Or else I’ll kill you, Mary finished in her mind, which raised an inner smile that eased a little of her nervousness. She did as he instructed, and then turned to find him standing at the center of the room already, looking round as though he had a vague distrust of everything within it.
Frisque had raised his head again, and now the little dog rose to his feet and wagged his tail with such a force it set his body shaking. Mary, fearing he might bark, crossed quickly to the bed and took him in her arms. There was no way she could avoid the Scotsman, nor could they converse and keep their voices low as caution would require unless she moved to stand quite close to him, so with reluctance Mary did just that. The deeper shadows cast by the lone candle and the low flames of the hearth made harder angles of his features, but she faced him squarely anyway, and said, “You have my journal.”
Without answering, he drew the book and penner from his pocket, and as wordlessly he set them on the table.
Frisque was squirming. Mary, settling the dog, said, “Thank you.”
“Your brother,” said Mr. MacPherson, “is Nicolas Dundas?”
She knew she’d written down her brother’s first name in her journal, in the single entry that she’d made in English before switching to the cipher. As to how he had deduced their surname, Mary did not know, but she could see no reason to deny it. “Yes.”
He did not ask about the cipher, which at first she thought was strange, until she reasoned that if he had read that first long entry he’d have known about her morning spent with Mistress Jamieson, and how she had devised the cipher, and the purpose of it. All he said, after a frowning pause, was: “I would have your word that what ye write within those pages is for your eyes, and none other.”
Mary looked at him in some surprise. “You have it.”
She’d expected him to question her more closely; to demand to know the contents of the entries she had written, and perhaps even compel her to reveal to him the cipher. All he did instead was study her a moment with that gaze she could not penetrate.
She held that gaze unwillingly, but did not look away, and in the end he broke the contact and looked down at where the journal lay, and with one square and well-formed hand he slid it closer to her, in an action that was also a decision.
“Then guard it,” he said to her. “Burn it or bring it. Don’t leave it behind.”
Which appeared to be all he would say on the subject. But when Mary thought he would leave her he paused again; brought his gaze back to hers, and for an instant she thought she discerned something searching within it, as though he were faced with a conflict of facts he was seeking to reconcile.
“You are accomplished,” he told her, “at cards.”
Having no notion how to reply to a compliment from this inscrutable man, she could only say, “Thank you.”
“You had a carte blanche in the second hand.”
Mary thought she had some faint idea, then, where he was heading with this line of talk. And she could have explained to him what her intention had been in not claiming the carte blanche, but telling him that would in turn have revealed near as much of her mind and true self to him as claiming carte blanche would have revealed all of her cards to her gaming opponent, and Mary did not wish to be so exposed. She retreated instead, as she’d done for so long, behind that useful mask she had learned to adopt, of the pretty and witty but none-too-intelligent female. “How silly of me,” she said, “not to declare it. I must be more tired than I realized.”
His gaze could no longer be read, at least not by the candlelight. Giving the short nod she’d noticed he gave in the place of a bow, he said nothing further but turned and departed.
She bolted the door when he’d gone. Frisque whined and Mary hushed him with her mouth against his soft fur.
“It’s all right,” she soothed the little dog. “He scares me, too.”
Chapter 20
My temper, though I didn’t often vent it, was my least attractive feature. Had I been at home I would have let loose with a stream of every swear word I could muster, but because I was in someone else’s house I held it in and fumed in steady, burning silence.
It took a lot of effort, so much so I didn’t notice the by-now-familiar sound of Noah’s video game music until he was standing in the doorway of my little workroom, and when I glanced up there must have been a lot of anger in my eyes because he physically stepped back a pace, and instantly I felt remorse.
“Good morning, Madame Thomas,” he said, speaking careful English. “I am sorry to disturb you. I will not disturb you more. I do not want to be disturbing.”
I was briefly puzzled by his repetition of the word disturb until I realized I had taught it to him on the morning we’d first met, and he was probably just showing me that he’d remembered.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m only frustrated by something here. It isn’t about you.”
“Ah. Good. I’m looking for—”
“Diablo. Yes. He’s there.” I waved a hand towards the boxes by the window, where the cat had been curled up in comfort, staring at me for the past half hour as though convinced I’d lost my mind. Perhaps I had. I said to Noah, “Take him.” Which of course meant: Take him with you when you leave, but Noah only lifted up the cat and stood there by the window, watching me.
He asked, “Is frustrated the same as frustré?”
“Yes, it is. The very same.”