To Lie with Lions by Dorothy Dunnett Page B

small, spry and ever willing to help, with her hazel eyes and brown hair and air of perpetual eagerness. Only Jan Adorne had found her tiresome, but Jan Adorne was a plodding student who had over-celebrated at Venice and disliked everyone who knew about it.
    Katelijne considered. She ejected some pips. ‘I think that some ladies like freedom, and resent it if a child comes too soon.’
    ‘So she didn’t want the child? She certainly left it a lot.’
    Katelijne shook her head. ‘I think she fell in love with it, when she couldn’t have M. de Fleury.’
    Tilde laughed. ‘Well, it’s a theory. So what does Nicholas think of his wife? He chose her.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘But in Alexandria, he was told she was dead, and it was as if –’ She stopped. She was frowning.
    ‘As if?’ prompted Tilde.
    Kathi turned. ‘He loved your mother. What did he do when she died?’
    Tilde felt herself flush, and then recollected it was Kathi she was talking to, who censured nobody, and helped whom she could. Tilde said, ‘He tried to come home to us, but we wouldn’t have him. We were stupid. He went off on his own for a long time, until the Venetians caught him and took him to Cyprus. With Primaflora.’ She spoke without thinking. In Cyprus and Rhodes, the lady Primaflora, now dead, had briefly been married to Nicholas. She had been a beauty. She had been a professional courtesan.
    ‘That was when and how he met Primaflora?’ Kathi had stopped eating, her eyes unfocused again.
    It occurred to Tilde, for the first time, that indeed, that was how the affair with Primaflora had begun. She said tentatively, ‘And so … It must have been terrible. Was it terrible? What did he do when he thought Gelis had died and left him as well?’ She drew a shocked breath. ‘Was he glad ?’
    The speckled gaze, refocused, was minatory. ‘Couldn’t stop laughing,’ said Kathi. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t really think he’d go through all that with her in Africa and then marry her, without feeling something when he heard she was dead. The point is, what? She wasn’t your mother, so of course it was different.’
    Tilde said nothing. The girl said after a bit, ‘He seemed to be lost. He cares about something, but Dr Tobias isn’t sure either what it is. It may just be that his plan had been spoiled. His future may have depended on this intricate duel with Gelis, and he had nothing to put in its place.’
    ‘Not the child?’ Tilde said. ‘After all the efforts to find it?’ She was not eating now. In passing encounters, in exotic places, this little girl had seen more of Nicholas as he was now than anyone else. Tilde thought the girl’s view over-simple, but it had a clarity about it which she trusted. Adorne possessed it as well: this gentle, unsentimental appraisal which did not stop him from correcting and chastising those whom he perceived to err.
    ‘He would have thought of that eventually, I expect,’ Kathi said. ‘As it is, Margot believes that the nurses have been with the boy all along, so the child hasn’t suffered. And if M. de Fleury is planning to have his wife join the baby again, it sounds as if he means a reconciliation. But he may not make it easy, and Gelis will have to find somewhere private to wait where she can be sure of getting his message. It will be very hard for her, because she’s been stupid. As you say, people are.’
    Tilde was silent. ‘And after they are together?’ she said. ‘Where will Nicholas go?’
    ‘It depends what he wants,’ Kathi said. ‘Not a hot country for the sake of the child – and he has walked away from his business there anyway. To Bruges or Venice or Florence if he wants to humiliate Gelis. If he wants to appear, briefly or permanently, like a family, then to somewhere more distant, like Scotland. He can do what he likes there. And he had planned to go back.’
    Tilde found she had shivered. She said, ‘But he couldn’t. Simon and his