The Unicorn Hunt - Dorothy Dunnett [105]
She had known that he would, and had invented this move to prevent it.
She had lodged the message with Godscalc, relying on Godscalc’s understanding of Nicholas. Godscalc would never wittingly place her in danger.
And wittingly of course, neither he would.
Chapter 15
THE NUNS LIKED Mistress Margot, who was well mannered and handsome and kind, and had been thankful when she left her post with the lawyer in Bruges and came to help them with their difficult Lady.
Newly arrived, sore from her altercation with Gregorio, Margot deduced that the sisters had become a little flustered at first when Gelis van Borselen rode up with her servants and occupied all their guest-quarters, despite the extraordinary sum of money she deposited with them.
They felt a genuine sorrow, although they did not express it, that a lady so well born and wealthy should feel it incumbent to hide from her loved ones. When they learned that, at last, her dear husband was to be permitted to visit, they wept tears of joy.
Margot wept as well: tears of exhaustion and fear, which she kept to herself. She couldn’t guess what was going to happen, for this time she knew Gregorio’s instinct to be wrong. That is, Gregorio, whom she loved, was a lawyer and a temperate man, who thought other men were as he was, and who knew only one woman, herself.
She and Gregorio had been separated many times since first, long ago, they became lovers, but never by her will like this, and never as painfully. And if, because of the outcome, he did not want to take her back at the end, she had no hold over him. They were not man and wife.
Late one afternoon, the courier came to the convent to tell Dame Gelis the Ghost was in Sluys with her husband de Fleury on board. It meant, Margot comprehended, that Nicholas would be in his Bruges house by now. It meant that, if the priest thought it safe, Nicholas would have learned of his wife’s invitation. It meant that tomorrow afternoon he could be here.
That night, Margot did not try to sleep. Lying alone in the darkness of her small chamber, she watched the line of gold under the door that told her Gelis, too, was waiting, awake.
They had parted, Nicholas de Fleury and this girl, on their wedding night. On that night, caught by chance within hearing, Gregorio had heard Nicholas receive such a welcome as, surely, no man ever received from his bride. ‘Look at me. It’s Simon’s child, Nicholas. What shall I do with it? Kill it? Rear it? Tell Simon about it? Or let the world think it’s yours?’
Nicholas had left the room then without answering. But, ignoring advice, he had repudiated neither his bride nor her child. He had merely departed on business, leaving her as his acknowledged wife, with half his fortune still settled upon her. And he had informed her that he intended the child, when born, to be treated as his.
Gregorio did not understand, but Margot did. Nicholas had acted with the cleverness you would expect of him. He had drawn the venom from the girl’s declaration by forcing it underground. And at the cost of inhuman restraint, he had denied her the satisfaction for which she must have ached.
To offer to accept another man’s child as his own seemed an act worthy of the man who, to all appearances, had emerged with some nobility from the ordeal of Africa. But it had not always been so. Long ago, Nicholas had responded very differently, it was said, to men or women who crossed him. Since then, he had directed his energies towards success in business, employing a talent for strategy to force his will on men of far higher birth. There was ruthlessness there, however rarely he let it be seen.
Gregorio could not deny it, but was disarmed, Margot well knew, by the high spirits, the imagination, the courage which had always endeared Nicholas to those in his own chosen circle. Once, Margot herself had had no doubts either. Until this occurred.
Why should a girl – intelligent, capable, united in unorthodox passion with such a man and accepting his offer of marriage – why should Gelis hold Nicholas de Fleury in such hatred