The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [287]
‘No. Yes,’ said Philippa truthfully. Her back ached. Her wet clothes, now the rain had gone off, encased her limbs, moist and warm as papier mâché. She sneezed.
‘Oh, God!’ Lymond said. It had such an unheard-of ring of feeling that she turned immediately, but he had swung himself abruptly from his horse and taking his own reins and hers had instantly resumed talking quite normally. ‘I apologize. It suddenly seemed to me that I have forced you to ride forty miles through filthy weather on an errand of impeccable charity, from which you will probably receive no reward but a fever. It was unchristian to be bad-tempered as well.’
Philippa gazed at him, and then at the inn courtyard towards which he was leading her. ‘You have forced me,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘Oh, well. I don’t mind helping you to feel guilty if you must. On the other hand, I should point out that of all our various encounters, today is the only time you have favoured me with two civil words in sequence. I found it quite worrying.’
But the attempt to find safety in badinage did not bring the intended response. He went ahead of her into the inn to bespeak some refreshment while an ostler helped her dismount, and when at last she joined him, alone by the fire in the rush-strewn inn parlour, he was sitting quite still in a settle, his ringless hands clasped white together between his long, mud-splashed boots, and his burnished head bent brooding over them. She stood still, watching him until she heard the bustle of servants behind, and then, moving forward, said calmly, ‘What can be done for these headaches?’
He rose immediately, and then glanced from her to the door as it opened, and a maid came in, with a tray of hot punch, and cold meat, and a loaf of new bread on a platter. ‘Short of execution,’ Lymond said, ‘I think the problem is insoluble,’ and smiled, and sat when Philippa sat and the maid, her burden deposited, had left them alone. Then, since Philippa continued to study him, he said, ‘I am sorry it seems to be so obvious.’
‘No. It isn’t obvious,’ Philippa said. ‘But it won’t help much with Mr Bailey if you have both a blinding headache and an excess of hot punch.’ She paused and said abruptly, ‘I shouldn’t have come. You were right. You have enough to contend with already.’
‘I think,’ Lymond said, ‘I can probably deal with Master Bailey and Mistress Somerville in one day, without succumbing altogether. If you give me a moment, I can probably even manage some frivolous conversation. And the hot punch is for you, not for me.’
So she disengaged for the moment. But later: ‘Why did you change your mind?’ Philippa said. ‘And come to see Bailey?’
It was a bad question, on an excursion where emotional matters were barred. For without emotion, his answer was chilling. ‘Because, I think, of something you said. One should be able to face anything. I have learned to play chess again. I have learned to listen to music, and to play it. I have learned to buy self-indulgence and enjoy it. I have learned to take a line of logic and follow it through, whatever the consequences. I should be able to withstand the revelation that I am a bastard, and my mother a whore.’
Philippa swallowed, and put her hands under the table. She said firmly, ‘So long as you allow yourself that kind of self-indulgence, you can expect to have headaches. If you can face anything, then face up to the one basic fact in all this. You told Míkál once, in Thessalonika, that you have never loved anyone. That was a lie. You feel for Sybilla quite as much as she has always felt for you.’
He had risen, his face too well trained to betray anything: after a moment’s thought, he walked to the window and stood there. Philippa said, bluntly, to his back, ‘If I were you, it would matter to me very much to prove that she was my mother. So much, that I shouldn’t even attempt to find out the truth, if I thought I might learn she wasn’t. I shouldn’t want to be Gavin’s son, either.’
‘I don’t think,’ said Lymond, ‘you could be.’ He sounded politely amused.
‘I don