Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [207]
She had moved instantly to the window. There, now, she looked out. Among the politely discoursing spectators, an eddy betrayed Mistress Boyle’s purposeful grey head, making for the château. She would not be permitted to enter; and even if she did, it was too big to search; and Lymond, moreover, had locked the door.
Among the dancers, the Earl of Ormond had found another escort and was smiling again, his polished English smile. Her task for Cormac had had to be abandoned too. But she could handle Cormac. In the last resort he might use his fist, but that was because he had already conceded the case with his brain. Anyhow, she was prepared for this encounter, schooled like an athlete about to take the arena, the muscles of her mind firm and hard. She turned sideways in the faint glow of the window, and lifting her hands, she took the mask from her marked face.
Dim in the shadows by the door, Lymond showed neither alarm nor surprise. Instead he said sardonically, ‘It’s quite a price to pay for being the Petite Pucelle of Ireland, my dear. There are worse things than passing from hand to sweaty hand, much as the prospect appalls you.’
She did not make the woman’s answer: ‘Who told you so … Martine of Dieppe?’ Instead she said, ‘Before you spend yourself loosening my chains, you had better find out what they are. I never did anything yet out of fear … even fear of common harlotry, Francis Crawford. The O’LiamRoe, you must remember, is a sentimental man. If he told you I am tied to Cormac’s side by any fear of the future, he was wrong.’
‘Was he? What was Cormac like as a young nobleman, Oonagh, ablaze for Géraldine Ireland? The splendour there must have been.’
‘The young man is there in him yet,’ she said, and went on quickly. ‘What would you have him? A spectator, or a spy?’
‘A man,’ said the pleasant voice, undisturbed, ‘who does not need a woman to lead him.’
Two of her fingers were at the bruise on her cheek; she did not know how they got there. Dropping them, she said with soft bitterness, ‘Do you think I want power?’
‘I think you have staked your life on Cormac O’Connor,’ said Lymond. ‘And have kept his young love and his young crusade green under the ice while the reality has rotted. He is not ambitious for Ireland, he is ambitious for Cormac O’Connor. He may still love your body, but he keeps you for your brain.’
Her throat closed; but through the anger rising like thunder through her head she managed to speak. ‘And what would you keep me for? The graveyards and prisons of Europe are full enough of half-made souls created by Francis Crawford and loneliness and God.’
When he spoke, his voice was dry. ‘I was not proposing, my dear, to support you for life, or even to seduce you in lieu of a fee. I am offering you a chance to define and revise your ideals. It is impossible that they should quire with mine?’
‘ ’Tis a lavish offer, if a trifle obscure,’ said Oonagh O’Dwyer. ‘If in my burning patriotism, I betray someone else’s scheming, you will refrain from the cruder gestures of appreciation. You return triumphant to Scotland, the golden stripling; Cormac languishes no doubt in a French prison for attempting the life of an Irish rival and I, with my eyes averted from this unworthy Messiah, am cast into a dull but healthier void.’
‘It is still an improvement,’ said Lymond, ‘on the Tour des Minimes. What aspect of Cormac’s homely charm made that experiment worth while? Lord d’Aubigny had found out,