Darling Jasmine

by Bertrice Small

  Skye settled into Glenkirk Castle. Adali housed her in the west tower apartments, which had once been used by the fabled Janet Leslie. It consisted of three floors. On the first was an anteroom, and two small bedrooms which would house Daisy and Nora. On the second floor was a dining room with a pantry, and a lovely dayroom that had once been used for preparing food for m’lady Janet. On the top floor was a lovely airy bedchamber and a garderobe. All the rooms but the garderobe had fireplaces. It took several days to make these rooms habitable again. The draperies and the bed hangings had to be found, brushed, and hung. The dust sheets were removed from the lovely old oak furniture, which was then polished up. Wonderful oriental carpets were brought from the castle storerooms and laid upon the floors. They had belonged to the lady Janet, and when she had moved to her own newly built castle of Sithean, they had somehow been left behind. Skye’s clothing was stored in the garderobe. Her featherbed, pillows, and personal linens were used to make the bed, and the remainder of the linens put in a cedar-lined oak trunk. Silver candlesticks and shining brass lamps were brought to illuminate the rooms; wood was stacked by the fireplaces, to be replenished each morning and afternoon. A crystal decanter of wine and one of whiskey along, with four silver goblets, appeared upon the sideboard in the dayroom, along with a bowl of spicy potpourri.

  “I am amazed that she would leave Queen’s Malvern,” the earl of Glenkirk said to his wife as they lay contentedly in their bed. Outside the northwest winds howled, and an icy rain pelted against the windows.

  “I am not,” Jasmine said quietly, and snuggled against her husband’s shoulder. “She doesn’t want to be at Queen’s Malvern for the holidays this year, Jemmie. Can you understand that? And she would not go to any of my aunts, or uncles, for they will make a long face of it and her heart will break all over again. I am the only one who wasn’t there, and so she has come to me. I am glad! I have never had a baby without Grandmama nearby to watch over me.”

  He put his hand upon her belly, feeling the child stir beneath his touch. “He’s a strong bairn, Jasmine.”

  “You’re certain that it’s a lad,” she teased him.

  “Aye,” he answered her with great certainty.

  “So am I,” she said softly, and she put her hand over his. “Patrick, sixth earl of Glenkirk. He will follow a proud tradition of Leslies, Jemmie, won’t he? And he’ll be a grand man.”

  “Like our other lads,” her husband answered her. “With you for a mother, he cannot help it, Jasmine, my darling Jasmine!” and he kissed her tenderly. He would not make love to her now, for her condition prevented it, but he enjoyed stroking her and kissing her, as did she. Her breasts were large and decorated with slender blue veins now. He found it very exciting to think that those beautiful breasts would shortly nourish his bairn. A wetnurse had also been found for the coming child.

  The children had all settled well into Glenkirk, making friends easily with the castle and village children. India, who would be eight in March, and Henry who would be seven in April, were, along with little Fortune, receiving lessons daily from Brother Duncan. Little Charles Frederick Stuart, at age three and a half, was considered too young, but he was intelligent, and Brother Duncan said that perhaps next autumn, after the bairn’s fourth birthday, they might begin to teach him his letters. The little not-so-royal Stuart did not seem to mind waiting.

  “He’s all Stuart,” the earl said of his stepson and ward. “Charm just like his father, and a smile that would break an angel’s heart.”

  On the twelfth of December the Leslies celebrated Skye’s seventy-sixth birthday with a family gathering, now that Jasmine’s grandmother was well rested, and recovered from her long journey. This was the Leslies’ first opportunity to meet Skye, and she was warmly welcomed amongst them and quickly liked. The pipes, which Skye had known in Ireland as a child, were the entertainment, along with the men of the clan, who danced for her, much to her delight.

  “I do like a man with good legs,” she remarked, “and you Leslies seem to be all well endowed with handsome limbs.”

  “And other parts,” a female voice said pithily, to ensuing laughter from the women members of the clan.

  India Lindley, her dark ringlets shining, cast her golden eyes up at her great-grandmother, and asked, “Are you very old, Grandmam?”

  Skye nodded. “I am very old, India.”

  “Was Grandsire Adam very old, too?”

  “He was eighty-four, India,” Skye said softly. Damn! She missed him, she thought sadly.

