Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [245]
Lymond looked astonished. ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he said. ‘Here I am, lying about being amended in corners. It is my day for being humble.’
‘It is your day, as always, for being impertinent,’ said Sybilla sharply. ‘Bring her, Richard.’
In the end Madame Donati brought the child down and, formidable in padded black, held her as she faced them all. Alone all the long day in her bedchamber, Joleta had laced white ribbons in her silk-apricot hair, and ribbons glinted in the pure voile of her dress. She was big with child. But above the turgid, womanly mound, shawled but cruelly undisguised by the white, childish dress, Joleta’s face was blinding in its happiness. Setting aside her duenna’s hands, with gentle care, she walked slowly and heavily towards Francis Crawford.
And cool, slender, expensive, that young man stared not at her but at that pathetic, white-bellied distention. ‘My God, Mother,’ he said, lively interest contending with horror in his voice. ‘There’s more than one small mistake there. She’s setting a clutch.’
For their day and age, the Crawfords were a sophisticated family. But this was a callousness unknown in their halls. Joleta gave one short cry only, and then stopped it with her hands. Sybilla gasped as if he had winded her; and Richard Crawford, turning on his brother, brought his arm up in a gesture meant to drive some manners forcibly into his head.
Lymond who, after all, had more warning than anyone, ducked expertly and ran instead, with a stinging smack, into the flat of Evangelista Donati’s hand. ‘Whoremonger!’ said Joleta’s duenna in a voice rising to a scream. ‘Anti-Christ! Wolf! Do we wish to see you? Do we wish to speak to you? Go die in a cesspool, misbegot hog!’ And as Lymond, rocked by the unexpectedness of the blow, sat down with extreme suddenness in the chair just behind him and began maddeningly to laugh, Joleta ran, draggingly, to the door.
Lymond sat up, disregarding equally Madame Donati threatening at his side and Richard, his head flung back in anger, with Sybilla’s hand on his arm. ‘Come back! Oh, come back!’ said Francis Crawford, and got up, one hand cradling his jaw. ‘I am penitent. Only, if you indulge in numbers, how are we to get rid of the bastards?’
Joleta stopped.
‘Get rid of!’ said Sybilla.
Lymond turned to her, his blue eyes wide. ‘Unless she wants to be a little mother to them? A little unmarried mother?’
‘I am glad,’ said Madame Donati, in the ensuing silence, ‘that you do not insult the child, at least, with an offer of marriage.’
‘Good Lord, no,’ said Lymond comfortably, sitting down again. ‘Do sit down, Joleta, sit down and take the weight off.… Heavens, girl, don’t cry again. But, marriage to the right godly fresh flower of womanhood here would make me Gabriel’s good-brother, wouldn’t it? And I don’t think Gabriel could stomach that. Joleta! We are planning!’
‘Get out,’ said Richard curtly. He had, incredibly, unsheathed his sword.
‘No,’ said Sybilla. ‘No. He has come here to say something and you must listen, for Joleta’s sake. Whatever you wish to do afterwards, I shall not stop you. Lymond: what are Sir Graham Malett’s wishes in this matter?’
It was, Richard guessed, the first time in his life that Francis Crawford had been so addressed by his mother. It removed, for the fraction of a second, the smile from his face. Then it was back, with more malice than before. ‘He doesn’t know,’ he said. ‘What’s the punishment for seduction? Pinned to a fiery wheel in the skies. But Gabriel is a kind monk. Jeune, galant, frisque, dehait, bien adèxtre, hardi adventureux, delibéré, hault, maigre, bien fendu de gueule, bien advantagé en nez. Et cetera. He will ask only that I praise the Lord and marry Joleta.’
Joleta turned round. In the delicate face, her grey-blue eyes were liquid with unshed tears, her small sparkling teeth were sunk in her whitened lip. ‘I would marry