Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [119]
The experience this time was different. The difficult, swampy terrain and the lack of villages meant that seclusion was no longer possible. They shared their evening meal; their tents were close, for security. And during the day, instead of the voluble company they were used to, there was none but their grumbling, half-Tartar escort and the silent figures of Petru and Brygidy, one sullen, one grim.
That at least, could be repaired. Without being told, Anna invited the two to sit with her in the evening, and chatted to them both through the day. Nicholas made the escort his business, employing a ragbag of languages, but principally his talent for coarse visual jokes eked out with mime. They always ended by gambling, and he always lost. It reminded him of his first ship, the San Niccolò, but he dismissed the African trip from his mind. He did not propose to resurrect his first months with Gelis. He had a feeling that Anna was one day going to mention her.
About his own relations with Anna, he had made up his mind from his departure from Thorn, in a way that would have staggered some of his friends — his former friends — and aroused the derision of others. She was sympathetic, intelligent, beautiful, and he had half killed her husband. To a contrite man, despite the absence of the Patriarch, she would clearly be sacrosanct. To Nicholas, the happy predator, the juvenile libertine, she would obviously fall prey within hours.
All that and more, Nicholas recognised. Inescapably, she was desirable. By the edicts of a greater compulsion, however hungry, however desolate, he had vowed this time to deny himself.
It was a matter of management. Everything was. During this long, awkward journey he had seen displayed, without ostentation, all her grace, all her skills, all that had first drawn him to her, and more. He dealt with it. He dealt with her effect upon others. He had long known that she was also an excellent horsewoman and an accurate shot: the men of the escort ate better because of it, and had begun to admire her. It was to keep the admiration in its place that he suggested, when the third night approached, that he should sleep, as her servant, in the forepart of the small pavilion that Anna shared with her maid. After a moment’s thought, Anna agreed. There would be a curtain between them. In any case, she had never been coy; her attitude to himself, or to Julius for that matter, was one of mild, faintly mocking affection: she was one of the most self-possessed women he had ever known.
He had not probed beneath the control. He had seen it slip, once, when she thought Julius dead and had screamed at him. She had taken time, after the shock, to soften what she had said, and now did him the courtesy of speaking freely of Julius; she had done so, with a touch of rueful tenderness, only today. Nicholas wondered again why they had no children, and this led his thoughts to Kathi’s coming child and prompted him, in unwise and contrary mood, to speculate on where and how Robin sired it. In a gentlemanly way, he was sure. Not like his. Not like his with Gelis in Africa.
It was, perhaps, because he had let his guard down that he made his mistake, entering his tent in a hurry; sore with himself, dismayed by his lack of control. It was the time — he had forgotten — when Brygidy brought in the buckets for Anna’s primitive shower. Water was scarce and he kept none for himself, being able to splash with the men in some stream where their nakedness would not offend. It was by accident therefore that he came in before the curtain was drawn, and saw Anna facing him as once he had dreamed. Or more divine than his dream: her dark-centred breasts and belly and thighs glistening in hazy sunlight; her wet black hair clinging like leaves. The badge between her thighs was night-black as well.
He looked there first, and then the shock hit him physically. It seized her as well: with shame and alarm that caused her to drop where she stood,