Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [399]
She stood up rather suddenly and moved to open one of the doors which gave onto the balcony. A bright sword of light flashed into the room; Daspir flinched and blinked his eyes. Isabelle was holding the top of her negligée closed around her throat. The harsh midday light picked out the fine lines in her face. She must be ten years older than he, Daspir thought. He had reflected on this probability before, but now it occurred to him for the first time that she must be nearer to Maillart’s age than his own. Yet after all it was not Maillart she had expected. And she was beautiful, and she had guided him to pleasures he had never before imagined, much less known, and also she was rich, or would again be rich once this rebellion had been definitively put down. This latter point was not without significance—to others as well as himself, Daspir had lately begun to realize.
The negligée was familiar to him. It fastened with two dozen tiny buttons down the front, concealed beneath a fold of cloth, and he had spent delectable periods teasing them open one by one, parting the garment slowly from her skin, as she whispered and shivered beneath him . . . but when he looked at her now, he could sense little of the treasure beneath the cloth. Her movement was leaden, and she did not come anywhere near him as she returned to her solitary seat. It did not seem at all likely that she would soon take his hand and lead him to her inner chamber.
“Well, I have disturbed you,” he said. This time his tone was not so sour.
“It is no matter,” Isabelle repeated. She was gazing past him, into the fierce light beyond the balcony; the intensity of the light made her dark eyes seem pale. “I am restless, as I told you. Weary, but restless.” She tossed her head, but without vivacity. “It is the very definition of ennui.”
“I came to warn you,” Daspir said.
“Oh, did you?” Isabelle took her chin in one hand, curled a little into her chair, and looked at him with the expression of a faintly interested cat. The neck of the negligée opened when she released her hand, and an instant of real yearning left Daspir momentarily speechless. He fingered the bullet hole in his hat. At other times, in other moods, Isabelle had affected to admire this souvenir, but now it struck Daspir as almost shameful—to have escaped death so narrowly by mere dumb luck.
“It’s Paltre,” he finally said. “He means to defame you. He means . . . he suspects . . .” He felt the heat spreading over his cheeks. He ought to have chosen his words more precisely, but on his way here from Picolet his mind had gone blurry with the heat and the excitement of the idea that propelled him. Isabelle studied him with that same cat-like detachment. She had lowered her hand from her chin to the space between her breasts, where it must cover that distressing carving she’d strung there. Why would her first thought be to reach for that? As a sickly sweat broke out on his temples, Daspir considered for the first time that Paltre’s ugly hints might have some truth to them. If Isabelle had stretched her ice-pale skin against a black man, and let his darkness cover her . . .
“You needn’t say it.” Isabelle’s manner softened slightly. “Though it is good of you. I have been warned.”
Maillart, Daspir thought again. But for some reason he felt no stab of jealousy this time. He pushed the other image from his mind. It was all Paltre, his meanness and his spite.
“I thought to offer you my protection,” he said.
“Oh no,” said Isabelle. “There’s no solution in this dueling.” Again she seemed to harden slightly. “It isn’t that I would regret the loss of your Captain Paltre, but even if you did away with him, others of his kind would come.”
“It wasn’t that I meant to offer,” Daspir said. He got up, dropping his hat to the floor, and crossed toward her on the creaking boards, feeling at once stiff and a little dizzy—it was all so much more awkward than he had pictured it, when she was so unbending to him now. His joints popped as he sank to his knees and