Intrigued (48 page)

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Authors: Bertrice Small

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General

BOOK: Intrigued
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Lady Sabrina Stuart was married to the Earl of Lynmouth on the second of May. The day was sunny and mild with no wind. The bride wore an antique cream-colored silk wedding gown that had belonged to one of her female antecedents, although no one knew who. It had been found in the attics, carefully preserved in a trunk. Her unbound hair was crowned with a wreath of daisies. Her handsome bridegroom wore sky-blue velvet and seemed to have a waterfall of lace flowing from his cuffs. A banquet was set up on the lawns after the religious ceremony in the family’s ancient chapel.
The Marquis of Westleigh and his wife had come for the event with all their children, spouses, and grandchildren. Nearby neighbors had been asked. Pits had been dug to roast the beef, which was packed in rock salt. There were country hams and ducks roasted with a stuffing of raisins and apples swimming in plum sauce. There was salmon sent down from the streams at Glenkirk, broiled and set upon silver platters of green cress; golden-crusted pies filled with pieces of goose; rabbit stew in red wine; spring lamb chops, and a large turkey stuffed with cherries, plums, and saffroned rice. There were bowls of new peas and tiny beets, artichokes in white wine, and asparagus in a dilled cream sauce. There were wheels of sharp Cheddar, smaller wheels of soft French brie, freshly baked loaves of bread, and crocks of sweet butter. A cake with a spun-sugar couple atop it, surrounded by tiny, fresh strawberries concluded the meal. The wines came from Archambault and Chermont. The beer flowed freely from its kegs, as did the cider.
They danced country dances, reels, and in a straight line, weaving in and out. They played at bowls upon the lawns and shot arrows at butts set up for the purpose. They sang. Then, finally, the bride and groom were chased up the stairs of the house, giggling and laughing, to be undressed and put to bed. It had been a wonderful day for them all, they agreed afterwards, sitting about the fire in the family hall, the bridal couple well occupied, the children abed.
In the middle of the night Rohana came and woke her mistress. “It is time,” she said meaningfully, and Jasmine rose, drawing her chamber robe about her to follow her serving woman to Adali’s chamber.
Entering, she saw Toramalli waiting. Jasmine sat by her ancient servant’s bedside and took his hand. The old man’s breathing was shallow and growing fainter by the minute. Afraid he would think she hadn’t come, Jasmine spoke softly to him. “Adali.”
The brown eyes opened and, seeing her, he smiled. “I have stayed as long as I could, my princess. I will be waiting for you with the master, who says I must go now,” the old man said with great effort and his last bit of strength. Adali’s eyes closed again. He died just as the sun rose on the morning of the third of May.
Jasmine said nothing to her family, instead seeing her granddaughter, who looked extremely happy, off with her new husband. Only after they had gone did she announce to the household that Adali had died. His grave was dug and he was buried in the family’s private burial grounds. He had served his mistress faithfully for well over seventy years. Jasmine wept, inconsolable at his loss and at the knowledge that sooner than later she would lose the others as well.
Several days later Red Hugh came to her to say he wanted to go home to Glenkirk. She knew why. “Remain there,” she told him. “I am past the day when I need you to watch over me. Our adventuring is long done, I fear.”
“Ye were always getting into trouble when I wasna there, my lady,” he reminded. “ ’Twas a mercy, and no thanks to me ye weren’t killed half a dozen times.” He kissed her still elegant hands.
“Take a letter to Patrick for me,” she said, and he nodded. She asked her other manservant, Fergus More-Leslie, if he would go home to Glenkirk, but Fergus surprised her by declining.
“I’ll stay wi ye, m’lady. Don’t make no difference to me where I die. When I’m dead, I’m dead. Besides, that old woman of mine would nae leave her sister, nae would I. We’ll stay wi ye till God calls us, I vow.”
“You are behaving as if you’re going to die, Mama, and you are frightening me,” Autumn said.
“Well, I’m not,” her mother said firmly, “but Adali’s passing has made me realize what I have refused to see. None of us are young anymore, and those who have served me are entitled to some peace on earth before they must be put into it. They will not go, however.”
“Where would they go, Mama?” Autumn said. “They love you and have been with you your whole life. They will die in your service.”
“I suppose I should get someone to help Rohana and Toramalli,” Jasmine considered. “We tried before, but no one ever seems to work out or suit them.”
“I think they have always been jealous of anyone else serving you, Mama, but now they may be more amenable to having a helper.”
