Bedazzled (3 page)

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Authors: Bertrice Small

Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #Fiction

BOOK: Bedazzled
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A banquet table stretched from one end of the hall to the other. The king had been placed in its center beneath yet another embroidered cloth-of-gold canopy. To his right sat his mother. To his left, his sister, England’s new queen. The proxy bridegroom was placed on Henrietta’s other side. The bride was served by a high-ranking nobleman, her old friend from childhood, Baron Bassompierre, and two French marshals.
When the meal had at last ended, all the guilds of Paris paraded before the new queen, and her brother’s Swiss Guards performed an intricate drill. At eleven o’clock, the exhausted bride retired back to the Louvre. For the rest of the week, all Paris rejoiced, and celebrated the marriage that united England and France. There were balls and banquets so numerous it was difficult to get to them all. The finest, however, was given by the Queen Mother in her new and magnificent Luxembourg Palace.
Then, suddenly, George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, arrived in France. He had come, he announced grandly, to escort England’s new queen home. Buckingham was very tall, and extremely handsome. His dark eyes when fixed upon a woman made her feel she was the only woman in the world. His wife was devoted to him, and while he was considered a terrible flirt, Lady Villiers had no cause for jealousy. Buckingham had such beautiful features that the late King James had given him the nickname of Steenie, because the old monarch said George Villiers had the face of St. Stephen, who had been noted for his beauty.
The French queen was openly admiring of the Englishman. The French male courtiers hated him on sight, for they considered Villiers arrogant. It was their opinion he behaved as if he were a king himself, and they could barely tolerate his presence. Their wives disagreed, sending the duke languishing looks each time he came their way; smiling invitingly, sighing over his chestnut curls, his exquisitely barbered mustache and little pointed beard. The queen and the other ladies of the court were always delighted to have the English duke among their company. He swept into their midst one afternoon wearing a suit of silver-gray silk, and gold tissue. The suit was sewn all over with pearls, but the pearls were forever dropping off, and rolling across the floor. As servants scrambled to retrieve the gems, the duke of Buckingham waved them away with a smile. The pearls were naught but trifles, he told them, implying there were plenty more where they came from. Keep them, he said.
“You have done it quite deliberately,” the duchess of Glenkirk scolded George Villiers. “These pearls are sewn too loosely so, of course, they will drop off. You are intent on annoying these poor French. What a wicked creature you are, Steenie!” They had known each other ever since Villiers’s very early days at King James’s court.
The dark eyes twinkled. An elegant eyebrow arched mischievously, and then he smiled at her, but he said not a word.
At last, on the twenty-third of May, the new queen of England’s great cavalcade finally departed Paris. It was made up of the several hundred people who would accompany Henrietta-Marie, including, besides the lords and ladies who were to make up her household, a large number of servants: cooks, grooms, a surgeon, an apothecary, a tailor, an embroiderer, a perfumer, a clockmaker, eleven musicians, Mathurine, her Fool, and twenty-four priests, including a bishop.
The king had an attack of the quinsy. His throat was so enflamed that he could barely speak. He bid his sister farewell at Compiegne, and returned to Paris to recuperate. At Amiens, Marie di Medici developed a fever. After a few days, it became obvious that Henrietta-Marie would have to leave her mother and travel onward with her great train by herself. Charles was already sending impatient messages to France requesting his bride come forthwith. Finally, they reached Boulogne where twenty ships were waiting to take the new queen and her retinue to England. There was also a party of English ladies and gentlemen who had come to greet the new queen, but while Henrietta-Marie was polite, she showed little warmth toward these members of her new court. They were Protestants, and must be avoided as much as possible, her foolish spiritual advisors warned her, little caring if she made a good impression on her new subjects as long as her soul was safe.
The duke of Glenkirk and his family had taken their leave of the young queen in Paris. They would see her in England, but it was not necessary that they be part of the great company traveling with Henrietta-Marie to her husband. They returned to the château with the St. Laurents so they might have a few more days with Lady Stewart-Hepburn, who would be spending the summer in France with her youngest daughter.
James Leslie tried hard to get his mother to return home to Scotland with them. “You dinna even know this Stuart king, Mother, and his parents, your last link wi the royal Stuarts, are both gone now. Come home wi us to Scotland. There is always a place for you at Glenkirk.”
