Stone's Fall

'And I owe my freedom to you as well. Mr Cort told me what you had said.'

'Yes,' I replied. 'That's the bit that's puzzling me.'

'Why?'

'I am normally a truthful person,' I said evenly. 'I've only started telling lies since I met you.'

She frowned in slight dismay and confusion; just a little enough to make the bridge of her nose wrinkle attractively before she smiled again.

'I was looking at you when you shot me, you see. The expression in your eyes. I really don't think you were trying to miss me.'

'Of course I was,' she said a little petulantly. 'I was petrified, that's all. You read far too much into my eyes.'

'They are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. I have tried often to get you to look at me, just to have that feeling of excitement that it causes in my stomach. When I close mine, I can see them. I dream of them. I know them well.'

'But why would I want to shoot you? I mean, really shoot you. You know.'

'How often do you take the waters at Baden-Baden?'

She looked momentarily confused, then replied. 'Every year. I go in the autumn. I have done for many years now. Why do you ask that?'

'And Mr Xanthos? He is an enthusiastic water-taker as well?'

'No,' she said, 'I'm sure he is not.'

'But you were both there last autumn?'

'Yes.'

'Strange that an arms salesman should go to a place like that. Unless he was visiting someone. Like you.'

She raised an eyebrow. Her face, so very expressive it was, was turning cold.

'And when you were both there you came to the attention of Madame Boninska, otherwise known as the witch-woman. A nasty bit of work, who made a tidy living out of blackmail. She knew a gold mine when she saw one. She followed you back to England, and decided to try a little blackmail. How long did you pay up before you refused?'

'Matthew, you are talking such nonsense. Have these nurses been putting something into your tea?'

'Morphine, maybe?' I said, with a quite nasty tone. 'Drink some. You know more about that sort of thing than I do.'

That stopped her attempt at good humour, so I continued. 'She wrote to your husband, who went to see her. There she gave him the details. That his beloved wife was having an affair with another man. His own employee was betraying him. Not only planning to take his company away from him, but to take his wife as well.

'Lord Ravenscliff was not a man to go down without a fight. He had already amended his will so that everything would fall into the hands of an administrator should he die. I am fairly certain that, if he had had his meeting with Xanthos the next day, Xanthos would have been dismissed. And then he would have thrown you out as well. I have heard enough to know that he was thorough and ruthless. When he acted, he moved fast and decisively. And he hated disloyalty above all.

'But you were his equal, so Xanthos told me, and he was right. You moved fast. One swift move, and he was out the window. Did you put your arms around him and tell him how much you loved him before you gave him a little push? Or was it some melodrama, opening the window and threatening to throw yourself out, until he came to stop you and made the mistake of turning his back on you?'

'Before that, you had offered – what a loving gesture! – to find out what Xanthos was up to. Persuaded your husband he could trust no one else. That put you in the perfect position to relay Xanthos's instructions to Jan the Builder. You weren't doing this nonsense to find out what he was planning. The Tsar would be murdered, war would break out and Ravenscliff would get the blame – but quietly, no publicity. Xanthos would take over his companies. Then you and he would marry . . .'

She hit me, so hard that I was dizzy with the pain and my nose began to bleed profusely. And when I say hit, I don't mean some dainty slap about the face, such as an irate female might deliver. I mean punched, with her fist. And, having hit me, she hit me again, even harder. Then stood over me, eyes blazing with cold fury, teeth clenched. She stood over me, breathing hard. I really thought I was about to die.

Instead, she marched to the door, pulled it open and turned round.

'How dare you talk to me like that?' she spat. 'Who do you think you are?'

I couldn't talk. I gasped through the bedsheet, which I was having to use as an impromptu bandage. The pain was so great it even overwhelmed the pain of my wound. It occurred to me that saying what I had, all alone in a room with her, had not been the cleverest thing to do. Being punched on the nose was getting off quite lightly, really. Others had not been so lucky.

'You have come to your conclusions. I will not argue against them. I told you I loved my husband. You disregard all of that. And now you are going to run to Henry Cort?'

I shook my head.

'Why not? Why not? That is what a good Englishman should do, isn't it?'

I shook my head again.

'Why not?'

'Because you're all as bad as each other. I don't want anything to do with any of you. I've had enough.'