Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [182]
Her dismay had fetched her half across the small room. In front of him, ‘Don’t you desire me?’ said Joleta, and flushed scarlet again.
Against the door, his eyes heavy with wine, Lymond scanned her from her milky throat to her green-slippered feet. ‘Dear Joleta,’ he said. ‘You’ve been reading too many Italian books. There’s such a thing, you know, as seducing in hate.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Joleta steadily. ‘Love is stronger than hate. Love is stronger than anything. Where there’s love, there can be no evil.’
‘Maybe,’ said Francis Crawford. ‘But I am not, sweeting, in love.’
‘But I am,’ said Joleta Malett desperately. And pulling, tight-fisted, at the silken cord that bound her high-waisted dress, she dragged first girdle then buttons apart until the green stuff, gaping loose to the waist, slid from her bare shoulders and hung from her elbows, tight-sleeved like a courtesan’s robe.
She wore nothing beneath. Her flesh breathed sweetness and warmth, and her sixteen-year-old breasts, round and rosy in firelight, lay high and ripe in their calyx of green. Three-quarters stripped, trembling, her eyes black with a queer ecstasy, half missionary, half not, Joleta caught Lymond’s cold, clever hand and slid it round and over and down all her warm flesh.
There was a heady pause. She felt him steady himself after the first, quick-breathing shock; then the fingers which lay so passively in hers suddenly gripped like a vice. She gasped, and in the same moment heard what he had heard: distant galloping hooves which moment by moment became nearer and sharper until in seconds a neighing horse came to a jangling halt in the silent courtyard below. There were running footsteps, then a swordhilt hammered home again and again on the inn’s big oaken door while a harsh voice yelled for admittance.
The voice was the voice of Randy Bell, and the name he was shouting was Lymond’s.
The cries tore across the sleeping peace of the night: the roaring as the angry innkeeper stormed to the doorstep roused every soul in the wing. Across the corridor Jerott Blyth shot up in bed and a moment later Blacklock, grumbling, got out. He said, ‘Christ, it’s Randy. Look, you’re decent at least. Go down and let him in before he breaks down the door. I’ll tell Lymond.’
‘Tell Lymond?’ Jerott was cold, ‘He could hardly help hearing that, unless he’s stone dead.’
‘He may not be dead but he may very likely be stone drunk,’ said Adam with reason. ‘Go on. You had the damned bedclothes all night. You ought to be warm.’
And, repressing a strong desire to curse, Jerott went. As he began to run downstairs Blacklock crossed the corridor and gave an almighty bang on Lymond’s shut door. ‘Francis? Send her out. I’ll take her next door. The room’s empty.’
Before he had finished, the door was open. Inside, Lymond, an extraordinary expression on his face, half of mischief, half of malice, propelled towards Blacklock a slender, golden-topped figure muffled in a great cloak. ‘Look out, she’s half naked,’ said Lymond calmly. ‘And if you force her, you lecherous scribbler, you can explain to Gabriel, not me.’ And, half pulled, half carried, Joleta Malett was carted away.
Two minutes later, Randy Bell was upstairs, taking three at a time, with Jerott casting questions at his heels, and hardly taking time to knock on the door, they were both into Lymond’s room.
Lymond, awake, alert and neatly dressed in London russet, laid down his book by the fire and gravely welcomed them in.
‘It’s the Hot Trodd!’ said Randy Bell. ‘Word came today from the Wardens to St Mary’s. Someone’s taken a great herd of Kerr animals, and Cessford and Ferniehurst are riding over the Border tonight.’
‘How exciting,’ said Lymond, staring at the panting physician. ‘But not enough, I think, to keep me from my modest couch. Sir Graham, I take it, is leading a company after the chosen of the children of Benjamin?’
Randy Bell flung his helmet on a settle and sat down with a crash. ‘That isn’t all. The