Wild Jasmine (80 page)

“I do not like doctors,” the prince replied.

“How so like a man,” Skye said sweetly, and Prince Henry looked startled. “You could be one of my grandsons,” Lady de Marisco continued, “and so I intend to treat you as I would treat one of them, my lord. We will get you to bed right away! You need some competent nursing, not the quackery and mumbo-jumbo that always surrounds a royal court and its physicians.”

“You have been to court?” he asked her, amused. He liked this determined old woman. Seeing her with Jasmine, he noted the very obvious resemblance of not just face and form, but of manner. Lady de Marisco was very beautiful for one of her years.

“Bess’s court, and a nest of vipers it was!” Skye responded, leading the prince from her hall. “I suppose you have your vipers too.”

She saw him tucked into bed, with bricks wrapped in flannel set at his feet. She fed him delicate, nourishing foods, and her own cough syrup made from the bark of the cherry trees in her orchards. To his great surprise, Henry Stuart found himself feeling better within a few days’ time, so that when Jasmine went into labor with their child on the morning of September eighteenth, he felt well enough to attend her.

“I have never seen a bairn born, madame,” he told Skye. “Pray, what is it like? I want to comfort my love in her travail.”

“Well, my lord, if I may speak plainly,” Skye began, “birthing
is painful, noisy, and bloody. If such things disturb you, I would ask that you remain in the hall. We have no time for anyone right now but my darling girl, and the little one she is working so hard to bear.”

“Lead on, madame,” the prince said, and he followed her into Jasmine’s bedchamber.

There he found his beautiful mistress pale and dripping with perspiration. Her loose hair was lank and swung about her as she paced the room nervously. “ ’Twill be quick this time, Grandmama,” Jasmine said, ignoring Henry Stuart. “I can sense it. This child is anxious to be born.”

“All the better!” Skye said, her glance sweeping about the chamber to be certain that all was in readiness. The birthing table was in its place. There were plenty of clean cloths, and water. The cradle and swaddling were in evidence.

“Ohhhhhh!” gasped Jasmine, and she doubled over.

“Help me get her on the table, my lord,” Skye said to him.

“Is she all right?” he asked low.

“As all right as any woman in the throes of childbirth can be, my lord,” Skye answered him, amused. But she fully approved of how the young man took charge of Jasmine, lifting her up to lay her gently upon the birthing table. “Get behind her, my lord,” Skye instructed him, “and brace her back. She will need your strength.”

Henry Stuart did as he was instructed, bracing Jasmine, bending low to murmur encouragingly to her, reaching forward to massage her distended belly with gentle hands. He seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of what was needed in this situation, and encouraged by his presence, Jasmine relaxed, pushing her child into the world.

“Ahhh!” Skye said. “The head!”

“Adali!” Henry Stuart barked. “Take my place!”

Adali leapt forward to obey the prince, and Henry Stuart moved around the birthing table to join Skye.

“God’s bones,” she muttered beneath her breath. This was all she needed. He would grow faint with all the blood, especially in his weakened condition. But to her surprise, the prince did not falter. Instead he watched the birth with great curiosity, encouraging Jasmine in her efforts, and when it became apparent that the baby would be born, he gently pushed Skye aside and birthed his child with his own hands, even as Skye cut the cord.

The infant began to howl immediately. Henry Stuart grinned
as he noticed the tiny genitals. “A son!” he crowed to Jasmine, and he held the screaming boy up to show her. “We have a son, madame!” Then he thrust the baby at Skye and came around to kiss his mistress. “Thank you, my love,” he said softly. “Thank you!”

“I would not have believed it,” Skye told Adam afterward in the privacy of their own apartment. “What a king he will make, young Henry Stuart! A king even I can respect and admire. He did not falter once, Adam, and he thrust me aside to birth the lad himself! What a man! No wonder Jasmine loves him, and what a pity that they cannot wed. How unfair life can be sometimes. She would be a fine queen. Do you realize that if they were wed, this child should be England’s next king after his father? God’s bones! ’Tis not fair! He will wed some overbred royal virgin who will give him weaklings and stillbirths while our magnificent great-grandson is so strong and filled with life!”

