Wild Jasmine (36 page)

Jasmine was slightly shocked. “But my breasts can be plainly seen,” she wailed at her first fitting.

“ ’Tis the fashion,” her grandmother decreed. “You have beautiful breasts, my darling girl. Besides, if one is to catch a rich husband, one must bait the trap well, eh?”

Jasmine burst out laughing, and even the dressmaker tittered.

“I’m not certain I want another husband, Grandmother.”

“What do you want?” Skye asked quietly.

“I do not know yet,” Jasmine said honestly. “This is a new world for me. I would explore it and learn all I can about it.”

“But when you have finished exploring it,” Skye said wisely, “you will want a husband with whom you can settle down and have children. What else is there for a woman if not a family, Jasmine? Were things so different in your native India?
I do not think they were. Would not your Mama Begum rejoice to learn you have found another true love and happiness once again, darling girl? If she is the dear, wonderful lady you have told me that she is, I know she would.”

“Aye,” Jasmine admitted to Skye. “She would be very happy to know I had found happiness with a new love. Ohh, Grandmother! I miss her so very much! Here is another pain Salim has inflicted upon me. He is my brother and claims to love me, but he has caused me nothing but misery. He loved our father, too, but he was never happy being just his heir. He had to be the Mughal. Nothing else would do for Salim. He brought Father great unhappiness despite the love Father had for him. What matter of man is it that loves but constantly brings sorrow to those he loves?”

“I do not know,” Skye told Jasmine, “but something good has come out of this all, my darling girl. You have come to England!”

The fittings continued. There were nightgowns, chemises, blouses, and petticoats to be made. Corsets, made of laths about two inches wide, banded together by silk ribbons, were the latest fashion from Spain. Jasmine would not wear one, despite the dressmaker’s tsking disapproval.

“I cannot breathe in one of those things!” she said.

“Then you shall not have it,” her grandmother agreed.

The dressmaker and her assistant sewed on, making high-waisted cloaks with full sleeves, jackets for riding and archery, and capes with hoods for rainy days. There were silk stockings bought, and shoes and boots made to order. Jasmine told her grandmother of how her foot had been measured in India, and the dressmakers listened, their eyes wide. There was clothing for the winter months, and clothing for the warmer months, and clothing for the in-between months. Jasmine’s gowns were decorated with embroidery and beautiful buttons of ivory, bone, pearl, and precious gemstones. There were gloves sewn and handkerchiefs embroidered with the monogram
J de M
. The use of lace and silk ribbons was lavish.

“I shall be able to buy myself a shop with what I have earned sewing for you, my lady,” the little dressmaker admitted on the day that she left them.

It was early April, and on that same day two messengers had arrived, one from the north and the other from a ship newly docked from the East Indies. The first messenger, wearing
the livery of the Earl of BrocCairn, carried a letter for Skye. Opening it, she scanned its contents.

“We must go home,” Skye said. “Your mother and her brood will be at Queen’s Malvern in two weeks. I shall hold a family party!” Then she looked at her granddaughter, who had suddenly grown paler as she read the message that had been addressed to her. “What is it, darling child?”

“My father is dead,” Jasmine said. She held up a strand of magnificent black pearls. “Alain has sent us the news via a late-departing merchant vessel.” Silent tears began to slip down her beautiful face. “My father arranged this sign with me so I should be certain the messenger did not lie.”

Skye enfolded the girl in a loving embrace. “Death,” she said, “is always a shock. Even when it is expected, we don’t quite expect it. I will always remember when my own father died. I came to his bedside, and he entrusted the well-being of the family into my hands, much to the shock of my sisters and brothers-in-law. Only my stepmother Anne supported me.” She caressed Jasmine’s hair. “Does Alain say when the emperor died, my darling?”

“He died on October fifteenth, 1605. In the evening. It was his sixty-third birthday. Mama Begum and Jodh Bai were with him,” Jasmine said. “Alain is quoting the official statement.” Then she sobbed her grief for Akbar upon the older woman’s breast.

Being young, however, and being away from India, Jasmine began to recover from her sorrow within the next few days. She could never forget her dearly beloved father, but Skye kept the girl so busy that there was little time for her to mope about.

