"It won't," said Kit, and looked at Edmund. "Will it?"
Edmund did not answer. He was looking at Ogilvie, who was putting his instruments back into his bag with hands that would not quite obey him.
"You were paid as well," Edmund said.
The surgeon straightened up. He was afraid, but he looked Edmund in the face, and Edmund thought better of him for it. "I was paid to attend a wound, sir," Ogilvie said. "That is my trade. I'd have taken that ball out as cleanly as any man in London. I was told the alternative was a less careful man and a less careful surgeon. I believed it." He swallowed. "I still believe it, for what that's worth."
"It's worth something," Edmund said, and found he meant it. Then, to Darnell and Kit: "Gentlemen, I think there's nothing more to be settled on this ground."
"Nothing at all," said Darnell fervently. "The affair is closed. Honour can't be satisfied by a contract." He blew his nose with violence. "I'm going to have my breakfast, and then I'm going to bed, and then I am going to think very seriously about the company I keep."
Stannard laughed again, more gently. "Do, Frank. I would." He looked at Edmund once more. "If it helps you, Garrow, I think he loves you. Your father. I've sat across a table from a good many men who wanted something from me, and I know what it looks like when a man is buying something he can't bear to pay for. He wept, you know. When he told me where the ball must go."
Edmund said nothing. There was nothing in him to say it with.
"I'll go abroad myself, I think," said Stannard to nobody in particular. "Ostend, perhaps. One can live cheaply in Ostend, I'm told, and nobody there has heard of me. Lady Sophia. Garrow." He bowed to each of them and walked away across the bright, wet grass toward his curricle. The thrush, recovering from the interruption, started its song again from the beginning.
VI
It was fifty yards from his mark to the black chariot, and Edmund walked them alone. Kit started after him, and Sophia put a hand on Kit's sleeve, and Kit stopped. Edmund did not see it. He saw only the carriage getting bigger, its lacquer reflecting the elms and the morning and finally a small dark figure that was himself, coming closer.
The near postilion touched his cap without meeting his eyes. Edmund put his hand on the door, and before he could turn the handle it opened from inside.