe in his hands and she went on, before he could speak. “You’re trying to