3 A Surfeit of Guns: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (24 page)

Carey was talking to her all the time as he danced and whatever he was saying seemed to please her, because she laughed and tapped him playfully with her fan. When the dance ended, she allowed him to escort her to a bench at the side of the room. Carey looked around impatiently for Hutchin, but his expression softened when he saw the boy on a stool by the door, fast asleep. He beckoned Dodd over.

“Sergeant,” he said quietly. “Will you do me the favour of fetching a plate of sweetmeats for Signora Bonnetti, and some wine?”

For a moment Dodd bridled at being treated like a servant again, but then he thought that if he was making up to a pretty woman like the Signora, he might not want to leave her alone for someone else to find either.

Coming back with a sugar plate piled with suckets and a goblet of wine, he gave it to Carey and then stood nearby, trying to eavesdrop on how you talked to a court-woman.

He grew no wiser because Carey was speaking French at a great rate and in a caressing tone of voice. The Signora answered him with little inclinations of her head and popped suckets in her mouth greedily. Smiling she pulled Carey’s head down near hers and fed him a sweetmeat and they both laughed in a way which was instantly comprehensible in any language in the world.

How does he do it, Dodd wondered enviously; how the hell does he draw the womenfolk like that?

He looked about the hall for the Widdringtons and found them, Elizabeth sitting wearily on one of the benches although she had not danced, and Sir Henry standing, rocking on his toes with his hands behind his back. Carey’s performance with the Italian woman was easy for him to see, although it didn’t seem to be pleasing him. Sir Henry bent down to Elizabeth and spoke to her, nodded in their direction. Elizabeth looked briefly, shut her eyes and said nothing. Sir Henry’s fist bunched, but his son came back from dancing a pavane and sat beside Elizabeth. He had the painfully careful movements of a boy who had broken a lot of furniture before he got used to his size, and it was touching how protectively he sat between his stepmother and his father. When he saw what Carey was up to, his spotted features frowned heavily.

Carey had more than one audience for his courtship of Signora Bonnetti. The King himself seemed interested in it, which surprised Dodd, for between kissing Lord Spynie on the cheek and applauding the dancers, occasional regal glances would come in Carey’s direction and then sweep away again. If Carey noticed all the attention, he didn’t show it.

I wonder where the Signora’s husband is, Dodd thought, but he saw nobody else among all the courtiers in Maxwell’s hall who seemed foreign.

As it happened, Carey was asking the Signora precisely that, to be rewarded by an arch look from under the crimson feathers on her face and a wrinkling of her nose.

“He has a flux,” explained Signora Bonnetti in her lilting Italianate French. “He was much too ill to come feasting for he cannot be more than five steps away from a close stool.”

“Poor gentleman,” said Carey with fake concern. “But how generous to allow his wife to come dancing and gladden this northern fastness with the fire of her beauty.”

Signora Bonnetti giggled. “He has a woman to attend him,” she said. “And I am the worst of nurses.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Signora Bonnetti tapped Carey’s arm with her fan. “But I am, sir. I am angry and furious with anyone who is sick.”

“And when you are sick?”

“I am never sick, save when with child. And then I am angry and furious with myself. To be sick is to be dull and squalid, isn’t it? And full of sorrow and self-pity; oh, Lord God, the pain, oh, my dear, my guts, oh God, fetch the pot…arrgh.”

Carey laughed. “And I cannot believe you are a mother?”

“But I am, and two of them still live, thank the Virgin. They are at home with my family in my beautiful Rome.”

“Such devotion to follow your husband to the cold and barbaric north, Signora.”

“Sir, you are the first Scot I have met who admits to being a barbarian.”

“I am not a Scot, Signora; I am English and we are a little less barbaric because more southerly.”

“English. Well! I would never have guessed. Why are you here?”

