Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [160]
When, therefore, Margaret Erskine returned from one of these visits bringing Joleta to stay, Jenny greeted the child with sparkling affection and left her to Margaret to entertain. If Margaret thought it would lessen the tension at Midculter to have Joleta where she and Lymond couldn’t quarrel, she was welcome to try. Privately, Lady Fleming thought it would do the little prude good to be the subject of Lymond’s dislike.
It was too tempting, then, when she found Francis Crawford in her own hall, and Joleta unseen and unsuspecting in her solar above. Randy Bell Lady Fleming summed up without difficulty and got rid of, with guile, to her apothecary. Then she went, to Joleta’s surprise, and sat with Joleta, after arranging artlessly that Francis Crawford, when free, should be brought to her there.
She could not, of course, prevent her daughter from warning him. It was the first thing Margaret Erskine recalled when all the intelligent, rational things about Tom’s death had been said, and after, most unexpectedly to herself and perhaps to him, she had broken into a storm of tears in Lymond’s passionless and steady arms. When it was over, ‘You will hate it, Francis. I’m sorry, but Joleta’s here in the castle,’ she said.
‘Why hate it?’ Lymond asked. He had given her his handkerchief and she had used it unashamedly, blowing her plain nose scarlet on the still-warm lawn. ‘Little girls are always throwing down gauntlets. Or worse. I don’t have to pick them up.’
‘You don’t have to trample on them, either,’ said Margaret Erskine with her customary directness. ‘You spurned, in public, her spirit, her wit and finally her powers of physical attraction. You might have awarded her a minor decoration for trying, at least.’
‘She’s annoyed, is she?’ said Lymond. ‘Good. Let’s find a nice convent for her. I have troubles enough without my name being linked with Gabriel’s sister.’
Joleta Reid Malett was most certainly annoyed. When Lymond entered her room, expecting to take leave of Lady Fleming, and Lady Fleming at the same instant found urgent business elsewhere, Joleta was both startled and angry, and even Lymond was for an instant taken aback.
But after no more than a moment, he continued forward, raised his eyebrows for leave, and picking up a chair sat on it, saying, ‘How awkward. And how like dear Jenny. We shall have to bear five minutes of each other’s company. Never mind. Every absence increases respect. Are you respectable?’
Joleta had been stringing a lute, the apricot hair slung back out of her way and her quilted, loose sleeves rolled up. Her forearm along the ridge of the bone was powdered with freckles; underneath, as she laid down the lute, the flesh was white as curds. She had flushed. ‘I am afraid to say anything,’ she said sweetly, ‘in case another of your dear ones has died.’
‘No.’ Despite the damp handkerchief in his doublet, he would not challenge her good taste a second time. ‘It is the hatchet that has been interred. To save our friends’ nerves, I suggest we meet on a plane of brutal courtesy. It need not interfere with our mutual distrust. Do you play that thing?’
‘Not as well, I am sure, as you do,’ said Joleta, her voice thin. ‘And I don’t intend to toady in public to someone who manhandled me as you did. Conceited men have no attraction for me. Shut the door as you go.’
‘All right,’ said Lymond pleasantly. ‘But let me mention one thing. Margaret Erskine tells