Lost Love Found (6 page)

“I have never been in love with any man in my whole life. I do not understand it, for Mama tells me that the women in our family are passionate. I, however, am not. Since Ned’s money now makes me my own mistress I do not think I shall wed again, for I have found that to marry simply to marry is not a good thing. A woman should love the man she weds, and she should not take a husband for any reason other than love—no matter what others say to persuade her.”

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known, Valentina St. Michael,” Padraic told her fervently. “You could have any man you choose. Even a prince of royal blood!” Oh, Lord, he thought. I sound like a gushing schoolboy. She did not seem shocked by his declaration, and in a moment he understood that she had missed the passion in his voice.

She laughed lightly. “Alas, Padraic Burke, we have no princes in England who seek wives. Nor in Ireland, either. Oh, cousin, you have always had the knack of chasing away my deepest doldrums. Thank you for such a lovely compliment, but I think your mother is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

“In her generation, perhaps,” he declared stoutly, “but in ours it is you, Val, who are the most beautiful.”

“What of your sisters, you disloyal wretch?” she teased him.

“Willow is too sallow, Deirdre too pale, and Velvet’s nose is too long,” he answered casually.

“Villain! I shall tell your sisters what you’ve said about them! If any of my brothers spoke so scathingly about me I should wreak my vengence on them even as your sisters are going to revenge themselves upon you, my lord Burke!”

“Not, madam, while I have ten fingers with which to tickle you.” He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers in the air. “These digits are my secret weapon, and they will keep you silent and obedient to my will, Valentina St. Michael,” he told her.

“Hah! You will have to catch me first, my fine lord,” Valentina told him. She scampered off through the gardens, her cousin in hot pursuit.

Valentina headed for the garden’s famous boxwood maze, racing toward its protective greenery.

“Foul! Foul!” he cried, thwarted. “Damn it all, Val, you know I’ve never been able to find my way out of that bloody maze. Come out this instant, you wicked wench!”

She had disappeared into the maze and her laughter, taunting and victorious, floated over the thick hedges. With a smothered oath Padraic Burke plunged into the maze in search of her. Valentina, hearing him thrashing about, chuckled over his predicament. When she was very certain he was well and thoroughly lost within the twisting, turning paths of the living green puzzle, she exited easily and hurried back to the house. It would shortly dawn upon him that she was no longer there, and that he would have the difficult if not impossible task of finding his way out of the maze. She laughed, delighted.

If she was Padraic’s favorite cousin, then he was certainly her favorite cousin as well. Although he was eleven years her senior, they had always been close friends. As a little girl, it was Padraic Burke to whom she had always gravitated.

He had been much at court in his youth, having served as a page in the household of the Earl of Lincoln, whose countess was a cousin of Aidan St. Michael’s. When he grew too old to be a page, his mother sent him to Oxford. He studied there for two years before spending a year at sea with his elder brother, Murrough. During that year he discovered that, like his late father, Niall Burke, he was a landlubber through and through. Since then, Padraic had spent most of his time on his estates and at court, performing small, discreet services for the queen. He had joined the Earl of Essex’s expedition to Cádiz in 1596 when the English captured and sacked that Spanish city.

Valentina had seen her cousin at every family gathering. Now, she wondered why she had never discussed with Padraic her inability to find a husband she could love. He had always helped her to find answers to her problems. Furthermore, Padraic, like her, seemed unable to find true love.

“Valentina,” her mother called as Valentina reached the terrace. “Did Padraic find you? He came today especially to see you.”

“You had best send someone to help him find the path out of the maze, Mama. It seems Lord Burke has once again lost his way,” Valentina laughed.

“Valentina! Will you never grow up?” Aidan scolded, but she could not help laughing. She was relieved that Valentina had not gone into a decline over Lord Barrows’s death. “Jemmie,” she called to her youngest child, “go and lead your poor cousin Padraic from the maze.”

The little boy scampered off, whooping with glee. His cousin’s inability to solve the secret of Pearroc Royal’s maze was a longstanding family joke. All of the St. Michael children had easily deciphered the riddle of the twisting paths by the time they were four years old, as had their cousins—all except Padraic. To him the maze was still a conundrum, much to his mortification.

