Lost Love Found (77 page)

“A
daughter
, my lord,” she corrected him. “
And her name shall be Elizabeth!
”

Epilogue

Q
UEEN’S

M
ALVERN

C
HRISTMAS
1605

O
n Christmas Day, 1605, there was an enormous gathering in the family chapel of Queen’s Malvern, the home of Lord and Lady de Marisco, the Earl and Countess of Lundy. On this day, Lord and Lady Burke’s second child and first son was to be christened.

Attending the gathering were the proud father’s three older brothers: Ewan O’Flaherty, the Master of Ballyhennessey, who had traveled from Ireland with his wife across a winter sea to attend the event; Captain Murrough O’Flaherty; and Robert Southwood, the Earl of Lynmouth. Two of Lord Burke’s three sisters, along with their respective mates, were there: Lady Willow Edwardes, the Countess of Alcester, and Deirdre Blakeley, Lady Blackthorn. There was also a huge variety of assorted nieces and nephews. Lord Burke’s youngest sister, Velvet, the Countess of BrocCairn, was still in Scotland. She and her husband and family would finally be coming south in the spring to join King James’s court.

On his maternal side, the guest of honor was represented by two of his mother Valentina’s three sisters and their husbands; and Valentina’s three brothers and their wives. Payton’s wife, the Lady Honoria, was due to present Payton with a child in the early spring. Present, too, was the guest of honor’s elder sister, Elizabeth. It was a most festive celebration that had been planned in his honor, and the baby, at six weeks, was alert enough to look about him a bit, even if he did sleep a great deal.

“He looks
exactly
like Padraic did at that age,” Skye said, her beautiful Kerry-blue eyes misty. “He is just the sweetest little baby!”

“You only say that because you are a most doting grandmother,” said Valentina to her aunt, cradling her son discreetly to her breast. “He is actually a shamelessly greedy, gluttonous little piglet, aren’t you, my angel?” she cooed at him as he nursed vigorously at her breast.

“What do you think of your baby brother, Bess?” demanded Lord de Marisco, who was holding his two-year-old granddaughter in his arms.

Elizabeth Burke stared with violet-blue eyes at this intruder who had taken all the attention away from her and ruined her life. “Hate him, Grandy! Bess wants him go ’way!”

“Bess, my sweeting, you must not say such wicked things about your baby brother,” chided her other grandmother, Lady Bliss. “You and your brother must love each other, for that is the first rule of a family, to love one another.”

Elizabeth Burke stuck out her lower lip in a distinct pout. All this fuss over a creature who cried and smelled funny. She didn’t understand it.

“Perhaps it would help if I took her home to Pearroc Royal with me after the festivities,” Aidan suggested. “Just for a little while, to help her come to terms with the baby.”

“No, thank you, Mama,” Valentina replied. “You will only spoil her even more than Padraic has already spoiled her, and then what will I do? No! She must learn to accept her brother with good grace, and as quickly as possible, for with God’s blessing this baby will be only the first of many siblings for Bess.”

“You were just as hostile to the twins when they were babies,” said Conn, laughing, to his eldest child’s mortification.

“I most certainly was not,” Valentina declared vehemently. “I couldn’t have been!”

“I distinctly remember a summer’s day when you took Anne and Colin from their cradles where they had been set on the lawns and tucked them into Leoma’s willow laundry basket. You set them adrift on the estate lake,” her father replied, laughing all the harder at his daughter’s horrified look.

“Papa! I didn’t!
Did I?
” Valentina cried.

“You did, my daughter, but fortunately the basket was watertight. The twins were sleeping soundly, and we caught you before the basket had drifted more than ten feet from shore,” her father told her. “It was the only time your mother ever spanked you, Valentina. My wee granddaughter’s nose is only slightly out of joint, isn’t it, Bessie?” Conn teased the little girl, taking her from Adam and tickling her until she was overcome with giggles.

“It is time!” Lady de Marisco announced to her family. They all trooped into the chapel, which was not really large enough to hold them all, so they spilled out into the hallway.

Padraic and Valentina’s son, with Payton and Honoria St. Michael standing as his godparents, was christened Adam Niall Burke.

“For both of my fathers,” Padraic had told his mother and stepfather. “For the father who gave me life, but whom I never knew. And for the father who raised me and loved me—and whom I love most dearly.”

Adam de Marisco’s smoky-blue eyes filled with tears at Padraic’s tribute. I am becoming a sentimental old fool, he scolded himself. Both his stepdaughter, Willow, and his daughter, Velvet, had named sons after him, but Padraic and Valentina’s decision to give their first son his name was a different kind of honor. It was almost as if his own family line was continuing. He was moved more than he could express.

Adam Burke, having been properly baptized and duly admired, was removed to the nursery while a great party was conducted in his honor in the hall below him.

