The Marriage Portrait(77)

“I did not mean to provoke your displeasure,” she says. “I was just—”

“This kind of recklessness is something I might have expected from an infant, not a duchess such as yourself. What kind of example is this to others? What if somebody outside had seen you, displaying yourself like that at the window?”

“I don’t think anyone—”

“Did your mother not teach you to conduct yourself with decency? And to safeguard your health?”

“She—”

“Did it cross your mind that you might already be with child? Did it? Anyone would think you do not wish to bear my heirs.”

Lucrezia is seized with a terrible and urgent desire to laugh, and has to lower her head so that he will not see the sudden grin on her face. Can he really believe that watching a storm will have an effect on pregnancy?

“I was merely—”

“You find this to be a source of amusement, I see.” His voice has reached an even lower pitch. He is not touching her now. “However can I trust that in future you will—”

Lucrezia can bear this no longer. What madness has possessed him? She does not deserve this: all she did was open a window to see the lightning. She lifts her head to tell him so. “Alfonso—”

“Do not,” he holds a finger aloft, closing his eyes, as if summoning all reserves of patience, “be foolish enough to interrupt me when I am speaking. Now or ever. Do you understand me?”

She bows her head again. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Her smile and the suppressed hilarity have vanished, as if they never existed; there is no danger now that she might laugh. She stands before her furious husband in the posture of a penitent. She pictures herself from the outside: a girl with her shoulders slumped, her head lowered, hands upturned. No one would think she was anything other than apologetic and remorseful, filled with regret for her misdemeanour. Only she knows that within, just under her chilled skin, something quite other is taking place: flames, vibrant and consoling, lick at her insides, a fire kindles, cracks and smoulders, throwing out smoke that infiltrates every corner of her, every fingernail, every inch of her limbs. Her hair surrounds her—all he can see of her is the top of her head. He must believe she is listening to his lecture, to his chiding, but no. She is stoking this conflagration, letting it blaze, encouraging it to sear every inside space. He will never know, will never reach this part of her, no matter how violently he grips her arm or seizes her wrists.

She wonders, however, over the roar of the flames, what will ensue. Will she be sent back to Florence, in disgrace, just as her father once predicted? Will she have to face her parents again, so soon after her departure? Better, perhaps, for her to contract a fever and die here than risk her father’s fury and her mother’s scathing disappointment.

Within the tent of her hair, she can see her feet, bare and wet, facing his, booted and polished. She can see the front panels of her zimarra, decorated with delicate threadwork, and her arms hanging by her sides.

She knows what she has to do but part of her baulks at it, wants to run from the room, down the stairs, across the courtyard, out of the villa, and into the forest, where she might conceal herself inside the undergrowth, shelter there with the porcupines and stone martens, with pine needles in her hair and moss matting her hem. She need never come out.

With a small sigh, she reaches out a cold hand and ventures to take one of his. This is what is required: this is the only exit from this scene. She cannot run to the forest, however much she would wish it. When he doesn’t resist, she raises his hand to her mouth, and kisses its hard bones, again and again.

“I’m so sorry.” She says these words like an actor reading lines. “Please forgive me. I’ll never do it again. I was so intrigued by the storm and the lightning. I wasn’t thinking. I cannot bear that you are angry with me.”

There is a pause. She cannot look at him, in case his face is still distorted by fury and incomprehension. She waits, still holding his hand to her face, sensible of the fire within retreating from her edges, dying down, the flames shrinking, and this gives her a feeling of such profound sorrow that actual tears—not conjured or affected ones—gather behind her eyes and spill down her cheeks.

At the touch of saltwater on the skin of his hand, his anger vanishes, like clouds cleaving apart to let in shafts of sun. His face of fury disappears, to be replaced by one of indulgence. His other hand rises up to cup her cheek. He wipes at her tears with the sides of his thumbs. It seems to her that he is, all of a sudden, himself once again, that for a moment he had been inexplicably replaced by a vengeful, irascible monster in human form, a devil in collar and cuffs. But now the beast is banished: Alfonso is back.

“Very well,” comes his voice, and it is once more his even, affectionate tone. He leans forward to kiss her brow, then her temple. “We shall speak no more of it. Do not distress yourself, dearest.”

He pulls her towards him and embraces her. Her face is crushed against his giubbone, his arms about her head. To disguise the strange shaking of her hands, she passes them around his waist and fastens them behind him. She breathes in and out, inhaling his scent; she finds she has to keep swallowing, as if she has eaten something she cannot digest; she wonders what will happen now.

But she doesn’t have to wonder for long. One of his hands is toying with her hair, letting its rippling length run through the palm. Then it removes itself. It drops lower, towards her waist. It pulls open the knot there and loosens the sash. It pushes aside the zimarra. It gestures towards Emilia.