Darling Jasmine

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Authors: Bertrice Small

BOOK: Darling Jasmine
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BERTRICE SMALL
Darling Jasmine
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
For Carol Stacy and Kathe Robin
Queen's Malvern
TWELFTH NIGHT, 1615
Prologue
A
dam de Marisco was dead.
One moment he had been sitting at the highboard in the Great Hall of his home, surrounded by the many members of his family who were gathered to celebrate the holidays. Three of his stepsons and two of his stepdaughters, along with their families, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren packed the hall, which until a minute ago had been filled with laughter.
Adam's laughter.
Even at the advanced age of eighty-four, Adam de Marisco's laughter boomed loudly when he was amused. It was a particularly ribald jest spoken by his daughter-in-law, Valentina Burke, that had occasioned his latest bout of mirth.
Wiping his eyes, he had taken his wife's hand up in his and kissed it tenderly. Smiling out at them, he had said, “God bless you all, my dears!” Then his great leonine head had fallen forward upon his chest, and the hall was suddenly deathly silent.
She knew!
Skye had, to her great shock, seen the life-light fading rapidly from his blue eyes even as his lips had touched her skin. Almost immediately she thought,
Oh, Adam, my dearest, dearest love, how could you leave me like this?
And yet what a magnificent death it had been. He had not been ill, nor had he suffered,
and
he had left them with his blessing. It was so typical of Adam. His great heart had always been filled to overflowing with his love for them all. It was a merciful God that had taken him when he was surrounded by those whom he loved best.
“Mama?”
Her daughter Deirdre Blakeley's voice quavered nearby.
Skye looked up, her eyes brimming with tears.
How can I cope with them at this moment,
she wondered. Yet who else was there? She knew she would not be allowed to mourn in peace until she had comforted them all, and assured them that everything was going to be fine despite the awful loss they had just endured. She loved her family, but would there ever come a time when they would look to themselves, and not to her? For a moment she was bitterly resentful, but swallowing back her own grief, she said, “It will be all right, Deirdre.”
And then her children were surrounding her, offering her their love, their comfort, and support. But in Skye O'Malley's heart there was now an enormous empty place that could never, ever again be filled. Adam de Marisco was dead, and she was left alone to continue on without him.
Belle Fleurs
WINTER 1615
Chapter
1
“Y
ou simply cannot remain here alone, Mama,” Willow, Lady Edwards, said in a firm tone that all of her children knew meant she would have her way in whatever matter she was discussing.
Skye O'Malley de Marisco stared out the window of her day room. The snow was falling lightly, but it had already covered Adam's grave site upon the hill. The snow, she thought, was better than that raw slash of dark earth. The snow softened everything.
“You are in your seventy-fifth year, Mama,” Willow continued.
“I have only just celebrated my seventy-fourth birthday last month, Willow,” Skye said, her tone edgy with her irritation. She did not bother to turn her view from the landscape. It was growing dark. Soon she would not be able to see Adam's grave at all. Not until the dawn.
“A woman of your years cannot live by herself,” Willow persisted.
“Why not?” her mother asked.
“Why not?
Why not?” Willow blustered a moment, unprepared, although she knew she should have been, for the question. “Why, Mama, it simply isn't respectable for a matriarch of your age to live alone.”
The light outside had faded completely now. Skye turned and faced her eldest daughter. “Go home, Willow,” she said wearily. “I want you and all of your siblings to leave me in peace to mourn my husband of forty-two years. From the moment of Adam's death four nights ago you have not given me a moment's surcease. I need to be alone. I want to be alone.
Go home.”
“But . . . but . . .” Willow began again, only to be silenced by a fierce look from her mother.
“I am not helpless, Willow. I have not yet lost my reason. I have absolutely no intention of closing up my home, displacing my servants, and moving myself in with
any
of my children. I intend remaining here at Queen's Malvern until I die. Is that quite clear?”
Daisy Kelly, Skye's faithful tiring woman, felt her mouth turning up in a small smile, but she withheld her laughter as she sat by the fire, mending the hem on one of her mistress's gowns. She was surprised at how little Mistress Willow seemed to know her mother if she actually believed Skye would come and live with her, or any of her other children. They might not be as young as they once were, Daisy ruefully admitted to herself as she squinted to see her stitches, but she and her lady were perfectly capable of looking out for themselves.
“But, Mama,” Willow persisted, “Queen's Malvern no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the little duke of Lundy, Charles Frederick Stuart.”
