Scales of Gold - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
‘And me,’ she said after a pause. ‘And be taken somewhere where you could pacify her. Was that true? Did you try to force Umar to take you to Ethiopia?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘She thought you did.’
‘I told her the truth. Umar offered. I didn’t tell her that Umar wouldn’t take a refusal.’
There was a silence. She said, ‘If it’s like that, then why is he marrying her?’
‘Because it isn’t like that,’ he said. ‘Or not the way you’re thinking. He asked me not to go. When I wouldn’t, he threatened to come as a means of changing my mind. Of course I shall stop him.’
‘So he doesn’t mean it,’ she said.
He stirred. ‘Oh, he means it,’ he said. ‘He is as interested to keep me here as you seem to be. What did you put in the ewer?’
She was so adept, her eyes didn’t change. She said, ‘A new kind of drink. As you called it.’
‘I enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘But since you couldn’t keep me asleep for a week, presumably you had another outcome in mind. This room? Are you going to disrobe?’
She said, ‘You are the one who is wet.’
He said, ‘I see,’ and crossed and sat on a cushion quite near her. The damp spread through the silk and reminded him of something. He smiled.
‘What?’ she said quickly.
‘I was thinking of Lagos. I thought you wanted to get rid of me and take home the gold?’
She folded her skirt primly and looked up. She was twenty years old, and above middle height, with the kind of firm, solemn face you saw in altar paintings, usually suspended above childish, blunt-fingered hands holding a psalter. There were hairline creases under her eyes, not sufficiently used to be called laughter lines. Because of too little nourishment and too much heat in the five months’ pilgrimage he had inflicted on her, her breasts were still bud-like and young, and hardly disturbed the cloth of her gown, although they were distinct in his memory: curved and white as a lily, without the blue veins that would come as they pouted and swelled. Her waist was a twist of gristle, as Katelina’s once had been, and she had longer legs than Katelina. The place between them, too, was fair and not dark.
He stood where he was and said, ‘No, I’m wrong. You do want me to go. But first you want me to stand here and feel this.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Her colour, he thought, had risen a little.
He said, ‘If I had been the worse for what you gave me, I might have done something about it. You would have screamed, I suppose.’
‘No,’ she said. It was obvious now that she had flushed. Her eyes were like aquamarines. She said, ‘Next day, you could not have borne it.’
‘And would have gone off to Ethiopia, agonising. Not a bad scheme.’ He moved forward, his head to one side, engaged in unfastening the clasp of his mantle. He dropped it. Beneath, he was still wearing his robe. The dampness of it on his skin was a luxury. Then he lowered himself to the cushions: close, but not quite close enough to touch her. He said, ‘What makes you think that, next day, I’d regret it?’
She smiled, but the hair-creases below each eye hardly deepened. The changes in her were so slight that, had he been further off, they would have been invisible: a low pulse near her throat; a quick breath. She said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’
He drew up his knees, and studied the toe of her slipper. He said, ‘If you didn’t want me, you wouldn’t be able to give me much pleasure. A virgin unmoved makes an unsatisfactory victim of lust. Didn’t Bel tell you?’
Now the colour in her face had pooled and heightened. She said, ‘Hardly. Although I have heard of failure. A poor experience might even have sent you off all the sooner. I’m glad all your other women were eager.’ She bit off the word.
Nicholas squeezed his eyes shut, and after a while, opened them. He said, ‘Oh, stop. Let us both stop. She’s dead. Gelis, Gelis, this is a terrible way to mourn her. If you want me, I’ll take you, whatever it does to me later. And of course I was lying: you could never be, or give, anything but delight. But you mustn’t offer yourself out of revenge.’
He could hear her breathing. She lifted a hand, as if unsure where to place it. He