Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,97

the end of the mews and turned into the street, not looking back.

Then Sammy let out a poltergeist ‘Youweee’ yell of uncomplicated victory, and went with jumping feet to fetch the pistol from where he’d hidden it.

He presented it to me with flourish, laying it flat onto my hands.

‘Spoils of war,’ he said, grinning.

TWENTY ONE

Litsi and I drank brandy in the sitting room to celebrate, having thanked Thomas and Sammy copiously for their support; and we telephoned to Danielle to tell her we weren’t lying in puddles of blood.

‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been able to think what I’m doing.’

‘I suppose what we did was thoroughly immoral,’ Litsi commented, after I’d put down the receiver.

‘Absolutely,’ I agreed equably. ‘We did exactly what Nanterre intended to do; extorted a signature under threat.’

‘We took the law into our own hands, I suppose.’

‘Justice,’ I said, ‘in our own hands.’

‘And like you said,’ he said, smiling, ‘there’s a difference.’

‘He’s free, unpunished and rich,’ I said, ‘and in a way that’s not justice. But he didn’t, and can’t, destroy Roland. It was a fair enough bargain.’

I waited up for Danielle after Litsi had gone yawning downstairs, and went to meet her when I heard her come in. She walked straight into my arms, smiling.

‘I didn’t think you’d go to bed without me,’ she said.

‘As seldom as possible for the rest of my life.’

We went quietly up to the bamboo room and, mindful of Beatrice next door, quietly to bed and quietly to love. Intensity, I thought, drowning in sensations, hadn’t any direct link to noise and could be exquisite in whispers; and if we were more inhibited than earlier in what we said, the silent rediscovery of each other grew into an increased dimension of passion.

We slept, embracing, and woke again before morning, hungry again after deep satisfaction.

‘You love me more,’ she said, murmuring in my ear.

‘I loved you always.’

‘Not like this.’

We slept again, languorously, and before seven she showered in my bathroom, put on yesterday’s clothes and went decorously down to her own room. Aunt Casilia, she said with composure, would expect her niece to make a pretence at least of having slept in her own bed.

‘Would she mind that you didn’t?’

‘Pretty much the reverse, I would think.’

Litsi and I were already drinking coffee in the morning room when Danielle reappeared, dressed by then in fresh blues and greens. She fetched juice and cereal and made me some toast, and Litsi watched us both with speculation and finally enlightenment.

‘Congratulations,’ he said to me dryly.

‘The wedding,’ Danielle said collectedly, ‘will take place.’

‘So I gathered,’ he said.

He and I, a while later, went up to see Roland de Brescou, to give him and the princess the completed contracts.

‘I was sure,’ Roland said weakly, ‘that Nanterre wouldn’t agree to dissolve the company. Without it, he can’t possibly make guns … can he?’

‘If ever he does,’ I said, ‘your name won’t be linked with it.’

Gascony, the name we’d given to the new public company, was the ancient name of the province in France where the Château de Brescou stood. Roland had been both pleased and saddened by the choice.

‘How did you persuade him, Kit?’ the princess asked, looking disbelievingly at the Nanterre signatures.

‘Um … tied him in knots.’

She gave me a brief glance. ‘Then I’d better not ask.’

‘He’s unhurt and unmarked.’

‘And the police?’ Roland asked.

‘No police,’ I said. ‘We had to promise no police to get him to sign.’

‘A bargain’s a bargain,’ Litsi nodded. ‘We have to let him go free.’

The princess and her husband understood all about keeping one’s word, and when I left Roland’s room she followed me down to the sitting room, leaving Litsi behind.

‘No thanks are enough … How can we thank you?’ she asked with frustration.

‘You don’t need to. And … urn … Danielle and I will marry in June.’

‘I’m very pleased indeed,’ she said with evident pleasure, and kissed me warmly on one cheek and then the other. I thought of the times I’d wanted to hug her; and one day perhaps I would do it, though not on a racecourse.

‘I’m so sorry about your horses,’ I said.

‘Yes … When you next talk to Wykeham, ask him to start looking about for replacements. We can’t expect another Cotopaxi, but next year, perhaps, a runner anyway in the Grand National … And don’t forget, next week at Cheltenham, we still have Kinley.’

‘The Triumph Hurdle,’ I said.

I went to Folkestone races by train later that morning with a light heart but without Danielle,