Darling Jasmine (32 page)

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Authors: Bertrice Small

BOOK: Darling Jasmine
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“What about us?” Fortune demanded boldly.
Robert and Henry Gordon brought forth puppies from their doublets, and handed them over to their very pleased nieces.
“That's the whole litter,” Charlie Gordon told his half sister.
She sighed. “ 'Twas kind of you,” she said, weakly watching as India squealed when her puppy peed on her bodice; and her own spaniel, Feathers, growled menacingly from behind her skirts at these unruly intruders onto her territory; and the three older puppies, hastily placed upon the floor chased after her two elderly cats, Fou-Fou and Jiin, who, with amazing agility, leapt atop the sideboard, hissing while her beautiful blue-and-gold parrot, Hiraman, screeched wildly,
“Robbers! Robbers!”
while flapping upon his perch by the fireplace.
The children, of course, giggled and ran after their puppies, gleefully tumbling over one another, while the adults began to laugh.
“ 'Tis certainly a well-ordered household,” Velvet Gordon teased her daughter.
“ 'Twas your sons who brought chaos into it,” Jasmine said spiritedly. “ 'Twas all calm until you came, Mama.”
“What's for dinner?” her stepfather, the earl of BrocCairn, asked, grinning. “ 'Twas a damned long, cold ride over from Dun Broc. There's a good storm coming in another day or two. I can feel it in the air. We're in for a wicked hard winter.”
“I hope Uncle Adam and Aunt Fiona get here safely before the storm breaks,” James Leslie said.
“I wanted Mama to come over to Dun Broc, and stay with us,” Velvet said. “Alec and I have been married for over a quarter of a century, and you've never seen my home, Mama.”
“In the spring,” Skye promised. “I've done all the traveling about I intend to do for a while.”
“Thank God for that!” Daisy muttered gratefully from her seat by her mistress.
“Why, Daisy,” Velvet teased her mother's companion. “You haven't had so much fun in years now, admit it! Your life was in a rut.”
“I like me rut very well, Mistress Velvet,” Daisy responded.
“Well, you're out of it now,” Skye said, “and I vow you're looking younger than you have in twenty years.”
On the twenty-second of December Adam and Fiona Leslie arrived from Edinburgh in the gray late morning. By noon the snow had begun to fall, and by dusk it was piling up upon the hillsides, in the forest, and upon the battlements and windowsills of the castle. Outside there was not a sound to be heard as the snow fell softly, showing absolutely no signs of letting up.
In the hall that night Adam Leslie delivered some rather unsettling news to his nephew. “Before we left I met Gordie MacFie in the High Street. He told me that he hae heard there was an Englishman nosing about the city seeking ye out. Said the fellow claimed to hae an arrest warrant for ye, signed by the king himself, Gordie said.”
“St. Denis!” Jasmine cried, turning pale.
“Did MacFie see this Englishman, learn his name, or even see the alleged warrant?” the earl of Glenkirk asked his uncle.
Adam shook his head. “Nay. I asked.”
“It is St. Denis!” Jasmine repeated. “What is the matter with him that he will not give up his futile pursuit? And did the king not give us his word, and to Grandmama, too, that we were free of the marquis of Hartsfield and his machinations? How can Piers St. Denis have an arrest warrant for you, Jemmie?
How?”
“It is a forgery, darling Jasmine,” he reassured her.
“How do you know that?” she demanded of him. “The king, it would appear, blows this way and that where St. Denis is concerned.”
“We are safe here at Glenkirk,” the earl told his wife.
“How can you be certain?” Jasmine cried, fearfully, her hands going to her belly as if to protect her child.
“Lassie, lassie,” Adam said, kneeling by her side. “Jemmie is telling ye the truth. The winter hae begun, and nae man can travel wi'in these Highlands until the spring. The snows hae already begun to clog what few roads we hae. Fiona and I were fortunate to get here at all, and we'll nae be going home to Edinburgh until the spring comes, and the roads are open again. If this Englishman didna leave Edinburgh, and arrive here before we did, then he is nae getting here until the spring. And if he got here, what could he do? This is Leslie and Gordon territory. Do ye think we would allow him to harm the earl of Glenkirk, or his family. I dinna hear this fellow hae an army wi him. He is alone. We hae two clans' worth of lads ready to defend yer man. Dinna fear, lassie. Ye and yers are safe at Glenkirk.