  “Will you live to be as old as Grandsire Adam, Grandmam?” India persisted. “I do not like it that he has gone away from us.”

  “I do not like it either, India,” Skye told the child. “And as for how long I shall live? That, child, is in God’s hands.”

  “I hope God will let you live forever, Grandmam!” India told her.

  “Thank you, child, but I do not. One is born to die, India. It is our fate, and no one lives forever, nor would they want to. When I die I shall be reunited with all those whom I have loved and who have gone through that door we call death into the next life. I shall not be sad about it.

  “I will,” India said forlornly.

  Skye laughed. “You will have your memories of me, child, and you will know, because I have told you so this night, that I am happy because I will be with my Adam again. But enough, India! This is a celebration of my birth, and I am here with you to enjoy it! Fetch me another piece of that apple tart with cream!”

  “She’s a grand old lassie,” the elderly earl of Sithean remarked to his nephew of Glenkirk. “Is she here to stay?”

  “I don’t know,” James Leslie said. “For the winter and the spring, at least. And I’m certain since she is here, BrocCairn will want her to visit them. She has never been to Scotland in all the years Velvet has been wed to Alex. They are coming for Christmas if it does not snow too heavily. And Uncle Adam and Aunt Fiona are coming up from their house in Edinburgh. We will have a full house indeed.”

  And on the twentieth of December the Gordons of BrocCairn arrived with four of their five sons. Sandy, the eldest, had remained at Dun Broc with his pregnant wife and her family. Jasmine’s favorite half brother, Charlie, now twenty, lifted her up, and gently swung her around, while the twins, Rob and Henry, age eighteen, and Neddie, now fifteen, cheered his efforts.

  “Put me down this instant, you loon!” she scolded him, but Jasmine was laughing even as she upbraided Charlie Gordon.

  He set her gently upon her feet. “Yer as big as a year-old heifer,” he teased her. “How’s my namesake?”

  “He’s named for Prince Charles, too,” Jasmine reminded her sibling. Then she drew forth the little duke of Lundy, who was peeping from behind her skirts at these four big fellows his mama said were his uncles. “Say hallo to your Uncle Charlie, Charlie-boy,” she encouraged him.

  “Charlie is my name,” the duke of Lundy said truculently, looking up at the laughing man.

  “It was my name first,” Charlie Gordon replied, swooping the youngster up in his arms and tickling him. “Shall we share it?”

  “I gots an Uncle Charles,” the little boy persisted, giggling.

  “Aye, laddie, ye do. Royal Charles, who will someday be our king, God bless him! But I’m nae Charles. Like you I’m just plain Charlie, and I’m happy to share my name wi ye, laddie,” Charlie Gordon concluded, his eyes twinkling at his little nephew.

  “I’m nae plain,” Charlie-boy responded. “I’m a duke.”

  “What’s that?” his uncle asked mischievously.

  The child shook his head. “I dinna know,” he said to the laughter of his family.

  “Ah, well then,” his uncle told him, “there is plenty of time for ye to learn all about being a duke, laddie. For now I think ye would far enjoy just being a wee lad, eh. Hae ye a puppy?”

  Charlie-boy shook his head again. “Nay,” he said. “We all share Mama’s Feathers, but she’s a silly old thing.”

  Ch
arlie turned to his youngest brother. “Neddie, where’s the gift we brought for our wee nephew.”

  Reaching into his doublet, Neddie Gordon drew forth a small black-and-gold puppy, handing it to his elder sibling.

  “ ’Tis for you, Charlie-boy,” Charlie Gordon said, handing the puppy over to the wide-eyed child. “ ’Tis a Gordon setter, and will be a good hunting dog when it is grown.” And when his nephew had taken the puppy gently into his arms, his uncle set him down on the floor again with his prize. Turning to his brother, he said, “Neddie?” and a second puppy was drawn forth from the younger Gordon’s doublet and handed to Henry Lindley, who had been looking slightly crestfallen at his little brother’s good fortune. “We’d nae forget ye, Henry,” Charlie said to his now delighted older nephew.

  “What about us?” Fortune demanded boldly.

  Robert and Henry Gordon brought forth puppies from their doublets, and handed them over to their very pleased nieces.

  “That’s the whole litter,” Charlie Gordon told his half sister.

