Fellowship with Demons by Conyngham Lexie

Author:Conyngham, Lexie [Conyngham, Lexie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Mystery
Published: 2013-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I

Wednesday was wet. More than half of his promised fortnight had gone by, and Murray still had nothing to tell Viscount Melville. In the garden outside his dressing room window the leaves, on the trees as well as on the ground, were turning black and soggy, put off by the weather from even attempting gold this autumn.

Murray had thought to contrive some excuse to make a prolonged visit to the Ronaldson household at Rossart, perhaps by persuading them that his perfectly healthy horse was lame, or that he himself was injured, or that he did not like the look of the weather. Even to get past the door would be a stage further than that achieved by anyone he knew outside the family themselves.

He had Ladybird saddled and rode up to the Old Town. The mare danced with excitement through the crowds, eyeing all about her, and stopping to examine anything particularly interesting like a sedan chair, or a water caddy, which made for an uneven ride until he had passed out along South Bridge Street, through St. Patrick’s Square and past the end of the town proper. There he was among the scattered Newington feus, secluded houses for newly prosperous gentlemen. Then Ladybird grew bored and slowed to a walk, head down, and nothing Murray could do would shift her faster, short of getting off and pulling. It gave him the chance to take a good look ahead at the horizon, though, and he noticed that the sky was indeed beginning to loom ominous. The Pentlands far to his right were fading fast into a matt grey wall. He hoped that the Ronaldsons would have a good fire going when he had his planned emergency, and rode on.

The road was the main one to Carlisle and Selkirk, and was, in this weather, chewed to the consistency of old porage by the passing of horses and carriages going to and from the moderately fashionable new houses. The Ronaldsons’ was an older house than these, some distance from the edge of the town and from the new villas, near the road to the villages of Liberton. By the time he had picked through the mud and pulled back on to the verge every two minutes to allow the filth-encrusted carriages to pass (he spent some time thoughtfully cursing those who insisted on taking the dry way to work in the lawcourts, or found their own company so unsatisfactory as to feel the need to go visiting even in this weather), it was growing quite dark, though it was not yet noon, and the rain was starting to spit with purpose on Murray’s gloves and shoulders. It began to seem that the weather would be no lame excuse: he might have no need to pretend injuries to Ladybird or himself.

The gateway to the drive to the Ronaldsons’ house met the road at a point where the verges were particularly steep and the road particularly narrow, a difficult bend even in the best of weather.

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