Carey told her and watched a fleeting instant of calculation cross her face under the feathers. Her manner instantly changed from a pleasurable flirtation into something much more focused and intent. He smiled in response, a smile which was an invitation to conspiracy, and she smiled back, slowly, the feathers nodding and tapping her smooth pale cheeks, a light dusting of glitter in the valley between her breasts catching the torchlight in the roofbeams.

She tapped him with her jewelled fan again. “Shall we dance again, Monsieur le Deputé?” she said, and he bowed and led her into the rows of lords and ladies waiting for the first chord in the music.

To dance with the Signora was a delight: she was small and her feet in their crimson silk slippers moved like thistledown. Briefly, like a man feeling a sore tooth with his tongue, Carey wished he could dance with Elizabeth Widdrington instead, but that was utterly impossible with her jealous bastard of a husband standing guard over her. He had never before known the obsession with a woman that he felt for Elizabeth and he disliked it thoroughly. He felt perpetually confused and at war with himself, wanting to take the simplest route, march over to where she sat, pale, composed and frankly dowdy in her high-necked velvet gown, punch her loathsome consort in the nose and sweep her away with him. What he would do with her then made the material of all the sleeping and waking dreams that pestered him and frayed his temper. But none of it was possible. Elizabeth herself, with her stern sense of propriety, could and would prevent him. He could hardly see her without creating elaborate internal flights of fancy in which he tore off her clothes and took her gasping against a wall, and yet he also knew that he could not bear to hurt her and would stop if she so much as frowned. It was all too complicated for him.

If I press my suit to the Italian lady, thought the calculating courtier within him, it may ease Sir Henry’s suspicions. It might even convince the King I am not what he thinks me and perhaps…perhaps, who knows?—Signora Bonnetti might not be quite so staunch in defence of her honour?

The music of the pavane stopped and he realised he had gone through all its figures without even registering them. Signora Bonnetti curtseyed low to him and he bowed and they waited for the next dance.

Another volta, and Carey found himself grinning impudently at her. There were ways and ways to find out. He pranced and spun through the opening jig, and held her hand lightly while she responded with the women’s footwork. With his index finger he gently stroked the hollow of her palm as she danced. She laughed and spun, her skirts billowing, came neatly into his arms and in the beat and a half when he was placing his hands to lift, he made his move. In the volta the man was supposed to grip the bottom edges of the woman’s stays, front and back, to lift and spin her as she leaped. His hands disguised by crimson satin, Carey put them in two quite different places, causing the Signora to gasp and flush. He lifted her anyway as she jumped, and she spun neatly and came back to him again. He was braced for her to slap him, or stand on his toe or even accidentally on purpose dig her fan handle into his privates—all of them counter-moves he had known court-ladies make before. She didn’t, only leaned against him as he caught her, and whispered, “Gently, my dear, I am not made of marble.”

“Nor am I,” he whispered back, as he placed his hands exactly where they had been before. “See what you do to me.”

She jumped as he lifted, spun, jumped again and laughed when he steadied her in an equally scandalous manner.

The dance separated them into their own figures and Carey concentrated on lifting the solidly built lady who came into his arms as the partners changed without rupturing himself or hurting his back. His whole body was alive with the dance and the music, he felt like thistledown himself and his feet flung themselves through the complicated steps without any need for his conscious direction. He could look across the expanse of whirling courtiers and find Signora Bonnetti watching him. Perhaps? Please God, he prayed profanely, thinking about Catholic countries where the possibilities were so pleasingly endless and forgiveable.

At last the dance brought her back, whirling breathlessly into his arms and once again he held her delectably tight arse instead of her stays and flipped her up. Although he believed he had done it properly, he thought he must have mistaken the balance. She came down heavily and seemed to twist her ankle. Immediately contrite he held her up and as the measure finished, he supported her to the bench at the side of the hall.

“Signora, I am sorry,” he said. “How embarrassing for you to have such a clumsy partner…”

“Yes,” she said, not looking at all annoyed with him. “My ankle is sore and I am very hot indeed. Please take me into the garden to cool myself.”

