The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [284]
He said, ‘I hadn’t thought of it as a social occasion.’ Then after a moment he said, ‘I can hardly glare at you, when you have taken all this trouble to follow me. You think I shall need a witness?’
‘With Bailey,’ said Philippa grimly, ‘you need a full suit of armour. He was born, like Genghis Khan, in a Rat Year. I think this is one occasion when you will have to forget your finer feelings and let the populace in. I shall try, I promise you, not to humiliate you.’
‘You could hardly do that,’ Lymond said, and his horse, shaking its head in the rain, moved restively under him. ‘You know more about my sordid parentage than I do. Leonard Bailey being what he is, do you think it likely that I would allow a royal lady-in-waiting to go with me?’
She raised her eyebrows. Thinned and glossy and perfect, they arched over her dense brown eyes, invisibly cultivated: the rain had brought fresh colour naturally to her young skin. She said, ‘Well, how nice. I seem to have the moral ascendancy this time. Dear Mr Crawford, I have been there already. Alone. And on your behalf. It is for you to repay the obligation. Trencher chippings, please, for the dutiful sow.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ said Lymond, and gave a gasp of laughter, and then stopped, looking down at his gloves. After a moment, he said dryly, ‘So, having disposed of my finer feelings and my obligations, there seems to be only one objection you haven’t thought of. With an annulment pending, it would be quite ludicrous for you and for me to spend a day and a night unescorted.’
‘Oh,’ said Philippa.
‘Checkmate,’ Lymond said. She could feel his eyes on her, filled no doubt with ungenerous triumph. ‘Stalemate. Goodbye, Philippa. Allaha ismarladik! And let my Lord, when he divorces me, give me in your place wives better than you: submissive, faithful, obedient, penitent, adorers, fasters, widows and virgins.…’
‘Speaking of virgins,’ Philippa said.
His horse moved again. ‘No,’ said Lymond.
‘Speaking of virgins, there can be fewer acts more directly prejudicial to a divorce on the grounds of non-consummation than sharing a double bed in the Sultan of Turkey’s seraglio. If you remember,’ Philippa said.
And stared at him owlishly for that, she well knew, was a tricky matter. Not because of what happened between them, which had been precisely nothing. But of what Mr Crawford had experienced that night, the night the child Khaireddin had been killed.
But he had forgotten, for after a moment’s thought he said only, ‘So you are intending to rely on medical evidence to dissolve the holy union between us. Ubi tres medici, duo athei?’
‘And vituperato sia chi mal pensa,’ said Philippa blandly. ‘Could we, do you suppose, begin riding on? It is really rather wet.’
But he did not move his horse. ‘I have one move left to play,’ Lymond said. ‘Do you want me to see this man Bailey?’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa warily.
‘Then I will see him,’ said Lymond sweetly. ‘But only if you go back to London.’
She had thought of that, too. She kept her brown eyes fixed open upon him, and allowed her mind, lushly, to fill with the injustice of it all. Her nose grew pink. ‘Then,’ said Philippa simply, ‘I shall cry.’ And, to order, her eyes filled and spilled over with the first of two surfing tears.
With Austin, it had always been most effective. Mr Crawford, on the other hand, neither offered his kerchief nor words of chastened apology. Instead he drew his horse sharply from her and, without a word, wheeled and rode forcefully off.
After a moment’s sinking comprehension, Philippa gathered her own reins likewise and stubbornly set off at top speed behind him.
There followed a long and unpleasant hour’s riding. The rain continued to fall in heavy, irregular showers. Mud flew against Philippa like snow, from the hooves of her own mare, and the riders and carts splashing by. She was never close enough to catch the mud from Mr Crawford’s big horse. He had very