Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [301]
She awoke an hour or two later shivering, and recalled with a great drop of the heart where she was sleeping and why. It had become very cold. Craning over the edge of the bed, she saw on the far stretch of carpet the dark shape which must be the quilt; and then, straining, the gleam of Lymond’s hair in the faint moonlight streaming through the high window. She did not reahze that he was awake until his head turned, his eyes dark as a lynx in the night, and his voice said quietly, ‘What is it?’
All Kate’s maternal instincts and her own common sense rose and drowned Philippa’s qualms. She said, ‘I’m cold. And if I’m cold, you must be freezing. Put that quilt back on the bed and come and sleep on the other side. I don’t mind. And who’s to know?’
There was faint amusement in the low voice. ‘My dear girl, there isn’t a soul in the Seraglio who doesn’t believe I’m there anyway.’
Philippa had forgotten. She recovered, and said, ‘Well, put it back anyway. You can’t sleep without it, and neither can I. Heaven knows, the bed’s big enough.’
It was: a remarkable object running to cherubs, with a great deal of pendulous drapery. The quilt, homing back to its blankets, fell over her with a comforting sigh: laying it straight, Lymond’s hand for a second touched her. Philippa sat up. ‘You’re frozen!’
He had moved to the far side. I’m tired, that’s all; so I feel it. Look, you’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘After Míkál?’ said Philippa. ‘Anyway, it’s almost legitimate. We’re going to be joined in holy wedlock tomorrow.’ She rather liked the terrible phrase. ‘Did you enjoy your bachelor party?’
‘Archie and Jerott both did,’ he said drowsily. The mattress had hardly moved to his weight, but she knew he was there, lying still, with the furthest extent of the big bed between them. The cold must have kept him awake a long time, for once there, he slipped almost at once into sleep.
Silence. With warmth once more enfolding her, it was strange that she was content just at first to lie awake, thinking in peace, the moonlight slowly searching the bedchamber; the quilt, the crystal cherubs; her partner.
Frightening, that Fate should so turn that Francis Crawford of Lymond, the source of her earliest terror, the hated intruder in her mother’s calm house, should be here, alone and asleep in her bed. How many women, one wondered, had lain adoring that fair head at rest on the pillow? Why, everywhere he goes—down through the years came her own hoarse, childish voice—he has hundreds and hundreds of mistresses. And Kate’s voice, not quite as amused as it seemed, Do learn tolerance, infant. Then Philippa herself fell asleep.
She woke much later because of a movement of the bed and this time lay still, remembering at once where she was. Then the man on the other side of the bed moved again, blindly abrupt in his sleep, and she realized that in the restless slumber of opium he was not an easy bedfellow; hard on her, and harder still on himself. For a while, still half asleep, she drowsed and woke and drowsed again through the disturbance, sometimes aware of his voice. Once he said, clearly enough to be distinguished, ‘Tell me. I can’t understand. Why did you do it?’ And added, after a moment, in a queer voice, ‘Poor Eloise.’ Another time he said only, O mill. What hast thou ground …?’ Philippa knew that reference. Her impulse was to move to him as she would to Kuzúm, and put her hand on his arm, but she was afraid of both his pride and his temper.
But in the end it was he himself who, flinging over in some great gesture of escape and despair, touched her body. He recoiled like a spring; like someone who had received his bane-blow, torn half awake by the shock, his expressive body hard with revulsion. Shocked herself by his reaction, Philippa sat up, and in that second he became thoroughly awake; aware of the flurry of movement, and of her alarm. He said, ‘What have I done?’ And as, confused and distressed, she did not at once speak, he said wearily,