Intrigued (47 page)
“I am,” she agreed. “Where is your home?”
“To the north, in Durham,” he answered her. “It is a large house built of brick, very much like this one.”
“It’s not a castle?” Autumn sounded disappointed.
He choked back his laughter at the look on her face. “Nay, Autumn, it’s not a castle. I have a title, a fine house, and a goodly estate that supports a deer park and herds of cattle, but that is all I have. Did you really want a castle?”
“I grew up in a castle, and Chermont is a castle,” she said, but before she might continue her mother’s voice rang out.
“God’s blood! I let you go to court and you return with a belly, Autumn! One of these gentlemen had better be your future husband. Come into the house, all of you. Charlie, you had best have an explanation for returning your sister from court in this condition.” She whirled about and stamped away.
“That is Mama,” Autumn said sweetly. “Daughter of an emperor, wife of a prince, a marquis, and a duke. Mistress of another prince.”
They followed Jasmine into the house, and into the family hall. The servants scurried about taking cloaks and passing out wine and sugar wafers. Suddenly the hall was full of children. Madeline and Margot ran to their mother, shrieking their delight as she bent awkwardly to hug and kiss them. Charlie’s sons hurried forward, their young faces wreathed in smiles.
“Maman! Maman!”
the little girls cried.
the little girls cried.
“Papa!” Frederick and William greeted their father.
A slender young girl entered the hall, and Johnnie Southwood’s mouth fell open in unabashed admiration. “Papa,” Lady Sabrina Stuart said, going to Charlie and kissing him on the cheek. “Welcoom hame . . . home, Papa.” She spoke slowly, carefully, and under her grandmother’s approving eye. “I’m glad yer finally back. We’ve missed ye, eh, laddies?”
“My bairns,” Jasmine said to the older children, “now that you have greeted your parent, take the wee ones from the hall. We have business to discuss.” She smiled at her little French granddaughters. “Mama will come to you soon,
mes enfants.
Go with your cousins until you are called back. Sabrina, take them to the kitchens. Cook will give you all a treat.”
mes enfants.
Go with your cousins until you are called back. Sabrina, take them to the kitchens. Cook will give you all a treat.”
Sabrina took the little girls by the hand and led them off, followed by her two brothers. Maddie and Margot no longer feared their big cousin.
“Who is she?”
“More important, who are you? Have you never seen a pretty lass before? Why do you look so damned familiar?” Jasmine demanded.
“I am John Southwood, your grace, the Earl of Lynmouth,” Johnnie said, remembering his manners and bowing to Jasmine gallantly.
“God’s blood, sir, you look like my Uncle Robin,” Jasmine told him.
“He was my great-grandfather, madame,” Johnnie told her.
Jasmine sat down heavily. “God’s blood, I am an old woman!” she said. “My uncle died the year before the king was murdered. But what of his son and his. grandson?” she asked the Earl of Lynmouth.
“My grandfather died at Naseby, my father and my eldest brother at Worcester. I was just seventeen then. My mother kept me penned up at Lynmouth and out of mischief until the king was restored.”
“A very wise woman. What of your grandmother? Your father married one of my Uncle Padraic’s daughters,” Jasmine recalled.
“My grandmother, Penelope, and my mama share the dower house at Lynmouth and pray that I will marry sooner than later,” Johnnie told her with a chuckle.
“And today for the first time you are considering it,” Jasmine said. “My granddaughter is very lovely, isn’t she? How clever of you, Charlie, to bring home a possible suitor for Brie. I’m smoothing her rough Highland edges very nicely. She is a quick study.” Now she looked at the other young man unfamliar to her. He was very handsome, and in an odd way reminded her of her second husband, Rowan Lindley but then realized it was only his dark blond hair.
“May I present Gabriel Bainbridge, the Duke of Garwood, Mama,” Charlie said formally. “The king wants him to marry Autumn.”
“Why? Because he put a baby in her belly?” Jasmine snapped.
“The king put the bairn in my belly, Mama,” Autumn said sweetly.
“What?”
