Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [21]
Danny, who had been holding his breath, promptly released it. Madame la Maréchale, who had felt little but contempt for the creature’s escapade, experienced for the first time a shadow of pity. She stood up and so, tardily, did the comtesse de Sevigny.
Philippa said, ‘The trouble is, you would say all that anyway.’ She gazed at her husband, her grimy brow wrinkled sadly. ‘If only we could get Güzel here for you!’
Danny made a loud, painful noise with his nose. Lymond, who had not been prepared for it either, just avoided vocalizing his reaction. He said, his skin flushed to the roots of his hair, ‘She might not be prepared to emigrate.’
‘No,’ said Philippa. She paused. ‘It has all been rather … adolescent. I hope you will overlook it. You do mean I may see the papers? There are more, you know, at Marthe’s house. She was going to help me. I was to call on her at six tomorrow.’
Moving to the door, he stood, arrested in the moment of opening it. ‘What a coincidence. So was I, at Jerott’s insistence.’
They looked at one another. Then Lymond added, ‘Suppose we share the Kittasoles of State and go together? Where are you staying? Or wait. I should be able to guess. As a guest of the Hôtel Schiatti, with the family sworn not to tell me?’
She nodded, and Lymond’s grim mouth relaxed. ‘Don’t brood over it,’ he said. ‘Madame Marguerite knows the English are crazy. I shall call for you at half-past five.’ And with Danny saluted her briefly as, escorted by the Governor’s wife, the girl in servant’s livery descended the stairs to the courtyard.
They did not hear Philippa repeat, handsomely, her apologies to her hostess. Or hear her add, cheerfully, that she had met the Maréchale’s daughter in Paris.
Madame, smiling, was not forthcoming. ‘She enjoys her work. Catherine, you will know, is one of the Queen’s demoiselles of honour.’
‘Well, she’s on her way to Lyon,’ said Philippa cheerfully. ‘At Queen Catherine’s warm insistence. I think there’s a very good chance that M. le comte will take to her. Next after dark night, the mirthful morrow, you know.’
Not for the first time that evening, Madame la Maréchale de St André gazed at the wife of her guest with an astonishment edging on horror. Within her desk upstairs at this moment was a letter. In it her husband the Marshal begged her to humour this whim of the Queen’s: to bind the comte de Sevigny closer to the French crown by the gift of the richest heiress in France, their only daughter.
Marguerite de St André had been less than beguiled by the prospect. Knowing what she now knew of the Count’s style and his person, she was reluctant for other reasons altogether. But at no time had she expected the man’s wife to know of the plan, far less support it.
She said, ‘My daughter, Madame de Sevigny, has a sizeable fortune. Do you imagine that your husband is a suitable spouse for her?’
Philippa pondered. ‘I haven’t heard of any complaints,’ she said with honesty.
Complaints.…
‘More than most men,’ said the Governor’s wife carefully, ‘my lord of Sevigny seems to have led a life of some … irregularity. You do not resent this?’
‘Well: not, of course, the Rose-tree of the Garden of Fidelity,’ said the comtesse de Sevigny, ‘but there would be very little point, I should say, in resenting it. You know. Zyf you know or you knyt, you mayst you Abate: And yf you knyt er you knowe, Than yt ys to late. He has a wonderful——’
‘What?’ said Madame la Maréchale. She was beginning to feel the faintest fondness for Philippa Crawford.
‘… mistress,’ said Philippa apologetically. ‘That’s why he wants to get