The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [112]
“Ruthven’s got you running foul little errands for him now, has he? Like some scullery maid?”
“Oh, don’t be so wearisome. I’d not run errands for John if my life depended upon it. He’s been no husband to me for years.”
“Blegg, then?”
“Blegg, as you so rudely put it. An entirely different proposition. Really rather intoxicating, when one develops a taste for men possessed of real power. Do you think me dreadful?”
She tossed the question out on to the air like a diaphanous handkerchief, without the slightest interest in what he truly thought. He told her anyway.
“Dreadful. Aye, that might be one word for it.”
She smiled once more, wholly unperturbed by his rasping hostility. She tugged at her delicate calfskin gloves, tightening them over her hands.
“It is rather sad, to see a man such as yourself so overmatched. So out of his depth.”
“Might want to wait a wee while yet, before coming to that opinion.”
“How exciting,” she said drily. “You really don’t understand, do you, you poor man? Still you do not grasp who you are dealing with. My husband is quite untouchable, Mr. Quire. Quite untouchable. He counts as a friend everyone whose influence can help to keep him safe. I should know, for I’ve watched every penny we once had to our name flow out through the door in the service of that very aim.”
“Best give me your message, before I run short on patience.”
“Ah. Very well. I’m told that your friend is at my husband’s farm, and if you would be so good as to bring Mathieu Durand there, an exchange of some sort will be transacted.”
“Cold Burn Farm.”
“Indeed. Do you know it?”
Quire could not tell if her placid innocence was feigned or genuine, and did not greatly care. She was no fool, and could not be unaware how crude and cruel was the business she transacted.
“In any case,” Isabel said, “you have until nightfall tomorrow, I understand, to complete the rendezvous. That’s what Durand’s people would call it, I think? I’m told he is probably gravely ill by now, and will likely expire if you delay beyond that, which would be unfortunate for all concerned. I know I would regret it, myself; I always rather liked the man, for all his somewhat feeble, miserable manner. I do hope it won’t come to that.”
Quire regarded her coldly for a moment or two, staring into her bright eyes, wondering at the poison beneath that fair exterior. Slowly, deliberately, he hawked up a gobbet of spittle into his mouth and spat at her feet.
She looked down at the unsightly, muculent smear on the floorboards, then at Quire. She arched her eyebrows, and rose from the bed.
“And what if I made a prisoner out of you?” Quire said. “Would that not put your menfolk at something of a disadvantage?”
She laughed.
“Oh, I’m not nearly so precious to either of them as Mathieu is. My husband would be inconvenienced by my disappearance only until he concocted some explanation for it that satisfied the gossips of the New Town. And as for Mr. Blegg… I am not so foolish as to think it would trouble him overmuch either.”
Quire moved aside from the door and pulled it open. Isabel Ruthven gave him a buoyant nod as she drifted past him and out on to the stair. He slammed the door behind her, hard enough to shake its feeble hinges.
XXVI
Cold Burn Farm II
Merry Andrew’s cart was a rackety old contraption, too shabby and brittle for carrying much in the way of anything. The last time Quire had been aboard it, he had been the cargo, bouncing along over the Water of Leith bridge with Merry Andrew’s grave-robbing tools for company; now, he drove it. It had been a fair few years since he was called upon to steer a horse in harness, but he had done it often enough as a child on his father’s farm, and sometimes when he had been at war, for no army moved much of anywhere without a mighty train of wagons in its wake.
Nor did Quire, this time, ride alongside spade and crowbar and sacks for the bagging of bodies. His one French pistol rested on the seat beside him, rocking gently