He expected her to begin an interrogation right then but Marguerite didn’t even blink. “Go and warm yourself by the fire while I finish this,” she said, waving him off. “Then you can tell me all about it.”
Lindsay obediently settled into his favourite sofa by the fire while Marguerite turned her attention back to the ledger, dipping her quill in the ink pot.
He watched her work and it was oddly soothing, listening to the scratch of her nib on the paper and her mutterings as she calculated columns of figures. As always, the calm, subtle power she exuded settled him, and by the time Blaireau arrived with the wine he was feeling less frayed about the edges.
“Aren’t you joining us?” Lindsay asked the majordome, noting there were only two glasses on the tray.
“Not tonight,” Blaireau replied, filling both glasses from the decanter. “Madame’s got something to talk to you about.”
“So she says,” Lindsay agreed accepting one of the glasses, “but so far she’s been too busy with her totting-up to tell me.”
“I’m nearly finished,” Marguerite said without looking up. “You have the patience of an infant.”
Blaireau set Marguerite’s wine at her elbow, then tucked his tray under his arm, saying, “I’ll leave you two to your squabbling.” He had that fond, fatherly note in his voice that made Lindsay happy and sad at the same time, his heart twisting in his chest with pained affection.
Lindsay watched the old man slowly leave the room, then sat for a while longer, sipping his wine and contemplating his ruined shoes as Marguerite completed her task. Finally, she set down her quill and leaned back in her chair, lifting her wineglass.
“So, tell me how it went with Aubrière.”
“Badly,” he said, making a face, and proceeded to tell her of the evening’s events.
He expected her to be exasperated by his lack of progress, but when he’d finished his tale—and she’d stopped laughing—she only said, “Ah well. We’ve waited this long, another week or two will make no difference now.”
Lindsay stared at her in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?” he said. “Did you not, onlyyesterday, tell me that I’d taken far too long over this already?”
Marguerite shrugged in that negligent Gallic way Lindsay secretly admired, making her wrapper slide off one shoulder to reveal a slice of perfect, creamy skin.
“Priorities change. Something more important has arisen that I need you to deal with for me. Francis can handle Aubrière.”
Lindsay gave a choked laugh. “Did you hear any of what I just said? Can you imagine Francis entertaining Aubrière at the Perle Noir?”
Marguerite gave him a quelling look. “Francis will deal with him as Francis does. His methods are different from yours.”
“Francis disapproves of bribery,” Lindsay reminded her baldly. “That’s why you leave that stuff to me. He’ll insist on going through the official channels and you’ll end up paying out a damned sight more than you wanted to.”
“Such is life,” she said with another of those shrugs. “It can’t be helped.”
Lindsay’s eyebrows rose. If there was one thing he knew about his Marguerite, it was that she didnotlike to part with gold. Something was going on—this was entirely too placid a reaction.
Carefully he said, watching her, “What’s this important thing you need me to deal with, Mim?”
She glared at him. “Don’t call me that ridiculous name. It’s bad enough that Francis uses it.”
“Fine. I’ll stop calling you Mim if you tell me what this is about.”
She hesitated for a moment then said simply, “I want you to go to Scotland.”
Lindsay stilled. The thought of his birthplace had his stomach hollowing out and his mouth drying up, pictures of Duncan MacCormaic’s Keep and of Duncan himself flooding Lindsay’s mind. Duncan’s cruel smile and those lazily beckoning fingers.
“Come, cur...”
“MacCormaic is still in Spain,” Marguerite said, correctly guessing his thoughts. “But we believe he’s on his way to Paris. If that’s right, he will likely arrive by the end of the month.” Her gaze was unwavering. “I want you well out of the way before then. You will be safer in Scotland for now and I have business for you there, in Edinburgh.”
Lindsay swallowed, hard. “He’s coming after me again then.”
Marguerite sighed. “Yes.” She paused then added gently, “He will probably never stop trying to get you back—you really must accustom yourself to that.”
She was right, but it had been more than a decade since Lindsay had last had to run from Duncan, and somehow he could not stop the persistent seeds of hope from germinating each time he had some reprieve.
