Garnache bowed to the lady, who returned his greeting by an inclination of the head, and his keen eyes played briskly over her. She was a plump-faced, insipid child, with fair hair and pale blue eyes, stolid and bovine in their expressionlessness.
“I am quite ready, monsieur,” said she, rising as she spoke, and gathering her cloak about her; and Garnache remarked that her voice had the southern drawl, her words the faintest suggestion of a patois. It was amazing how a lady born and bred could degenerate in the rusticity of Dauphiny. Pigs and cows, he made no doubt, had been her chief objectives. Yet, even so, he thought he might have expected that she would have had more to say to him than just those five words expressing her readiness to depart. He had looked for some acknowledgment of satisfaction at his presence, some utterances of gratitude either to himself or to the Queen-Regent for the promptness with which she had been succoured. He was disappointed, but he showed nothing of it, as with a simple inclination of the head—
“Good!” said he. “Since you are ready and Monsieur le Seneschal is anxious to be rid of us, let us by all means be moving. You have a long and tedious journey before you, mademoiselle.”
“I—I am prepared for that,” she faltered.
He stood aside, and bending from the waist he made a sweeping gesture towards the door with the hand that held his hat. To the invitation to precede him she readily responded, and, with a bow to the Seneschal, she began to walk across the apartment.
Garnache’s eyes, narrowing slightly, followed her, like points of steel. Suddenly he shot a disturbing glance at Tressan’s face, and the corner of his wild-cat mustachios twitched. He stood erect, and called her very sharply.
“Mademoiselle!”
She stopped, and turned to face him, an incredible shyness seeming to cause her to avoid his gaze.
“You have, no doubt, Monsieur le Seneschal’s word for my identity. But I think it is as well that you should satisfy yourself. Before placing yourself entirely in my care, as you are about to do, you would be well advised to assure yourself, that I am indeed Her Majesty’s emissary. Will you be good enough to glance at this?”
He drew forth as he spoke the letter in the queen’s own hand, turned it upside down, and so presented it to her. The Seneschal looked on stolidly, a few paces distant.