“Why on earth did you lure your cousin into the maze, Valentina?” her mother demanded.

“I did not lure him, Mama. I was forced to flee from him. He was tickling me, and you know how ticklish I am. I knew if I could but get him into the maze I could then escape him easily. I certainly could not outrun him. Besides, would it not be undignified for a newly widowed lady wearing deep mourning to be seen fleeing a pursuer across the lawn? I should hope to have a greater care for my reputation than that, Mama.”

“I am pleased to see that you have considered the proprieties, my dear, even if your methods are somewhat unorthodox,” Aidan murmured.

“I hope you are prepared to protect me, Mama, when Jemmie releases my cousin from his prison,” Valentina said mischievously.

Seeing her nephew striding determinedly toward them from the end of the garden, Aidan took her daughter by the arm and hurried her off. “I believe Padraic is less apt to wreak his vengeance upon us if we are safely indoors,” she said.

“Ah, Mama, I am relieved to see you are still willing to defend me.

“I have always defended and protected you, Valentina. From your very infancy I have guarded you, even though you were too young to remember it” was the reply.

“I know,” said Valentina. “Nan has told me the story of my kidnapping at least a thousand times over. And Wenda, too, for she also shared in the early part of the adventure, didn’t she?”

“Aye, she did,” said Aidan with a smile, “but it was the faithful Nan who bore your captivity in Ireland and suffered at the hands of my grandfather FitzGerald and his family. It was she who nursed you and kept you alive until I could reach you. Still in all, I did manage to rescue you even before your father could arrive. In doing so, I met Lord Glin who sheltered me from the FitzGeralds and their wrath behind Glinshannon’s sturdy walls until Conn could come for us. Now Bevin is to wed young Henry Sturminster, his father’s namesake and heir. One day my daughter will be mistress of that magnificent castle. I can hardly believe it.”

“You have done well by your daughters, Mama. Anne will one day be mistress of Holly Hill, and Bevin will have her Irish castle You will one day have to find an earl for Maggie, for she is determined to have the best wedding of us all. Only an earl will justify the expense,” Valentina teased her mother.

“But what of you, my dear?” Aidan asked. “You will one day wish to marry again.”

“Oh, no, Mama! You will not sing that tune with me again! When will you accept the fact that I am the odd duck in this family? No man has ever touched my heart, and I doubt one ever shall. I do not pretend to understand it, but there it is. I married Lord Barrows to please you and Papa, and though he was a good man, it was a terrible mistake. I shall not make such a mistake again. If I cannot have the kind of love that you and my father have, I will not settle for a lesser emotion and tell myself I must be happy. Never again!”

Aidan St. Michael said nothing. There really was nothing she could think of with which to refute her daughter’s argument.

She had realized, of course, that Valentina was not in love with Edward Barrows. Still, she had found no logical reason to discourage the match once Valentina agreed to it, so Aidan had closed her eyes to the facts and let the wedding take place. At twenty, Valentina was somewhat long in the tooth for a first marriage.

Aidan had not married her husband until she was in her middle twenties. Still, she reasoned, there had been mitigating circumstances in her case, which were not there in her daughter’s. It did not occur to Aidan to consider that, while it was true that she’d had the responsibility of her aged father, she might also have simply been a late bloomer. Her eldest child—so like her in many ways—might be a late-blooming rose, as she had been. But the idea had never occurred to Aidan. What was the matter with Valentina, she fretted, that she could not seem to find love?

In the weeks to come, however, Aidan St. Michael, Lady Bliss gave little thought to her widowed daughter. There would be time to deal with Valentina’s problems later. For the present, she was far too busy preparing for her third daughter’s wedding. It was to be a very grand one. Aidan seriously doubted that any mother had ever married off three daughters so well in the short space of less than six months.

In the summer of 1596 Conn O’Malley had taken his family to Innisfana Island, the ancestral home of the O’Malleys of mid-Connaught, to see their grandmother, Anne O’Malley. Anne O’Malley was sixty that year, and seeing the deteriorating conditions in which his mother lived, Conn sought to bring her back to England with him, but she would not come. Her warm brown eyes were sympathetic as she had told him, “I was born in Ireland. I have lived my entire life here. I shall die here. And I will say no more about it, Conn.”

