Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [227]
But Sybilla had not told him yet.
Sybilla. Struck by a sudden thought, she looked at him. He was still watching her. ‘Go on,’ he said; as if she had been speaking, not thinking of him.
As she had thought of him so often, when he was absent. As, sleeping, she had dreamed of him making just such an avowal, only to wake to desolation and anger, that the cruel impossible should so have taunted her.
And still it was both cruel and impossible. What evidence was there to suggest otherwise? Think … Of what? The time in London, for instance, when he had upbraided her for meddling once again in the history of his origins? This matter is mine, and not yours or Kate’s, do you hear me?
That had been the voice of fear and of pride, not of love. Love did not make for the long absences, the abrupt avoidals, the lack of all physical contact, except where wine, or excitement, or gaiety made him forget … the Hall of the Revels at Blackfriars Monastery; the flight through the fog in Lyons; the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville and after …
The truth is …
That was where she had heard him quote those words, without realizing then what they were. The truth is that thy body is free of all shadow. To soul and brain from thy abode comes the perfume of Paradise …
He had spoken them to her, and broken off when he remembered. And after, when Marthe had tried to force him to embrace her, he had used, in his need, the only weapon which would both stop Marthe and send herself, quickly, out of danger.
Love did not require to act like that.
But hunger did. Hunger, decently denied, accounted for everything. Looking back, her eyes unsealed and open, she saw proved over and over what she should have observed long before but for her dazzlement. He wanted her. And as he had just said, had determined to spare her the net.
He did not know, but could be told, that to her, his reasons for abstaining were baseless. That nothing mattered but this: that the moon was here, in her fingers.
Through the jolting in her ribs and the agony in her throat Philippa said, ‘I am not crying, I would have you understand, because I am sad; but because I believe you. I also have a little … sermon of my own to deliver.’
His wine glass was empty. He set it down carefully, its foot between two slender fingers. A little colour had come to mark his cheekbones, but his eyes remained on the goblet. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You are not either Sybilla or Marthe; and you know better than they do. But I am Gavin in everything but name.… Indeed, I am his brother.’ He looked up.
‘How long did Marthe’s love last, I wonder? A few months; a year or two at the most. Perhaps it would take you a little longer to find out you wanted a different husband, nearer your own age and interests. But since you have loyalties, unlike Marthe, the conflict then would be unsupportable. It might do you great harm: it is certainly more than I could contemplate.… And there are other factors against me, that you know of.’
She would have spoken; and then felt, rather than saw, that he did not want her to.
He said, ‘I opened this door so that, understanding each other, we might shut it together. There are many men who feel about you as I do. When there is time and distance enough between us you will choose one, or be chosen, and have a life as good as Kate’s was with Gideon. Meanwhile … we have very few meetings left, and those all in public. It should not be too impossible. And at least you know … that it is not Kate; and that you do not sicken me.’
He paused to breathe, and to smile; and ended with the same persistent steadiness. ‘And we shall manage very well, as long as we are sensible. Restraint is the remedy. Restraint, and not exaggerated gestures of self-abnegation.’
‘And that, I see, disposes of my future,’ said Philippa. Her chest was heaving. ‘So let’s take yours, and see what we can do for it. The blinding headaches, for example?’
He said, still steadily, ‘Perhaps marriage to Catherine