“There’s no word for you,” she told him between her clicking teeth. She was shaking violently, uncontrollably, like someone in a chill. “Crawling to my lawyers—you—you—a common adventurer——”
“You are mad,” he said.
“It’s here,” cried Fair. “Look. It’s here in black and white—are you going to deny it?”
“Give me that letter,” said Philippe le Gai.
“I wouldn’t touch it in a thousand years,” she flung at him. “Not in a hundred hundred thousand. It’s filthy—it can lie there till it rots.”
“Pick it up,” he told her.
“How dare you?” she whispered. “How dare you?”
“It is not so very greatly daring,” he assured her. “Pick it up, I tell you.”
Fair stared at him voicelessly where he stood, tall and splendid and terrible in the sunlight. No, no, this was nightmare—this was not real. It was not she who bent to the bidding of this relentless monster—it was some other Fairfax caught in a hideous dream. The paper rattled in her fingers like goblin castanets.
“Now bring it to me.”