Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [150]
‘You had him followed? Did Liddell help?’
‘Liddell disappeared when Sandy did. I don’t know if he likes Angus very much, but that same Archie Douglas is Liddell’s landlord in Forfar. Angus rents out a lot of property there, next to Cortachy. And Angus’s wife is a Boyd, Tom Boyd’s sister. Adorne got some of their land.’
Gelis stopped drinking. Her shoulders against him were moist. A drop of wine from the base of the cup made a glittering bead on the curve of one breast, and began slowly to find its way down. When he stemmed it with two broad, coddling fingertips, she trapped them against her. ‘No. Listen. Wasn’t the first Tom Preston killed at Forfar? At the sheriff court during a quarrel?’
‘Ask Leithie, Thomas the Second. Yes. Thomas One died five years ago. That was when Adorne had gone back to Bruges, and was about to be sent on Burgundian business to Poland.’
‘So the quarrel was over his land?’
‘I couldn’t find out. Someone in Edinburgh knew there was going to be trouble at Forfar and tried to cancel the meeting, but the message didn’t get through. Again, justice courts are notorious for dangerous squabbles, and Preston might have been killed by mischance. No one else died. Like everyone else, Preston had been raising money for trade by handing over recoverable assets to people he could trust to return them eventually. People like his own Craigmillar family, and James Shaw, with bits of the old Colquhoun lands of Sauchie. When Preston died, they got to keep them, of course.’
There was a pause. Gelis said, ‘Jordan de St Pol’s wife was called Shaw.’
‘So are a lot of people. She was dead long before Preston was killed. I don’t think it’s relevant,’ Nicholas said.
‘But you don’t know for sure. Did you know that Bel’s last name is Erskine?’ She had not lifted her eyes to observe him. Her head pillowed against him, she was watching the pulse in his throat. The two joys of living with Gelis: the challenges and the love.
Nicholas said, ‘Yes, I knew.’ He stirred his fingers within hers, so that this time she looked up. He said, ‘Gelis. I know what we agreed. The only safety for you, for me, for Adorne, for all of us is to be open with one another. To lodge a record, in triplicate, of everything that we do. You know all that matters about me, except for one or two secrets that aren’t mine; and nothing about them will ever worry you.’
She held his gaze for a long time, and then smiled. ‘No other children with dimples?’
With Gelis, there were no barriers now when he was conveying a truth. Shaking his head, he let his smiling eyes answer. Then he returned freely to nonsense.
‘How did you guess? Five in the Curia alone, all upstanding young priests.’
It sounded flippant. No one else could know that something caught in his throat as he spoke. Something very small and remote, like a secret.
It was strange, then, that she lay still at his heart, and didn’t smile, or retort, or embark, as only she could, on another complex, ardent, sensual triumph. It was strange and mortally comforting that, instead, she said only, ‘I’m here.’
DESPITE KNOWING WHAT everyone else knew, Tobie also was happy.
His charges were well. The birth of Hob had transformed Hob’s young father. What had been done grimly before was now done with exuberance, including a robust way with his wheelchair which had added astonishing power to the muscles on his active side. With an attendant, he roved Leith and Edinburgh and even, with a contrivance of John’s, got himself on a horse. The attendant was as irresponsible as he was, and not much older; they got into scrapes from which Kathi would herd them both home, trying to sound stern while dissolving in thankfulness.
Clémence assisted, while comfortably dividing her time amongst the infants Hob and Efemie, and the older children. She also regularly helped the Princess Mary, which meant that she could be continually astonished by the progress Jodi was making, while checking