Catriona Hay Leslie Stewart-Hepburn shook her head. She had been a dazzling beauty in her youth, and while time had aged her, she was still a stunning woman. Her honey-blond hair had turned a snowy white, just faintly tinted with gold. Her leaf-green eyes, however, had not changed. They were as clear and beautiful as they had always been. Now they fixed themselves on him. “Jemmie,” she said, “you are my eldest child, and I love you dearly, but I will not leave Bothwell, as I have already told Jasmine. Besides, as I have also said, my old bones are too used to the sunshine and the warmth of the south. Going home to Scotland would take ten years off my life. While I miss Francis, I am not all that anxious to join him yet. I enjoy my grandchildren too much, I fear.” She laughed, and patted his hand. “You have done very well all these years without me.”
“Do you not miss your children?” he queried her. “My brothers and my sisters hae given you grandchildren, too, Mother.”
“And all have at one time or another come to Naples with their families to see me,” she responded. “They do not need me, either, Jemmie. A woman raises her bairns, and then no matter how much she loves them, she must let them go on to live their own lives. A mother and father are like the sun around which their children move. Then one day it all changes. The bairns are grown, and become like the sun themselves, which means the parents must take a lesser position in their lives. There is no tragedy in this, for a mother wants her bairns to flourish and lead their own lives. They go on,
and we go on
. I loved all my bairns, but you were not my only life.
“Soon Jasmine’s three eldest will be ready to leave the loving nest you and she have built for them. You must let them go, Jemmie, as I let you, and your brothers, and sisters go. And you must let
me
go, my son. While you may not realize it, you did so years ago when I left Scotland, and you became head of the Leslies of Glenkirk. Seeing me after so long a time has but made you nostalgic.”
“I dinna realize how much I hae missed you, Mother, until now,” James Leslie said. “Will you nae return to Scotland ever?”
“You know I will never leave him,” she replied.
“He would like it if he were buried in the soil of his native land,” the duke of Glenkirk said slowly. Then he chuckled. “I’ll wager he was awaiting Cousin Jamie at heaven’s gate, and Queen Anne with him. She always liked Bothwell, Mother, didn’t she?”
Cat nodded. “All the women liked Francis,” she recalled with a small smile, “but if he were awaiting Jamie at heaven’s gate, surely the king thought he had been sent in the opposite direction from which he anticipated, although seeing his Annie might have reassured him.” She laughed, and then grew pensive again. “Aye, he would like to have been laid to rest in his native land, Jemmie.”
“Do you think he would object to being planted in Leslie soil?” the duke inquired of his mother.
“On the grounds of the old abbey,” Cat said softly. “Could you, Jemmie?”
“Did we nae once hoax the royal Stuarts, Mother?” the duke answered her. “You and I together?”
“You would not think it disloyal to your father’s memory?”
“My father is nae buried at Glenkirk,” the duke said. His mother did not know it, of course, for she had been gone from Scotland, but the duke’s father, the fifth earl of Glenkirk, had not been lost at sea as had been reported, before the king ordered him declared dead. Actually, he had been captured by the Spanish, and gone exploring with them in the New World, where he had made himself a new life.
The duke had learned of it almost twenty-five years ago when his father appeared suddenly at Glenkirk to make amends for his long absence. He was extremely relieved to learn he might go on with his new life, and return to the young woman who awaited him in a place called St. Augustine. James Leslie had never seen his father again, although every few years a missive would arrive filled with news of his adventures, and the half-siblings his new wife had borne him. “My father was a good Scotsman, Mother, and if it had been possible, he would have been buried at Glenkirk himself. I dinna believe he would object to you and Bothwell being there. He owes you that much,” the duke said meaningfully, and then, “Besides, who will know it but us?”
