Wild Jasmine (79 page)

The day of Lady Lindley’s departure, the head cook at St. James’s Palace personally oversaw the provisions that she would carry in the coach with her. The journey, usually just a few days in duration, would take far longer, for Prince Henry did not want his mistress wearied in her delicate state. A full dozen bottles of wine from Greenwood’s cellars were put into the coach. There were two fully cooked capons, three loaves of fresh bread, a dozen hard-cooked eggs, half a small ham, a large wedge of hard, sharp cheese, some pears and oranges, which would take Lady Lindley through her first day.

“I have sent one of my undersecretaries ahead, my love, to see to your accommodations. You will be provided with a fresh basket of food for your journey each day, and should your wine give out, you will also be supplied with the best wines available,” the prince told her.

“There is more than enough wine,” Jasmine told him, thinking that wine did not agree with her particularly now as it was. She far preferred springwater, and her Assam tea.

“I do not like to let you go,” Henry Stuart said tenderly at their parting. He put his arms about her.

“I do not like being parted from you, my lord, but I would see my children, and I am told that plague has already broken out in the poorer sections of London. I am safer with my grandmother, and our bairn is too,” Jasmine told him.

He smiled at her use of the Scots for baby, and placed his hand upon her belly, which was beginning to swell visibly now. “God keep you, my love. I will come to you in September. I cannot come before, for the press of my duties is great.”

Their lips met in a tender kiss, and Jasmine felt tears prickling behind her closed eyelids. She did love this handsome prince, and she was unhappy to be leaving him, but the safety of their child depended upon her behaving in a sensible and responsible manner.

She sighed deeply, and breaking off their embrace, he looked deep into her beautiful turquoise-blue eyes. He wanted to beg her to stay, but Henry Stuart realized all too well that
he could not be selfish. A future king made decisions based on what was best, not on what he personally desired. Only sometimes were the two the same.

“I love you, Jasmine,” he told her softly, and he helped her into the carriage, where Toramalli was already seated. “Watch over your lady well for me, Mistress Toramalli,” Henry Stuart said, and then he closed the door of the coach. With a last silent farewell to her, he signaled the coachman, and the vehicle began to move slowly off.

Jasmine lowered the windows of the vehicle and looked out at him. “Farewell, my lord! Farewell, my love!” she called to him. He could not see the tears shining brightly in her eyes now, and he waved back to her, but there was no smile upon his face.

It took nine days to reach Queen’s Malvern, but as she stepped from the coach into Skye’s open arms, Jasmine knew she had been right to come home.
Home!
Aye, Queen’s Malvern was home, and so she told her grandmother, who beamed with pleasure at both Jasmine’s return and her words. The two women hugged once again, and then Skye released Jasmine.

“Thank God you are home safe!” she said fervently, and putting her arm through her granddaughter’s, led her into the house to the Family Hall, where the fires were blazing merrily, for the spring day was damp.

Jasmine laughed. “I but went to court, Grandmama,” she said.

“And came back with something you did not leave with,” Skye replied, reaching out to touch her granddaughter’s belly.

“I love him, Grandmama,” Jasmine said softly, “though I shall never tell him. He is young, and would in one moment cast aside his obligations, while telling me in the next what a fine king he will be someday. But he is a good man, and he will be good to his child.”

“I will not scold you, Jasmine, my darling girl,” Skye told her. “In my youth I would have done the same thing you have.”

“In your youth you did worse!” Adam de Marisco teased as he came into the hall. “Welcome home, Jasmine, my love!” He enfolded his granddaughter into his large embrace.

She kissed him heartily, and then stepping back, said, “Grandpapa, you are limping. What is the matter?”

“What is the matter?” Skye interjected. “I will tell you what
the matter is! Your grandfather is an old fool, Jasmine, who will hunt all day in a driving rain and then drink wine and eat foods that are too rich for his stomach. That is what the matter with him is!”

“I have the gout in one knee,” the Earl of Lundy said with as much dignity as he could muster, allowing his granddaughter to seat him by the fire. “Now what is this I hear about another baby, madame?”

“Mama has written to you?” Jasmine sat next to him as Skye took the place opposite them.