“The babe is better off a simple Englishman,” Adam said to his wife. “If he were Henry Stuart’s heir, he would be taken from us to be raised by strangers. They would instill their values in him, and not ours. We would never see him, Skye. I thank God he is not England’s heir, because he will be ours to love and know, ours to watch grow from infancy to boyhood. I shall never see him a man, but I will live long enough to see our little Charles Frederick Stuart a boy to be reckoned with, sweetheart. ’Tis good enough for me!”

Skye looked at her husband, stricken. She had never before heard Adam de Marisco speak of his own mortality.

He patted her hand, instantly understanding her fears. “I am eighty-two, little girl. I know my time is short, but not too short,” he finished with a deep chuckle, and leaning forward, gave her a kiss.

Lord Charles Frederick Stuart had been born at twelve noon on the eighteenth day of September in the year 1612. Prince Henry, fascinated with his blue-eyed, auburn-haired son, could but stay with mother and child another three days. He left them on the twenty-second of September to join his royal parents as they made their progress from the Midlands back south. Before he left, he spoke privately with Skye, Adam, and Jasmine.

“I have taken the liberty, my lord,” he told Adam, “of making a change in the line of descent for the Earldom of Lundy.” Then he looked to Skye. “Robert Cecil told me last spring before he died, madame, that you arranged with the late Queen
Elizabeth for the line of descent to come down through the female line. Your daughter, the Countess of BrocCairn, will have no need for this title; nor will Jasmine, who is Marchioness of Westleigh.”

“
Dowager Marchioness,
” Jasmine corrected, and he laughed.

“Dowager Marchioness then, my love.”

Skye was ahead of him. “You have arranged for your son to inherit the title from my husband, my lord. Is that it?”

The prince nodded. “ ’Twas bold of me, and if you are truly distressed, I will see that the matter is reversed, but I did not think you would mind. I can ask my father for a title for my wee Charles, but I think this is a more discreet way of handling the matter.”

Skye nodded. “It is,” she agreed, and looked to Adam.

“I concur,” he said.

Jasmine was yet too weak to leave her bed, and so Henry Stuart bid her farewell in her bedchamber, where she was nursing Charles. Fascinated, he watched as his son suckled strongly on her nipple. “I am jealous of the wee laddie,” he told her with a smile. “When will you rejoin me at court?”

“Charles must come first, my lord, and he is much too young to travel. It is my desire to nurse him myself. It is better for him,” Jasmine said. “I nursed India and Henry both.”

“I want you back at court for Elizabeth’s wedding in February,” the prince told her. “Either you must hire a wet nurse, or Charles must travel with you, which I do not think advisable in the winter weather.”

“We will discuss it further when Charles is older,” Jasmine evaded him, not wanting to refuse him, but her maternal instincts overrode her passion for this man.

“In time for Bessie’s nuptials, madame,” he warned her. “I will brook no disobedience from you in this matter.”

“Yes, my lord,” she told him with false sweetness.

“Toramalli, take the bairn,” the prince said, and the tiring woman hurried to obey him.

“Now, madame, you must bid me a proper farewell,” he told her.

Their lips met, and Jasmine was quite startled to find her dormant passions being aroused by her lover.

He chuckled as she pulled away. “You see, my love, your desire for me is already warring with your desire to mother our child.” Giving her a final quick kiss, he said, “I will try to visit
you before you must return to court, my darling.” Then he arose from her bed and, with a wink, departed.

“Adali,” she called. “Carry me to the window that I may see my lord’s departure.”

He rushed to obey her, cradling her in his grasp as she leaned forward to watch the prince below, bidding her grandparents farewell.

“Now keep taking the syrup for your cough,” Skye said. “I have given your valet the recipe for it. The ingredients are easy enough to obtain, so don’t let him tell you he cannot. That cough is still deep in your chest, my lord. My syrup just keeps it at bay.”

