Wild Jasmine (53 page)

“Only last night,” she half whispered, suddenly afraid, but struggling not to show it, “and never again if I am to be your wife. I am the Mughal’s daughter, and I have my honor as well as yours to protect. Last night I was a free woman.
Free to do as I chose
. Today that is no longer so. I will not dishonor you, my lord. Or will you cry off because of what I have just told you?”

His hand dropped from her neck and he laughed weakly. “Would it please you if I say yes? Well, I will not, Jasmine de Marisco. Can you not see that you drive me to madness?
Never before have I put my hands upon a woman in violence or anger. This is what you do to me, and I suspect even when you are mine, I shall still feel this way if another man should dare to look at you with anything less than respect in his eye, may God help him!”

Then he pulled her roughly to him, and his mouth crushed down upon hers, bruising it, yet sending a thrill of anticipation through her slender frame. “You are a fever in my blood, Jasmine de Marisco,” he murmured against her lips. “A burning, hot fever.” He nibbled at her mouth, his golden eyes suddenly soft and tender. “I want more than just a night with you.
I want eternity
. I want sons and daughters of our making, my beautiful Jasmine.”

“Aye,” she told him, swept up in the moment, “I would have children too! When Jamal was murdered, I lost our child. I love children!”

“Then marry me and I will give you those children. I will give you whatever you want, Jasmine.
Anything!
”

What if she said no? What could they do to her? she wondered. Then she realized that if her grandmother had chosen the Marquess of Westleigh for her husband, he could be naught but a good man. Again, there was no real choice, but she did trust her grandmother.

“Aye,” she told Rowan Lindley. “I’ll marry you, my lord.”

He took her face in his two hands and gently kissed her. “I will make you happy,” he promised her gravely.

Jasmine felt tears welling behind her eyelids, but she opened them, gazing up at him through the veil of moisture, and said, “I think I must make you happy also, my lord.”

This man makes me feel safe. I have not had this feeling since I was a child, she thought. I have not had this feeling since Salim robbed me of it.
Now
, the notion slipped into her consciousness,
now
my brother can never find me. Even if his agents eventually trace me to England, he does not know my mother’s real name, or my grandmother’s,
or my husband’s
.

“One thing I must know,” Rowan Lindley was saying, and Jasmine forced herself to pay attention to him.

“What is it, my lord?” she asked.

“What does the Earl of Glenkirk really mean to you, madame?”

“Jemmie Leslie?” Jasmine smiled. “Why, he is my friend, sir.”

“But last night …?”

“There is much in common that we share,” Jasmine began. “We have both lost mates in a violent manner. We have lost children. We were lonely and sought only to comfort each other. I do not love him, nor he, me. My stepfather thought that he should wed with me, but I said no. I should not like to think I forced a man to the altar,” she finished with a smile.

“I needed to know, Jasmine,” he told her.

She put her hand upon his cheek in a comforting gesture. “I know that you did. I will never betray your honor, my lord, nor my own. Are you certain, however, that you still really wish to marry me? Certainly you realize my grandmother has decided I must be wed lest my
baser
instincts publicly embarrass the family. There will be no scandal about last night, for the discovery that Jemmie and I were together was not made until after my uncle’s guests had gone. Still, should you decide that a marriage between us was not wise, I would understand.”

“You are mine,” Rowan Lindley said simply. “You have been since I first set eyes on you last May Day.” Then, taking her hand in his, he led her from the picture gallery. He said nothing about the wedding date nor the reason behind the delay. He was touched by her honesty and knew that she would be a good wife to him. I can trust her, he thought, satisfied, and he squeezed the slim hand in his lovingly.

It is settled then, Jasmine realized as she signed the contract of marriage between herself and James Rowan Lindley, Marquess of Westleigh, that evening. The contracts for Sybilla’s marriage were also signed. A small dinner party was held in the betrothed couples’ honor.

“Thomas is taking me to France in May,” Sybilla announced grandly. “ ’Twill be a belated honeymoon as there is nowhere we may go in January. We shall visit Paris and Grandfather de Marisco’s relations at Archambault. Mama says there is a special château there, Belles Fleurs it is called, where she spent her early childhood.” Sybilla turned eagerly to Skye. “May we stay at Belles Fleurs, Grandmam? Mama says that you and Grandfather spent a part of your honeymoon there and ’tis a very romantic place. Oh, please, Grandmam!”