Cullen Butler came to say his good-byes, still wearing the dress of a moderately well-to-do gentleman. He had lingered long enough in England to be certain that Jasmine was adjusting to her new life, but then his aunt had certainly seen to that. He would ride down to Devon and sail from Bideford to Cobh.

“I do not know, Princess, if we will ever meet again,” he said seriously, “but I would have you know that I am grateful for my years with you. Kneel, my child, and let me give you my blessing.”

When she arose, Jasmine kissed her cousin on the cheek, saying, “Without your help, Cullen Butler, I should have had a much harder time coming to England than I have had. Thank
you. I hope my great-uncle, Michael O’Malley, will give you that little stone church you have so longed for all those years you spent in India.”

“Tell Michael there are harder times coming for Ireland than they ever had under old Bess,” Skye told the priest. “Remind him that he’s
the O’Malley
now, and not me. Tell him not to allow his duty to the Church to turn him from his duty to the family. In our father’s time the O’Malley and his bishop were two people and not one. ’Tis hard for Michael, I know.” She kissed her nephew. “My love to your mother, Cullen Butler. Tell her that her youngest son has done the family proud. I am grateful.”

Cullen Butler departed, and an hour later the de Mariscos also departed for Queen’s Malvern. Although accompanied by several coaches, Skye, Adam, and Jasmine preferred to ride. Her grandparents had given her a beautiful, fine-boned black mare whom Jasmine named Ebony. The girl loved racing the beast ahead of her party, letting the mare have her lead and feeling the warm spring wind in her face. The hillsides were awash with daffodils, narcissus, common red poppies, yellow rock rose, and purple gorse. Skye pointed out all these wild flowers new to her granddaughter. The neatly thatched, whitewashed cottages also fascinated Jasmine.

“Of course,” she said, “there are more people in India than there are here in England, but our peasants do not have such fine houses as do yours. The land is all owned by the Mughal, and he parcels it out to his nobles in exchange for military units. The nobles, in turn, give over bits of the land to the farmers and lower peasant orders. In exchange, they must pay with part of their crop and with time given to the military. It is all very complicated. If the Mughal becomes angry with a noble and reclaims his land to give to another, very often chaos results. Do your peasants own their land or do they just farm it for the nobility? And look!” She pointed. “Do they own their sheep and cattle too? And their orchards as well? This is an interesting land!”

“Some farmers rent their lands from the nobility,” Skye told Jasmine, “but others own their own land as well as their livestock and orchards. Men and women are all free here in England.”

“So Cullen told me, Grandmother. I freed Adali and my maids before we left India.”

They rode toward the Midlands, and on a bright, warm day
in late April, Jasmine de Marisco saw Queen’s Malvern for the first time. Built in the reign of Edward IV, it had been a love token given to that king’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville. The building, set in a small valley within the Malvern Hills between the rivers Severn and Wye, had been constructed in the shape of an E. It had always been a royal property, and Elizabeth Tudor, the late queen, had loaned it to Skye and Adam in exchange for Adam’s island of Lundy. Late in Elizabeth’s reign, desperate for money, she had sold Queen’s Malvern to the de Mariscos.

The house was built of warm, long-mellowed pinkish brick, and two of its walls were covered in shiny, dark green ivy. The windows were lead-paned, but tall and wide, allowing a good deal of light to enter into the house. As they rode up the graveled drive, the coaches rumbling behind them, Jasmine saw that the hedgerowed fields surrounding Queen’s Malvern were filled with mares and colts.

“Your grandfather and I raise horses,” Skye explained.

The front door to the house opened and the footmen came out to greet the travelers. They were accompanied by a gap-toothed woman who called, “Mistress Skye! And ’tis high time you got home! I was beginning to think it was the old days all over again and you had gone off without me.”

“Ahh, Daisy, I’d never go off without you.” Skye laughed, and drawing her horse to a stop, dismounted slowly. “I’m certainly not as agile as I once was,” she complained ruefully.

“Well, m’lady, you just come along,” the serving woman said, “and I’ll have a nice hot tub prepared for you this minute.” Then Daisy’s sharp eyes saw Jasmine, who was next to her grandfather. “And who is this?” she demanded, peering closely at the girl, a puzzled look coming into her eyes. “She seems familiar. Do I know this lass, Mistress Skye?”