“Then one day we shall come home to Scotland together, he and I,” Lady Stewart-Hepburn said, and suddenly her eyes were filled with tears, which slid down her beautiful face even as she attempted to prevent them. “Ahhh,” she said softly, “we had such grand times, he and I, as we rode beneath the border moon.” Then, catching hold of her emotions, she said, “We will travel in a single coffin. That way there will be no questions. Just the duke of Glenkirk’s old mother returning to be buried in her native soil. And no one shall ever know where Bothwell’s grave is, Jemmie, for even in Naples there are those who believed those scurrilous tales of witchcraft and magic Cousin Jamie and his Protestants spread about Francis. There are some who come to take soil from his grave, believing it has powers. I must keep a watch there all the time, or they would surely steal his body away to use in their vile rites.”
“I dinna think I will get you home too soon, Mother,” the duke said, seeking to lighten the moment.
“No,” she replied with a small laugh. Then she hugged him. “Thank you, Jemmie, for your generosity.”
“I hae always enjoyed sharing secrets wi you, Mother,” he chuckled. “Only Jasmine shall know besides we two.”
“Agreed,” she answered him. “I will miss you.”
“And I you,” he told her. And then the duke of Glenkirk took his mother for a final stroll in his sister’s gardens.
Chapter
2
“
S
uch extravagance!” the countess of Alcester said, in very disapproving tones. She turned to her niece. “You are spoiling the chit, Jasmine, by allowing her to have such a wardrobe. Every fortune hunter at court will descend upon you when India parades herself in this splendor.”
“Am I so witless, Great-aunt,” India defended herself, “that I cannot separate truth from fiction? I have turned down half a dozen matches in Scotland for the very reason I knew it was my fortune that attracted the gentlemen in question and not me. Fine clothes will do little, if anything, to dull my perception of men.”
“Your tongue is too quick for a girl of respectable upbringing,” the countess snapped. India was too damned headstrong, even as her mother had been.
Even as my mother was,
Willow, Lady Edwardes, countess of Alcester, thought irritably.
Thank heavens my daughters have all been obedient girls
,
and my granddaughters, too
,
although perhaps one or two of them bear watching.
“If you will take my advice, Jasmine, although I suspect you will not, you and James will make a good match for India and cease this nonsense and outrageous expense.” Then, heaving her bulk from the chair in which she had been sitting, Lady Edwardes shook out her own dark skirts. “I do not like London anymore,” she grumbled, “and no one should live here at this time of year. It is too warm, and much too damp, but what could we do? We had to come to London to greet the new queen.”
“I think the queen is very pretty,” India noted.
“All young girls are pretty,” her great-aunt said, “and this one no more or less than many, but there will be difficulty over her religion, mark my words. And if all those French with her persist in their rude habits, the king will do well to send them away.” She moved toward the door. “I am going back to your uncle’s house now,” she announced. “I will see you all in the morning when we go to court, and I hope, Jasmine, that your daughter will be suitably garbed like a proper young Englishwoman, and not decked out like some foreigner.” The countess of Alcester stamped through the open door, which a servant held for her, her skirts swinging indignantly as she went.
“Fat old cow!” India muttered when the door had shut again.
“She has just forgotten what it is like to be young,” Jasmine told her daughter, although personally she agreed with her daughter’s assessment. Aunt Willow had always been prim and proper. It was as if she strove to be entirely and totally different from her own mother, a lady of passion and colorful character. It often made her seem joyless and didactic. “Your great-aunt is correct in one thing, however, India,” Jasmine said. “Tomorrow you will wear one of your less spectacular gowns to court to greet the queen. It would not do to outshine Her Majesty when she is undoubtedly striving to make a good impression upon her new subjects. She will be feeling strange, and, I suspect, not just a little frightened in her new land.”
“Like when you came to England?” India said.
Jasmine nodded. “At least the queen can go home again if she wants to visit France. Once I left India there was no going back.”
“Do you ever regret leaving?” her eldest child asked.
Jasmine shook her head. “No. My life there was at an end. My fate was here with your father, and later in Scotland with your stepfather, my darling Jemmie. You must never fight your fate, India, even if it is not the fate you believe you would choose.”
“My fate isn’t very interesting, Mama,” India said. “I will have to choose a husband very soon, or risk being an old maid. I will settle down, and have children as you, and Grandmother Velvet, and my great-grandmother, Madame Skye, did. There is no excitement or surprises in such a fate. It is all quite ordinary, I fear.”