Spring faded away into summer. Gabriel Bainbridge made several brief trips to Durham to his estate to be certain that everything was running smoothly there. He also, unbeknownst to Autumn, arranged to have his house ready to receive his bride and her children. July passed, and then August came with terrible thunderstorms that flattened the fields of grain just before the harvest and knocked apples and pears from the trees in the orchards. The grains were quickly gathered before rot or mildew could set in, but the damanged fruit could only be pressed immediately into cider that had to be sweetened with precious sugar as the fruits had not been fully ripe.
Autumn went into labor on the twentieth of August. She had had little warning and few pains, but suddenly she could feel the pressure between her legs and knew that this birth was different from the others. Her waters broke, soaking her skirts, as she screamed for help. Then came the pains—hard, racking pains that ripped through her as if she was being carved up for butchering. Gabriel Bainbridge refused to leave her, standing at her head, wiping her moist brow as she cried and swore in her travail. Finally, after several hours, the baby was born. It was a perfectly formed little boy and he was quite dead, the cord wrapped about his neck so tightly that he was blue.
“Why isn’t it crying?” Autumn demanded. “Mama, is it a laddie? I did promise the king a laddie. Why isn’t he crying?”
There was no help for it. Jasmine showed Autumn the child just born, and her daughter began to wail a cry of such terrible anguish that Jasmine began to weep too. “It’s God’s will,” she sobbed, as if to explain the terrible tragedy. Then she began unwrapping the cord from about the little boy’s neck.
“God again!” Autumn cried out. “The same God who stole my husband from me and my first son! Now this wee laddie! I hate this God who would do such a terrible thing to me and to my child! What harm did that innocent little baby do, Mama? What harm?” Then she began to wail and cry once more.
Rohana pressed a goblet of wine to Autumn’s lips. “Drink, my lady. It has the juice of the poppy in it. You must sleep to escape the pain.”
Autumn gulped the liquid offered. “I hope I never wake up,” she said bitterly. “I hope I never awaken again!”
“Do not say such a thing,” the Duke of Garwood begged her. “What of Madeline and little Margot, Autumn? Think of your daughters.”
“Mama will raise them,” she replied sleepily.
“What of us?” he demanded.
“You will find another wife,” Autumn said. Her eyes were closing. “One better than me. Kinder.”
“But I love you,” he told her.
“That’s nice,” Autumn said as she slid into unconsciousness. He loved her. Someone loved her again, she thought muzzily as she seemed to fade away into nothingness.
Chapter
20
S
he didn’t want to wake up.
She didn’t!
But consciousness forced itself upon her. Autumn opened her eyes to see her mother sitting by her bedside. She felt empty. So very empty, and looking down at her belly, the awful reality slammed back into her with such force that it almost took her breath away. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she half-whispered.
“Baptized and buried,” Jasmine said quietly, “How do you feel, my darling child?”
“How long have I been asleep?” Autumn ignored her mother’s question. She felt awful. Absolutely awful. How else was she supposed to feel after carrying a child to full term only to have it born dead?
“You have been unconscious for two-and-a-half days,” her mother answered her. Jasmine stood up and, going to the sideboard, poured a small goblet of wine for Autumn.
Autumn accepted the liquid, drinking it down quickly, for she was thirsty. “I have to write to the king,” she said.
“It is already done,” Jasmine said.
“Thank you,” Autumn replied. “I would not have known what to say to him. I promised him a son and I have failed. This is the second son I have lost, Mama. What is the matter with me?”
“There is nothing the matter with you,” Jasmine reassured her daughter. “You lost Sebastian’s son because of the shock you suffered at your husband’s sudden and unexpected death. This poor wee bairn had the bad luck to get entangled with his cord. He strangled even before he was born. I would not make you sad, my darling, but he was a perfect child, all fat little arms and legs and a beautiful face. ’Tis a terrible tragedy, Autumn, but it was not your fault. These awful things happen.” She paused, and then she said, “I sent Charlie directly to the king to tell him personally, and he took my note to his majesty. Your sorrow will be a private one, Autumn.”
“Where did you put him, Mama?” the grieving woman asked.
“Next to your great-grandmother,” Jasmine said quietly. “He will be safe there.”
“I want to see him,” Autumn begged.
“In a few days, my daughter, when you have regained a small bit of your strength,” Jasmine told her. “For now you need rest and nourishment, Autumn. Let me look after you.”
“It would seem I have no choice,” Autumn replied bitterly.
She ate what they put before her. She drank the hot possets and healing draughts they brought to her. She slept, but she did not cry. It seemed to Autumn that her heart had turned to stone in her chest. Several days after her son had been born and died her daughters came to keep her company. Madeline and Margot both now spoke accentless English, although they were made converse daily in their native French tongue.
