Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [24]
“You seem to have waited a very long time to be told. Perhaps you may find yourself waiting as long again. Oh.”
Simon said, “I am afraid, if you sit over there, that you will continue to be stung. Let me recommend this side of the fire, where the smoke will blow past you. Why did you refuse his lordship? He had a fortune, and he would have died very quickly.”
“Would he?” said Katelina. She considered, and then rose with his jacket and, spreading it, dropped by the fire. He was right. The smoke was just enough to ward off the gnats, but it flowed in his direction, not hers. Already his fair skin was flecked with soot, changing its classical contours, and his eyes shone.
“Of course he would, with you as his wife, demoiselle. Although I am told he prided himself on his embraces. You didn’t experience them?”
He must know perfectly well that Ederic was within earshot. She said, “I cannot really remember. I find courting tedious.”
He had removed his hat. His hair and eyes gleamed in the firelight. The sky was lurid; the garden was dark. Her gallant Scotsman bowed his head, examining the erratic course of his fire. “Look,” he said. “So damp and so miserable. But at a touch” – he bent and blew – “the right touch, of course … Warmth. Light. Comfort.”
Katelina van Borselen, black from her brow to her bosom, looked back at him. And then round at him, because swiftly, he had slipped round beside her.
He said, “And sometimes, the right touch is not comfortable at all. But how can I find out whether my courting is tedious unless we are both black as well? My black hands here and here, and my black lips where you would like them. Katelina?”
His breath was scented. The silk on his arms and his body was warm. His lips, arrived at her mouth, tasted of wood ash.
His black lips were on hers, and his pink tongue was inside her pink mouth, disturbing her. Her chin, when she jerked it away, was wet and sticky. She wiped it with trembling fingers.
“Mother Mary,” she said. “They said you had the conduct of an oaf and the talents of a girl, to the shame of your father. Now I believe them.”
One hand remained caught at her breast. The other lay slack at her neck. He became perfectly still. He said, “They? Your father?”
She could not lie about her father. She twisted her shoulders, and his hands fell away. There was a space between them. His soiled face, intent on hers, glimmered in the firelight. Gnats, moths, flared, died, and dropped on their laps. She said, “Has no one told you that before?”
“Who?” he said. “Who said that?”
“No one you need be afraid of,” she said. “Except that I heard it. Except that it’s true.” Without him, her skin wavered between cold and hot, and she was still shivering.
Very slowly, Simon of Kilmirren stood up, and the smears on his face were not comical. He said, “You father does not think so. Do I begin to see why you refused his lordship, and are unmarried at nineteen? You are malformed?”
She stood also. “Yes,” she said. “If it means I have a dislike of fumbling attentions.”
“You invited me here. I see. So all you want is a convent?” The anger in his voice was so well controlled that it hardly carried. His voice itself was low enough to escape any listener.
“All I want is a gentleman,” said Katelina loudly.
And found herself, somewhat naturally, alone in the garden.
Chapter 4
DRAWN FROM THE comforts of the van Borselen kitchen, the servants of the noble Simon had to scramble to put on their jackets, collect the hound and attend, torch in hand, as their master, without taking leave of his host, set off at a smart pace for the market place and the Bridge of the Crane, beyond which lay his lodging. The dog, which he ignored, skipped and barked, excited