Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning.
Dorothy DunnettThis time, after a moment, he called her bluff.
“Perhaps Philippa and I should be thrown together a little more. She might become attached to me if she knew me better.” Kate, brightening visibly, ignored the gleam in his eye.
“That would make her sorry for you?”
“It might. The object of any sort of clinical study deserves compassion, don’t you think?”
“Snakes don’t,” said Katherine inconsequently. “I hate snakes.”
“And yet you feed them on honey cakes and forbid them to defend themselves.”
“Defencelessness is not a noted characteristic of serpents. Anyhow, I can’t have them lying rattling about the house. It gets on the nerves.”
“It does if you handle it by rattling back.
Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you’re a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency.”
Kate thought. “It needs an extra gift for human relationships, of course; but that can be developed. It’s got to be, because stultified talent is surely the ultimate crime against mankind. Tell your paragons to develop it: with all those gifts it’s only right they should have one hurdle to cross.”
“But that kind of thing needs co-operation from the other side,” said Lymond pleasantly. “No. Like Paris, they have three choices.” And he struck a gently derisive chord between each. “To be accomplished but ingratiating. To be accomplished but resented. Or to hide behind the more outré of their pursuits and be considered erratic but harmless.
This is habitual. Mother flutters her wings, and every institution within sight tumbles flat.
Dorothy DunnettRepressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said.
Dorothy Dunnett‘I’m fairly bursting tae ken how ye guessed I spoke Scots?’ Lymond looked up. Superficial pain, withstood or ignored for quite a long time, had made his eyes heavy, but they were brimming with laughter. ‘Well, God,’ he said. ‘In the water, you were roaring your head off at a bloody bull elephant called Hughie.
Dorothy DunnettFor reliable information, apply to a lawyer, a barber or prostitute. My informant hasn’t found out so far who paid the captain.’ ‘But she will,’ said Margaret, her face grave. ‘I hope so,’ he said with equal gravity,
Dorothy DunnettIt was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake.
Dorothy DunnettAnd as he followed after the Irishwoman, Margaret Erskine, most levelheaded of women, picked up a Palissy vase, looked at it earnestly and smashed it clean on the floor.
Dorothy DunnettArrested for the second, whether in admiration for Lord d’Aubigny’s inventiveness or in a kind of silent snort of hysteria at the prodigies expected of him—a condition, O’LiamRoe recognized, to which Lymond was all too prone—Francis Crawford was off guard for the one moment that mattered.
Dorothy Dunnett« prima precedente
Pagina 6 di 16.
prossimo ultimo »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.