Checkmate - Dorothy Dunnett [33]
Philippa Somerville stood with her hands clasped and viewed, a little pale, the spectacle of Lymond losing his temper. She said, ‘Don’t be silly, it would be stupid to go back there now, unless you had to. That’s what I wondered. I wondered whether it might suit you instead to stay in Europe and marry someone important. Or whether it would do if you simply went on sleeping with people like Madame la Maréchale.’
‘Where the spirite is, there it is always sommer,’ said Francis Crawford semi-automatically. He was gazing at her. ‘Go on. There must be other options. Sum fra the bordell wald nocht byde Quhill that thai gatt the Spanyie Pockis?’
Philippa said patiently, ‘All I am trying to point out is that you may please yourself. With or without a divorce, I am quite capable of making my own arrangements.’
‘What? Who with?’ Jerott had jumped to his feet. ‘Damn you, Francis,’ he said.
Lymond paid no attention. He relinquished the edge of the table and moved gently forward until he stood over Philippa, his hands clasping one another behind his straight back. He said, ‘I hit you once, on the jaw. Do you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Philippa. She added, ‘You hit me another time, on the arm.’
‘Oh? I had forgotten that,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘Why?’
‘It happens all the time,’ Philippa said courteously. ‘I was where someone didn’t want me. If they place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left and ask me to give up my mission, I will not give it up until the truth prevails or I myself perish in the attempt. Are you going to strike me?’
‘I am considering it,’ said Lymond. ‘Jerott is now convinced I am corrupting you. Fortunately I know, if Jerott does not, when you are speaking from conviction and when you are being deliberately and spitefully obstreperous. You have never made any arrangements outside marriage and you have no intention of making any, even if I felt constrained to break my agreement and start back to Moscow tomorrow.’ He lifted his eyes to Jerott. ‘The Somervilles,’ he said tartly, ‘are adept at sheer, bloody, domineering interference.’
Jerott sat down. He said, ‘I don’t understand’; and then, after a moment, ‘Christ, Francis. Have you got into the Maréchale’s bedroom already?’
Lymond began to laugh. Slightly weak with relief, Philippa looked at Marthe and found Lymond’s sister already staring at her with an odd look, not entirely friendly, which she failed to interpret. Jerott, receiving no answer, seized the flask of wine, tipped some into all the glasses and pushing Lymond’s across the table said, irritably, ‘Well, come and sit down and tell us. Have you——?’
‘I heard you,’ said Lymond. He dropped into a chair, elbows on knees and tented his hands over his eyes, still laughing silently. After a while, he looked up and said, ‘You know how it is. Au travail, on fait ce qu’on peut, mais à table, on se force. If time allowed, I should be delighted to discuss my private life in every choice particular with all of you, but it really isn’t relevant.
‘As soon as I’m released from my obligations, I’m going back to Russia, whether there is a place there for me, or whether I have to make it. I should break my pledge and go now, if I didn’t know very well the kind of revenge this monarchy would take. Also, if I might make the point, I myself wish to be freed.’
‘To marry Güzel?’ Marthe said. ‘Or take a bed-fellow to Russia with you?’
Lymond smiled, and leaning back in his chair, placed his ringed hands together, master of himself, unpleasantly, once more. ‘There was a suggestion,’ he said, ‘that the Tsar could find a better, younger, wealthier match which would be worthy of me, Güzel would be sent to a nunnery.’
‘You said she was with Prince Vishnevetsky,’ said Marthe. She was not smiling.
He opened his fingers expressively. ‘So the Tsar’s suggestion may prove very timely. Would it trouble you if I excused myself from the inquisition and asked Philippa what she found in the documents?’
‘Nothing,’ said Philippa shortly. She sat down and stared at the soiled parquetry floor, her hair falling forward. ‘I recited