“With pleasure. I cry your pardon, Susan, it’s just that my mind and memory, realizing it’s Sanday, have joined hands and gone off on holiday together—eloped, you might say—and left me temporarily without a brain in my head.”

He might well have rattled on like that for another hour (he had before; to that both Roland and Alain could testify), but she stopped him with the easy briskness of an older sister. “I can easily believe ye have no control over yer mind, Mr. Heath—or the tongue hung below it—but perhaps ye’ll take better care of yer purse in the future. Good day.” She was gone before he could get another word out.

5

Bert found Roland where he so often was these days: out on the part of the Drop that was called Town Lookout by many of the locals. It gave a fair view of Hambry, dreaming away its Sanday afternoon in a blue haze, but Cuthbert rather doubted the Hambry view was what drew his oldest friend back here time after time. He thought that its view of the Delgado house was the more likely reason.

This day Roland was with Alain, neither of them saying a word. Cuthbert had no trouble accepting the idea that some people could go long periods of time without talking to each other, but he did not think he would ever understand it.

He came riding up to them at a gallop, reached inside his shirt, and pulled out the corvette. “From Susan Delgado. She gave it to me in the upper market. She’s beautiful, and she’s also as wily as a snake. I say that with utmost admiration.”

Roland’s face filled with light and life. When Cuthbert tossed him the corvette, he caught it one-handed and pulled the lace-tie with his teeth. Inside, where a travelling man would have kept his few scraps of money, there was a single folded piece of paper. Roland read this quickly, the light going out of his eyes, the smile fading off his mouth.

“What does it say?” Alain asked.

Roland handed it to him and then went back to looking out at the Drop. It wasn’t until he saw the very real desolation in his friend’s eyes that Cuthbert fully realized how far into Roland’s life—and hence into all their lives—Susan Delgado had come.

Alain handed him the note. It was only a single line, two sentences:

It’s best we don’t meet. I’m sorry.

Cuthbert read it twice, as if rereading might change it, then handed it back to Roland. Roland put the note back into the corvette, tied the lace, and then tucked the little purse into his own shirt.

Cuthbert hated silence worse than danger (it was danger, to his mind), but every conversational opening he tried in his mind seemed callow and unfeeling, given the look on his friend’s face. It was as if Roland had been poisoned. Cuthbert was disgusted at the thought of that lovely young girl bumping hips with the long and bony Mayor of Hambry, but the look on Roland’s face now called up stronger emotions. For that he could hate her.