Wild Jasmine (40 page)

“Aye, ’tis like the old Kirk and the new Kirk at home. Each says the other is wrong and wicked,” Charlie answered.

Jasmine was surprised by his quick grasp of the situation. She knew about the religious squabbles going on throughout Europe from her studies and from her grandmother, who had explained the situation in England to her when she arrived. “Aye, Charlie, ’tis just like that,” she told him. “You are a quick lad, I think.”

“Can we be friends?” he asked. “I hae nae been friends wi a girl before, but I nae knew a girl who could fight so good. Aye, you’ve blackened Sibby’s eye for her, I can see.” He pointed to his other half sister.

Young Lady Sybilla had indeed gotten the worst of it. Her blond hair was pulled and, delicate of texture, it stood out in unattractive clumps. Her face was scratched, one eye was indeed blackened, and her skirt was in shreds. She was howling more, however, than was really warranted in the situation.

“She almost killed me! She did certainly try to kill me! Mama! Papa!” Sibby looked about for her parents, but they were still arguing with each other. She could not obtain their attention. She grew sullen and quiet, glaring at Jasmine, who glared back.

“Ohhhhh!” shrieked Sibby, suddenly drawing back. “She is going to come at me again, that wild woman! Keep her away
from me!
Keep her away from me!
” Sibby threw herself at her aunt Willow.

Willow, however, was not one bit fooled by Sybilla Gordon’s histrionics. She took her by the shoulders and shook her hard. “That is quite enough, miss!” she said. “Your half sister Jasmine has made no further move in your direction. Stop this nonsense or I shall myself slap you out of your hysterics, you silly chit!”

Sibby grew silent.

“Spoiled,” Willow said to her sister-in-law, Joan O’Flaherty. “Velvet has spoiled her rotten. There has been no advantage in being the only girl in a family of boys. Now she has a rival for Velvet’s affections and she is jealous.”

Joan nodded. Whether you agreed or disagreed with Willow, it was best simply to nod. In this particular instance she did agree with her formidable sister-in-law.

The beautiful Countess of Lynmouth, however, was a bit more sympathetic toward her niece. “You cannot blame her, Willow,” Angel Southwood said. “She has had Velvet to herself her whole life, and Velvet has perhaps worked harder at being a good mother to Sibby because Alanna was such a bad mother. Discovering that Velvet has another daughter must be a terrible shock for Sibby. Especially under the circumstances.”

“If Alex would set his daughter a better example,” Willow noted, “Sibby would follow suit. But no. There he is, raging and ranting about something that happened almost sixteen years ago. Although I thought Velvet impetuous to run off with Murrough at the time, and I still do, the birth of her daughter by the Indian king is hardly her fault now, is it?”

Valentina St. Michael Burke burst out laughing. “I do not think Jasmine’s father is totally responsible for her birth,” she said. “Do you, dearest Willow? Velvet did play some part in the situation.”

“I have heard enough!” Skye O’Malley de Marisco said. She turned to the gentlemen and said fiercely, “Sit down and stop braying like donkeys, the pack of you.” When the room grew silent, she continued. “I will have no more quarreling about this. The facts are quite clear. Jasmine is Velvet’s daughter by the Grand Mughal Akbar, now deceased. She was born of a legitimate union in her own land and is as legitimate as any of you, as far as I am concerned. She has come to us for refuge. She will have it,
and
anything else I choose to give her. Is that quite plain to everyone?

“Sybilla, you, too, are Velvet’s daughter, for she has raised you from your infancy and loves you dearly. Whatever the circumstances of your birth, your father has legally legitimatized you. But I will not allow you or anyone else to unfairly blacken Jasmine’s reputation or the de Marisco name. You are jealous that you must now share your mama. I understand that, but you must try not to be jealous. Velvet, I know, has more than enough love for both her daughters and all her sons too. Certainly you are not so stupid that you cannot understand that.