“I will not run!”
Jasmine said fiercely.
“Not this time!”
“Ye dinna hae to run, lassie,” Adam said quietly. “We Leslies hold what is our own, and we willna allow our earl to be taken unfairly.”
The snow finally stopped falling on Christmas Eve, and they attended midnight services in the castle chapel. The Anglican mass was said by Ian Leslie, a middle-aged cousin who had been given his living by the earl. The Anglicans had made a small inroad in Scotland despite the Presbyterians and the Covenanters. The earl of Glenkirk would not have ministers of either of those factions in his house, for he held them responsible for the murder of his first wife and sons.
The Great Hall was hung with holly and other greens. A huge Yule log was dragged in, the children all accompanying it, followed by their yapping puppies. There was hot cider and mulled wine to drink, and a roast boar with an apple in its mouth that arrived upon an enormous silver salver carried by six clansmen. The children were given little bags of sugared sweets and raisins for a treat. They played games such as Hide-and-Seek, and Find-the-Slipper, while their elders sat back, well filled with bread and meat, and cheese, and wine.
The piper came into the hall that night and was given the gift of a silver piece after he had played for them. The men had, as they had on Skye's birthday feast, danced, their Leslie and Gordon kilts swaying in time with the music, their handsome faces flushed with whiskey and high spirits.
On January 1 the family exchanged gifts. The children all received ponies, which, the earl informed them, they would have to personally care for, even little Charlie-boy. Henry Lindley was told that he would have to help his brother until the duke of Lundy got a little bigger.
“When you own something,” the earl of Glenkirk told his four stepchildren, “you have a responsibility for it. It will be the same with your estates and with your families. You will be responsible for its lands and its people,
your
people. And you lassies, when you are wed one day you will have the responsibility for your household, and its servants. You will have to see to their health and their wellbeing. It will be easier for you when that time comes if you begin with the small responsibility of a pony now.”
“He's a good father,” the earl of BrocCairn remarked to his wife about their son-in-law. “And our grandchildren will be the better for it, I dinna doubt. Ye canna let the bairns run wild.”
James Leslie had a special gift for his wife. He gave her the deed to
A-Cuil,
a small lodge in the hills above Loch Sithean, which had belonged to his mother. “It isn't much, not like MacGuire's Ford, with its little castle and lands. It's just a wee stone house on a hill. We'll go there in the spring so you can see it, and after that it is your private place for when you seek to be alone.”
“Wasn't that once Gordon land,” Velvet said to her husband.
“Jemmie's great-grandmother was a Gordon,” he remarked. “She left it to Cat. When the marriage was arranged between her, and Jemmie's father, Cat's father included
A-Cuil
in his daughter's dowry. Cat refused to wed her intended until he returned
A-Cuil
legally to her sole possession, which, I am told, he did on the very day that Jemmie was born. He knows the story better than I thought,” the earl of BrocCairn told his wife.
On Twelfth Night Skye kept to her apartment in the West Tower of the castle. She could not face the celebration, but she did not want to spoil it for the children. Her daughter and granddaughter joined her in the afternoon, and together they wept for Adam de Marisco, gone from them a full year now.
“When Willow's father died,” Skye told them, “I thought I would die, too, but for Willow's sake I had to be brave. When Geoffrey Southwood died I mourned him and our son John almost to my own death. It was Adam who pulled me back. Then I lost Niall Burke, but by that time I had become hardened to death, and there was Adam once more. I swore I would not marry again. I had buried five husbands by then. He insisted that that was because he was the only husband for me. He promised me he would live forever by my side; that he would not leave me as the others had done.” She sighed deeply. “But we don't live forever, my darling girls, do we? And I had over forty years with that wonderful man. Now all that is left for me is to await death.”
“Mama! Do not say such a thing!” Velvet implored her mother.