  She sighed. “ ’Twas kind of you,” she said, weakly watching as India squealed when her puppy peed on her bodice; and her own spaniel, Feathers, growled menacingly from behind her skirts at these unruly intruders onto her territory; and the three older puppies, hastily placed upon the floor chased after her two elderly cats, Fou-Fou and Jiin, who, with amazing agility, leapt atop the sideboard, hissing while her beautiful blue-and-gold parrot, Hiraman, screeched wildly, “Robbers! Robbers!” while flapping upon his perch by the fireplace.

  The children, of course, giggled and ran after their puppies, gleefully tumbling over one another, while the adults began to laugh.

  “ ’Tis certainly a well-ordered household,” Velvet Gordon teased her daughter.

  “ ’Twas your sons who brought chaos into it,” Jasmine said spiritedly. “ ’Twas all calm until you came, Mama.”

  “What’s for dinner?” her stepfather, the earl of BrocCairn, asked, grinning. “ ’Twas a damned long, cold ride over from Dun Broc. There’s a good storm coming in another day or two. I can feel it in the air. We’re in for a wicked hard winter.”

  “I hope Uncle Adam and Aunt Fiona get here safely before the storm breaks,” James Leslie said.

  “I wanted Mama to come over to Dun Broc, and stay with us,” Velvet said. “Alec and I have been married for over a quarter of a century, and you’ve never seen my home, Mama.”

  “In the spring,” Skye promised. “I’ve done all the traveling about I intend to do for a while.”

  “Thank God for that!” Daisy muttered gratefully from her seat by her mistress.

  “Why, Daisy,” Velvet teased her mother’s companion. “You haven’t had so much fun in years now, admit it! Your life was in a rut.”

  “I like me rut very well, Mistress Velvet,” Daisy responded.

  “Well, you’re out of it now,” Skye said, “and I vow you’re looking younger than you have in twenty years.”

  On the twenty-second of December Adam and Fiona Leslie arrived from Edinburgh in the gray late morning. By noon the snow had begun to fall, and by dusk it was piling up upon the hillsides, in the forest, and upon the battlements and windowsills of the castle. Outside there was not a sound to be heard as the snow fell softly, showing absolutely no signs of letting up.

  In the hall that night Adam Leslie delivered some rather unsettling news to his nephew. “Before we left I met Gordie MacFie in the High Street. He told me that he hae heard there was an Englishman nosing about the city seeking ye out. Said the fellow claimed to hae an arrest warrant for ye, signed by the king himself, Gordie said.”

  “St. Denis!” Jasmine cried, turning pale.

  “Did MacFie see this Englishman, learn his name, or even see the alleged warrant?” the earl of Glenkirk asked his uncle.

  Adam shook his head. “Nay. I asked.”

  “It is St. Denis!” Jasmine repeated. “What is the matter with him that he will not give up his futile pursuit? And did the king not give us his word, and to Grandmama, too, that we were free of the marquis of Hartsfield and his machinations? How can Piers St. Denis have an arrest warrant for you, Jemmie? How?”

  “It is a forgery, darling Jasmine,” he reassured her.

  “How do you know that?” she demanded of him. “The king, it would appear, blows this way and that where St. Denis is concerned.”

  “We are safe here at Glenkirk,” the earl told his wife.

  “How can you be certain?” Jasmine cried, fearfully, her hands going to her belly as if to protect her child.

  “Lassie, lassie,” Adam said, kneeling by her side. “Jemmie is telling ye the truth. The winter hae begun, and nae man can travel wi’in these Highlands until the spring. The snows hae already begun to clog what few roads we hae. Fiona and I were fortunate to get here at all, and we’ll nae be going home to Edinburgh until the spring comes, and the roads are open again. If this Englishman didna leave Edinburgh, and arrive here before we did, then he is nae getting here until the spring. And if he got here, what could he do? This is Leslie and Gordon territory. Do ye think we would allow him to harm the earl of Glenkirk, or his family. I dinna hear this fellow hae an army wi him. He is alone. We hae two clans’ worth of lads ready to defend yer man. Dinna fear, lassie. Ye and yers are safe at Glenkirk.

  “I will not run!” Jasmine said fiercely. “Not this time!”

  “Ye dinna hae to run, lassie,” Adam said quietly. “We Leslies hold what is our own, and we willna allow our earl to be taken unfairly.”