“Alex! Our daughter was a good and faithful wife to you before her adventures in India and certainly has been after them. Jasmine’s arrival into our midst is, of course, a great surprise, but I would remind you that my daughter has raised with love the daughter born to your mistress. No one asked her. Velvet did it out of her love for you. You will not dare to mistreat her or my granddaughter Jasmine unless you wish to answer to me.”

“It was different with me,” the Earl of BrocCairn began, but his mother-in-law interrupted him angrily.

“If you tell me it was different because you were a man, Alexander Gordon, I shall kill you where you stand!” Skye threatened. “Now this has been more of a day than I expected ever to have. I am no longer a young woman. I am going to bed, and I suggest you all do the same. Adam!” She stamped from the Great Hall.

Adam de Marisco rose to his feet. “Good night, my dears,” he said, and with a wink he was gone after his wife.

For a moment there was silence in the Great Hall of Queen’s Malvern. Then Jasmine de Marisco curtsied to her relations and bid them good-night, leaving the hall with her three servants in her wake.

“Ohhh, Papa!” Sibby Gordon cried, flinging herself into her father’s embrace, seeking sympathy.

Alex Gordon, however, was confused. He pushed his daughter away, saying, “Go to bed, Sibby. I’ve nae time for ye now, lass.”

Velvet took Sybilla’s face in her hands and kissed the girl. “Go along and obey your papa, dearest.”

“Do you love me still, Mama?” Sibby said low. “Or do you love that bastard girl more?”

“I love all my children equally, Sybilla,” Velvet said quietly, “and if you love me, dearest, you will not refer to my firstborn
child as a bastard. She is not. It hurts me greatly when you say it. You will shame me and your father if you continue to do so.”

Sybilla nodded. “I would not hurt you, Mama. I love you!”

“Come, Sibby,” Aidan St. Michael said, taking her niece by the hand and leading her off. “Let Uncle Conn and me escort you upstairs.”

When the doors to the Great Hall closed again, the children of Skye O’Malley settled themselves about the fire and began to talk with one another.

“Well,” chuckled Murrough, “you say you like surprises, Robin. We have surely had one this evening. I thought we were past the time when Mother could surprise us, but obviously we are not.”

“Mama,” Willow said sharply, “will go on surprising us until she is gone. Frankly, I am not so certain that she will not reach from beyond the grave to surprise us all a final time or two!”

The others laughed appreciatively.

“What are we to do, then?” Padraic asked.

“About what?” Deirdre questioned her brother. “Surely we will all accept Velvet’s child as one of our own?”

There were nods and murmurs of assent, but John Blackthorne, Deirdre’s husband, said quietly, “What of your feelings, Alex? This affects you and your children more than any of us.”

The Earl of BrocCairn looked up at them, and never had any of them seen Alex Gordon look so vulnerable. “Madame Skye is correct when she says that Velvet hae always been a faithful wife to me. She is correct when she says that Sibby is jealous. The lass is pea-green. There is nae doubt about it. She is correct when she says that Velvet hae raised Sibby wi love. She has.

“I want to be as generous to Velvet’s daughter as my wife has been to my daughter. I want to love her child as she hae loved mine, but I cannot! Even though I knew that the Grand Mughal had made Velvet his wife, I could put it all from my mind because Velvet came home to me. Because she was a good wife to me and bore my sons. Because she was generous enough to take my daughter to her heart. As the years went by, I pushed that episode in our lives further away into some distant past that perhaps never really existed after all. There was nothing to substantiate it, was there?

“But now,” he sighed, “Jasmine de Marisco stands as living proof of my wife’s passion for another man. If Velvet would say that she was forced to his bed … but she will not. She loved him. The girl is proof of the love that existed between Velvet and the Grand Mughal Akbar.

“Perhaps if Jasmine were soft-spoken or plain I could find it in my heart to accept her; but she is neither, is she? She eclipses her mother in both beauty and in pride. She is the Mughal’s daughter. She will always remember it. Her coming amongst us will, I fear, change everything.”

“Aye,” agreed his brother-in-law, the Earl of Lynmouth, “it will, Alex. It already has, but Jasmine is our own flesh and blood. I, for one, am glad that she has been restored to us.”

