Dragonfly in Amber 2(353)

I felt unclean simply from being near him, and rose to get away. The shards of the alabaster tobacco jar lay on the floor, and I kicked one inadvertently, so that it pinged off the wall, ricocheting and spinning off under the love seat, reminding me of the recent Danton.

I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to discuss the subject of my aborted murder with him, but it seemed at the moment preferable to some alternatives.

“What did you want to kill me for?” I asked abruptly, turning to face him. I glanced quickly over the collection of objects on a piecrust table, looking for a suitable weapon of defense, just in case he still felt the urge.

He didn’t seem to. Instead, he bent laboriously over and picked up the teapot—miraculously unbroken—and set it upright on the restored tea table.

“It seemed expedient at the time,” he said calmly. “I had learned that you and your husband were attempting to thwart a particular affair in which I had interested myself. I considered removing your husband instead, but it seemed too dangerous, what with his close relation to two of the greatest families in Scotland.”

“Considered removing him?” A light dawned—one of many that were going off in my skull like fireworks. “Was it you who sent the seamen who attacked Jamie in Paris?”

The Duke nodded in offhand manner.

“That seemed the simplest method, if a bit crude. But then, Dougal Mac-Kenzie turned up in Paris, and I wondered whether in fact your husband was in fact working for the Stuarts. I became unsure where his interests lay.”

What I was wondering was just where the Duke’s interests lay. This odd speech made it sound very much as though he was a secret Jacobite—and if so, he’d done a really masterly job of keeping his secrets.

“And then,” he went on, delicately placing the teapot’s lid back in place, “there was your growing friendship with Louis of France. Even had your husband failed with the bankers, Louis could have supplied Charles Stuart with what he needed—provided you kept your pretty nose out of the affair.”

He frowned closely at the scone he was holding, flicked a couple of threads off it, then decided against eating it and tossed it onto the table.

“Once it became clear what was really happening, I tried to lure your husband back to Scotland, with the offer of a pardon; very expensive, that was,” he said reflectively. “And all for nothing, too!

“But then I recalled your husband’s apparent devotion to you—quite touching,” he said, with a benevolent smile that I particularly disliked. “I supposed that your tragic demise might well distract him from the endeavor in which he was engaged without provoking the sort of interest his own murder would have involved.”

Suddenly thinking of something, I turned to look at the harpsichord in the corner of the room. Several sheets of music adorned its rack, written in a fine, clear hand. Fifty thousand pounds, upon the occasion of Your Highness’s setting foot in Scotland. Signed S. “S,” of course, for Sandringham. The Duke laughed, in apparent delight.

“That was really very clever of you, my dear. It must have been you; I’d heard of your husband’s unfortunate inability with music.”

“Actually, it wasn’t,” I replied, turning back from the piano. The table at my side lacked anything useful in the way of letter openers or blunt objects, but I hastily picked up a vase, and buried my face in the mass of hothouse flowers it held. I closed my eyes, feeling the brush of cool petals against my suddenly heated cheeks. I didn’t dare to look up, for fear my telltale face would give me away.

For behind the Duke’s shoulder, I had seen a round, leathery object, shaped like a pumpkin, framed by the green velvet draperies like one of the Duke’s exotic art objects. I opened my eyes, peering cautiously through the petals, and the wide, snaggle-toothed mouth split in a grin like a jack-o’-lantern’s.

I was torn between terror and relief. I had been right, then, about the beggar near the gate. It was Hugh Munro, an old companion from Jamie’s days as a Highland outlaw. A one-time schoolmaster, he had been captured by the Turks at sea, disfigured by torture, and driven to beggary and poaching—professions he augmented by successful spying. I had heard he was an agent of the Highland army, but hadn’t realized his activities had brought him so far south.

How long had he been there, perched like a bird on the ivy outside the second-story window? I didn’t dare try to communicate with him; it was all I could do to keep my eyes fixed on a point just above the Duke’s shoulder, gazing with apparent indifference into space.

The Duke was regarding me with interest. “Really? Not Gerstmann, surely? I shouldn’t have thought he had a sufficiently devious mind.”