He held his arm out to her and she wove her hand into the crook of the elbow and squeezed eloquently. “Monsieur le Deputé, you are very gallant.”

“Signora Bonnetti, you are very beautiful, but too formal. Will you not call me Robin, as the Queen of England does?”

Another squeeze and the brush of her hip against his told him she was pleased.

“Why then, Robin, you may call me Emilia as my husband does—though he is no longer so gallant, alas.”

Carey bowed his head. “How can I help paying court to Emilia, the fairest jewel in Scotland?” Hackneyed, he knew; whatever had happened to his tongue?

She tossed her head and limped assiduously as he led her out towards the bowling alley, past the crowd of lords and ladies predating on the delicacies of the banquet, and through the door into the garden, where their feet crunched on gravel paths between herb beds and her ankle seemed much better already. She led him through hedges into a rose garden, from the scent, and sat them both down on a stone bench.

“For the crime of hurting my ankle with your wickedness,” said Emilia Bonnetti in a whisper, “you must now forfeit a kiss.” She proffered her cheek and shut her eyes.

Just for a moment, uncharacteristically, Carey hesitated. Somewhere inside him came a plaintive cry, protesting that this was the wrong woman, that what he needed to do was go back into the hall, kill Sir Henry Widdrington and bring Elizabeth out to the rose garden instead…And then the unregenerate old Adam arose and pointed out that wrong or not, this was
a
woman and an extremely juicy one at that and…God knew, he needed a woman.

She was still holding up her cheek to be kissed. He bent towards her, touched her very gently with his lips below the feather fringe of her mask, then took her shoulders and turned her so that her mouth came under his. Then he kissed her properly.

After that there was another, more ancient dance than the volta, only marginally complicated by her farthingale and his padded hose, which ended inevitably with her sitting astride his lap giggling as he bucked and gasped into the white-hot little death and bit her quite carefully on her creamy shoulder, just below the line of her gown.

She squeaked, nibbled his ear and lifted the hand that was under his doublet and shirt to tweak his nipple. They stayed like that for a while.

“We should go back,” she whispered, and sighed.

“Just a minute, Emilia my heart,” he temporised, happier than he had been in months, sliding his hands under her thighs again. God, they were beautiful to feel; why did women hide their beautiful plump smooth arses under acres of silk and linen, it was a miraculous treasure that they kept there and he wanted more…

She squeaked again, differently, and laughed. “Mon Dieu,” she said flatteringly. “I had heard Englishmen were cold-hearted.”

“Not me,” he managed to pant, his heart building up to a gallop once more, Jesus God, it had been so long…“Kiss me.”

“Tut tut. At least it’s true that Englishmen are greedy…” She was thoughtful, or her top half was, while her rump rocked gently to and fro and made him feel he was going to burst again.

“I admit it,” he muttered. “I admit it, I’m greedy, only kiss me again.”

She slid her arms out of the front of his doublet and held him round the neck so he could do it more thoroughly. She twisted her fingers in his hair and grasped in a way that would normally have hurt him while he directed her honeypot and let himself quite slowly drown in it. This time both of them cried out dangerously in the empty rose garden, and Carey crushed her against his chest as her faced relaxed like a baby’s.

The night had darkened while they were dancing, and now the first few spots of rain began to fall. Emilia Bonnetti gasped with dismay as the specks of cold touched her neck and shoulders and lifted her head.

“Blessed Virgin, my gown will be ruined,” she cried in Italian, hopping off him to his own near ruin and rummaging under the silks to rearrange her underskirts. Carey thought wistfully about taking a nap, but he didn’t want his black velvet to spot and run either. He stood with a few creaks and winces as the hardness of the bench told on him at last, and made himself decent. She used the edge of a petticoat to wipe her facepaint off his face, an intimacy that made them both smile, and they trotted down the path back to the bowling alley and the torches.

A few steps from the door, Emilia began limping again.