“The place has not been lived in for years,” Skye said, “but oh, very well, you silly chit. I will send word that the château be made ready for another generation of honeymooners.” Though she grumbled, Skye smiled with her words.
Belles Fleurs!
It has been so long ago. She had been so much younger, she thought ruefully, and her back had not ached so much
in the mornings. “No place to go in January indeed. You can go to court and lord it over all those other silly chits who serve Danish Annie with you,” she told Sybilla.

“I am offended, beauty,” the Earl of Kempe said mournfully. “No place to go? Why, I shall take you to heaven and back, my adorable Sybilla. You may trust my word on it.” He kissed her little hand, his gray eyes twinkling mischievously.

Sybilla was not so dense that she did not comprehend his meaning. She blushed to the roots of her golden-blond head.

The first of the family weddings being less than three weeks away, Bonnie, the seamstress, and her assistant found themselves immersed in work eighteen hours a day. The London seamstress who had sewn Jasmine’s new wardrobe the previous winter was called from her shop to lend a hand. Remembering the generosity of the old Countess of Lundy, she came gladly. Lady Sybilla Alexandra Mary Gordon would not go to her new husband with less than a full trousseau. The Earl of BrocCairn had begged the queen’s indulgence, and Sybilla had been relieved-of her duties as maid of honor. Her place in the queen’s household was quickly filled.

“So she is indeed to be married to the Earl of Glenkirk,” Queen Anne said, smiling, when Sybilla’s father requested her release. “ ’Tis time Jemmie wed again.”

“Nay, madame,” Alex Gordon corrected the queen. “Sybilla is to be married to Thomas Ashburne, the Earl of Kempe. Glenkirk was but a childish fantasy she hae carried wi her for years. Kempe offered for her last summer, but we hae promised her she could come to court to serve ye. Nay, madame, Glenkirk never entered the picture except in Sibby’s girlish dreams. She is quite besotted by Tom Ashburne now, and he in love wi her.”

“Then,” the queen said, “ ’twill be a good match, my lord. You and your wife are to be congratulated on your daughter’s good fortune.”

“We hae been twice blessed, madame,” the earl told her. “My widowed stepdaughter, Jasmine de Marisco, will remarry in the spring. Her betrothed husband is the Marquess of Westleigh, Kempe’s cousin. Both gentlemen came to visit my father-in-law, Lord de Marisco, last May at Queen’s Malvern and fell in love wi the lasses then.” Alex Gordon felt safe in telling the queen this additional bit of news. Jasmine’s monthly flow had come upon her two days after her liaison with Lord Leslie. There would, thank God, be no scandal!

* * *

The day before Sybilla’s wedding to Tom Ashburne, Jasmine sought out her stepsister. She found Sybilla in her bedchamber alone.

“What do you want?” Sybilla demanded. She had not been quite as obnoxious to Jasmine of late as she had previously been.

“I want you to have this,” Jasmine said, proffering a large, flat, red leather case to Sybilla. “It is my wedding gift to you.”

Sybilla looked at Jasmine with surprise. “Why are you giving me a wedding present? You hate me. You must.”

“I do not hate you,” Jasmine said. “Remember, Sibby, that we share something very special.
Our mother
. I cannot hate my mother’s daughter, and I do not believe that you really hate me.”

“Perhaps if Mama had had a daughter and not four boys,” Sybilla began, and she sighed, “but she did not. I was her little girl, and then you came. I realized then that all the love she had lavished on me was really the love she had wanted to lavish on you. Her love did not belong to me. It belonged to you. I was hurt and angry, Jasmine. Would you not have been if you were me? I love Mama more than anyone in my life!” Here Sybilla’s voice broke and large tears slipped down her pink cheeks.

Jasmine put a comforting arm about her stepsister and, strangely, Sybilla did not pull away. “Oh Sibby,” Jasmine told her, “had it not been for you, I do not believe our mother would have survived leaving India, nor would her marriage have been a very happy one. When my husband Jamal was murdered, I lost the child I was carrying. I did not know that child except in my imagination. Yet its loss hurt me dreadfully.

