Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,8

would come the lectures on ‘The Masters of the Italian Renaissance’, given by the illustrious Keeper of Italian paintings in the Louvre. In the morning, ‘Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael: Masterworks in the Louvre’, and in the afternoon, ‘Giorgione’s Concert Champêtre and Titian’s Laura Dianti: The Cinquecento in Venice’, all to be accompanied by slides illuminating points of brushwork and technique. These lectures, the leaflet said, represented a rare privilege seldom granted outside France by probably the world’s greatest expert in Italian Renaissance art.

On Saturday evening there would be a grand Florentine banquet especially created by a master chef from Rome, and on Sunday visits would be arranged to the Lakeland houses of Wordsworth, Ruskin and (if desired) Beatrix Potter. Finally, afternoon tea would be served round the fire in the Great Hall, and everyone would disperse.

I seldom felt unsure either of myself or of my chosen way of life, but I put down the leaflet feeling helplessly inadequate.

I knew practically nothing of the Italian Renaissance and I couldn’t reliably have dated da Vinci within a hundred years. I knew he painted the Mona Lisa and drew helicopters and submarines, and that was about all. Of Botticelli, Giorgione and Raphael I knew just as little. If Danielle’s interests deeply lay with the Arts, would she ever come back to a man whose work was physical, philistine and insecure? To a man who’d liked biology and chemistry in his teens and not wanted to go to college. To someone who would positively have avoided going where she had gone with excitement.

I shivered. I couldn’t bear to lose her, not to long-dead painters, nor to a live prince.

Time passed. I read the world-wide air timetables and found there were many places I’d never heard of, with people busily flying in and out of them every day. There were far too many things I didn’t know.

Eventually, shortly after eight, the unruffled Dawson reappeared and invited me upstairs, and I followed him to the unfamiliar door of M. de Brescou’s private sitting room.

‘Mr Fielding, sir,’ Dawson said, announcing me, and I walked in to a room with gold swagged curtains, dark green walls and dark red leather armchairs.

Roland de Brescou sat as usual in his wheelchair, and it was clear at once that he was suffering from the same severe shock that had affected the princess. Always weak-looking, he seemed more than ever to be on the point of expiring, his pale yellow-grey skin stretched over his cheekbones and the eyes gaunt and staring. He had been, I supposed, a good looking man long ago, and he still retained a noble head of white hair and a naturally aristocratic manner. He wore, as ever, a dark suit and tie, making no concessions to illness. Old and frail he might be, but still his own master, unimpaired in his brain. Since my engagement to Danielle, I had met him a few times, but although unfailingly courteous he was reclusive always, and as reticent as the princess herself.

‘Come in,’ he said to me, his voice, always surprisingly strong, sounding newly hoarse. ‘Good evening, Kit.’ The French echo in his English was as elusive as the princess’s own.

‘Good evening, monsieur,’ I said, making a small bow to him also, as he disliked shaking hands: his own were so thin that the squeezing of strangers hurt him.

The princess, sitting in one of the armchairs, raised tired fingers in a small greeting, and with Dawson withdrawing and closing the door behind me, she said apologetically, ‘We’ve kept you waiting so long …’

‘You did warn me.’

She nodded. ‘We want you to meet Mr Greening.’

Mr Greening, I presumed, was the person standing to one side of the room, leaning against a green wall, hands in pockets, rocking on his heels. Mr Greening, in dinner jacket and black tie, was bald, round-bellied and somewhere on the far side of fifty. He was regarding me with bright knowing eyes, assessing my age (thirty-one), height (five foot ten), clothes (grey suit, unremarkable) and possibly my income. He had the look of one used to making quick judgments and not believing what he was told.

‘The jockey,’ he said in a voice that had been to Eton. ‘Strong and brave.’

He was ironic, which I didn’t mind. I smiled faintly, went through the obvious categories and came up with a possibility.

‘The lawyer?’ I suggested. ‘Astute?’

He laughed and peeled himself off the paintwork. ‘Gerald Greening,’ he said, nodding. ‘Solicitor. Would you be kind enough to witness some signatures