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 relationship 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 shirt 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 nightshirt 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."

"Then there are no obstacles in our path after all. We've been apart too long, Isabella. That is all there is to it." His voice softened deliberately to the tender note that in the past had never failed to have an effect on her. If only she was nearer he could touch her, for he knew her intimately and how to arouse her to fiery desire under his caresses. "Remember the last time we made love when we escaped to the stairs during your parents' dreary party!"

"For mercy's sake keep your voice down!" She half rose from her chair in panic as she looked toward the door that she had left open. "Mother may be on her way up here! I've only been allowed a few minutes to be on my own with you!"

"Or that time in the rose garden?" he urged, not mocking now, for on a sudden renewal of hope he saw that he was getting through to her after all.

There was anguish in her eyes. "Those days are gone. I did love you, Constantijn. I suppose I still do."

"Then give me my ring that you're holding and let me put it back on your finger."

She opened her hand and looked down at the ring lying in her palm, a large emerald set in pearls and winking with all the colors of the sea. "No," she said, her voice thick with regret.

"Why not? Nothing has really changed."

"But it has." She raised her sloe eyes swimming with tears, but all unconsciously her lips twisted with aversion. "I could never marry half a man."

For a brain-splitting second he thought how easy it would be to slip from the ultimate pitch of rage into murder. Beyond speech, he held out his hand for the ring. She left the chair to give it to him and was within his reach at last. He seized her by the wrist, which sent the ring flying, and brought her falling with such force against him that the chair rocked as if it might have tipped them both backward. Before she could get away he drove his fingers into her hair to hold her head as he kissed her violently. Lost in their pa.s.sionate struggle, neither heard her mother enter the room with a shriek of outrage.

The woman flew forward and struck him about the head. It was when she wrenched her daughter free that he was jerked forward and toppled, unable to save himself. He fell face downward to the floor, landing with a heavy thud, his arms sprawled awkwardly. Isabella gave a piercing scream and would instinctively have knelt to him, only to hesitate when she realized the covering rug now lay tangled beneath him. As she saw him without his legs, which previously had given him such a fine height that she had had to stand on tiptoe for his kisses, she began to scream again hysterically. Her mother, who had a fierce hold on her arm, drove her forward out of the room. He heard the piercing sounds continue with increasing force as she was bundled down the stairs. Then for the first time since the accident, and for as long as he could remember, he wept where he lay.

That night when Aletta looked out of her window across the square before closing the curtains, her heart seemed to stop. There was no light in Constantijn's window. The whole house was in darkness. In the morning her fears were confirmed. He had left Delft and, as yet, n.o.body knew where he had gone.

SYBYLLA CONTINUED TO suppose that her only chance of finding a rich husband was at the Korvers' house, but she did not visit as often as in the past, because the girls were all wed and away from home. Yet she never forgot that her aunt Janetje had met her husband there, which sustained hopes in that direction. She no longer expected any invitation to be forthcoming from Ludolf when his period of mourning should come to an end and she blamed her father for that. Hendrick was scarcely civil when Ludolf had taken the trouble to call and say he had seen Francesca in Delft. There was always a show of bad temper if Hendrick had to see his patron on business.

"Why do you have to scowl whenever there's anything to do with Ludolf?" she had asked him once. "He buys your paintings and yet you make it so obvious that you don't like him."

"I would wish my work to hang in any house but his," Hendrick had growled in reply.

"But why? You should be exceptionally considerate toward him since he is in mourning."

"Huh!" Hendrick had given a hollow, derisive laugh before stamping off into the studio and slamming the door behind him.

Aunt Janetje had sent each of her nieces a gold bracelet for the last St. Nicholaes's Day, the designs varying. They had come late, not reaching Amsterdam until well into the new year, and the two for Francesca and Aletta had not been sent on, but were being kept until Francesca made a visit home, which should have been at Christmas and was now overdue. Sybylla was particularly proud of her bracelet, it being the prettiest she had ever owned, and she had taken to wearing it daily. She loved the feel of it on her wrist and its expensive little tinkle when she rested her arm on anything. Maria did not approve.

"Such fripperies are for best wear, Sybylla. If you don't keep it for special occasions you'll lose it one day, mark my words!"

Sybylla took no notice. She liked always to be stylish and had developed an instinctive knowledge of what suited her. She recalled that when a child she had been amazed when a visiting cousin had not worn all her jewels; now she knew that a single piece of adornment could set off to perfection a lovely neck, or arm or hand. Whenever she played her viol she knew that the glint of gold about her wrist further enhanced her graceful movements, almost as if the links of the bracelet were dancing to the music.

