Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [23]
*
Kate was relieved of her guests, in the end, by Tom Erskine himself, on his way back from weeks of negotiating the final terms of the peace treaty between Scotland and England at Norham.
Although he could not be said to understand Sybilla, Dowager Lady Culter and her two sons, Tom Erskine was haplessly fond of them all. And on receiving Lord Culter’s request that he should return via Flaw Valleys and escort the recovered Joleta and her governess to the Culter home at Midculter castle, he had no trouble in imagining the arguments that polite request had provoked.
In strict fact, there had been the nearest thing to outright battle that had ever occurred at the Culters’. Richard had said, receiving a cramped and colourless note from Madame Donati, ‘That Malta girl is better again.’
‘Well?’ had said his mother unhelpfully, while his wife, straightening out a smile, bent over her sewing.
‘Where’s she to go? Have you got her into a convent?’
‘Why, is she entering religion?’ had inquired Sybilla, her blue eyes amazed.
Richard had paused for a fresh breath. ‘She has to stay somewhere until her brother comes for her. Do you want him to find we’ve put her into Sandilands’s care, knowing what he’s like?’
‘Well then, she’d better come here, hadn’t she?’ said the Dowager absently, picking up some silks Mariotta had dropped. Her daughter-in-law shot her a swift look and bent again to her task. Experience with the Scottish family she had married into at least had taught her when to keep quiet.
‘Mariotta has the child. To ask her to look after another—’
‘Mariotta sees her son just as often as you do, and no more; and quite right too, with the best wet-nurse in Lanarkshire looking after him. In any case, I gather the girl is sixteen, not six months, and your real concern is in case we open a brothel?’
‘Mother!’ said Lord Culter and went scarlet, something only Sybilla could have achieved. His wife, in appalled ecstasy, dropped her sewing and gazed at them both, her hands over her mouth. Sybilla herself, after a moment, went on evenly. ‘I cannot be hurt by Francis, my dear. What have you seen in France that makes you so afraid for this child?’
Lord Culter moved to the window and back: a square, hard-muscled family man with cares and responsibilities in plenty, wearied as he had been wearied all his life with the task of separating his brother’s wake from his own. At length he said plainly, ‘I’m afraid for them both. You wouldn’t expect morality and restraint at the French Court. Licence is the mode and Francis has been setting the fashion. You’ve heard, I suppose, of Oonagh O’Dwyer. She was only among the more reputable of his indulgences. He has had a surfeit of that. He’ll want something different now. Something,’ said Richard, exasperation only half suppressed in his voice, ‘like falling romantically into young love.’
Sybilla’s pointed face, upturned to his, had not moved. ‘Well of course. Why not?’ she asked. ‘The girl is quick and well-read. She won’t stay sheltered for long. Or do you think she will take against him?’ Sybilla cocked her head to one side, eyeing her older son. ‘But, do you know, it would do him so much good if she did.’
‘She’s very young,’ Mariotta couldn’t forbear remarking.
‘How old do you think he is?’ said Sybilla placidly. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t want him hanging about my petticoats for the rest of my life. He is, you must admit, a little disruptive in the home. What’s your anxiety then, Richard? You think he has no self-restraint, and they will simply ruin each other before the grown-ups can prevent it? But, my dear boy, the child has been brought up in the Religion, with a brother in one of the strictest Christian Orders. She is unassailable, surely. And Francis.… Unless he has changed very much, Francis surely will respect her.’
It was unlike Sybilla to be complacent. In fact, it was only afterwards that Richard came to understand his mother’s wilful self-deception in the cause of her younger son’s