Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [216]
‘Why are you going? France is a civilized country. The two wives of the comte de Sevigny—does my poor Earl doubt it?—are fond of one another.’
‘I know,’ said Danny Hislop. ‘I want to see them being fond of one another. I want to see everybody brazening it out. And then I want to see what your petit François does to you when the party’s over.’
*
For her part, Philippa Somerville watched without pleasure her husband’s older brother picking his way purposefully towards her while displaying, to Catherine d’Albon, several eminent noblemen and one or two mesmerized students surrounding her, all the overtures expected of a selfless and hard-working guest, together with evidence that she had never spent a happier evening in her life.
The moment when Piero Strozzi’s messenger had found her, released from duty, drinking wine and reading poetry and discussing theology in the little house belonging to the mistress of a young medical graduate named Jacques Grevin, had been in itself sufficiently macabre, denoting, it seemed, some royal death or disaster.
The message he actually brought—that Francis Crawford wished her presence at his reception—was in its way even more worrying.
Since there was, she was assured, no time to change, she hurried to the Hôtel d’Hercule as she was, in a high-necked gown of unadorned russet velvet, with her unbound hair lying brushed over her cloak. Her mind, occupied furiously with possibilities, first reached the conclusion that some kind of unthinkable climax had occurred between Sybilla and Francis, and that, unable to ask another’s help, he had had to send for her services. Or had Jerott, too fuddled to remember the niceties, said something of Marthe to Lord Culter?
Or worse than anything else … Had Leonard Bailey left the house in the rue de la Cerisaye and chosen tonight, of all nights, to make public the scandal surrounding the Crawfords?
Even when her escort pushed his way through the crowds to the brightly-lit house, and she heard the music and laughter drifting from the tall windows, she still thought it possible. It was the dénouement a vengeful man would choose … before an audience of Sybilla’s own countrymen. And with even the Queen, it seemed, there to hear it. Bailey could have made his threat. Lymond might be waiting helplessly, even now, for his arrival.
So she came quickly into the room, her furred cloak fallen back; and saw him see her at once, and with an apology to the Queen at his side, rise to walk swiftly towards her.
And from his manner, she knew instantly that there had been no disaster. St Michael killed his dragon, gold and green, on the spotless velvet of a man who was totally at home, and in command both of himself and of every circumstance of his surroundings. And in his eyes was no personal apprehension, but only a faint, well-masked concern whose reason was perfectly obvious.
He had not expected to see her.
Philippa did not even speak. Her eyes sought Piero Strozzi and found him grinning, his splendid shoulders raised in expansive expectation of forgiveness.
Following, speechlessly, all the play upon her face and, turning, on the Florentine’s, Lymond divined, still without words, what had happened.
Then he smiled, betraying no anger, and said, pleasantly, ‘I see that Piero has been at pains to make fools of us both. There is no need for embarrassment. Come and make your salutations to the Queen and Sybilla and then I shall bestow you on Catherine for companionship.… Take your cloak off. Your gown and your hair require no adornment.’
It was direct flattery to restore her shaken confidence; but none the less, she was grateful for it. And when Catherine, smiling, came to lead her to a low cushioned hassock beside her, she was grateful, too, that Francis had chosen a bride of sensibility as well as intelligence, and that she had made a friend of her.
Someone was singing.
The fruit of all the service that I serve
Despair doth reap, such hapless hap have I.
But though he have no power to make me swerve
Yet, by the fire, for cold I feel I die.