“Do you really believe that either my granddaughter, or the duke's guardian, the earl of Glenkirk, would dispossess me, Willow?” Skye snapped. “I think it is you who have lost her wits, and not I.”
“Jemmie Leslie was back at court this autumn, Mama,” Willow informed her mother. “He is very angry that he has not yet been able to track Jasmine down in France. It will be two years this spring since she fled him, taking the children with her.”
Skye chuckled wickedly. “I do not know why he has been unable to find her,” she said. “After all, Adam practically told him exactly where to look, but then, of course, I did send a messenger to warn her of her grandfather's lapse in judgment.”
“Ohh, Mama, how could you?” Willow wailed. “You will make an enemy of the king should your interference with James Stuart's will become public knowledge! Was it not enough that you made an enemy of our good queen, Bess? Has age taught you no discretion?”
“My darling girl has made two marriages to please her family,” Skye said in firm tones. “I hope that this time she will be able to make her own choice, Willow. No one, not even the king, should force Jasmine to the altar. It was foolish of James Stuart and his silly romantic queen to even try.”
“But Jemmie Leslie loves Jasmine, Mama,” Willow said softly.
“I know,” Skye said, “but it is not all a certainty that Jasmine loves him. I shall go to France in the spring, and tell my granddaughter of her grandfather's death. Then we will see what she wants to do. Though I miss her, the choice must be hers to make.”
“You will go to France?”
Willow looked horrified.
“If you suggest that I am too ancient a crone to travel any longer,” Skye told her daughter, “I shall surely smack you, Willow!” Her Kerry blue eyes glared at Lady Edwards.
“I was not thinking any such thing,” Willow replied, although in truth she was.
“And when the snow stops you will leave,” Skye said firmly. “You and
all
of your siblings. I need time to come to terms with the fact my dearest Adam has departed.
I must be alone.
I realize that you do not understand that Willow, but you must accept it.”
Willow nodded, defeated, and, curtsying to her mother, left her apartments, making her way to the family hall where her brothers and sister awaited her.
“Well?” demanded the earl of Lynmouth, Robin Southwood, his lime green eyes twinkling. “Is Mama come to live with you in her dotage?”
“Oh, be silent, Robin!” Willow snapped. “I hate it when you are smug. Mama is most recalcitrant, as she always is when asked to be reasonable. I could get nowhere with her, as you fully expected, but I had to try. She wants us all to leave as soon as the snow stops.”
“Should she be left alone?” Angel, countess of Lynmouth, worried.
“She absolutely insists upon it,” Willow said sourly.
“I can understand that,” said Deirdre, Lady Blackthorne, Skye's middle daughter. “Mama will show no weakness to anyone, even her children. Have any of you yet seen her cry? We must all go home as soon as we can, so she may mourn Adam in her own fashion.”
Her siblings, and their mates, even Willow, nodded in agreement.
“ 'Tis not a strong storm,” Padraic, Lord Burke, said. “ 'Twill be over by the morrow. We had best set our servants to packing.”
“Mama says she is going to France to tell Jasmine herself,” Willow informed them. “Sometime in the spring, she says.”
“Has anyone sent to my mother and my father?” asked Sybilla, the countess of Kempe, a granddaughter of the de Mariscos.
“I dispatched a messenger the morning after,” Robin Southwood told his niece. “I don't imagine he has reached Dun Broc yet with this weather, but in a few more days Velvet will know her father is dead.”
“Poor Mama,” Sybilla said softly, and her husband put a comforting arm about her shoulders.
“Aye, Velvet will be devastated,” Murrough O'Flaherty said soberly. “She adored Adam. Hell! We all did now, didn't we? He was the one father we can all remember. None of mother's other husbands lived long enough though we may recall them slightly.”
The others nodded solemnly.
“Adam was father to us all,” Lord Burke said, “and a good father, too. We learned much from him.”
“Do you think Mama can survive his loss?” Deirdre wondered.
“She will miss him greatly,” Robin said quietly, “but I do not think Skye O'Malley is ready to give up the ghost yet, sister. She has survived the others well enough.”
“But she was younger then,” Willow noted.
“True,” Robin agreed with his elder sibling, “but she is stronger now than she has ever been. We will leave our mother to mourn our father as she wishes to do. Then we will see.”
“I wonder if she will wed again,” Valentina Burke mused.
“Never!”
Robin spoke emphatically. “Of that I am certain.”
The snow had stopped the following morning as Skye O'Malley's children and other relations departed Queen's Malvern. Each had bid the matriarch a fond farewell, and then clambered into their separate coaches to begin their journey home.