Madeline, who would shortly be eight, said, “We saw our little brother before they put him in the ground, Mama. He was a very pretty child. I’m sorry he did not live to play with us. Are you sorry he died?” She climbed up into the bed with her mother as Margot clambered onto the other side of Autumn.
“Are you sorry, Mama?” Margot parroted her elder sister.
“Yes, I am sorry,” Autumn said.
“Poor little Louis,” Madeline said, shaking her head sadly.
“Poor Louis,” Margot reprised.
“He is to have his own stone marker,” Madeline told her mother with an air of self-importance. “Grandma says it will read: Louis Charles Stuart, born and died August twentieth, sixteen hundred and sixty-one. And there is to be angel carved on it.”
“Angel. Angel. Angel,” Margot sing-songed.
“Oh, be quiet, Maggot! I am telling Mama,” Maddie said irritably.
“Do not call your sister ‘Maggot,’ ” Autumn scolded her elder daughter, although she was forced to push back a giggle. Maddie was obviously quite clever. “She is Marquerite Louise or Margot.”
“She is a botheration, Mama,” Maddie said. “She is always following me about. She is too little to be any fun.”
“You are sisters,” Autumn told them. “You must love one another and protect one another. You only have each other,
mes filles.
Go now, and let Mama rest again.”
“Papa says we are to all have a beautiful home of our own soon,” Maddie announced to her mother as she and her sister climbed off Autumn’s bed. “We are to have our own ponies. He says he is the luckiest man alive to have three beautiful ladies to bring to Garwood Hall.” She giggled. “It is so nice to have a papa at last, isn’t it, Margot?”
Margot nodded enthusiastically. “I want a black pony,” she said.
Then the two little girls departed Autumn’s bedchamber hand in hand, leaving their shocked mother to ponder what her children had just said.
Papa
was obviously Gabriel Bainbridge. How dare he take it upon himself to tell her daughters to address him in such a manner? She had not said she would marry him.
She wouldn’t marry him!
She didn’t need his title and she didn’t need his house. She would build her own house, and to hell with an English title. She was still Madame la Marquise d’Auriville.
On the first of September Autumn felt strong enough to get up and get dressed. Then, with Lily and Orane supporting her, she left the house and walked slowly to the family burial ground. When she had finally reached the site she sat down upon the marble bench saying, “Leave me,” to her two serving women.
“And how do you propose to get back?” Lily demanded irritably. “You couldn’t have got here at all if it weren’t for me and Orane, m’lady.”
“I want to be alone,” Autumn said. “Go! Come back later if you must, but leave me in peace for now.”
The two women hurried away, Lily muttering beneath her breath about how some people were so stubborn and never learned.
Autumn sat quietly, the warm September sun on her back. The tiny mound next to her great-grandmother’s grave was already grassed over. The marker, of course, was not yet ready. Two sons, she thought, both born dead. In her belly one day and gone the next. She had not been to either funeral. Nay, she lay prostrate, desperately trying to escape the pain of it all while her sons were buried by others. Sebastian’s hadn’t even had a name, although she always thought of him as Michel when he crept into her consciousness.
But Louis—her little Louis she had carried until he was due to be born. To lose him so easily at that point was incomprehensible to her. How could such a terrible thing have happened? Was God punishing her? Why had he not punished Mama, and Charlie been born dead too? Or was it, as her mother was so fond of saying, fate? Plain, ordinary fate that had taken a hand in her sons’ deaths. Why could she not successfully birth lads? Her daughters were both hale and hearty enough.
She did not hear him, and so Gabriel Bainbridge stood quietly by a tree watching Autumn. Except at the moment of the child’s birth, when she had realized its fate, she had not cried. Was she so heartless then? he wondered. She had made no secret of the fact she had deliberately set out to fill Barbara Palmer’s place in her absence. She had been pleased to be having the king’s child. Now that child was lost to her. Had it only been a means to an end for her? Was she that callous, that cold-hearted?
Then he heard the noise. A tiny noise at first, and then, as if a dam had broken her sobs poured forth in a sorrowful stream of weeping. There was such anguish and genuine pain in the sound that it reached out to him and touched his heart. So she was not the unfeeling bitch he had thought her to be. It was then Gabriel Bainbridge realized that Autumn was a far more complicated woman than he had anticipated. He debated going to her and comforting her, but she had come here to mourn in private. She was not ready to share her grief with anyone yet, let alone him. The Duke of Garwood slipped quietly away without Autumn ever having known he was there.
She came into the hall that evening to join them at their meal. “Sir,” she said to him, and he heard the irritation in her voice, “who gave you leave to tell my daughters that they might call you
papa?”
