* * *
The wetness of the spilled tea soaking through my skirt brought me to my senses, but he had already stepped inside. He looked me up and down with his usual air of disdainful appraisal, then glanced at the closed bedroom door.
“You are alone?”
“Yes!”
The hazel glance flickered back and forth between me and the door, assessing my truthfulness. His face was lined from ill health, pale from poor nutrition and a winter spent indoors, but showed no diminution of alertness. The quick, ruthless brain had retreated a bit further back, behind the curtain of those ice-glazed eyes, but it was still there; no doubt of that.
Making his decision, he grasped me by the arm, scooping up my discarded cloak with his other hand.
“Come with me.”
I would have allowed him to chop me in pieces before I made a sound that would cause the bedroom door to open.
We were halfway down the corridor outside before I felt it safe to speak. There were no guards stationed within the confines of the staff quarters, but the grounds were heavily patrolled. He couldn’t hope to get me through the rockery or the side gates without detection, let alone through the main palace entrance. Therefore, whatever he wanted with me, it must be a business that could be conducted within the precincts of Holyrood.
Murder, perhaps, in revenge for the injury Jamie had done him? Stomach lurching at the thought, I inspected him as closely as I could as we walked swiftly through the pools of light cast from the candleholders on the wall. Not intended for decoration or for graciousness, the candles in this part of the palace were small and widely spaced and the flames feeble, meant only to provide sufficient light to assist visitors returning to their chambers.
He wasn’t in uniform, and appeared completely unarmed. He was dressed in nondescript homespun, with a thick coat over plain brown breeks and hose. Nothing but the straightness of his carriage and the arrogant tilt of his unwigged head gave evidence of his identity—he could easily have slipped inside the grounds with one of the parties arriving for the ball, posing as a servant.
No, I decided, glancing warily at him as we passed from dimness to light, he wasn’t armed, though his hand clamped around my arm was hard as iron. Still, if it was strangling he had in mind, he wouldn’t find me an easy victim; I was nearly as tall as he was, and a good deal better nourished.
As though he sensed my thought, he paused near the end of the corridor and turned me to face him, hands tight above my elbows.
“I mean you no harm,” he said, low-voiced but firm.
“Tell me another one,” I said, estimating the chances of anyone hearing me if I screamed here. I knew there would be a guard at the foot of the stair, but that was on the other side of two doors, a short landing, and a long staircase.
On the other hand, it was stalemate. If he couldn’t take me farther, neither could I summon aid where I was. This end of the corridor was sparsely populated, and such residents as there were would undoubtedly be in the other wing now, either attending the ball or serving at it.
He spoke impatiently.
“Don’t be idiotic. If I wished to kill you, I could do it here. It would be a great deal safer than taking you outside. For that matter,” he added, “if I meant you harm, inside or out, why should I have brought your cloak?” He lifted the garment from his arm in illustration.
“How the hell should I know?” I said, though it seemed a definite point. “Why did you bring it?”
“Because I wish you to go outside with me. I have a proposal to make to you, and I will brook no chance of being overheard.” He glanced toward the door at the end of the corridor. Like all the others in Holyrood, it was constructed in the cross-and-Book style, the upper four panels arranged to form a cross, the lower two panels standing tall, forming the likeness of an open Bible. Holyrood had once been an abbey.
“Will you come into the church? We can speak there without fear of interruption.” This was true; the church adjoining the palace, part of the original Abbey, was abandoned, rendered unsafe by lack of maintenance over the years. I hesitated, wondering what to do.
“Think, woman!” He gave me a slight shake, then released me and stood back. The candlelight silhouetted him, so that his features were no more than a dark blur facing me. “Why should I take the risk of entering the palace?”
This was a good question. Once he had left the shelter of the Castle in disguise, the streets of Edinburgh were open to him. He could have lurked about the alleys and wynds until he caught sight of me on my daily expeditions, and waylaid me there. The only possible reason not to do so was the one he gave; he needed to speak to me without risk of being overseen or overheard.
He saw conclusion dawn in my face, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. He spread the cloak, holding it for me.
“You have my word that you will return from our conversation unmolested, Madam.”
I tried to read his expression, but nothing showed on the thin, chiseled features. The eyes were steady, and told me no more than would my own, seen in a looking glass.
I reached for the cloak.
“All right,” I said.
We went out into the dimness of the rock garden, passing the sentry with no more than a nod. He recognized me, and it was not unusual for me to go out at night, to attend to an urgent case of sickness in the city. The guard glanced sharply at Jack Randall—it was usually Murtagh who accompanied me, if Jamie could not—but dressed as he was, there was no hint of the Captain’s real identity. He returned the guard’s glance with indifference, and the door of the palace closed behind us, leaving us in the chill dark outside.
It had been raining earlier, but the storm was breaking up. Thick clouds shredded and flew overhead, driven by a wind that whipped aside my cloak and plastered my skirt to my legs.
“This way.” I clutched the heavy velvet close around me, bent my head against the wind, and followed Jack Randall’s lean figure through the path of the rockery.
We emerged at the lower end, and after a pause for a quick look around, crossed rapidly across the grass to the portal of the church.
The door had warped and hung ajar; it had been disused for several years because of structural faults that made the building dangerous, and no one had troubled to repair it. I kicked my way through a barrier of dead leaves and rubbish, ducking from the flickering moonlight of the palace’s back garden into the absolute darkness of the church.
Or not quite absolute; as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see the tall lines of the pillars that marched down each side of the nave, and the delicate stonework of the enormous window at the far end, glass mostly gone.
A movement in the shadows showed me where Randall had gone; I turned between the pillars and found him in a space where a recess once used as a baptismal font had left a stone ledge along the wall. To either side were pale blotches on the walls; the memorial tablets of those buried in the church. Others lay flat, embedded in the floor on either side of the central aisle, the names blurred by the traffic of feet.
“All right,” I said. “We can’t be overheard now. What do you want of me?”
“Your skill as a physician, and your complete discretion. In exchange for such information as I possess regarding the movements and plans of the Elector’s troops,” he answered promptly.
That rather took my breath away. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. He couldn’t possibly mean…
“You’re looking for medical treatment?” I asked, making no effort to disguise the mingled horror and amazement in my voice. “From me? I understood that you…er, I mean…” With a major effort of will, I stopped myself floundering and said firmly, “Surely you have already received whatever medical treatment is possible? You appear to be in reasonably good condition.” Externally, at least. I bit my lip, suppressing an urge toward hysteria.
“I am informed that I am fortunate to be alive, Madam,” he answered coldly. “The point is debatable.” He set the lantern in a niche in the wall, where the scooped basin of a piscina lay dry and empty in its recess.
“I assume your inquiry to be motivated by medical curiosity rather than concern for my welfare,” he went on. The lanternlight, shed at waist height, illuminated him from the ribs downward, leaving head and shoulders hidden. He laid a hand on the waistband of his breeches, turning slightly toward me.
“Do you wish to inspect the injury, in order to judge the effectiveness of treatment?” The shadows hid his face, but the splinters of ice in his voice were tipped with poison.
“Perhaps later,” I said, as cool as he. “If not yourself, for whom do you seek my skill?”
He hesitated, but it was far too late for reticence.
“For my brother.”
“Your brother?” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice. “Alexander?”
“Since my elder brother William is, so far as I know, virtuously engaged in stewardship of the family estates in Sussex, and in need of no assistance,” he said dryly. “Yes, my brother Alex.”
I spread my hands on the cold stone of a sarcophagus to steady myself.
“Tell me about it,” I said.