The Fire in the Flint by Candace Robb

Author:Candace Robb [Robb, Candace]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Crime, General, Mystery & Detective, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781446439265
Google: qKxc8Y7twxMC
Amazon: B004EYSYB0
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-12-06T18:30:00+00:00

13

THIS PURGATORY

Malcolm retreated from Margaret’s grasp. ‘It would be unwise for me to go within, Maggie.’

He looked well. As ever, his long nose, dark eyes, and bushy brows gave him the air of a predator. She noticed that as they’d aged, her father and his brother Murdoch had grown more alike in appearance, their red hair thinning and growing pale, their fair complexions spotted, their girths settling in their middles. But her father had neither her uncle’s rolling gait nor his scars. He had lived more comfortably and moderately. At the moment he was glancing nervously towards the street.

‘There are only the two servants and me,’ she said. ‘You’ll be safer within.’ News of the death in his warehouse would soon spread through the town, and whatever his reason for hiding had been, he might risk his life if he were seen now.

‘Two servants – that’s bad enough.’

‘Anyone passing along Watergate can see you here,’ she said. ‘Come within, into the kitchen.’

‘No. In there we cannot hear whether someone enters the house.’

‘Do you ken what happened to John Smyth?’ She tried to keep her tone even. Now that she was face to face with him she could not believe her father a murderer.

But Malcolm searched her eyes and saddened. ‘Even you, lass. How are those without our tie to believe in my innocence if you don’t?’

‘I did not accuse you. Come into the hall, do.’ She moved towards it, heard him following.

He stopped just inside the door that opened out towards the kitchen, where it was shielded from the hall by a tall wooden screen. ‘This is far enough.’

Margaret pulled out a bench and they sat straddling it, facing each other. He smelled of spices.

‘Why are you here, Da?’

Again he looked taken aback. ‘How can you ask that, Maggie? I worried when I arrived and heard of Roger’s abandonment.’

‘I mean back in the country.’

He shook his head in sympathy. ‘You are hardened by all your troubles, I understand.’ He paused, as if expecting her to protest, but shrugged when she did not shift her level look. ‘I am here because King Edward is in the Low Countries. It seemed an opportunity to retrieve more of my goods. I’d not heard that so many troops were biding here, and that Wallace and Murray had stirred up the people so. I’d not have come had I kenned the mood of the land.’

Margaret relaxed a little, believing he told the truth – as far as he cared to. ‘I did not see your ship on the river.’

‘No, and I’ll not tell you where it is.’

‘I was not about to ask.’

Her father grunted and drummed his fingers on the bench for a few moments, staring out at the yard. ‘Edward of England has arrived too late in Flanders. They’ve no need of him. His ambition outruns his wit. I did not wish to be there when he needed a dog to kick, eh, lass?’

Margaret did not feel obliged to offer sympathy. ‘Where are you biding, Da?’

‘Best you ken nothing of my activities.

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