The Spring of the Ram - Dorothy Dunnett [70]
When he had found, installed at the widow’s right hand, a teenage apprentice she was planning to marry, his impulse had been to walk out immediately. He had not left. Mesmerised, he had discovered his first interpretation of the situation to be at fault. Nicholas was unlike anyone he had met. The widow, far from being an object of contempt, won his compassion. Inviting ridicule, she had persevered with this unsuitable marriage. Sooner than most people, Gregorio had begun to understand why.
Given his choice, he would have gone with Nicholas to the Levant; but that would not have been wise. The business needed what he could give it of skill and of industry. He remained to nurture it, not now with an eye to his own advancement, but for the demoiselle’s sake, and from interest, and from the hope of a stimulating future as Nicholas grew and developed as he thought he might. Of the dark side of Nicholas which Tobie had once discussed with him, he had seen nothing more. Nicholas had made his mistakes, and they had been deadly ones. With Tobie at his side, and Julius, he could surely wreak no more harm.
But now, his mind was on the woman whom Nicholas had married and left behind. Since the departure for Italy, Gregorio had watched Marian de Charetty try to create, after marriage, widowhood, marriage, a fourth identity in her adult life: one of the wife and manager who has opened the door and allowed a young husband to taste unfettered the sweets of the world.
The five months without Nicholas had been less difficult than many she must have experienced. She no longer had young children to care for as well as her business. The business itself, well managed by himself and others chosen by Nicholas, was thriving along the lines they had planned. The death of Felix her son was receding; the absence of Catherine her youngest daughter was in many ways a relief. She had time for leisure, and friends, and to find herself.
The mortal loss, it was apparent, had been that of Claes himself. Of Nicholas, the child she had found and fostered and given a place at her side, and eventually a marriage partnership to. Until, one day, the partnership was no longer one of business alone.
Then, in admiration and in pity, he had watched her bloom: discard her heavy widow’s headgear for dressings that flattered her dense, red-brown hair; and find jewels and gowns that did justice to her high colour and blue eyes and pretty, plump flesh.
She kept them after Nicholas had gone. Indeed, as the weeks went by, Gregorio thought that the robes, the chemises, the overgowns, the long sleeves, became lighter and younger still, as if waiting for Nicholas she used the time to become a more fitting bride for him. Or as if, left to a life so nearly that of the rigid widowhood she had left, she needed to affirm to herself and her circle how much things had changed.
They had both known, she and Nicholas, that the parting would be a long one. His reluctance to go had been genuine, or so Gregorio believed. The reasons behind the decision had been as complex as the reasons for the demoiselle’s in urging it upon him. Nominally, it had been to remove him from danger: from the Scottish lord and his father whose enmity he had incurred—had even, sometimes it seemed, set out to achieve. In fact, Gregorio thought, it was instead the act of a generous woman who had opened the cage door rather than deny the skies to a loved companion, but who longed, hour by hour, for the time when the companion would return.
Wiser in some ways than Marian de Charetty, Gregorio her lawyer did nothing to disturb what peace of mind she could find. In obeying her wish to have news of her Catherine in Brussels, he anticipated nothing more than an interview with