Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [246]
Lymond’s reflective gaze stayed on her. ‘Où est la très sage Helloïs,’ he said. ‘Pour qui chastré fut, et puis moyne? I have no intention of asking you,’ he went on. ‘I say it in the presence of the Fool Plough and the Bessy there. I don’t take soiled goods into my bed, except to pass an hour slumming.’
Fortunately, perhaps, it was too much for Madame Donati’s uncertain English. But as she stared, suspicious but uncomprehending, Richard Crawford looked from Lymond’s mocking face to Joleta’s white one and said, ‘Soiled goods! What filth is this now?’
‘My dear man,’ said Lymond coolly. ‘Oüez, oüez, oüez. Et vous taisez si vous pouvez. Joleta Reid Malett is a promiscuous little lady with a foul temper, who is carrying a child whose father she probably doesn’t know, even herself. It certainly isn’t mine. That baby is due to be born a good deal sooner than three months from now. Let me assure you that, far from being deflowered at Dumbarton, Joleta Malett wasn’t even a virgin. She was already carrying a child.’ And as the girl, her face wild, suddenly flung out her hands to still the unborn, flagrant in its virginal voile, Lymond added, his voice metallic, ‘And I wonder how Sir Graham Malett, Grand Cross of Grace of the Order, will enjoy being told that.’
Joleta’s cry, ‘He won’t believe it!’ coincided with Sybilla’s quieter voice. The Dowager said, slowly, ‘There is only your word for that, against Joleta’s. Why, since you hate him so, have you not given yourself the pleasure of telling Sir Graham before now?’
‘Because it is a lie!’ said Madame Donati’s shocked and furious voice.
‘Because he wants it—don’t you, Francis?—as a final, annihilating blow to strike Gabriel off from your heels. What did the Queen Dowager say to you, Francis?’ said Richard harshly. ‘We heard she had summoned you. Has she decided, too, that St Mary’s under a man of no discipline and no principles is too dangerous to exist?’
‘But Graham doesn’t want St Mary’s! He only wants … wants the best for you, because he admires you so.’ Joleta, her tears dried, was staring wide-eyed at Lymond. ‘You wouldn’t give him such pain?’
‘He’s going to be a little pained, isn’t he, whatever we do?’ said Lymond reasonably. ‘At least, this way he can retain his much-publicized respect for me while he proves that he doesn’t want St Mary’s.’
‘That,’ said Lord Culter softly, ‘is blackmail.’
Lymond said agreeably, ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? The weasel and the basilisk. It’s a little troublesome, you see. The dice is loaded against me. Nil est tam populare, as you might say, quam bonitas.’
But Joleta, moving closer, her rosy hair falling disordered over her clear brow and cheek, said with a sudden, hurried intensity, ‘You want Graham to go away? If Graham went away, right away—if Graham promised never to come back … would you marry me?’
And Lymond’s bright, sardonic face, looking into hers, lost all its amusement; all its icy amiability; all its social charm. ‘My dear sister in Christ, and mother in expectation, I may be what Buccleuch has called me: a harlot. But a discriminating harlot, my dear.’ And, flashing out an arm, he snatched, lightly from below her labouring grasp, a fine glass vase of Sybilla’s at her side. ‘You don’t sign your work twice,’ he said softly. ‘It’s unlucky.’ And watched as, dizzily, the child stumbled into Donna Donati’s sheltering arms.
Holding her, the duenna stared above the silken head at Francis Crawford, her yellow, high-bred face hollow with rage and contempt.
‘Your life, it is worth nothing,’ she said. ‘From now, every good-living man, as well as the blessed angels in heaven, will be cursing each breath you draw. We shall tell her brother. That good and holy man, in his suffering, may forgive what you did. His brethren will not. Whatever becomes of the little one and her baby, she will be avenged.’
The Venetian woman glanced at him once, with a kind of tired scorn in her cold eyes; and then shepherding the girl’s swollen body gently before her, closed the door on them both.
No one said anything. Sybilla,