Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [31]
Predictably, Jerott himself had consumed most of it. Returning after the installation of Philippa, Lymond saw that the flask was empty, and that Marthe also had gone, after lighting the heavy candelabra on the long sideboard. Outside, the engulfing darkness had risen almost to the sun-red gables of the opposite houses: the rue Mercière had quietened as the day’s commerce came to its end and the pigeons under the wooden eaves shook their broad grey wings and planed down into the darkness to nod among the split meal and horse-dung. Jerott Blyth, his dark head against the paned window said, ‘You still don’t drink.’
‘My excesses are other,’ Lymond said. He picked up his half-full glass. ‘But I don’t refuse wine like this. You have heard what the merchants’ loan to the King is to be? Six hundred thousand crowns, a hundred thousand of it without interest. On touche toujours sur le cheval qui tire. Or, whom God loves, his bitch brings forth pigs. Your reports were invaluable.’
‘Is Polvilliers coming?’ Jerott asked. Against the window, his face was hard to read, although the candlelight glimmered on the figured silk which clothed his finely built body; and on the powerful legs, and the rings on the strong, swordsman’s hands.
Lymond said, ‘Hell, Jerott: you gave me half the information yourself. It’s true enough. The prospects are as fair as they can be. The cantons have promised to help us raise eight thousand Ku’milchers, and I’m clearing the ground round them and putting two thousand Germans into that fortress as soon as I can. Mâcon will have three thousand Switzers. I have someone working on one of Polvilliers’s captains as well. He might desert. He was well treated once as a prisoner. You know the sort of thing that has to be looked after. It all requires money.’
‘I wondered what you were doing, that was all,’ Jerott said. He left the window, looked vaguely round for the wine and finding none, rang a bell and waited. ‘It’s hard to get well-trained servants. Marthe has to travel a good deal to buy stock. She’s as well known as Gaultier was. You can see. She makes more money than I do.’ The door opened, and he turned his head. ‘God’s bones, you took your time coming.… Oh.’
It was Marthe, with another flask of wine in her hands. She said, ‘We find it a little hard to keep servants. They don’t always work on the same time-adjustment as Jerott. I should have had a second flask ready: I’m sorry.’ She met Jerott’s dark eyes and said to Lymond, ‘I think you might sit down, even if no one has asked you. Have you been questioned yet on your triumphs in Russia? Jerott is longing to ask you.’
‘He has been talking about you, and your successes,’ Lymond said. ‘And thank you, but I have enough wine. How is Philippa progressing?’
The lint-blue gaze lingered on him, caressingly. Marthe placed the flask at Jerott’s side and subsided in a sigh of wide, harebell skirts on a foot-stool. ‘Forgive! and never will I aft trespass. She is half-way through: the acme of speed and efficiency. Why don’t you settle for marriage with her, my Francis? A little house well filled, a little land well tilled, a little wife well willed …?’
‘After Russia?’ he said with amusement.
The schooled face accepted everything, smiling. ‘Don’t you think Philippa worthy of you? Or is she finding you a little too experienced for her? What effected the transformation?’
‘She was trained at the English court,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘Mary Tudor on top of the ministrations of Güzel would alter anyone’s habits.’
‘I had forgotten,’ said Marthe. Whimsically, the disarming blue gaze scanned her step-brother. ‘Of course, she was taught by Güzel. Then you must certainly forget your divorce and do your duty by her, my gallant Francis. Think of the continuity!’
For a moment no one spoke. Then Lymond got to his feet. ‘I have a better idea. You marry her,’ he suggested.
Neither the words nor the sense had filtered to Jerott, who was staring from sister to brother, his black hair faintly dishevelled. He