“Ye'll send for me if ye need me, sister, won't ye?” Conn O'Malley St. Michael, Lord Bliss, asked his elder sibling.
“If I need ye,” Skye told him.
Conn shook his head. She was a proud woman, his sister, but he and his wife, Aidan, were near enough in case of emergency.
“Cardiff Rose
will be ready when you need her, Mama,” Murrough O'Flaherty said softly so only she might hear him.
Skye nodded and kissed her second born, and then his wife.
“God speed you safely home,” she told them.
“I simply don't know what to say to you, Mama,” Willow declared as she confronted her mother a final time.
“Farewell will do quite nicely, Willow,” Skye replied, kissing her daughter upon the cheek. She turned to her son-in-law, James. “Godspeed, my lord. I do not envy you your trip.”
“I sleep quite heavily upon the road,” he replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “I do not hear anything.”
“Thank God for that!” Skye said, and then she turned to her granddaughter, Sybilla. “Are you breeding again, Sibby?”
Sybilla chuckled. “Aye, madame, I fear I am, and 'twill make five. The babe will come in early June. Perhaps it will cheer Mama.”
Skye nodded. “Take care of each other,” she told Sybilla, and her husband, Tom Ashburne, the earl of Kempe.
Deirdre Burke was teary, but she struggled to maintain her composure as she bid her mother farewell.
“Now, Deirdre,” Skye scolded the most fragile of her children, “you're just going home, and God knows you live near enough to see me whenever you like, but for mercy's sake give me a few days of peace.”
Deirdre swallowed hard and nodded, as her husband, John, helped her into their coach.
“I don't like leaving you like this,” Padraic Burke said.
“I need to be alone,” Skye told her youngest son. “There is plenty of family nearby should I need them.” She gave him a hug. “Yer like yer father. You don't think I can take care of myself, but I can, Padraic. Now let me be to mourn my Adam.”
“Get into the coach, Padraic,” his wife, Valentina, said in a firm tone. She kissed her mother-in-law's cheek, and gave her a wink.
The last to depart was the earl of Lynmouth and his family. Angel and her children had bid Skye good-bye. Now it came time for Robin Southwood to say adieu to his mother. “Will you consult with me, Mama, before you do anything rash?” he asked her wryly.
“Most likely not, Robin,” she said, smiling at him.
“You're already plotting,” he accused her.
She smiled mischievously. “How can you tell? It has been years since I did any serious plotting, Robin.”
He laughed. “I remember the look, madame.” Then he grew serious. “I am glad I was here this Twelfth Night instead of giving my fete in London. The damned thing has become outrageously expensive. I count it good fortune that I came to Queen's Malvern this year.”
“I loved your father's fetes,” Skye said, the memories rising to fill her heart. “Especially the Twelfth Night one. I can still see the queen's barge making its way up the river to Lynmouth House. Twelfth Night has always been special to me. I knew I carried you one Twelfth Night, Robin. And do you remember that Twelfth Night just a few years back when Jasmine almost caused a scandal because Sybilla caught her in bed with Lord Leslie. And now Twelfth Night will always be etched in my memory with Adam's passing.” She shivered, and drew her cloak about her shoulders. “I shall never enjoy the holiday again.”
“Though I know you need your solitude,” Robin said, “I dislike leaving you, madame.” His arm was tight about her.
“I feel fragile at this moment, Robin,” she admitted to him, “but it will pass. It did with your father, and it did with Niall.”
But you had Adam to be your bulwark each time,
Robin considered, but kept the thought to himself. “Tell me before you leave England,” he said. “And tell that niece of mine to come home.” He kissed her soft cheek, then hugged her hard.
“Godspeed, Robin,” Skye said to her son, then stood watching as his coach made its way down the drive and around a bend, out of her sight.
“Yer a devious old woman,” Daisy told her mistress as she helped her into the house. “You have no intention of telling him when yer leaving for France, do ye?”
Skye chuckled. “Of course not,” she replied. “If I tell Robin, he will tell the earl of Glenkirk who will seek to follow me to Jasmine and the children. Nay, I'll not tell him a thing.”
“He'll tell the earl anyway when he passes through London in a few days,” Daisy said.
“Which is why I'll already be on my way to France,” Skye answered her tiring woman. “They'll not use me to force my darling girl back to England. She'll not come unless she chooses to come.”
“Oh, yer a wicked creature,” Daisy said chortling, but then she grew serious. “How will ye mourn his lordship if ye go, my lady?”

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