“Neither Madame Skye, nor my mother, nor I led dull lives in our youth, India,” Jasmine reminded her daughter, “although I do hope you will not face quite all the excitement we did. I am not certain you could cope with it, being so gently raised.”
“Grandmother Velvet was gently raised, and she managed to survive her adventures,” India reminded her mother.
“It was a different time,” Jasmine said softly, thinking her English born and bred daughter did not know the half of it.
“Come, and help me choose what I will wear tomorrow, Mama,” India said. “And we must choose something for Fortune. She will wait until the last minute, and somehow manage to look like nobody’s child, embarrassing us all. Fortune’s appearance matters little to her, I fear.”
The duchess of Glenkirk laughed aloud at her eldest child’s assessment of her younger sister. It was so accurate. India cared very much how she looked, and how she appeared before the world. Her hair was always properly coiffed, her gown fresh, her nails neatly trimmed. Fortune, on the other hand, was an unrepentant hoyden whose red hair was always flying and tangled as Fortune dashed impulsively through life, her skirts muddied and more than likely a smudge upon her pale cheek. The duchess’s mother said that Fortune would change when she got older, but Fortune would be fifteen in just a few weeks and showed no signs of maturation. How on earth could she and Rowan Lindley have spawned two such different daughters? “Let us choose your sister’s gown first,” Jasmine suggested, knowing it would take India forever to settle upon her own garb.
India nodded her agreement. “The main problem will be to find something clean,” she said, “but I suppose Nelly does her best to keep up with our wild Fortune.” Then India laughed. “No one can make me angrier than Fortune, Mama. She does not seem to care at all, but I do love her!”
“I know you do,” the duchess replied, and then together the two hurried upstairs to seek out a wardrobe, India’s elegant new silk skirts rustling as they went.
Impressed by the exquisite clothing she had seen at the French court, India Lindley had returned from France determined to have a new gown, nay, a dozen new gowns fashioned in the same manner, of the finest materials, sewn all over with jewels and gold thread, with fine brocade petticoats that would show through the gown’s front opening. She thought the farthingales and bell-shaped skirts of her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother’s day far more elegant than the skirts of today that fell to the floor in simple folds, with the fullness toward the back. It was somehow sloppy, India thought, but it was the fashion now. Opulent fabrics, India thought, would take the curse from this less elegant mode.
India had therefore raided the O’Malley-Small trading company warehouses where there were incredible fabrics stored that her mother had brought from her homeland nearly twenty years ago. There was so much fine stuff that India knew even if she and her sister were completely outfitted in dozens of new gowns each, there would still be enough of the beautiful materials left over. She had picked carefully, colors and fabrics that would flatter her skin. Then she had personally overseen the making of the garments, which were far richer than those normally worn now in England. Satisfied that her gowns were every bit as good as those that would be worn by the queen and her French ladies, India looked forward to going to court.
The king and queen had been remarried at St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, and had then made their way to London, coming into the city by barge as there was plague about. It was not the official state entry that Henrietta-Marie had expected. Still, the young queen waved at the crowds through the open window of the vessel as they stood there along the Thames bank in the wind and rain to greet her. The king was more sedate, waving regally, his face somber. Afterward, however, the queen had retired to rest from her long journey. It was just now at the end of June that she felt ready to attend the formal proclamation of her marriage.
The ceremony took place in the Great Hall of Whitehall Palace. The king and his queen sat upon their thrones while the marriage contract was read aloud to the assembled dignitaries and the court. Looking about her, India was quite satisfied that she was the best dressed Englishwoman in the hall. Fortune, of course, had rolled her eyes as India had been laced into a small corset, but India knew it was worth it, for her small breasts swelled discreetly over the low, square neckline of her gown, pushed up by the corset. The gown itself was of claret-red silk with a wide, ivory lace collar that extended low on the shoulder. The sleeves reached the elbow, and showed ivory-and-gold brocade through their slashes that matched the tantalizing glimpse of petticoat through the gown’s skirt opening. The duchess had refused to allow her daughter to wear her own famous rubies, believing pearls more suitable to the occasion. India’s hair was as fashionable as her gown, her dark locks being fixed into a flat, coiled knot at the back, with a single lovelock tied with a gold ribbon draping itself teasingly by her left ear.