  The snow finally stopped falling on Christmas Eve, and they attended midnight services in the castle chapel. The Anglican mass was said by Ian Leslie, a middle-aged cousin who had been given his living by the earl. The Anglicans had made a small inroad in Scotland despite the Presbyterians and the Covenanters. The earl of Glenkirk would not have ministers of either of those factions in his house, for he held them responsible for the murder of his first wife and sons.

  The Great Hall was hung with holly and other greens. A huge Yule log was dragged in, the children all accompanying it, followed by their yapping puppies. There was hot cider and mulled wine to drink, and a roast boar with an apple in its mouth that arrived upon an enormous silver salver carried by six clansmen. The children were given little bags of sugared sweets and raisins for a treat. They played games such as Hide-and-Seek, and Find-the-Slipper, while their elders sat back, well filled with bread and meat, and cheese, and wine.

  The piper came into the hall that night and was given the gift of a silver piece after he had played for them. The men had, as they had on Skye’s birthday feast, danced, their Leslie and Gordon kilts swaying in time with the music, their handsome faces flushed with whiskey and high spirits.

  On January 1 the family exchanged gifts. The children all received ponies, which, the earl informed them, they would have to personally care for, even little Charlie-boy. Henry Lindley was told that he would have to help his brother until the duke of Lundy got a little bigger.

  “When you own something,” the earl of Glenkirk told his four stepchildren, “you have a responsibility for it. It will be the same with your estates and with your families. You will be responsible for its lands and its people, your people. And you lassies, when you are wed one day you will have the responsibility for your household, and its servants. You will have to see to their health and their wellbeing. It will be easier for you when that time comes if you begin with the small responsibility of a pony now.”

  “He’s a good father,” the earl of BrocCairn remarked to his wife about their son-in-law. “And our grandchildren will be the better for it, I dinna doubt. Ye canna let the bairns run wild.”

  James Leslie had a special gift for his wife. He gave her the deed to A-Cuil, a small lodge in the hills above Loch Sithean, which had belonged to his mother. “It isn’t much, not like MacGuire’s Ford, with its little castle and lands. It’s just a wee stone house on a hill. We’ll go there in the spring so you can see it, and a
fter that it is your private place for when you seek to be alone.”

  “Wasn’t that once Gordon land,” Velvet said to her husband.

  “Jemmie’s great-grandmother was a Gordon,” he remarked. “She left it to Cat. When the marriage was arranged between her, and Jemmie’s father, Cat’s father included A-Cuil in his daughter’s dowry. Cat refused to wed her intended until he returned A-Cuil legally to her sole possession, which, I am told, he did on the very day that Jemmie was born. He knows the story better than I thought,” the earl of BrocCairn told his wife.

  On Twelfth Night Skye kept to her apartment in the West Tower of the castle. She could not face the celebration, but she did not want to spoil it for the children. Her daughter and granddaughter joined her in the afternoon, and together they wept for Adam de Marisco, gone from them a full year now.

  “When Willow’s father died,” Skye told them, “I thought I would die, too, but for Willow’s sake I had to be brave. When Geoffrey Southwood died I mourned him and our son John almost to my own death. It was Adam who pulled me back. Then I lost Niall Burke, but by that time I had become hardened to death, and there was Adam once more. I swore I would not marry again. I had buried five husbands by then. He insisted that that was because he was the only husband for me. He promised me he would live forever by my side; that he would not leave me as the others had done.” She sighed deeply. “But we don’t live forever, my darling girls, do we? And I had over forty years with that wonderful man. Now all that is left for me is to await death.”

  “Mama! Do not say such a thing!” Velvet implored her mother.

  “If you are yet here, Grandmama,” Jasmine said quietly, “perhaps it is because God still has things for you to do. Have you not always scolded me about fighting my fate? Do not fight yours, whatever it is.”

  A small smile touched Skye’s lips. “How clever of you, Jasmine, to use my own logic against me,” she told her granddaughter.

  “Never against you, Grandmama,” Jasmine replied. “I need you!” She took her grandmother’s hand and placed it upon her distended belly. “And Patrick Leslie needs you. And the babies that will come after him. I can’t have babies without you by my side, Grandmama. Do not return to Queen’s Malvern except in the summers, when Mama and I will go. Stay here in Scotland at Glenkirk with me.”