“She is your blood, Robin,” the Earl of BrocCairn said pointedly. “She is nae mine.”

“Nonetheless, you will treat my daughter with kindness and with respect, my lord,” Velvet told her husband.

“Your words have the unspoken ring of a threat to them, madame,” he said. “I will do my best, but I will promise you nothing.”

“At least when I went to the Mughal’s bed, I believed myself widowed of you, and an imperial bride. You, however, knew that I lived, yet you could not keep your cock in your breeches long enough to await my return. Do not dare to judge me, or to judge the child of my union with Akbar. Was your lapse of fidelity any less than mine, Alex? And why should either of our daughters suffer for it?” Velvet said pointedly. Then, with a swish of her dark green skirts, the Countess of BrocCairn left the hall, her back quite straight, her head held high.

Without another word Alex Gordon arose and followed her.

“Well,” said James Edwardes, the Earl of Alcester, to the remaining family members, “ ’tis been a most interesting evening, has it not?”

Chapter 10

“J
asmine!
” The voice whispered into her ear with urgency. “Jasmine, wake up! Wake up!” Something tugged at her arm.

She swam up through the mist of a dream in which Jamal was alive again and they were boating together on Wular Lake at dusk. The voice hissed her name again. Jasmine, rolling over, opened her eyes to look into her half brother’s young face. “Charlie,” she groaned, “what is it? Is the house afire?” She turned her head, looking to her window, and saw that the sky was just growing light with the dawn.

He climbed up on her bed, snuggling against her companionably and said, “I want you to come a-Maying with me. ’Tis May morn!”

“What is May morn?” she asked sleepily, thinking that even if he had woken her up at this terribly early hour, it was nice to have a little brother who climbed into bed with you for a chat.

“You do not know what May morn is?” he asked unbelievingly. “Why it is the first day of May, Jasmine. Do you not have the first day of May in India? I thought everyone in the world had a first day of May.”

“The calendar in India is based on the cycles of the moon,” she told him. “May first falls somewhere between the months of Shawwai and Dulkaada, depending upon the moon’s phases in a particular year. Now, tell me what is so important about today that I should get up out of my most comfortable bed, Charlie Gordon, and come with you?”

“On May morn,” he patiently explained to her, “we arise early so that we can gather flowers, fresh hawthorn branches, and the first dew at dawn.”

Jasmine yawned. “Why?” she demanded.

“The dew gathered on May morn has magical properties for the skin, and as for the rest,” he answered impatiently, “I do not know why. We just do it! Now get up and get dressed, Jasmine!”

She laughed and pushed him from the bed. “Very well,” she said, “but if you expect me to dress, you must leave, sir.”

“Do not be long,” he warned her, “and do not wear shoes. ’Tis not a formal occasion, Jasmine.” Then he scampered from her bedchamber, a pleased grin upon his freckled face.

Jasmine climbed from her bed as the door closed behind him. How, she wondered, had he managed to find her? She had not told him last night where her rooms were. She smiled to herself. Her stepfather might not approve of her. Sybilla obviously did not like her. But her mother and this little brother were making her feel very welcome. If only, she thought, I could let Mama Begum know how happy I am.

Jasmine pulled a simple white blouse on over her chemise, and a red silk skirt on over her petticoats. Informal, her brother had said. No need for either a farthingale or a fancy bodice, and with bare feet there was no need for stockings either. Un-braiding her hair, she brushed it out and rebraided it neatly in a single plait, tying the end with a red ribbon.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she frowned at the little purple bruise on her cheekbone. Stepping back to view her whole figure, she was somewhat startled to find she resembled a young Englishwoman in her present garb far more than she resembled an Imperial Mughal princess. Had it always been so? She wondered if Salim would even recognize her without kohl about her eyes. Reaching for her flask of scent, she dabbed some on, thinking that if he did not recognize her, he would certainly recognize the jasmine fragrance she always wore. Salim, however, was as far away from her now as if he lived on the moon itself. She would never see him again.