The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [246]
‘You see that. Now then,’ Philippa said, in an apparent non-sequitur which was the very essence of cunning: ‘will you play for me? Properly?’
He didn’t answer at once, but at least he didn’t dissemble. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said. ‘But although it might be proper, it wouldn’t be in the least different. Perhaps it’s the Russian climate.’
She had thought of something else. ‘The prophecy may be true then, may it not?’ Philippa said. ‘That your father’s two sons would never meet in this life again? Since it seems——’
‘Since it seems that Richard is not my brother. Even by opening my letters,’ Lymond said, ‘I don’t see how you knew about that.’
‘About the Dame de Doubtance? You’ve forgotten. I was in Lyons on the day that you saw her,’ Philippa said. ‘So was Güzel. Do you like Russia better than Scotland?’
Sitting deep in the chair, Lymond had a faint smile in his eyes. ‘I am not being kept in Russia by evil enchantments. If that is what you mean to imply.’
‘I meant to imply that Güzel helped us all to escape from Turkey. And that perhaps there was a price to be paid for it?’
‘If it helps to think so, I have no objection,’ said Lymond. ‘In fact, there is an infinite range of reasons, among which that plays only a fractional part. All I want is in Russia. I have been taught to face reality: an excellent thing.’
‘Music, the Medicine of the Soul. And chess,’ Philippa said.
Lymond’s gaze, faintly hostile, was level. ‘And chess,’ he agreed.
‘But you can’t face the facts in my letter?’ She was sitting, rigid, on the windowsill, neat from her caul to her velvet slippers, and her hands folded like a child’s in her lap. The brown eyes were stubbornly challenging.
Lymond rose, with charm quite as lethal. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘The chasse à cor et à cri is quite finished. I am going back to the others. Or your chivalrous Marquis will worry.’
‘Why?’ Philippa said. ‘Because Sybilla deceived you? Or would you feel differently if it were your father she had deceived?’
Half-way to the door, he turned quite deliberately and faced her. ‘No, Philippa,’ he said. ‘Listen to me, for I shan’t say this again. It is the end of the matter. Why you began it, I can’t conceive. It has done nothing but harm, and to pursue it will only cause more. Finally, it is really no possible business of yours. You kept these reports out of the wrong hands. That I do appreciate. And if you will drive it now from your mind, we shall manage very well together in the short interval of marriage which I trust, remains to us.’ And he smiled, turning already.
Philippa said, ‘And if that isn’t being damned magisterial, I don’t know what is. It’s my business because I love your family and you love your own, stately, self-perpetuated miseries. I have found a great-uncle of yours called Leonard Bailey in Buckinghamshire, at a manor called Gardington. He says Gavin Crawford is not your father, and he has papers to prove it. If you go there, he will show them to you. Or so he says. If you will take my advice, you will go. If you don’t, it’s because, for all Russia has done for you, you haven’t the backbone.’
There was a catastrophic silence. Then Lymond, speaking very softly, said, ‘Don’t be childish. What else have you done?’
‘Faced up to reality,’ Philippa said. She had got off her windowsill and was standing facing him, her hands at her sides. ‘I knew you would be angry. I do this for my own private entertainment.’
‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ Lymond said. ‘You’re performing a play, in a schoolroom, for an excited audience of one. I said what else have you done?’
Below the long, taffeta bodice, Philippa’s interior had begun to ravel with cramp pains. She said hardily, ‘Nothing, so far. I didn’t know another permutation in breeding was possible.’
There was another brief pause. Then Lymond said pleasantly, ‘I would strike a man who was stupid enough to say that to me. Were you followed to Gardington?’ His face, carrying little colour at any time, had the sallow bleakness which a sharp change