“We’ll do it,’ said Will Scott comfortably, shouting over the tumult. ‘If it’s no more than an hour, we’ll do it.’ ‘Christ, I believe you’re sorry, you flaming maniac,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t I keep telling you that this is bloody childishness, and don’t you keep agreeing?”

“Then Lymond’s voice, the chill gone, said, ‘Don’t be an ass, Jerott? You know I can’t do without you.’ It was an obvious answer. But it was also something Jerott had never had from Lymond before: an apology and an appeal both at once.”

“You’re going to declare a rest period?’ asked Jerott. Leisure, with Gabriel there, seemed too good to be true. ‘Rumour being what it is, I imagine it will have declared itself by now,’ Lymond said. ‘Yes. We shall take three days from our labours to relax. Provided Sir Graham understands that by midday tomorrow St Mary’s will be empty and all the men at arms and half the officers whoring in Peebles.’ In the half-dark you could guess at Gabriel’s smile. ‘Do you think I don’t know human nature?’ he said. ‘They are bound by no vows. But as they learn to respect you, they will do as you do.’ ‘That’s what we’re all afraid of,’ said Jerott; and there was a ripple of laughter and a flash of amusement, he saw, from Lymond himself.”

“… Jerott?’ Two steps away, Jerott stood perfectly still. ‘I hear you.’ ‘You sound like a schoolmaster,’ said Lymond’s voice at his ear, with a trace of its usual lightness. ‘It doesn’t matter. Go on.’ Jerott did not move. ‘What were you going to say?’ ‘Something regrettable. I’ll say it; and then we can both forget it,’ said Lymond. ‘You put up with a lot, you know. More than you should. More than other people can be expected to do.… I find I need a sheet anchor against Gabriel. However much I try—don’t let me turn you against me.”

“Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again.”

“What do you hope for that you haven’t got? What can that child give you?’ There was a little silence. ‘A virgin audience for my riddles, I believe,’ said Lymond thoughtfully, at length. ‘But it certainly poses an ungallant question.”

“Lymond said quietly, ‘You had good reason to hate me. I always understood that. I don’t know why you should think differently now, but take care. Don’t build up another false image. I may be the picturesque sufferer now, but when I have the whip-hold, I shall behave quite as crudely, or worse. I have no pretty faults. Only, sometimes, a purpose.’ He paused, and said, ‘Est conformis precedenti. I owe the Somervilles rather a lot already.’ Philippa’s unwinking brown gaze flickered shiftily at the Latin and then steadied. 'I should have told you before. You don’t mind?’ ‘If you had told me before, you might not have decided to have me for a friend. I don’t mind,’ said Francis Crawford and told, for once, the bare truth.”