Of all the Jacobites, nobles, captains and gentlemen, spies and common rufflers who had used her father’s hut in their passage to and from France, this man was the most at ease, the most arrogant of manner, as if his life was in no danger, nor his cause in any fear of failure; yet at the same time she had seen none with eyes that held such excited wildness or who kept his hand so continually on his sword. She puzzled over him; he was no daredevil of a cavalier or knight-errant, eager for adventure like some of these plotters; there was nothing roistering or gay about him; he had an air of passionate coldness; like a Puritan who disdains the worldly things about him and puts a full-blooded strength into grave desires; he looked past the girl as if she had been an old woman, a treatment she was not used to; she was handsome enough in her lean, vivid way to win courtesy at least; and often more from men older and graver than this one.
The Duke of Berwick had kissed her when he left that morning and given her the diamond brooch that glittered on her breast; it was the Stuart way of winning and keeping loyalty; she was shrewd enough to know it was only a manner of paying a debt, but she liked the implied compliment that it was not money could buy her services; this man, she thought scornfully, might likely enough reward her at parting with a handful of silver. Having spread the remains of the Duke of Berwick’s breakfast on a cloth of smuggled lace and having set beside them some bottles of the wine brought secretly from France, the girl turned to Mr. Wedderburn.
“Your supper,” she said curtly.
He rose, flung himself before the table and began to eat absently.
“You had a rough passage,” remarked Celia, eying him.
“Yes,” he barely looked at her as he spoke.
“You are often employed by His Majesty?”
“Yes,” was his answer, given even more coldly than before.
Celia came closer, resting her firm brown hands on the edge of the table and, leaning forward, she peered into his face.
The ragged yellow lamplight flickered over her, lighting her eyes and her dusky hair; she spoke, very low.