Eventually Maria's warning came true. Sybylla lost the bracelet somewhere between Willem's house and her own. She had been on an errand for her father and remembered glancing proudly at it as she drew on her gloves while Willem bade her good day. There had been no marketing to do on her way home, which had been a relief, because she was like her father in hating to carry anything in the street and it did not please her to have a basket on her arm with cabbages or cauliflower or the tail of a fish sticking up out of it. Fortunately Griet was taking over the running of the house more and more, which even Maria welcomed in her increasing infirmity. Sybylla was congratulating herself on Griet having gone to the butcher's that day, relieving her of the ch.o.r.e, when she sensed an emptiness about her wrist. She turned back the cuff of her glove and gave a sharp cry. Her precious bracelet was gone.

She panicked, tearing off her glove and pulling up her sleeve. Frantically she shook the side of her cloak and skirt to see if it had fallen and caught on the cloth, but there was no welcome sound of it falling to the cobbles. In despair she began to retrace her steps, searching as she went. Such a light object could have been unknowingly kicked aside by pa.s.sing feet and she zigzagged as she returned along the way she had taken. It was difficult when she had to cross a road where there was traffic, for wagoners shouted at her for being in their path and some coaches came at speed. Once she was caught in the middle of a flock of sheep being driven home from market. She was almost back to Willem's house when somebody spoke to her.

"Juffrouw Visser! What have you lost? May I be of a.s.sistance?"

She looked up and saw a man in his mid-forties whose face she remembered, although she could not think where they had met. Then it came to her. "Heer Cents! We sat next to each other at Heer van Deventer's banquet last May! Oh, I'm in such trouble. I've lost a gold bracelet and I can't find it anywhere."

"Have you just missed it?"

"No, but I've searched a long way back without result. All that's left is just round the corner to a house there."

"I'll help in looking for your bracelet. I'm going in that direction in any case. I'm to meet my nephew at an art gallery."

"Willem de Hartog's gallery?"

"Yes. Of course you know him! I remember now that your father is an artist and it was your sister who had painted that fine portrait of van Deventer."

"That's right. I last saw my bracelet when I was leaving Willem's house."

"Perhaps we'll be lucky in finding it near there, then."

He searched as carefully as she did, but they reached the double flight of steps leading to Willem's entrance without result. They decided there was just a chance she might have dropped the bracelet inside the hallway and when the door opened she preceded him into the house. The maidservant who admitted them knew nothing of anything being found, but Heer Cents said they would ask her master. He was pleased to renew his acquaintance with Sybylla, having enjoyed the sight of her pretty face and lively company at van Deventer's table at what otherwise would have been a long evening for him, for he neither gambled nor danced. Then the evening had become a tragic one for everybody through Amalia van Deventer's death. Had he himself not been a confirmed bachelor he might well have made a point of seeing Sybylla again.

The door to the gallery stood open and the first thing Sybylla saw as she went in was her bracelet lying on a side table. "It's been found!" she exclaimed, running to s.n.a.t.c.h it up and cup it in her hand.

Willem was nodding at her. "So it is yours? I thought it must be. If you hadn't come back I would have had it sent to your house."

"Did you find it?"

"No, I did," somebody else said.

She turned and saw the man she had been searching for as diligently as she had been looking for her bracelet. Tall and fair-haired with lean-faced, handsome looks, his whole appearance conveyed an impression of wealth from his white-plumed hat, its wide brim curled like a huge saucer, to his diamond-buckled shoes and the large ruby on his finger.

"Allow me to present my nephew to you, Juffrouw Visser," Heer Cents was saying. "He is my sister's son, Adriaen van Jansz."

Those of the Visser household who knew Sybylla well would have seen that already she was aglow with the extra charm she could summon up at will. The name of van Jansz was a highly respected one in Amsterdam, the family being bankers and powerful merchants, which made her doubly dazzled by having a young man of such rich background here in the same room with her. She curtsied to him and as he raised her up by the hand, making the usual conventional pleasantry of being honored to meet her, she gave him the full benefit of her round blue eyes ashine with suppressed tears of grat.i.tude.

"How wonderful that you should have found my treasured bracelet! It has the deepest sentimental attachment for me, having been sent all the way from Florence by my aunt, for whom I've had the greatest affection since my childhood days."

"I recognized it as Florentine work."

"Where did you happen upon it?"

"On the bottom step of the flight outside. I think you'll find the clasp is loose." He bent his head close to hers as they examined the bracelet.

"Yes, it is," she agreed, thinking he must have been barbered just before leaving home, for his skin smelt fresh and clean with the faintest hint of verbena. It was hard to restrain her eyes from sliding in his direction instead of focusing them on the bracelet, but she had learned a great deal about enticing men since Jacob had been infatuated with her, and to appear too eager was always a mistake. "I shall go straight from here to a jeweler and have it repaired."

"Allow me to drive you there. My coach is waiting."

She exclaimed prettily, "That is most kind."

"Will you pardon me while I have a final word with Heer de Hartog about some works of art I was about to decide upon at the moment when you arrived."

"Yes, of course."