“She has,” Adam said. “Are you happy, my love?”

“Aye, and nay,” Jasmine admitted. “I am happy to be having this child. Even though I know its father and I cannot ever wed, and I always knew it, I am yet disturbed by it.”

“Of course you are,” Skye told her, “but you knew when you began this affaire de coeur with Prince Henry what your life would be if you bore him a child. Put all distress from your mind, my darling girl. It is wasted effort. The prince loves you, your mother tells me, and he will be good to both you and his child even when he finally takes a wife.”

“When is my new grandchild due to enter this world?” Adam asked her. He reached for a goblet of wine the servant offered, ignoring the glowering look his wife shot at him.

“In mid-September, Grandpapa,” Jasmine said. “Hal has said he will come when the baby is near to being born. It is his first child, you know. The royal progress will be made through the Midlands this summer, and ’twill not be hard for him to slip away.”

The de Mariscos nodded. Skye was pleased that Henry Stuart wanted to be present at the birth of his child. It spoke well of the young prince.

“Where are my children?” Jasmine asked her grandparents. “I have missed them greatly, and long to see them.”

Skye nodded to a servant, who hurried out. A few minutes later the three little Lindleys entered the Family Hall in the company of their nurses. “Here is your mama, back from court,” Skye told them. “Come and make your curtsies, lasses, and Henry, make your bow.”

Jasmine was astounded by the change in her offspring. She had only left them nine months ago! Now here was India, her silky dark hair coaxed into ringlets, her golden eyes—so like Rowan’s—wide with curiosity. She wore a gown of rose-colored velvet that was most becoming to her. She was both
neat and subdued.
And Henry!
“You have breeked him,” she said surprised. Her three-year-old son was wearing dark blue velvet breeches, and a doublet with ivory lace.

“I do not hold with the custom of keeping children swaddled so that their limbs develop crookedly and they cannot walk until they are four or five,” Skye said emphatically. “I also do not believe in leaving little boys in skirts until their fifth birthday. It is ridiculous!”

“I did not swaddle the children past their first month,” Jasmine said weakly. The children were so quiet. Even Fortune.
Fortune!
Her baby was close to two years of age. “Her hair has not darkened,” she noted, and fingered one of Fortune’s curls. It was silky soft. Large blue-green eyes stared back at her. “Why, Grandmama, she has your eyes!” Jasmine said excitedly. “What a beauty she will be one day!” Fortune was also clad in deep blue.

“ ’Tis a fine litter,” Adam observed. “Even this little fox vixen,” he chuckled, tweaking one of Fortune’s curls.

“Welcome home, Mama.” Lady India Lindley curtsied prettily. Her brother bowed neatly, and her little sister spread her tiny skirts in imitation of India, glancing from beneath golden lashes to be certain she was doing it correctly.

Jasmine bit her lip to keep from giggling. It was just the sort of thing she would have done as a little one. She would wager that Lady Fortune Lindley’s fires were merely banked, but not extinguished. “Grandmama, you have tamed them very well, I must admit,” she said.

“Boundaries!” Skye said. “Children must have boundaries, my darling girl! They need to know what is correct and what is not, what they may do and what they may not do. You were far too lax with them, and I hope when you return home to Cadby, you will not undo all our hard work.
Manners!
Above all, manners. Good manners will cover a multitude of sins and other deficiencies, Jasmine.”

Jasmine bent as much as she could and enfolded each of her children in a warm, loving embrace. Then straightening up, she said, “I am happy to see you all, my loves. India, you have become quite the young lady, I vow. I have seen none finer at court.”

India beamed with pleasure. “Thank you, Mama,” she said, and Skye gave her granddaughter an “I told you so” look.

“You have grown muchly, my lord,” Jasmine told her son.
“Perhaps when you are older you may serve the king at court as a page. Would you like that?”

“Thank you, Mama,” Lord Henry Lindley said, but nothing more.

Jasmine looked to her grandmother, and Skye told her, “Henry is very deep, darling girl. He has many thoughts, it would seem, which he keeps to himself, but he is a good lad.”

“He seems so serious for three,” Jasmine said, and bending again, she asked her son, “Would you like to serve the king, Henry?”

