To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [106]
‘No. Not, anyway, while Mary blames her brother for everything. Although you wouldn’t be any worse off in Kilmarnock. Dean is a fine castle, and the children would like it. And M. de Fleury has his new keep nearby at Beltrees. The Countess likes him,’ said the girl thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know where he’s gone, but I shouldn’t be surprised if he solves all the Countess’s problems when he comes back.’
She left the hat and went off. An old head on young shoulders. A fast intellect running a body scarcely able to keep up with it, from what the Adorne physician, Dr Andreas, said. She had seen it in other children, poor things. It sometimes struck her to wonder whether, in M. de Fleury, she was not witnessing a survivor of the same combination. She had looked for it in the boy but found nothing but balanced good health and normality. Of course, she had had the upbringing of Jordan.
Nicholas returned to Edinburgh exactly when his wife calculated he would, and called on her almost immediately. Gelis heard the bodyguard’s challenge below, followed immediately by the familiar voice. She dismissed Mistress Clémence in the middle of what they had been arranging; the nurse curtseyed and bent, before leaving, to pick up and replace the object of their discussion, which had slipped to the floor. Then Nicholas was shown in. ‘Arrested at my own door!’
Their eyes met. The message was always something quite different; something which threatened to stifle her plans, as at Hesdin. She forced her five senses to work for her, not against her, and sat down gracefully, folding her hands. ‘Andro should have been on duty. Perhaps the others will now tell one another who you are. Or you could leave them a drawing. Your bruises have faded quite nicely.’ She could see the marks still, which in the dusk of the bedchamber she had taken for shadows. Such vanity. She added, ‘The coverlet was badly stained.’
‘I was sure you would hear all about it,’ he said. He leaned against the door, his head almost touching the beams of the ceiling, his thumbs in his belt. He had left his cloak below, and was not therefore leaving immediately.
‘The Countess heard, from her sister,’ Gelis said. ‘The Countess thinks it was thoughtful of you to spare me the ultimate embarrassment of the bath-stalls. She is anxious that, despite all, we should have a marriage as happy as hers. What a brute you have been to that girl. And to the Adornes.’
‘So you have already said. Save your sympathy. Le feu épure l’or. The good Baron Cortachy as usual will emerge glowing richly,’ Nicholas said.
‘And his wife Margriet?’ Gelis said. ‘In case you are interested, Betha Sinclair goes across every day to see if she can help. Phemie too.’
‘Phemie?’ Nicholas said. Phemie was Betha’s cousin, and shared her rooms in the Priory. In the midst of her disgust, it pleased Gelis to have tripped Nicholas into that question.
‘Margriet asked for her. They met in Bruges, at the christening of the Countess’s first child. Bel of Cuthilgurdy as well.’
This time she received only the flick of a dimple. ‘I know Bel isn’t here. The shrine of sanity has presumably found better things to do than follow our family carroccio. She has left us to the angel of distributive justice.’
‘I hope not,’ Gelis said. ‘Justice is not what I had in mind. Are you here for some reason, such as to apologise; or merely on your way to visit the Countess?’
‘Apologise for what? You are enjoying this,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am here to see the Countess, and the little broquette, and yourself. Govaerts and your steward have solved most of the problems, I gather, but there may be others to settle. Also, I shall divide my time now between this house and the other. There are rooms set aside, I am told.’
‘With a separate entrance,’ she said.
‘But within earshot,’ he said. ‘People have been known to conceive by the ear. The Virgin Mary. Two or three friends we both know. Did you read the paper I left you?’
‘I burned it,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said. He wore one of his clown’s faces, full of disappointment.