Lord Credesdale said, when Canny went into his room. “I feel a little better today—in myself, that is. This bloody body’s still collapsing on me, but I slept well for the first time in weeks. To judge by the look of you, you didn’t.” “Jet lag,” Canny said, trying to sound laconic. “Or too much excitement. I’ll be okay in a day or two.” He studied his father’s face with mild amazement. His mother had not been exaggerating; the thirty-first earl looked much better. Canny was modest enough to take it for granted that it was the morphine rather than his own words that had brought a new tranquility to the old man’s brain, but he was aware of the fact that the drug hadn’t been able to achieve that effect before. Maybe it was mostly a matter of timing, of arrival at the threshold of death—but it wasn’t improbable that he had played a part in facilitating the process. “Did you go to the library last night?” his father asked, when he had settled into the chair, conscious of the contrast between his own awkward pose and the ones that Lissa Lo had adopted during their confrontation in he library.
