The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [220]
He was an enviable prize; and he knew it. She was only the latest in a long, long line of men and women who had come to him, smiling, with offers. ‘Your grace is too kind,’ Lymond said. ‘But I fear my time and my conscience have already been purchased.’
And at last, she had received an answer she could not gracefully turn. For a long moment she stared at Mr Crawford of Lymond, Count of Sevigny; and then, turning the light eyes to her Chamberlain, she gave the nod which signified instant dismissal. To Lymond, ‘Then, you may leave, sir,’ she said, and did not again offer her hand. And as he bowed, smiling, and turned to go, there was more than one man among those about her who would willingly have spun him round and disfigured that worldly, impervious face.
The Muscovite Ambassador stayed a month longer in Scotland, and, held by a certain doomed fascination, the three officers of St Mary’s stayed with him, acting as his equerries; forming, in the rare leisure moments of John Buckland and Robert Best, a strange brotherhood which had grown without warning: the closeness of a group of men who have lived and faced danger together, and suffered a loss.
Danny Hislop had always intended to stay. Now Ludovic d’Harcourt as well deferred and then dismissed his plans to travel to London and make anew career for himself either there or in France, and Adam, for reasons so fragile he would have admitted them to nobody, had tacitly decided the same. While Nepeja was in England, they would stay with him. ‘Otherwise, poor Osep,’ said Danny Hislop, ‘as the likeness of the Ass bearing books, poor Osep will finish in Bedlam. What will you do, Ludo, if he gets another eagle? They have them in Scotland.’
But since the journey to Pitsligo from St Nicholas, Ludovic d’Harcourt was no longer so easy to bait on the subject of Lymond. And the process of self-questioning, observed by Danny’s bright, ironic gaze, had begun even sooner than that, on the night Lymond had shot Slata Baba. Now, staring critically at d’Harcourt without waiting for him to answer, Danny said, ‘You just admire him because he can swim better than you can. You realize you are joining the choir?’
Ludovic flushed and Adam said, ‘Danny, be quiet.’
‘Don’t interfere with my subject,’ Danny Hislop said smartly. ‘I’m not in St Mary’s because I like it. I am embarked spellbound on a study of devil-worship. Tell me, what is going to happen when the sweet Philippa comes inside his range?’
‘Nothing,’ said Robert Best shortly. ‘She is at the English court with Queen Mary. I was told all about her before I came up.’
‘And?’ said Danny encouragingly.
‘And nothing. She has work that she likes, and a mind of her own, and a group of excellent friends, with one or two who want to be more. She isn’t troubled about the divorce. But the moment it comes, she will marry.’
‘And then he will be … available,’ said Ludovic d’Harcourt thoughtfully.
‘For Güzel?’ Danny said. ‘No, how silly. Availability has been nothing if not the keynote these two years or more. For somebody’s wealthy widow? She need not trust her delicate health to the long journey to Russia. Someone should suggest it to the Voevoda. A mistress in Moscow, and a bonny wee wife with a mutch and a full belly in England. Which reminds me——’
‘The new ladies have arrived,’ said Adam grimly. ‘Guaranteed of clean stock, and inured to Russian practices. Osep has announced himself suited.’
‘For the time being,’ said Danny, open-eyed. ‘That’s ten since Pitsligo. Do you think it is a subversive attempt at colonization, or the long Russian nights that ought to be setting in about now in Vologda?’
‘We shall have to wait till the spring,’ Adam said, ‘to find out.’
Lymond was in Pitsligo. In spite of his efforts there, or perhaps because of them, little was found of the thousand pounds’ worth of goods reckoned to be taken from the wreck of the Edward, although he and the Commissioners made exhaustive inquiries, and January was spent in laborious sittings, attended by Nepeja in Edinburgh, during which innumerable witnesses travelled