Queen's Play - Dorothy Dunnett [206]
Oonagh, watching him through her mask scrutinize her body at leisure, continued with the sly and slightly malicious story she had embarked on. As Aunt Theresa had said, he could be quickly attracted. And Cormac, his eyes sparkling with the sheer joy of planning, had said, ‘But can she keep him so? There’s the challenge, my cold, black darling from the sea. My cold, black, ageless darling, you will need a charm, and another charm, and all the spells there are to bind that soft, oiled puppy kicking from his English nest. But—’ And, lifting a lazy finger, he had drawn it round her fine jaw, where the skin was tight drawn at the edge, and under the heavy eyes, where lack of sleep had stepped like a bird. ‘But for love of me, you will do it. It will be hard, but you will do it, my heart.’
So she had hidden the marks of his disapproval under her mask, and accepted a dance with the tenth Earl of Ormond, knowing that somewhere under this awning, in the warm, scented night, was the man who had come to France solely to challenge her. She was dancing, and for a moment she had forgotten that he might be there—among the dancers, in the spangled darkness of the gardens, in the mellow lights of the château and arcade. She did not even see him, as she and her partner moved up the line, until a voice of virgin honey spoke in her ear. Moved by the exigencies of the dance it died away, returned, shifted focus but remained always just audible through the music and talk.
Then she turned, against her training, and saw him.
He was not even masked, the man she last remembered as the drugged and bandaged prisoner at Blois. And of all the knowing eyes that looked at him, as on the ride to Angers he had foreseen, hers alone did not change. As she turned, the music stopped, the dance was stilled, and her partner, turning, came face to face with Francis Crawford, who continued speaking as if nothing had happened, his blue eyes lit with untrustworthy joy. ‘C’est Belaud, mon petit chat gris. C’est Belaud, la mort aux rats … Petit museau, petites dents.’
Butler, who had no French, said now in his high, cold English lisp, ‘Pardon me. You are a herald, sir?’
‘To the Right High and Excellent Princess, the Dowager of Scotland’s Grace. My name, my lord, is Crawford, and I seek your permission to lead this lady to my Queen.’
There was a little pause. The high voice was annoyed. ‘The Queen Dowager wishes to see Mistress O’Dwyer?’
‘If it please you—and her.’
‘Just now?’
‘As soon as I may lead her there.’
Discontentedly the Irishman who had spent most of his life a page in London said, ‘It is not an opportune moment, but naturally …’
‘Naturally,’ said Lymond with tranquillity, and offered the lady his arm.
She took it, not because she believed for a moment that the Queen Dowager wanted her, but because she could do nothing else. They moved off, the lovely woman and the fair-haired man at her side, leaving the Earl of Ormond irresolute in the middle of the floor, and Mistress Boyle starting out wildly from the distant arcade, where Margaret Lennox, blank-faced, sat and watched. Then the music struck up, the dancers linked hands, and fifty couples slowly weaving a pavane barred Aunt Theresa’s desperate way.
By the time she had stumbled through the crowded grass of the gardens, Lymond and her niece had both gone.
By whatever munificence of bribery, the unlit room to which he brought her had no guard at the door, nor had it any signs of occupation at all, although its windows gave on to the latticed ballroom below. It was a bedchamber, small, orderly and smelling of some heavy and unidentifiable scent.
Tomorrow, her arm would be bruised