Part 29 (1/2)

Geetruyd took a sip from her gla.s.s. ”Yes. Through a mutual acquaintance some years ago. Isn't that so, Ludolf?”

”Indeed it is,” he replied blandly before turning to Aletta. ”How do you like living in Delft?”

”I've settled down very well. The Vermeers have been extremely kind to me, but it's high time I found somewhere else to work. I only went there on a temporary basis.”

Francesca smiled meaningfully across at her sister. ”I'm so glad you could be spared from nursery ch.o.r.es to be with us this evening.”

”Catharina was very willing that I should come. The two older girls are so efficient at helping put the younger ones to bed that I'm hardly needed, although I can manage Beatrix much better than anyone else when she's in a mischievous mood.” Aletta gave a fond little laugh on her thought of the child. ”But I must find some other employment soon.”

If Francesca had not been in the house already, Geetruyd would have offered Aletta board and a room and employed her to help Weintje with the domestic ch.o.r.es, but even if Master Vermeer was not going to heed Hendrick Visser's latest whim, she herself was going to obey his orders to the letter. To have a sister in the house might give Francesca cover for more freedom and that was not to be allowed.

Geetruyd noticed that Ludolf was talking to Francesca again. She did not wonder, for the young woman had a bloom on her these days that enhanced her remarkable looks and Ludolf had always been a womanizer. Not that he was making much impression, for Francesca gave him no special response and talked more to her and Aletta and Clara than to him. Yet there was something in the air between the two of them, a tension that was almost palpable. Geetruyd thought how easily men gave themselves away when they were strongly attracted to a woman. The frequent glances, the easy laughter and the deliberately casual air were so transparent to any other female watching them, particularly wives, and she herself had been more than a wife to Ludolf through all they had done together, which was why thinking of herself as his mistress grated on her. It would not be hard to believe that Ludolf had become bewitched by Francesca's unusual beauty. By the time the evening was over Geetruyd was convinced she was right.

The concert had been most enjoyable. Francesca and Aletta sat side by side with Clara and Geetruyd in the seats between them and Ludolf. He stayed at the Mechelin for almost a week, seeing Geetruyd on her own by day, which gave him plenty of chance to list those agents whom she was to direct to certain areas, and also to slake through her the desire that just seeing Francesca roused in him. Each evening, after dinner at the house, he took Geetruyd and Francesca to other concerts and twice to plays. Aletta did not attend again, reluctant to ask Catharina for further time off at the busiest hours of the day. Francesca would have liked the same reason to have stayed at home, but her excuses were overridden each time, for Geetruyd was determined not to give Ludolf any loophole in which to leave on his own from wherever they were and return to the house, where Francesca would have been alone.

”You're a fool,” Geetruyd said to him one day. ”Francesca isn't going to allow herself to be seduced by a man of your age.”

”My dear woman,” he had countered with laughter and mock astonishment, ”how could you suspect me of such a purpose?”

He knew in his own mind that Geetruyd would be less amiable and less amorous if she suspected that he intended more than the seduction of Francesca. It occurred to him that he was leading two women, twenty-four years between their ages, gradually along a certain path. Geetruyd to an acceptance of his not taking her as a second wife and Francesca to a point where she would come to accept him as her husband. He felt he had made some progress on both counts.

EVERYTHING SEEMED peaceful again to Francesca when she no longer had to see Ludolf every evening. Even without Neeltje's warning she would have come to the conclusion that it had been more he than her father who had tried to engineer her return to Amsterdam. She had never expected to be pleased with Geetruyd's chaperonage, but she had been grateful during his visit. The woman had never left them on their own.

Aletta did not move far when eventually she left the Vermeers' employ, her new position being next door in the home of the van Buytens. Her task was to give first lessons to the two youngest children before they went to school in the spring. What would happen then she did not know, but in the meantime she had a comfortable little attic room. Although she was now two floors higher than the bedchamber where across the square Constantijn de Veere slept, she still looked toward his lighted window every night before she went to bed. It was said on all sides that he was well out of danger and would live, but as yet he had not left his room.

She thought she knew why. Just as she could not face going into a studio, unable as yet to adjust to a life without painting, so it was for him. His was a far greater void to enter than hers, for he was without the limbs with which he had once skimmed the ice like a bird.

Chapter 16.

FROM HIS PILLOWS CONSTANTIJN LOOKED TOWARD THE BEDCHAMBER door as it opened and put aside the book he was reading. His father entered, a written note folded in his hand.

”Isabella is here,” Heer de Veere said. ”She and her parents arrived about half an hour ago. Your mother and I have been engaged in serious talking with them.”

”So Isabella has come at last,” Constantijn commented wryly. She had written to him at quite regular intervals, encouraging him affectionately to be well again and sending him news of mutual friends. There had been very many excuses for her not coming to see him, which ranged from the dangers of traveling in severe weather to the imminent demise of her great-grandmother.