“Nay, Daisy,” Skye told her tiring woman of many years. She slipped her arm through Daisy’s and together they went into the house. “Come into the library, old friend, and we shall tell you who she is.”

Once the door to the room closed, Skye motioned her servant to a chair and sat down opposite her. She drew Adam to her side while Jasmine settled herself onto a stool by her grandmother’s knee. The girl looked particularly lovely in a midnight-blue velvet riding skirt with an elegantly tailored matching silk jacket with pearl buttons.

“This is Velvet’s firstborn, Daisy. Though you have been
discreet over the years, I know Pansy told you,” Skye said simply, and then to Jasmine, “Daisy’s daughter, Pansy, is your mother’s tiring woman. She was with her in India, too, my darling.”

“God Almighty!” Daisy gasped. “Then that’s what that heathen, Adali, was about with his arrival on Christmas Day, and all of us wondering and never knowing.” She peered again at Jasmine. “No wonder you looked familiar to me, child. You’ve both your grandmother and your mother in you, but more of your grandmother, I’m thinking. I’ve been with her since before Mistress Willow was born, and ’tis going on fifty years, it is. I can remember when my lady was as fresh and as ripe as you are now, child. Now why did that daughter of mine not get word to me about this? Probably too busy with her life in the BrocCairn castle and all of Dugald Geddes’s rambunctious sons—seven of them she has, but now that she’s got her girl, there will be no more babies for my Pansy. Blossom is the last of ’em, you can be certain.”

“Velvet does not know,” Skye said quietly.

“
What
?” Daisy looked astounded. “You have had this child for over two months and her own mother doesn’t know she is here? Shame on you, my lady!”

“Velvet will be here for her birthday on May first and remain for her English summer, Daisy. Jasmine is going to be my gift to her. She will be so surprised! I’ve sent invitations to Robin and Angel down in Devon; and to Murrough and Joan as well. They are to leave the children, however. ’Twould be too much for the children to absorb. Let my sons and daughters come to terms with all this first. Willow and James have been invited. Now that I’m home, Deirdre and John, as well as Padraic and Valentina, shall be sent for as well.

“And, Daisy, not a word to the other servants,” Skye cautioned. “Ohh, I cannot wait to see the look of surprise on Velvet’s face when she meets Jasmine for the first time! She never thought to see her child again, but fate, as I so often have warned Velvet, is a capricious but kind bitch when she chooses.”

When Daisy had gone, taking Jasmine along to show her her rooms and to carry out the other myriad instructions her mistress had given her, Adam poured his wife and himself goblets of rich red Archambault wine.

Handing Skye one of the goblets, he said, “Do you really still think it wise to surprise Velvet with her daughter’s arrival?
I have never heard her speak of the child since she came home to reconcile with Alex.” He sipped thoughtfully as he looked at her.

“Because she has not spoken of her does not mean she has not thought of her, Adam,” Skye answered. “No mother forgets a child she has borne and raised for even as short a time as she and Jasmine had each other. She is, I promise you, going to be thrilled.”

“Will Alex? Does he even know?” Adam wondered.

“Of course he knows,” Skye said with assurance. “He must. I am certain that Velvet promised me she would tell him. ’Tis true Jasmine will be a bit of a shock to him, but let us not forget that Velvet has raised the child Alex’s mistress gave him while Velvet was in India. Indeed, Sybilla thinks of Velvet as her own mother and even calls her Mama. I think Velvet has poured all the love she could have lavished on Jasmine into raising Sybilla Gordon.”

“I suppose,” Adam mused, “that it will be all right, even if it does come as a bit of a shock to the family at first.”

He smiled to himself, and Skye thought how handsome a man he was despite his age. Some men shrank with the passing of time, but not Adam. He stood as tall and straight as he ever had. The smoky blue eyes had never faded, and if his once midnight-black hair was now silvery white, she did not care a bit. They would be married thirty-four years in September. There had not been a year gone by that she had not been supremely happy with this great bear of a man.

Little had she realized all those long years ago when he so tenderly but firmly seduced her that one day he would be her dearest husband, not simply her lover and her best friend. Sometimes she would awaken in the night and listen for the sound of his breathing, afraid that he might have left her. But then he would resume his sonorous snoring and she would poke at him, admonishing him to roll over and cease his noise. Skye O’Malley frankly could not imagine life without her beloved Adam.