Henry nodded, but there was fear in his eyes. “Must I go to court soon, Mama?” he asked.

Jasmine hugged him and gave him a kiss. “ ’Tis many years away, my son. You must not fret yourself,” and she was relieved to see Henry smile at her revelation. God’s boots, he was just a baby, for all his fine clothes!

“Mama! Mama!” Fortune tugged at Jasmine’s skirts. “Kiss me!
Kiss me!
”

Jasmine laughed, and turned her attention to her littlest daughter. She kissed her on each cheek, and Fortune giggled. “Like kissing!” she announced enthusiastically.

“We had best teach her discretion,” Jasmine said merrily.

In the weeks that followed, Jasmine experienced some of the happiest times of her life. Surrounded by her family, cosseted and fussed over, she grew more content with each passing day as the child within her grew. She took walks with her children in her grandmother’s gardens, and in the fields and orchards belonging to Queen’s Malvern. The days grew longer and the weather warmer as spring moved into summer and the summer progressed toward autumn.

She had explained to her children that there would be a new baby in the family by the end of September. They were fascinated by her growing belly, and pressed ears against it to
hear
the infant.

“Why is the baby in your tummy, Mama?” India asked one day.

“That is where it must grow until it may live safely in the world,” Jasmine told her little daughter.

“How did it get there?” India persisted.

Skye looked at her granddaughter, amused. “Indeed, my darling girl, how did it get there?” she teased Jasmine.

“The papa put it there, India,” Jasmine replied serenely.

“
My papa?
” India demanded.

For a moment a look of sadness flitted across Jasmine’s face, but then she smiled down at her eldest child and said, “No, India, not your papa. Another papa.”

“Will the other papa be my papa, Mama? Will he come and live with us one day?” India inquired curiously.

“Nay, India, he cannot come and live with us, but soon you will meet him. He will come to be here when the baby is born. You will like him, and he will like you, I promise,” Jasmine told her daughter.

On the third day of September a messenger arrived from Henry Stuart. He was ill. Having spent an afternoon at his palace at Richmond in the tilt yard overexerting himself, he had gone swimming in the river afterward and come down with an appalling chill. He would, he assured Jasmine, be with her by the fifteenth of the month at the latest. She was not to give birth before then. Jasmine laughed at that although she was worried. There was still plague about the countryside, and in his weakened condition, the prince was vulnerable.

“How is he, really?” she demanded of the messenger.

“Feverish, and he has a cough,” the royal messenger told her. “He’ll not die, madame, if that is what frets you. I’ve seen him like this before, and he has always recovered.”

Jasmine heard no more. On the fifteenth of September she watched the road nervously the entire day long, but Henry Stuart did not come. Finally, when they had sat down to the evening meal in the Family Hall, he arrived. Jasmine, who had been pale with worry all the day long, regained the color in her cheeks as she ran awkwardly toward him across the hall.

“My love! You have come at last!” Dear heaven, he looks so wan, she thought. He was not fully recovered, and yet he had come to her. Her arms went about his neck, and she kissed him passionately, realizing as she did so how very much she had missed him.

He kissed her in return, and then setting her back, smiled as his hand reached out to caress her large belly. “My love,” he said, “you bloom beautifully, and the sight of you does my heart good. Ahhh, my darling one, I have missed you so these past few months!”

A look passed between Lord and Lady de Marisco, and they smiled at one another, pleased. Jasmine had not exaggerated. Henry Stuart was deeply in love with her. They were content now that even if their beloved granddaughter could not be his
wife, he would care for her and their child, no matter a royal marriage.

Jasmine now brought her lover to the high board to introduce him to her family.

Adam de Marisco arose slowly and bowed low. “My lord,” he said, “with your permission I will see to your men. Their horses will need stabling, and they will need hot food as well as shelter. I can see you have ridden hard.”

“There is no need, my lord,” the prince told him. “I have but come with my valet. This is no time for pomp and show, but a private time between us. I thank you for your gracious hospitality.” Then he broke off and began to cough.

“Cherry bark syrup,” Skye said. “I will see that your valet has a goodly supply. ’Tis a wicked cough you possess, my lord, and it needs tending. Have you no physician at Richmond?”