Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [55]
Julius, setting aside the details for future dissection, had repaid these confidences with a helpful précis of all that his former colleagues were doing while avoiding, under instruction, any mention of the same Gelis and her young son. The reuniting of Nicholas with his family, he quite agreed, was Anna’s province. His intelligent, beautiful Anna upon whom the gaze of the gallant Nicholas so often dwelled, to the amusement of her new husband. For Julius knew that, however ardently he might try, Nicholas could never steal Anna’s affections.
At the same time, Nicholas was right in suspecting his motive for this week of superior junketing. The wealthier merchants of Poland and Germany were impressed — over-impressed — by the intimacy between Julius and the former banker Nicholas de Fleury of Beltrees, and made certain assumptions about the future. Julius would be the last to deny them and Nicholas, so far, had not done so. Nicholas had still to make up his mind, but meantime acceded, for the most part, to the grandiose schemes laid before him, in which Anna nearly always took part.
The week that followed was not free of incident. In elevated company, Nicholas might not take a red cloth to a bear-hunt, but he did lead an unwise attack upon elk which nearly speared Julius in an area which, at the very least, would have ended his effective contribution to the marriage-bed. The following day, riding in a highly competitive relay race, Nicholas nearly fell to his death, taking Anna down with him. It was a miracle that neither was injured and Anna, thereafter, was debarred from rough sports. It saved her at least from the wolf-baiting in the moat when, after a vast drunken dinner in someone’s magnificent dwór, Julius and Nicholas were both carried out, gored and spluttering curses and laughter.
‘You both drink too much,’ Anna had said to her bandaged husband that night. ‘I know you are happy in his company, but he cannot partner you if he is disabled or dead. Let me speak to him again.’
Julius agreed, out of guilt. He often spoiled her quiet, logical plans through lack of caution, he knew. He had accepted, eventually, her view that Nicholas required looking after, and that this would best be achieved by bringing him to reconciliation with his wife. She would do nothing so crude as to suggest it to Nicholas outright. Reporting early progress to Julius, she had remained wryly determined rather than hopeful. Nicholas did not seem to mind when she mentioned how Gelis had abandoned her defiant post with the opposition after her husband’s departure and, against all expectations, had carried her private fortune and the business secrets of the Vatachino to the Venice branch of the Bank, where the lawyer Gregorio had welcomed her. ‘Welcomed her! The bastard!’ Nicholas had apparently remarked cheerfully at this point; but with so little engagement that he had remained perfectly amenable when Anna steered the conversation elsewhere.
The next time, when she spoke of his son, Nicholas had neither encouraged nor discouraged her, which Anna had supposed a good sign. ‘I told him all I knew about Jodi in Venice: about the dog and the bird and his swimming, and how he could shoot with a bow. He didn’t speak, but he listened. The little boy had sent him a poem, and when I held it out, Nicholas took it. He didn’t hand it back, or show disgust, or dislike. He loves them both still — he must do. If we persuade him to stay, he will send for them.’
It had seemed to bode well, but when Anna called on Nicholas later that evening