“Oh, but it is!”
“It is not. Have you read it?”
“No, but that’s soon done.”
He untied the cord and unfolded the sheepskin.
She leaned eagerly forward and scanned the writing, while Armstrong read it aloud.
“You see,” he cried gleefully. “Of course it is the commission. There are the names of Traquair, and all the rest, just as I gave them to the secretary, and there is ‘Charles Rex’ in the King’s own hand.”
“It is a duplicate. Cromwell has the original. You never left De Courcy alive within a mile of Broughton Castle?”
“I did that very thing. Not as lively as I have seen him, yet alive nevertheless.”
“Then ride, ride for the North. We have stood too long chattering here.”
“All in good time, Frances. There is no more hurry than ever there was; less, indeed, for it seems to me that Cromwell, for some reason, wants to come at this by fraud and not by force. But now that De Courcy’s name is mentioned between us, I ask you what you know against him more than I have told you?”