“It’s yours,” she said, and her eyes were now so intense that her gaze felt hot on his skin. He should have understood at once, but he had been blinded by her unexpected appearance. Also, he admitted, by her cleverness. You somehow didn’t expect cleverness from a girl this beautiful; beautiful girls did not, as a rule, have to be clever. So far as Bert could tell, all beautiful girls had to do was wake up in the morning. “It is.”

“Oh, aye,” he said, almost snatching the little purse from her. He could feel a foolish grin overspreading his face. “Now that you mention it, sai—”

“Susan.” Her eyes were grave and watchful above her smile. “Let me be Susan to you, I pray.”

“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.