The Great Hall at Queen’s Malvern was decorated for the twelve days of Christmas with pine, laurel, holly, and bay leaves. Great beeswax candles burned everywhere, and in the main fireplace of the hall were gigantic Yule logs. At the high board, and at the tables just below it, Skye and Adam, Conn and Aidan, and all of their children watched contentedly as their descendants scampered happily about the hall. A fine feast was served, and many cups of wine were drunk to the baby’s good health.

“Well, little girl,” Adam de Marisco said affectionately to his wife, who had been unusually quiet. “Forty-five grandchildren. So we have but five to go, eh?”

“
Forty-six
grandchildren, Adam,” Skye said softly.

“I have not forgotten,” he replied, “but our little princess is the one we may never talk about.”

“We are going to have to talk about her sooner than later, my lord,” Skye informed her husband. “I received a message this very day from India. A servant of the emperor himself brought it. Even now, the messenger warms himself in our kitchen.”

Adam looked puzzled. “The birthday pearl?” he said. “It is that time of year again, is it not, my love? Has the birthday pearl arrived? She is fifteen now, is she not?”

“Aye,” Skye said. “She is fifteen, and she will be in London by the end of January, Adam.”

“
What?
” Lord de Marisco nearly choked on his wine.

“The granddaughter we have never been able to acknowledge, this child whose existence has always been a secret from our whole family, this little princess of ours will be in London by the end of next month,” Skye repeated. “Her father has sent her to live with us, Adam. She is to remain in England.”

“But
why?
Why now, after all these years?” Adam asked his wife, forcing his voice lower in case those about them were curious enough to listen in.

“That, Adam, you may read for yourself in the emperor’s letter. As you will see, he really had no other choice. Now we must prepare ourselves and prepare our family to accept the existence of this child and welcome her into our family—a family that will find itself in an uproar over her very existence. She is, after all, Velvet’s firstborn. And she is our granddaughter.” Skye put her hand on her husband’s arm, and when she looked into his face, he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “We cannot turn Jasmine away, my darling! We simply cannot! She has no one but us, poor child.”

Lord de Marisco began to laugh softly. “Madam,” he said to his wife, “I thank God every day of my life that you are mine! I might have been old years ago, but living with you has always been one adventure after another.”

“Then you will welcome her?” Skye was relieved.

“Aye, little girl, I will most certainly welcome her! Surely you did not think I would not? She is my granddaughter, my own flesh and blood, my first grandchild,” Adam de Marisco said. Then his full laughter burst forth, rumbling up from his big chest to fill the hall.

“What, I should like to inquire, is so amusing?” Willow Edwardes demanded of her parents. She had always hoped that age would finally mellow them, that they would learn to contain their exuberance and curb their penchant for attracting difficulties. In this hope she was doomed to disappointment.

Lord de Marisco gasped, then said, “Your mother and I were discussing our forty-sixth grandchild, Willow, my dear.”

The others stopped talking and listened to the conversation taking place between Adam and Willow.

“Your
forty-sixth
grandchild, Papa? There are but forty-
five
, including, of course, Alex’s daughter, Sybilla.” Willow glared suspiciously around the hall at all of her female relations, but each shook her head in denial. “When is this forty-sixth due, Papa?”

“A great deal sooner than you can imagine, Willow, my dear,” Lord de Marisco murmured, then burst into fresh laughter.

Skye began laughing, too, and Willow looked askance at her mother and stepfather. Might they be drunk? If mere was a jest, she did not understand it. Her stepfather was talking nonsense. Was Adam becoming dotty in his old age? No, not Adam! which made the mystery even greater, and certainly more intriguing.

“Papa,” she said as patiently as she could, “I do not comprehend your meaning.”

“You will very shortly, Willow, my dear,” Lord de Marisco told her, laughing. “Indeed, very shortly, you will all understand.” Then catching his wife’s eye, Adam de Marisco began to chuckle once again.

Author’s Note

Lost Love Found
is the fifth book in the O’Malley Saga. I hope that those of you who have followed the series faithfully will forgive me my little joke in the epilogue. Of course there will be another book in this series. If you are a fan of the O’Malley family, I suggest you spend some time rereading the books in the series in preparation for Book 6 which should, God willing, be coming to you in 1991. For those of you who are new readers, and have chosen to read
Lost Love Found
at random, the O’Malley Saga books are as follows:

Book 1 Skye O'Malley

Book 2 All the Sweet Tomorrows

Book 3 A Love for All Time

Book 4 This Heart of Mine

Book 5 Lost Love Found

If you have not read the previous
O’Malley
books, I hope you have enjoyed this one enough that you will want to read the others.

For those of you who love history as much as I do, I wanted you to know that Elizabeth Tudor’s death is portrayed here as accurately as I could describe it. In fact as I wrote it, I had several histories open on my desk from which I drew my account of her last days. Many of the words spoken by her real contemporaries (as opposed to my fictitious characters) are given in this novel exactly as history has recorded their words.
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