Jasmine’s hand went to her heart. She sat down heavily.
Jasmine’s hand went to her heart. She sat down heavily.
“Did Mam act this way when Prince Henry gave you a chld?” Autumn asked her mother. “How interesting that history is repeating itself. Do you not think so, Mama?”
Jasmine was stunned by her daughter’s words. They were cold. Still she recalled how loving and welcoming her grandmother had been when she learned that Jasmine was expecting Prince Henry’s son. “Do you love the king?” she asked her daughter.
“Nay,” Autumn said quietly.
“Then how could you want his child?” Jasmine asked.
Autumn explained her reasoning to her mother, who was visibly distressed and shocked by it.
“I did not raise you to be so heartless,” she said quietly. “I loved Henry Stuart, and his son was a blessing, a joy to me, particularly given that Hal died two months after Charlie was born. But your behavior is reprehensible, Autumn. You have been deliberately calculating, and I do not understand it. How can you love a child not created of love?”
“Margot was not created of love, Mama, and I love her,” Autumn answered fiercely, defending herself.
“Margot was different,” Jasmine replied.
“Why? Because I was King Louis’s victim and, given the choice, would never have graced his bed? Does that make my child more lovable than the one lying now beneath my heart, Mama? Does the fact that Louis forced himself on me and conceived a daughter make her better than the baby I willingly conceived with King Charles? I am not like you, Mama. I cannot easily give up one love and love another man. I loved Sebastian. I shall always love him. No other shall ever take his place in my heart, Mama.”
“That is not the point,” Jasmine said, but Autumn was very angry now.
“Are you jealous of me, Mama? After all, you had but a Stuart prince for a lover. I have had not only a Stuart king but a Bourbon king in my bed. And I have given each of them children, or soon will.”
“Madame!” the Duke of Garwood roared. “You will not speak that way to your mother. She deserves your respect.”
Autumn jumped up. “Who are you, my lord, to tell me what to do? You may go to the devil!” Then she threw her wine goblet at him and ran from the hall.
Gabriel Bainbridge ducked the silver goblet as it crashed to the floor, spilling its contents. “Well,” he said dryly, “she does have a temper, doesn’t she? But a mighty poor aim.”
Jasmine had begun to cry, and Charlie knelt by her chair, his arms about her comfortingly. “She has never been the same since Sebastian died,” Jasmine said despairingly. “There has been nothing that pleases her, and then to be taken by that lustful king. It has all been too much for her, I fear.”
“She is a spoilt brat,” Charlie said. “She had this image in her mind of living happily ever after. Life doesn’t always work that way, Mama. You know it. My older sisters know it. What is the matter with Autumn that she does not understand it?”
Jasmine looked at the Duke of Garwood. “Do you really want to marry her? Even after having seen this display of her temper?”
“Tell your mother how I first met Autumn, Charlie,” Gabriel Bainbridge said to the Duke of Lundy. Charlie complied. When he had finished, Garwood continued, “From that day I have held her in my heart, madame. Is that love? I do not know, but I want to find out, and if indeed it is love, I shall teach her to love me as well. I do A not want to wipe away the memories she has of Sebastian d’Oleron; I want to make new memories with her that we may share together into the twilight of our years. Her temper does not deter me. I am told that women who are breeding are prone to vagaries of disposition. Our journey has been long, and certainly tedious. Autumn needs her rest and the love of her family to regain her composure.”
Jasmine looked closely at the Duke of Garwood. “Has my son explained the terms by which you may marry my daughter, sir?”
“He has, madame.”
“Forgive me, but I must ask. Are you in debt?” Jasmine said.
“Nay, madame, I am not,” he told her. “I am not a rich man, but neither am I a poor one. My title comes from the reign of the third Richard. My home is very much like Queen’s Malvern: comfortable, but not elegant. My income derives from my cattle. My herds are large. I have never been married before. My parents are deceased, and I have no siblings. I follow England’s church, my health is good, and I have all my teeth.”
