Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [162]
‘Remorse, the theory goes. There wasn’t so much: he had showered his own money as well as the Bank’s into all those neat, faulty schemes that were meant to pull Scotland apart. He’ll acquire another fortune, I’m sure, but he’ll have to work for it. The next offer the army receives may be from the rulers of Tabriz or Caffa. Astorre might even accept.’
‘He might, but I wouldn’t,’ said le Grant. ‘And these days, I’m part of the deal.’ He added bluntly, ‘So you’re not here about Fleury. You’re here to make sure that we shan’t sign our next contract with Nicholas?’
‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ Gelis said. ‘Nicholas knows it as well, I’m quite sure. No. I wondered if he had pretended to ask you. He would mean it to tell us something.’
‘What?’
She looked at him with momentary surprise. ‘About the course of events where he is. Trouble in the Crimea affects Russia and Poland, which affects Julius and Cologne and, in the long run, might damage Diniz in Bruges. He has been sending warnings ever since he went east.’
John le Grant set down his cup. ‘You’ve been in touch with him? You trust what he says?’ Then, with increasing incredulity, ‘Is this why you’ve been learning the business? You’ve managed to forget how Nicholas fooled us? You’d like us to invite Nicholas back to head a new combined Bank with his wife!’
Annoyingly, she didn’t look defensive; just tired. She said, ‘I thought I’d just told you. I knew you wouldn’t tolerate him for a minute. Neither would Diniz or Moriz or Tobie. Neither would Gregorio. He can’t come back.’
John le Grant listened. Then he said what he had held back until now. ‘And you? It wouldn’t have happened but for you.’
‘I know that,’ she said.
He didn’t know Gelis well. His world was a masculine one: he had been struck in Alexandria and in Iceland by the exuberant intelligence and sweetness of Kathi, but knew Gelis only through other men’s eyes, and by her sharp-witted performance at events where application and analysis were required. Had he stopped to think, he might have deduced that Kathi was an asexual being with a very feminine form of intuition, while Gelis was a ravishing woman with a mathematical brain.
He had now stopped to think. He said, slowly, ‘You don’t expect Nicholas back. You expect to go to him?’ Until then, he had thought the marriage already part sundered.
She smiled. Her eyes were still tired. She said, ‘It isn’t as easy as that. And I have work I want to do first. About your expiring contract, for a start. I need to know what you and Astorre want to do about that after Neuss. What do you think? Leave Fleury out of it.’
They talked then, as master gunner to agent, and reached certain conclusions; after which John le Grant went to bed, and rose next morning to escort Gelis van Borselen to Neuss, in what his friend Father Moriz would have referred to as a measuring frame of mind.
He did not know, because she had not told him, of the other measure Nicholas had taken, which she had just learned from Tobie. When giving up all his reserves, Nicholas had kept something back: the wages of two men to protect herself and Jodi.
She had spoken since to Manoli, the man in her employment. He knew no more than Tobie had told her, which Tobie had learned in turn from Clémence. Manoli was to guard her with his life, but against whom had not been explained. Gelis believed what Tobie had written. Nicholas was afraid of the corpulent vicomte de Ribérac, even when he was safely banished to a Portuguese island. And he was determined, too, to leave no loophole for David de Salmeton.
She had not spoken of it to John, for it made her seem less than self-sufficient. It also implied a relationship between Nicholas and herself which did not exist. He had always been over-anxious about Jodi.
AT NEUSS, Captain Astorre seemed more concerned, at first, to learn about the military training of Jodi than to decide where his next contract ought to be served. The house in which he received