”She wants you to read what she has written first.” Heer de Veere held out the letter. When no move was made to take it from him he laid it on the quilt in front of Constantijn, who, with a single sweep of his hand, knocked it to the floor.

”Surely you should read it, my son.”

Constantijn looked at his father's grave face framed within the gray periwig. ”Why? I know what it says. She no longer wishes to be my wife.”

Sadly Heer de Veere sat down on a bedside chair and rested a hand on each velvet-covered knee. ”Isabella can be held to the marriage contract. The law is with you there.”

”I'll marry no woman against her will.”

”A sum double the original dowry has been mentioned voluntarily as compensation.”

”I don't want a stiver of it. I set Isabella free. She is no longer bound in any way to me.”

”How long have you known that she had changed her mind?”

”When she did not come to see me as soon as was possible after the accident. I kept hoping that the loss of my legs would not change the relations.h.i.+p between us, but at the back of my mind I knew I was deceiving myself. The Great Blizzard gave Isabella an excellent excuse to avoid visiting me for a while longer and now when she has run out of reasons to stay away she has had to come. You must have guessed the truth of it, Father, even if Mother couldn't accept that anyone might reject her son, whatever the circ.u.mstances.”

Heer de Veere sighed and pa.s.sed the tips of his beringed fingers across his forehead. ”We knew on St. Nicholaes's Eve. Isabella's father wrote that under no circ.u.mstances could he allow his daughter to marry you now. You were too ill to be told then and afterward we continued to hope that he would revoke his decision.”

Constantijn smiled cynically. ”The poor old fellow was covering up for Isabella. It would have been her decision and that of her mother, but not his. He is a mild man, too kind for his own good with such a wife, and I'm sure he would have come to see me out of concern and goodwill if she and Isabella had not forbidden it. Yet he must have dug in his heels over Isabella giving me my ring back herself or else I doubt if she would have come at all.”

”I'm of the same opinion myself.”

Constantijn pushed aside the bedclothes. ”I want you to help me into the chair, Father. I'll not appear bedridden when Isabella is here. Find a s.h.i.+rt and all else I need. I'll have the coat and breeches of crimson velvet.”

While his father took the clothes from drawers, Constantijn pulled his nights.h.i.+rt over his head and then thrust it under the pillows out of sight. Normally his nurse fetched whatever he wanted before he sat in the chair, but now his father was at hand. He had become expert at dressing in bed and hauling on his own breeches. When he was ready he was given a lift across his father's back and then lowered into the nearby solid chair with its broad arms and leather upholstery in which his mother had sat for so many hours. He removed the wide belt that normally strapped him to it, for several times he had forgotten his handicap after reading or dozing and had fallen when he had automatically thought to stand.

”Put the belt away somewhere,” he said to his father. He could not endure the thought of Isabella seeing him strapped in. A rug was tucked around him and that would be the only visible sign to his visitor that he was not exactly as he had been at their last meeting.

”Tell Isabella to come up on her own, Father.”

”I will.”

Heer de Veere wondered as he went downstairs to the next floor if Constantijn hoped to win Isabella back to him if they could talk alone. She would be his first visitor, although he had been well enough for some time to have received visitors many times over. It was as if he had been waiting for her before he could start mending his life again.

Constantijn became consumed with impatience as he waited. He had been confined to this bedchamber for a long time, first through physical weakness and then through his stubborn refusal to be carried downstairs, which he thought of as being carted about like an infant.

He had borne the time of convalescence stoically, but now, waiting while Isabella put one foot in front of the other on her reluctant way up the flight, it seemed to him that she was taking all eternity.

His father had left the door ajar and for a split second before Isabella saw him he glimpsed dread in her eyes as she looked toward the bed, expecting to see him there. Had she supposed he might have been without covers over his severed limbs? Then she saw him and relief flooded her fine face with its clear pallor and sloe eyes, her lips pink and moist as oysters ready for serving.

”How well you look, Constantijn! Thinner, but that suits you.”

He held out his hands to her, but she pretended not to see them, seating herself in a chair his father had put ready beforehand and plucking nervously at the deep lace collar of her azure gown. She was holding something small within her left hand and he guessed what it was.

”You're not wearing the betrothal ring I gave you.” He was angered already that she had chosen not to come in with it on her finger, but was cupping it in her hand like a cheap fairing. If she was set on returning it to him she should have drawn it with dignity from her finger in a moment between them as private as when he had given it to her, no matter that the whole mood had been reversed.

”As I said in my letter-”

”I didn't read it. I want to hear from your own lips why you no longer want to marry me.” He watched her mercilessly, determined not to spare her.

She flushed uncomfortably. ”I discovered my feelings were not as strong as I had believed. People make mistakes about love sometimes.”

”Then it has nothing to do with my losing my legs?”

There was a start of guilt in her eyes before she shook her head too quickly. ”Of course not!”

”Have you met someone else?”

”No.”