Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [180]
‘Many of them do, for all of it,’ said Clémence de Coulanges. ‘For myself, I am fond of children, but prefer to spend my leisure with adults. No child has ever been as important to me as a grown man or woman could be.’
He scanned her face: the straight Gallic nose, the sallow skin, the black, shining studs of her eyes. The air of calm domination, which might equally stem from a fierce independence. ‘You do not give that impression,’ he said. ‘Of being interested in adults. In men.’
‘Then it is not surprising,’ she said, ‘if, without the facts, you have reached a wrong diagnosis. I have had lovers. But none since we met.’
She was smiling: a half-teasing, remembering smile he had caught on her face now and then, but had not understood. He felt a great, a staggering amazement. He felt an idiot. He said, ‘I wanted … I wondered … But there was Jodi, and Gelis. I didn’t know how to tell her.’
Clémence laughed aloud. ‘Gelis guessed long before you did. And what do you suppose Kathi has sent us to do?’
And then he, too, was catching his breath in something like laughter as, his robe and her apron confused, he set the tilt of her head with one hand, and used the other to trace, like a gratified father, the contours of brow, temple and cheek. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘to find out, at last, what colour of hair my wife has.’
But he still had not found out when he kissed her; and after that, did not care.
LATER, WHEN THE HOUSEHOLD had been told and the celebrations were over, Katelijne set aside her weariness and asked Tobie to stay.
Opening the door of her room, he had no qualms about his reception, for she had already expressed her delight. As Clémence had hinted, the news of their betrothal had astonished nobody, any more than the fact that a reputable Italian physician was to marry a French-speaking Burgundian who worked for her living. Clémence might be without parents or dowry, but she was an educated member of a seigneurial family. And since her appointment by Gelis six years ago, she had kept her employer’s household in order as discreetly as she had seen to the rearing of Jodi.
Soon, of course, that would end, although Clémence did not wish to marry immediately. But in another year, Nicholas’s son would be seven, and ready to move into a masculine world. Already, embarrassed, Tobie realised that Gelis had planned for it. A maidservant, a tutor, a master-at-arms would replace the loving nursery of the past. Or would not replace it, for he and Clémence would be near at hand. While there was a Flemish company, he wanted to serve it. He had already told Kathi so.
They knew each other very well, the bald doctor and Adorne’s young Flemish niece who had shared a journey to Egypt five years ago. Watching him cross to her now, Kathi flung wide her arms in a renewed fit of delight. ‘Will you be annoyed if I say that this is right for you, as Robin is for me? I am so glad for you.’ Then she sat back, memory jarred.
He said, ‘What?’ He was her doctor.
‘Nicholas said that in Poland. Great minds.’
‘He was so glad? About Robin?’
‘About me. About nothing. It was only important because for six words at least, he stopped acting.’ She paused. ‘He sent me some balm. Balm from Sinai, to keep for the christening. One anonymous seal; one signature, Nicholas. I gave a little to Haddington.’ Her smile became pursed.
‘Kathi?’ he said. ‘What is it? The reports about Anna? Is it so bad that Gelis can find out nothing about her from Germany? She married into high station, and if her origins were obscure, then she and her husband may have decided to leave them so. We know she did marry the Graf, and he never denied that Bonne was his child. She fell in love with Julius and made up a tale to impress him, but what of it? If she wasn’t wealthy, he was. She has all the Graf’s friends. And there is no doubt that it is a good marriage.’
‘No. I know,’ Kathi said. ‘And I know, I think, how Gelis