“Try to imagine what it must have been like for Mama, knowing her child and then being forcefully separated from that child. Then she came to Dun Broc and you were there! We are only six months apart in age, Sibby, but that would not have mattered.
You were there
. A little girl who needed mothering, and a mother who desperately needed her little girl. Mama must have thought it a miracle.

“The love and care she gave you was always yours, never mine, Sibby. Did she think of me? I do not know. Perhaps sometimes, but perhaps not, for I would have thought it far too painful for her. All she could remember was a baby. She never expected to see me again, and she had you. You became her darling little girl. Not me. Her joy at our reunion was no more
than that. She gave me life, and yet, try as I may, I cannot
really
think of her as my mother.”

“
You cannot?
” Sibby was astounded. She looked up at her beautiful stepsister in surprise. “
She is your mother, Jasmine!
”

Jasmine laughed. “I know she is, but because I never really knew her, it is Rugaiya Begum, the woman who raised me, that I think of as my mother. Do you ever think of Alanna Wythe as your mother?”

“
Never!
” Sybilla said. “I loathe and detest her, if the truth be known. Mama always grew upset with me when I said things like that, but it is true. Alanna Wythe but used me to blackmail my father. She was no mother to me.

“When I was small she would come to Dun Broc to see me, but every time ’twas really to wheedle something out of my father. Cattle, or horses, or grain to get her and that outlaw she wed through the winter. When I was six she came, big-bellied with a runny-nosed brat hanging upon her skirts. She coyly introduced him as my baby brother. The little horror was every bit as tall as I was, yet he was but two. His father, whom I’ve seen but once, is a huge giant of a man.

“I told my father after she left to simply send the creature her tribute, for I never wanted to see her again. I haven’t, either, since that day.”

“Yet she is your mother. She gave you life,” Jasmine said.

Understanding dawned in Sybilla’s blue eyes. Then she replied, “At least the mother who gave birth to you truly loves you.”

“But the love she has for me takes nothing away from the love she has for you, Sibby,” Jasmine responded. “We are two totally different girls, are we not? Cannot our mother love all her children without taking love away from one to give love to another of them? I never had a sister close to me in age, Sibby. I was the youngest, the last of the Mughal’s children. My father’s daughters were nearly all grown when I was born. I lived mostly apart from the court with my mother. I had no friends my own age. When I learned of your existence, I was so happy. It never occurred to me that we would not be friends. We should be. We are sisters.”

Not stepsisters
. She had said
sisters
, Sybilla thought. “Do you like me?” she asked Jasmine.

“Not always,” came the honest answer. “You are very spoiled.”

“And you can be imperious,” Sibby retorted quickly.

“
I am the Mughal’s daughter,
” Jasmine replied regally.

Then the two girls’ eyes met and they burst out laughing.

“Ohh my,” Sybilla gasped, finally catching her breath, “I think we can be friends, Jasmine.
I know we can, dear sister!
”

Then she began to sob again, and Jasmine wept too. It was thus that Velvet found them. “What is the matter?” she cried out.

“
We are sisters,
” Sibby said, her tears making her little nose quite rosy.

“
Isn’t it wonderful?
” Jasmine hiccuped.

“Have you two been imbibing the wedding wine?” Velvet demanded suspiciously. What on earth had happened to bring these two together?

“Jasmine brought me a wedding gift,” Sybilla finally said, “and then we talked and we decided we don’t want to be enemies any longer. We are sisters, Mama, and we are marrying cousins who are like brothers to one another.”

Velvet shook her head. “I have been a mother all these years, and I still do not understand children,” she said. Then, “Let us see what Jasmine has given you, Sibby. Open the box. Ohhhh, gracious! It is magnificent!” she exclaimed, as Sybilla revealed a necklace of diamonds and pearls nestled along with ear bobs upon a satin background.

“The diamonds come from my father’s mines in Golconda, and the pearls are from the waters of the Persian Gulf. The finest pearls in all the world come from the gulf, my father used to say. I did not know if Sibby had any grown-up jewelry, but I thought she should have some to wear on her wedding day. It will go perfectly with your gown, Sibby.”

“Ohh, do you really think so?”

Velvet was astounded. Quickly forgotten, she tiptoed from the room while her two daughters, their ebony and golden heads together, discussed the merits of Sybilla’s wedding gown.