“Damn me if that ain’t the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” Adrian Leigh, Viscount Twyford, said to his friend, Lord John Summers.
“Too rich for your blood,” Lord Summers replied dryly.
“You know who she is, Johnny? And why should I not aspire to such a magnificent creature?”
“Because she is the stepdaughter of the duke of Glenkirk,
and
the sister of the marquis of Westleigh. A virgin, and an heiress far beyond your reach. You don’t want to marry, Twyford. You want to seduce. Seduce that beauty, and you’ll end up very dead. Whatever they have planned for Lady India Lindley, it isn’t you.”
“I’ll be earl of Oxton one day, Johnny,” Viscount Twyford replied, “and what a countess she would make! India? ’Tis an odd name.
“The duchess of Glenkirk, the girl’s mother, is from that land, I am told, although her mother is English or Scots, I’m not sure which. I do know they are a wealthy family, and somehow distantly related to the king’s family. Lady Lindley’s half-brother, the duke of Lundy, is also the king’s nephew. Wrong side of the blanket, of course, but you know these Stuarts, Adrian.”
“The women are obviously hot-blooded,” Viscount Twyford noted, his blue eyes fixed on India.
“Be careful, Adrian,” his friend teased. “If your mama should find out you have an interest in such a suitable girl she will be quite piqued. I know how she dotes on you. It is said she will never give you over into the care of another woman.”
“My mother would do well to remain at Oxton Hall, looking after my father. He has not been well in recent years,” Twyford said sourly.
“She’s still a handsome woman,” Lord Summers remarked.
“She concentrates on remaining so,” the viscount replied. “It is her sole interest. That,
and certain men
. She will not prevent me from marrying, Johnny, when I find the right girl, and I believe I have. It is my duty to have an heir. I know it would please my father.” He fixed his eyes on his companion. “I must be introduced to Lady India Lindley, Johnny. Do you know any of the family?”
“I have an acquaintance with her brother, Henry Lindley, the marquis of Westleigh. My little estate borders his holdings at Cadby. If he is here, I suppose I might presume upon him. He has a good nature.” Lord Summers swept the Great Hall with his mild gaze. “Ahh, there he is! With his stepfather, the duke. Come along, Adrian. This is as good a chance as we’ll get, I think.”
The two men made their way across the large chamber which was filled to overflowing with the court. The marriage contract having been read, the king had gone into a nearby chamber to dine, and the queen had retired to her apartments. This left the courtiers to mill about, visiting and gossiping with and about each other.
When they had reached the area where the duke of Glenkirk stood speaking with his stepson, Lord Summers stopped, and waited to catch Henry Lindley’s eye, saying when he did, “I came to pay my respects, my lord, and to introduce you to my friend, Viscount Twyford, who, having seen your sister, Lady India, tells me he will perish if you do not introduce them.” Lord Summers grinned in friendly fashion at the marquis of Westleigh, who was three years his junior.
“Introduce me to these gentlemen, Henry,” the duke of Glenkirk said. He took in the measure of the two young men before them.
“Lord John Summers, Father. His estate borders mine. We have sometimes hunted together when I have been at Cadby,”Henry Lindley said. “And this is his friend, Viscount Twyford.”
“Do you have a name, young man?” the duke of Glenkirk demanded.
“Adrian Leigh, sir. I am the earl of Oxton’s son, and heir.” He bowed to James Leslie and the young marquis.
“And you wish to meet my stepdaughter, sir? To what purpose?” the duke inquired fiercely.
A tinkle of laughter greeted his words as the duchess of Glenkirk, overhearing, turned and took her husband’s arm. “Do not be such a ninny, Jemmie. Viscount Twyford would appear to me to be a fairly respectable young man, and India is a beautiful young girl. To what purpose indeed.” She laughed again, then said, “Henry, take both these gentlemen and introduce them to India.” Then she lightly touched Adrian Leigh’s arm. “You are respectable, sir, are you not?”
“Aye, madame, I am,” he said boyishly.
“Then go along with my son, my lord,” Jasmine instructed him.
The trio hurried across the hall again, this time headed for India, who stood with another young girl chattering. She smiled at her brother’s approach, holding out her hand to him.

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