Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [24]
‘That’s quite enough,’ said Sybilla. She had risen, her eyes level with his chest, but he stepped back a pace. There was no amusement in her gaze. She continued, ‘What Francis does abroad is his own misfortune. What he does under my roof is what I and your wife permit him to do. I have never lacked authority over my sons yet; and to suggest that a guest in this house would be in danger is a stupidity verging on viciousness. The rest of your observations we shall consider unsaid.’
Her own face pale, Mariotta became aware that the incisive voice had stopped. Her husband, who could control without effort five thousand fighting men, stood saying nothing, his gaze on his mother, his temples moist as if the room were too hot. Then he said with difficulty, ‘I’m sorry. Of course he won’t touch her. But she might be attracted to him.’
‘And so?’ She would not compromise.
‘Mother, she’s too young for that kind of heartbreak. You talk of marriage. What do you think I’d give to see him married? What do you think it costs me to admit that marriage between Francis and any young, convent-bred girl is in all honour long past allowing?’
Sybilla’s face changed. The arched, pale brows drew together and she sat, a little too firmly, in the chair she had just vacated. Then her straight blue gaze fixed on Richard again. ‘Of course, he is too clever for his own good. But there is no vice there. None. I will not believe it.’
Lord Culter did not answer. There was a long silence, during which Mariotta kept her head bent, her eyelashes wet, and the Dowager’s face became whiter and whiter. Then at last, as the pause threatened to become unbearable, ‘Then where,’ said Sybilla evenly, ‘do you suggest we send her?’
Richard’s tremendous exhalation plumbed his shattering relief. He said, ‘Would Jenny take her, at Boghall?’
It was the solution. Lady Fleming, exquisite widow of royal birth, was newly back at Boghall Castle from France, returned to bear a son out of wedlock to the French King. Of her seven children by the late Lord Fleming only Margaret, now married to Tom Erskine, could ever control Jenny Fleming; and Margaret, now in France with the Queen Mother, would soon be home. At Boghall, under the eyes of Margaret and Tom Erskine, Joleta Malett would be safe.
‘Her brother will certainly not approve of Jenny,’ said Sybilla thoughtfully. ‘But then, if I know Jenny, she will be far too interested in returning to France to acquire another little insurance against her old age, to trouble about Joleta. Joleta would be virtually in the care of the Erskines. And the Erskines—’
‘—know better than any the dangers of Francis with time on his hands,’ said Lord Culter gratefully. It was, as a matter of fact, the first argument with his mother that he had ever won, and had he known it, the most useless.
*
So Tom Erskine called at Flaw Valleys to take the Malett girl and her governess home to Boghall, and saw and caught his breath at the child’s looks, and noted that, since Gideon’s death, Kate had lost weight.
She was the last person to seek pity. He treated her to a recital of Jenny’s accouchement and the birth of the King of France’s acknowledged son, and she laughed at that, but not at the little he told her of Lymond’s presence at the French Court, and his wife Margaret’s attempts to restrain him.
He was missing Margaret. Of their two years of marriage, she had spent eight months in France with the Queen Dowager, and it might be October before he would see her again. Kate, a perceptive soul, spent some time in talk of his wife before saying suddenly, ‘I hope they come back from France soon, Tom. I have a feeling that child Joleta is going to need help.’
‘She’s pretty lonely, I would guess,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll try to amuse her. She’ll have the young men