Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [162]
As if he had flattened it with a hot-iron, the pain disappeared. Katelina lifted her hand and, when he dropped his, caught it in her own and held it, despite him. The inn-yard lights shone on them both, and showed her his eyes flicker: to her father waiting on the steps, and back to her again. She kept his clasped hand in shadow. He was smiling. He said, “Oh Madonna, you must go in.” And within her, another ache had begun.
Her father was returning down the steps, his face impatient. Katelina said aloud, “Tomorrow morning, then. My maid will give you the packet. Father, you don’t mind? Claes has been kind enough to undertake a transaction for me.”
Her father also was smiling. “You’re a good lad,” he said. “Young Felix couldn’t be in better hands. I’m only sorry you can’t stay in Bruges all the time. But youth calls, eh? And ambition. You’ll do well. I’m sure of it.”
And then Felix, whom Nature rather than youth had called with inconvenient suddenness, reappeared to repeat his formal thanks, and take his leave, and begin, before he left the yard, to berate Claes for not having the forethought to reserve rooms in the same place. Claes, who usually answered back and got him into a good humour again, was less communicative than he should have been.
It was van Borselen’s fault. Servants should never be invited to table, or they thought they could do anything.
Katelina retired to her room. It was a lady’s privilege, to test young men, and tease them. If Claes didn’t come, the matter was closed. He was a servant, and a coward.
If he came tomorrow to the family room, and made her transaction in public, it told her something else about him. He was a prude.
If he came another way, trusting her maid, trusting her powers of bribery, trusting her discretion, he was too sure of her, and too sure of himself, and ungallant. And false, after all he had said.
He came before dawn. She was asleep. It was her maid who wakened her. By the time he opened the door and closed it behind him with the utmost quietness, she was sitting up, the sheet high and firm round her body. A candle, shielded from the door, had been lit. She had also loosened her hair from its night-pleat. She saw it reflected in his eyes, as if she had only summoned him as a mirror. Her hair, and the sheet, and her naked shoulders.
He stood by the door and said softly, “There is some trouble?” His voice was reassuring, but there was concern in his face of a kind she couldn’t mistake. Of course. That was why he had come.
Pride demanded that she should undeceive him and send him away. Beseeching flesh overwhelmed it. Her throat was dry. She said, “Yes, there is trouble.”
He left the door at once and came to the bed and knelt, so that their eyes were level. She could see the glint of stubble above the swell and curl of his lips and over the frame of his jaw. His eyes, even unsmiling, still had a crescent pad of laughter tailored to each lower lid and beyond, ready for when he felt happy again.
Her hand lay on the coverlet. She saw him begin to move his own, in simple concern, to cover it, and knew that she couldn’t prevent herself from shaking. He touched her, and she shuddered from head to foot.
Taught by one night, she could read his response in his softening face. She watched him try to master it. But when he began to draw away, she snatched at his hand. The sheet dropped to her hips. If he moved to the door he would have to pull her naked with him. And out into the street. Her inner body was springing apart, was beginning of its own accord to scale the peak she had wanted him to drive her towards. She cried, “Oh, comfort me!”, but thought, even as he let himself respond, that it was too late.
He was experienced. She was brought from the bed to the floor, and in seconds he was with her, and this time with insistent violence. It hammered her, already come to her pinnacle, and kept her there, agonised,