Jasmine burst out laughing. “You have humor too,” she said. “I like that, my lord. Well, welcome to Queen’s Malvern. You are welcome to remain as long as you can bear us all. We are, I warn you, a noisy household.”
“May I remain as long as I like, cousin?” the young Earl of Lynmouth asked her.
“If you are going to attempt to court my granddaughter, sir, I suspect that you must. Aye, you too are welcome.”
The days were lengthening, and it was obvious that spring would arrive sooner than later. Green shoots were beginning to puncture the earth, and after a time the hillsides were bright with yellow daffodils. John Southwood courted Lady Sabrina Stuart beneath the careful eye of both her father and her grandmother. It was plain to anyone with eyes that they were a match. While they both descended from Skye O’Malley, their kinship was not so close as to forbid a marriage. The Earl of Lynmouth thought that Sabrina’s Scots accent, which was now much softer than when she had arrived in England four months earlier, charming. And to Jasmine’s surprise her granddaughter knew everything a young woman should know about running a house. There was no impediment to the marriage, which was scheduled to be celebrated on the second day of May.
Autumn had quieted and drawn into herself after her initial explosion of anger. Jasmine had struggled to remember how kind and supportive her grandmother had been to her when she found herself in the very same situation. The breach between mother and daughter, always so close, was healed, although Autumn could not understand her mother’s approval of Gabriel Bainbridge. “He has not Sebastian’s charm,” she said, “and he isn’t anywhere near as handsome, Mama.”
“That,” Jasmine replied with perfect logic, “is because he isn’t Sebastian d’Oleron. He is a completely different man. Stop looking at him as Sebastian. Stop comparing him to Sebastian. See him for who he is. He is a good man, Autumn.”
“Good men are boring, Mama,” was Autumn’s response.
Jasmine laughed. “Not always, poppet.”
So Autumn began to try to see Gabriel Bainbridge for who he was and not who she wished him to be. What was the matter with her anyway? Her husband would be dead six years in October. Suddenly she wished she was not quite so full with her child. How could a man court a woman who looked like a cow about to calf? She mockingly told him this.
“I raise cattle,” he said with a twinkle in his blue eyes. “I find breeding cows quite beautiful, madame.”
“I will not foster out my children,” she said seriously.
“Why would you?” he asked her. “Garwood Hall is a house meant for children, madame. Yours and ours.”
“I will be thirty in October,” she said. “I know not how many more years I have left to breed.”
“I will be forty-one in August,” he countered. “If we are diligent, Autumn, I think we can manage a few children before we are too old and gray.” The blue eyes twinkled at her.
“You are making fun of me,” she said.
He nodded in agreement. “I am,” he said. “You will get used to it in time, Autumn.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to,” she responded, not certain she liked this teasing.
He grinned. “You would be a wicked termagant if you were not so adorable, madame.”
“I am not a termagant!” she cried. “How dare you, sir?”
“A vixen, then,” he told her. “A delicious little vixen.”
Autumn ran her hands over her extended belly. “Hardly little, my lord,” she teased him back, “and likely to get bigger, I vow.”
He laughed at her sally, and then she laughed too.
Watching them, Jasmine had a faint glimmer of hope. How she would love it if Autumn could fall in love with the Duke of Garwood. If Autumn were remarried and settled with her children, her world would be complete. Nay, not quite complete. The servants who had been with her her entire life were fading away before her eyes. Adali was close to ninety, and she had never before heard of anyone living to that age. Rohana and Toramalli, her twin serving maids, were over eighty. They had been ten years old when she was born, and she would soon be seventy-one. What would she do when she lost them all?
Adali, back in England again, spent his days sitting in the sun by a window. Becket took care of Queen’s Malvern, so there was nothing left for him to do. Both Rohana and Toramalli were having difficulty in walking of late. Their knees, they complained, would not function properly, and they shuffled as they walked. Toramalli’s hands had grown quite gnarled. Her husband, Fergus, wasn’t much better. He and Red Hugh sat all day and played at chess, which Adali had taught them.
We are a household of old men and women,
Jasmine thought.
We are a household of old men and women,
Jasmine thought.
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