“I did,” her mother quickly spoke up. “It is best the girls begin accepting Gabriel as their father right now.”
“I have not said I would marry him,” Autumn replied. “If I decide I do not want to be the Duchess of Garwood, it will confuse my babies entirely. Particularly if I do eventually remarry. It was not your place, Mama, to give the girls such permission.”
“You are being obdurate,” Jasmine said.
“I am my own mistress, Mama,” was the swift reply.
“I will only marry a woman who loves me,” the duke said quietly.
“And I will only wed a man who loves me,” Autumn told him.
“But I do love you,” Gabriel Bainbridge told her. “Do you not recall the day that Louis was born, when I told you so?”
“I do not remember any such thing,” Autumn replied quickly, but she had as soon as he had mentioned it, and her blush told him so.
“Well, madame, I do love you, although why I do I cannot tell. You are difficult and shrewish, as well as being charming and beautiful. You puzzle me, and yet I love you,” he finished with a shrug.
“Shrewish? Difficult?
You have not had a great deal of experience courting a woman, my lord, have you?” Autumn snapped.
“But you have had a great deal of experience at being courted, madame. I must rely upon you to teach me what it is that will please you so you will keep a civil tongue in your head,” he replied blandly, his blue eyes twinkling wickedly.
Autumn flushed angrily, but then she said, “A gentleman never points out a lady’s faults of character, my lord. Not if he wishes to please her, of course.” She smiled sweetly, but the smile had no warmth to it at all.
He bowed to her. “I shall remember, madame. I hope you will enlighten me further on the subject of courting a lady. May I seat you at the highboard now?” He offered her his arm.
Charlie, back from court, caught his mother’s eye and swallowed back a chuckle. Jasmine, he could see, was also hard pressed not to laugh. It would appear that Autumn had at last met her match in Gabriel Bainbridge, Duke of Garwood. Unlike Sebastian d’Oleron, the duke, while in love, was not so bowled over by Autumn that he would entirely allow her her lead. There was going to be quite a battle between the two as to who would wear the breeches in their family, Charlie thought, amused. And even he was not certain on whom he would put his money.
September passed, and October came. Autumn had recovered from her son’s birth and was now ready to ride again. Lafite, who could write, had sent word that the harvest at Chermont had been a good one. When, he wondered, was madame la marquis and
les deux petite
mademoiselles coming home? Autumn did not have the heart to tell him that in all likelihood she was not coming back to France. She silently vowed, however, to send her daughters there next spring. Perhaps Mama would go with them, and then bring them back after the harvest. She knew that would please the people of Chermont. It was Madeline’s inheritance, and one day she must return to live there.
The Duke of Garwood was beginning to become familiar to Autumn. They continued to spar verbally, but his words were never cruel. He merely sought to exert his mastery over her, and Autumn was not certain she was willing to allow him that right. Sebastian d’Oleron, she now realized, while loving her had considered her a possession to be treasured and guarded. Had she been older, Autumn considered, as she now was, she would not have allowed him that prerogative, but rather she would have taught him that she was an independent creature.
She remembered how surprised he had been when she had devised the plan to free Queen Anne from Chenonceaux, and Cardinal Mazarin had approved it. She recalled how amazed he had seemed when it had all worked and the queen was returned safely to Paris. Prior to that she knew he had not believed a woman capable of being so clever. But the cardinal had appreciated her cleverness and had said so. He had even wished aloud that she would come to court. Autumn crossed herself. Cardinal Mazarin had died several months back, and King Louis, in a surprising move, had announced he would now personally run his own kingdom, down to the everyday details that had previously been the cardinal’s province. Louis was clever and had learned well.
Her mind flitted back to the duke. Gabriel Bainbridge, she recognized, was every bit as stubborn as she was. He had to understand, however, that she was not a pretty toy that he might own. He must comprehend that she was a woman with an intellect she enjoyed using. But how was she to convince him? She finally went to her mother for advice. God only knew Jasmine had until the end managed her father, a man very much like the Duke of Garwood. Her mother would know what to do.
“Tell him,” Jasmine said simply.
“Tell him
what?”
Autumn said, confused.
“Tell him that if you are to wed him, he must accept you as an equal partner in the marriage. Gabriel is not a fool. He appreciates you already, although, like you, he is stubborn. He will not admit it until you give him an equal advantage,” Jasmine advised. “Stop fighting with the man and speak plainly to him.”
Autumn decided to take her mother’s advice. She simply didn’t know what else to do. Charlie would soon be returning to court with his two sons in tow, and the king was going to ask if she and the duke were married. If they were not, she knew Charles would damn well want to know why they were not.

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