“If you are yet here, Grandmama,” Jasmine said quietly, “perhaps it is because God still has things for you to do. Have you not always scolded me about fighting my fate? Do not fight yours, whatever it is.”
A small smile touched Skye's lips. “How clever of you, Jasmine, to use my own logic against me,” she told her granddaughter.
“Never
against
you, Grandmama,” Jasmine replied. “I need you!” She took her grandmother's hand and placed it upon her distended belly. “And Patrick Leslie needs you. And the babies that will come after him. I can't have babies without you by my side, Grandmama. Do not return to Queen's Malvern except in the summers, when Mama and I will go. Stay here in Scotland at Glenkirk with me.”
“Glenkirk is your home, Jasmine,” Skye told her. “Queen's Malvern is mine. I will return to it in the spring, and I will not leave it once I am safely home again. I will die there as my Adam did, and you will bury me next to him on that hillside.”
Velvet began to weep piteously. “Do not talk so, Mama.”
Skye shook her head irritably, her eyes meeting those of her granddaughter. Jasmine understood her and would one day see that her wishes were carried out. Poor Velvet. There had been but one adventure in her life. How could she possibly understand? And yet from that adventure had come this magnificent granddaughter. Reaching out, she took Jasmine's hand in hers and squeezed it. Jasmine smiled back.
A few days after Twelfth Night there was a brief thaw, and the Gordons of BrocCairn took the opportunity to make their way the few miles separating Glenkirk from Dun Broc.
“I doubt I'll be able to come back until spring,” Velvet told her daughter. “You don't need me to have babies, Jasmine. You seem to do quite well all by yourself, and besides, Mama is here with you.” She was snuggled down between several fox and wolf pelts within the heavy sledge that had brought them across the hills in time for Christmas. Three of Jasmine's half brothers were settled about their mother, and Charlie was up on the bench seat with his father to help with the driving.
“I will try and send word of some kind,” James Leslie told his in-laws. “I'll light a fire on the beacon hill for you to see when Jasmine has delivered the bairn. If it burns two nights running, then you will know it's a lad. One night for a lass.”
“It's a laddie,” Jasmine said stubbornly.
Now only Adam and Fiona Leslie remained at Glenkirk with them, and Jasmine was glad for the company of Jemmie's aunt, who was set in years between Jasmine and Skye. She was a clever, wickedly funny woman, and through her Jasmine learned all about her husband's mother. She was sorry that she could not know Cat.
“She would like you even if you are the exact opposite of the wife she picked for Jemmie. She did her best, though, aligning him to the more powerful branch of the Gordon Clan. Isabelle, however, hae all the common sense of a peahen,” Fiona declared bluntly. “Only a fool would hae gone to St. Margaret's Convent that day. The Covenanters had been swaggering all about the area, rooting out the poor hapless priests of the old kirk and their adherents. It was a particularly vicious band that had already committed several atrocities in the name of God, crucifying priests upside down, looting and burning. Jemmie told her nae to go, but she insisted, saying that the nuns had finished some linens for her, and she must hae them. So she went, taking her laddies wi her, and ye know the rest.” Fiona crossed herself. “God hae mercy on their guid souls,” she said.
“And they never found them?” Skye asked.
Fiona shook her head. “By the time the mischief was done, they were long gone back to whatever hell hold they had climbed out from,” she said.
“I do not understand this business of people believing one religion is superior to another, but then I was raised in my father's court, and he was a very open-minded man,” Jasmine told Fiona.
The winter deepened, and reached its midpoint. The snows were piled high, blocking all travel. Some nights they could hear the wolves howling high upon the bens. Only the gentle lengthening of the days indicated that the winter would eventually leave the land. January passed. Then February. The life they led was peaceful and ordinary. Jasmine oversaw the household with Adali's help. The children took their lessons with Brother Duncan in the mornings and early afternoons, and played with their puppies, who were growing by leaps and bounds, in the later afternoon. They rode their ponies about the courtyard of the castle, which was kept shoveled, and Jasmine could not ever remember seeing her children so happy. At last they had a normal life, and James Leslie was responsible for it.

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