He accepted her decision, though he was most unhappy about it. His brothers, through stupidity and foolishness, had lost all the wealth they had gained in the years that they had sailed ships for England’s sake, harassing the proud dons along the Spanish Main. Embittered by their losses, blaming everyone but themselves, particularly Elizabeth Tudor and all for which she stood, Brian, Shane, and Shamus O’Malley currently involved themselves in petty piracies along the Irish and Scots-Irish coasts. In the summer of 1596, they were already embroiled with the Earl of Tyrone and his rebellions. It was a lost cause, Conn knew, and his brothers’ actions made him fear for his mother’s future safety.

It was during that summer of 1596 that Bevin St. Michael, aged eleven, met Lord Glin’s eldest son and namesake, Henry Sturminster. The future master of Glinshannon was seventeen and fresh from studying in France. He thought himself quite the traveled sophisticate, but one look at Bevin St. Michael, who had her grandmother FitzGerald’s glorious chestnut hair and light blue eyes, and Harry Sturminster had been lost. He told his parents, who had been seriously considering a match with one of his cousins, that he would have no wife but Mistress St. Michael. Seeing his determination, they agreed, so long as no fault could be found with either the girl or her family.

Bevin, however, had not been ready to consider such a serious involvement. She was caught between childhood and womanhood, and Harry’s passionate avowals of eternal love frightened her. When he realized his mistake, he had gone more gently with her, and by summer’s end, Bevin was half in love. She spent the next two summers at Glinshannon Castle endearing herself to her future in-laws and falling more in love with her Harry.

In the summer of 1599 the Earl of Essex had taken his army of seventeen thousand men into Ireland to put down the Earl of Tyrone, who, with aid from Spain, had mounted the most serious rebellion against the English to occur in many years. The Spanish did not care what happened to the Irish. They merely saw a good chance to harass the English queen. Essex, despite his army and vast resources, was no threat to them, for he hardly ventured beyond the Dublin Pale. Still in all, it had not been a summer for a gently reared English maiden to venture into Ireland, so Lady Glin and her eldest son had came to England on an O’Malley-Small ship so that Harry Sturminster might be formally betrothed to Mistress Bevin St. Michael.

Now, on the twelfth day of October in the year 1600, a huge gathering assembled at Pearroc Royal to witness the nuptials of the young pair. The family was joined this time by all of the neighboring nobility and several of the St. Michaels’ friends from court. Once Lord Bliss had been a part of Elizabeth Tudor’s circle, but several years ago, prior to Jemmie’s birth, they had ceased going to court at all, even for the New Year festivities.

Bevin was radiant with a diadem of diamonds and pearls, her long hair streaming in the warm autumn breeze. Her satin gown was the color of heavy cream and embroidered heavily with diamante, seed pearls, and gold thread. She was attended by her younger sister, Margaret, and several young cousins: Sybilla Gordon, Mary Elizabeth Edwardes, and Thalia and Penelope Blakeley. The bridesmaids wore bright yellow silk gowns and carried bouquets of white damask roses tied with gold ribbons.

The festivities and feasting following the wedding lasted until well past moonrise. The Great Hall at Pearroc Royal rang with laughter and merriment until long after the bride and groom had been put to bed with much ceremony and ribaldry. When, on the following day, the last of the guests finally departed, Aidan turned to her husband and sighed with relief.

“Thank God Maggie is only twelve! I shall not have to go through another wedding for at least three years.”

“What of Valentina?” Lord Bliss asked of his wife.

“ ’Tis not the same thing when a woman marries for a second time. Besides, our eldest child tells me that she has no intention of marrying again. I don’t believe her, of course, but it is enough that
she
believes it. Valentina needs time to come to terms with herself, Conn. We were wrong to rush her into marriage with Lord Barrows. I see that now.”

“Was she so unhappy with him?”

“Not unhappy, but not happy, either. She admits to having wed him simply to please us, and that distresses me, Conn.” Aidan put her head on her husband’s shoulder and sighed deeply. “We are so fortunate in our love, and I would like Valentina to find the same good fortune that I did when I found you, my love.”