Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [140]
She had forgotten it. Then she remembered and brought it forward and then, hesitating, placed it round his shoulders as she had probably once planned to do. Her hands lingered. They were trembling. He put up one of his own and drew her round and, still holding her fingers, seated her beside him, a space away on the trestle. The firelight struck through the stuff of her robe and told him something else. So, Claes, you need discipline for two. Let’s see how you master all this.
He said, “Demoiselle, the world is full of bridegrooms. Don’t be cruel to them because some of your suitors displease you.”
She said, “You don’t marry.”
That line of reasoning he didn’t propose to follow. He took another, speaking simply, to convince her. “Some day I shall. No one should expect too much, of course. But whoever my future wife is, she might regret having followed a whim.”
“I expect too much,” she said. “What I want doesn’t exist. So –”
So formality wouldn’t serve any longer, and what they were talking about would have to be made explicit. Which he regretted. Because she would end by loathing him. He gave her back her hand and, rising, stood, in his turn, bathed in firelight. “So you appoint me as surrogate. Thank you, but I’m not flattered,” said Claes. “And you’re wrong. There are many men who would make you happy.”
She, too, had dropped all pretence. “Show me how,” said Katelina van Borselen. “It’s my whim. It’s not your responsibility.”
He stood, looking down at her. “Of course it’s my responsibility. We’re of different stations. There might be consequences.”
“There will be no consequences,” she said. “Or I shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. Are you afraid of something else? Or am I less than you’re used to? In which case, can you recommend me to a friend?”
She spoke, as she had at Damme, with extreme harshness. There were tears on her lashes. He said, “Oh dear God,” and kneeling, took both her hands again. He said, “Look. What you would lose, you would lose for ever.”
“Would you boast about it?” she said. And then, “No. I’m sorry. I’m sure I know you better than that.”
“You don’t know me at all,” he said in despair. She smelt of some sort of fine scent. He tried to keep his hands steady and force his brain to work. Suddenly she pulled one hand out of his and laid it on his bare shoulder and then drew it down, sliding over the muscles of his bruised back, down and down.
Can you recommend me to a friend?
He said, “I shall show you what it is like. As gradually as I can, so that you can stop me before it goes further. After that, I’ll try to stop if you tell me to. If I don’t, you must use force. I don’t know how much you know about men.”
Her cheek was against his, and he could feel her smile briefly. He could feel her heart thudding. She spoke as if her throat hurt. “Gelis says that you’re the most passionate lover in Bruges, according to all the girls she’s been able to ask. And that you always tell them you can stop, but they never want you to.”
She was a child. And because two men had been cruel and her mother heartless, he was going to have to seduce her.
Or the other way about.
Or neither. He was going to lift her and take her up to her chamber and lay her, as her future lovers would do, on her bed. Then, as carefully as his abundant energy would let him, he meant to unclothe her, and caress her, and lead her as sweetly as might be through all the intricate overture of mutual love-making. Then – if she did not stop him – he meant to arrive with force where he was needed, so that all her life she would remember the new pleasure, and not the new pain.
Like most of his better plans it fell out as he wanted, except that he went to sleep afterwards, which he had not intended to do. But which, under the circumstances, was understandable.
He woke in bed, with a slumbering girl in his arms, and her long hair coiled over his body. Even in sleep, her face looked different; warm with colour, and peaceful and contented. There