Henry Stuart bent and kissed Skye’s cheek. “I never knew my grandparents,” he said. “I consider you both their surrogates.” Then he mounted his horse and rode off down the drive with his valet in his wake. Turning to wave to them, he smiled to see Jasmine in the window above saluting him. He blew her a kiss.

“A fine young man,” Adam said.

“Aye,” Skye agreed. “A fine young man.”

Above them Jasmine watched from the security of Adali’s arms as her lover departed Queen’s Malvern. Why, she wondered, do I feel so sad? Tears slid down her cheeks. Farewell, my love, she thought silently. God go with you always. Now why did I say that? she wondered. It was the sort of thing one said when one did not expect to see a person again. Jasmine shivered, and Adali fussed at her.

“Back to bed with you, my lady, else your grandmother blames me should you catch a cold,” and he placed her in her bed again as she brushed away the tears on her face that he discreetly ignored.

Chapter 21

H
enry Stuart rode most of the day, to meet his parents, who were staying at Sudley Castle, the home of Lord and Lady Chandos. From early afternoon on he and his valet, Duncan, traveled in a driving rain, but the prince was anxious to reach his family that he might tell them of his son’s birth. They stopped once to allow the horses a small respite and to eat something. The inn was small, and the innkeeper had absolutely no idea of whom he was serving. Duncan told him, and the man’s mouth dropped open with surprise. The innkeeper had heard the royal family was hereabouts, but he had certainly never expected to see one of them, let alone bring him an ale.

“Have ye any hot food?” Duncan demanded.

“There’s no time,” Henry Stuart told his servant.

Duncan had been with the prince his entire life, and now he invoked the privilege of a beloved servant—forthright speech. “I’ll nae go another step, my lord, wi’out something hot in my belly. I’m nae as young as ye are, and while I’m about it, a wee bit of something warm would nae hurt ye either. Yer cough is still wi ye, and this weather will do ye nae good.”

“ ’Tis easier to agree with you than to argue with you, Duncan,” the prince said with a chuckle, and then he began to cough.

“Ah-hah!” the valet said. “Ye see, my lord? Ye need food, rest, and Lady de Marisco’s elixir before we can go another step.” He turned to the still open-mouthed innkeeper. “Food, man!”

“Right away, sir, my lord,” the innkeeper babbled, and fled into his kitchen, almost knocking over his wife, who had been listening wide-eyed behind the half-open door.

In short order a hot soup appeared along with a rabbit stew, several thick slices of ham, and a capon. There were bread, cheese, and a small tartlet of dried apples. The prince, who had not thought himself hungry, found that despite his cough, he was famished. When they had finished eating, Duncan paid the
innkeeper generously, and the two men went out to the stables where they had left their horses.

“I’ve fed ’em and given ’em a bit of water, my lord, but only after I cooled ’em off,” the young stable boy said.

“Good for you, lad,” Henry Stuart said, and flipped the youngster a coin. “They’ve a bit of a ways yet to go. I know they’re as refreshed by your good care as we are by the meal we just had.” He led his horse from the stall and mounted it.

“Tell yer grandchildren one day, laddie, that ye cared for the horse of England’s next king,” Duncan told the amazed boy. “This is Prince Henry Stuart himself.” Then he mounted his own horse, and the two men were off again into the downpour, leaving the astounded youngster looking after them with wide eyes and an open mouth.

When they finally reached Sudley Castle, the king and the court were already at supper in the Great Hall. Still booted, Henry Stuart joined them, kissing his mother, who frowned when she heard the wheeze coming from his chest. The prince ignored her and took up a goblet of wine, saying, “Your Majesties, my lords, and my ladies, I ask you to raise your goblets to the good health and long life of Charles Frederick Stuart,
my son
, born at Queen’s Malvern on the eighteenth day of September!”

There was a deep, stunned silence. It was not that the court was ignorant of Lady Lindley’s condition, but until now everything had been so discreet. This was hardly a circumspect moment, and they did not know what to do.