"Lavinia, dear," she said softly, "I want you to go back to the tandour, or into the blue drawing room, at least. Monsieur de Jolival might need you."
The old lady smiled understandingly.
"I believe I sent for everything he should want. But perhaps you would wish me to deliver a message to him?"
"Yes. I'd like you to ask him—quite privately—if he will come here before he goes to bed. Tell him to be sure to come, however late it is. I shall not go to bed until—"
"But that is very wrong of you, my lady. The doctor said you were to go to bed early and get plenty of sleep."
"That's easier said than done when I cannot sleep at all. Very well, come back and help me into bed but do not close the door or put the lights out. Then you may go to bed. There's no need for you to wait up for the vicomte. The gentlemen may stay talking for a long time."
"Should I give orders for a room to be made ready for Your Highness's friend?"
Donna Lavinia's voice had stiffened slightly with the words. Her loving, faithful heart had made her sense in the tall and all too attractive stranger a danger and a threat to the master who had always been so dear to her. And Marianne was suddenly ashamed of the situation brought about by Jason's untimely arrival. She was a woman bringing her lover into her husband's house—a husband from whom she had had nothing but kindness. In vain she told herself that she was paying a high price for it. The unpleasant feeling remained. The part she had elected to play was certainly no easy one.
The look she gave Lavinia was unconsciously apologetic.
"I don't really know. He may go away at once, but on the other hand he may be glad to spend the night here. At all events, he won't be staying more than a few hours."
The housekeeper nodded. She helped Marianne into her nightdress and put her into the big bed, arranging the pillows carefully at her back. Then she checked the lamps to make sure that oil and wicks were as they should be and went away, with a little curtsy, to carry out the task entrusted to her.
Marianne, left alone, lay still for a moment, savoring the scented warmth of the sheets and the soft light in the room. She tried to make her mind a blank, not to think at all, but it was more than she could manage. Her thoughts would keep returning to the tandour. She pictured the two men there: Jolival prowling around in the small space between the stove and the divans. Jason, sitting down, with his hands clasped between his knees in the way that she had seen him sit a hundred times, whenever he wanted to give someone his full attention. For all the coldness of her words to him, Marianne had never loved him more.
In an effort to distract her mind, she picked up at random one of the books that lay on her bedside table but, although she knew the text almost by heart, her brain seemed incapable of taking anything in beyond the title. The book was The Divine Comedy, one of her favorites, but it might have been written in Hittite characters for all her eyes could make of it. She finished by tossing it aside impatiently, closed her eyes—and was asleep before she knew it.
She woke to a sudden pain. She could not have been asleep for long because the level of the oil in her bedside lamp had hardly dropped at all. Everything about her was in complete silence. The darkened palace seemed to be asleep, muffled in the soft cocoon of its curtains, its cushions and its hangings. Yet it was certain that not everyone could be asleep, for Jolival had not come.
Marianne lay for a moment with her eyes wide open, listening to the beating of her own heart and observing the progress of the pain which had started in the lower part of her belly and spread slowly to invade her whole body. It was not a bad pain and already it was fading, but it was a warning, a foretaste perhaps of what was in store for her. Had the time come to lay down her burden at last?
She lay and wondered what she ought to do and decided to wait for another pain to come and confirm what might easily be a too-hasty assumption before sending for the doctor who, at this time of night, would certainly be fast asleep in his bed. She had just stretched out her hand to ring the bell for Donna Lavinia, to ask her what she thought, when there was a soft tap on the door. It opened without waiting for an answer, and Arcadius looked in.
"May I come in?"
"Yes, of course. I've been expecting you."
The pain had quite gone now. Marianne sat up in bed and settled herself among her pillows, refreshed by the smile on her friend's face, which bore no sign of the anger which had been there earlier. In the shadows of the big bed, Marianne's eyes were bright with the anticipation of happiness.
"Jason? Where is he?"
"At this moment I should think he must be getting into bed. He can do with some sleep. So can I, in fact, because along with the coffee Donna Lavinia sent in a bottle of first-rate brandy. I don't like to think what she'd say if she knew we'd finished it."
Marianne's jaw dropped. It was too much! While she had been picturing them engaged in serious, even tragic conference, there the two of them had been quite simply getting drunk together! There was no mistaking Jolival's beaming countenance, the flush mantling his nose and the glazed look in his eyes. He was in what was commonly called a state of mild inebriation and Marianne wondered whether this temporary euphoria was, after all, a cause for great rejoicing.
"You still have not told me where he is," she said severely. "Although I am glad to see that you appear to have passed an agreeable evening."
"Most agreeable. We are in perfect agreement. But you were asking me where our friend is now? The answer is, he's in the room next to mine."
"He has consented to spend the night here? In Prince Sant'Anna's house?"
"He had no reason to refuse. Besides, who said anything about Prince Sant'Anna? This house belongs to Turhan Bey. In other words, the man whom Beaufort knew as Caleb."
"You were supposed to tell him everything," Marianne burst out. "Why didn't you say—"
"That, like the Deity, these were three persons in one? No, my child. You see—" Jolival dropped the bantering tone he had used so far and became oddly serious. "It did not seem to me that I had the right to reveal a secret which is not my own—or yours either, if it comes to that. If the prince wants Jason Beaufort to know that the man he treated as a slave and almost allowed to die under the lash was your husband, he will say so. But for my own part, I think that, considering Jason's attitude to colored people, it is best that he should continue in ignorance. Since you mean to sever your connection with the prince and resume your own life after the child is born, there is no reason why Beaufort should not go on believing he is dead."
During this speech, Marianne's initial protest died away as she had time to think. Jolival's wisdom, even when drawn from a bottle, could be disconcerting, but it was sound. And very often, against all the odds, he had been right.
"But in that case, how did you manage to explain the fact that I was living in Caleb's house—and that I had suffered myself to remain in—in my present condition?"
Jolival, who seemed to be having some difficulty retaining his balance on his feet, sat down cautiously on the very edge of the bed and, taking out his handkerchief, began to mop his brow with it. He was looking extremely warm and smelled strongly of tobacco, but for once Marianne did not even notice it.
"Come now," she said again. "How did you explain that?"
"Very easily—and without straying very far from the truth. You decided to have the child which was conceived in such frightful circumstances—and I may say it is well for Signor Damiani that he has already departed this life because our friend's one idea at this moment would be to tear him limb from limb. Where was I? Oh, yes. You kept the child because it was no longer possible to be rid of it without putting your life at risk. Beaufort can scarcely object to that, especially since his moral code is so much stricter than yours—than ours, I mean."