Chapter
1
L
ady Fortune Lindley drew her soft taupe wool cloak about her, and stared intently as the green hills of Ireland came slowly into view. The May wind was yet sharp, and ruffled the fur edging the hood of the garment against her face. Leaning against the ship’s rail she watched as the early morning mists, like pale silver streamers, blew themselves out of existence, revealing a pale wash of blue-white sky. She wondered what Ireland would really be like, and if she would at last find love. Did love even exist for her?
Her gloved fingers tightened about the railing. What on earth was she thinking?
Love?
That sort of thing was for her mother, and for her sister, India. Fortune Mary Lindley was the practical one in the family. Her mother’s history was both fascinating and appalling. Two husbands murdered, and one of them Fortune’s own father. Her half-brother, Charlie, a royal bastard because her mother and the late Prince Henry had been lovers, but could never have wed because her own mother would have been considered a bastard by English royalty. In India, however, her mother had been a royal princess, courtesy of a grandmother who had been kidnapped, placed in a royal harem to bear the Indian emperor a child before being retrieved by her family, and sent back to her Scots husband.
And her own sister, India, who had attempted to elope with a young man, only to find the vessel upon which she was making her escape attacked and taken by Barbary pirates, had also ended up in a harem. Rescued, she had returned home
enceinte
with her Barbary master’s child. Their stepfather had been furious, and had sent her up to the family’s hunting lodge in the mountains to have the child. Fortune had gone with India to keep her company. The child had been taken from her sister upon its birth, and India had been married to an English milord.
Love?
Heaven forfend! She certainly didn’t want her life filled with such melodrama!
Love was not practical. What a woman wanted was a pleasant man with whom she could live peaceably. He must be reasonably attractive, and have his own wealth, for she would certainly not share hers. That she would keep for her children. They would have their children at reasonable intervals. Two. A son to inherit his father’s estate, and a daughter to inherit Maguire’s Ford. It was the sensible thing to do. She hoped she would like Ireland, but even if she didn’t, she would remain there. An estate of some three thousand acres was not to be sniffed at, and her mother’s gift to her upon her marriage would make her not simply wealthy, but very, very wealthy. Wealth, she had observed, was far more preferable than bleak poverty.
“Are you thinking of William Devers?” her mother asked, coming to Fortune’s side to look out over the water at the nearing land.
“I keep forgetting his name,” Fortune chuckled. “William is not a name that is familiar to me, Mama.”
“You have a cousin William,” Jasmine answered. “My Aunt Willow’s youngest son. He is the cousin who has taken holy orders in the Anglican church. I don’t think you ever met him, poppet. A nice young man, as I recall. A bit younger than I.” Jasmine’s eyes were thoughtful with her concern. Fortune was her privy child. She was never really certain what Fortune was thinking. “If you do not like this young man, poppet, you do not have to wed him,” she told her daughter for what must surely be the twentieth time. God! She didn’t want Rowan’s youngest daughter unhappy. It had been a near enough thing with India.
“If he is presentable, Mama, and kind, I’m sure he will suit me well,” Fortune replied, patting her mother’s hand in a gesture of comfort. “I am not adventurous like you and India, or the rest of the women in this family for that matter. I want an orderly and peaceful life.”
The duchess of Glenkirk laughed aloud. “I do not believe, Fortune, that the women of this family ever sought out wild adventure deliberately. It just seemed to happen.”
“It happened because you were all so impulsive and reckless,” Fortune said disapprovingly.
“Hah!” her mother snorted with humor. “And you are not impulsive, my little huntress? I’ve seen you take your horse over a small chasm many a time, sending us all into fits.”
“If the stag can take the jump then so can the horse,” answered the girl. “Nay, Mama. You and the others sought out exotic climes and places. You associated with the mighty. It was inevitable that you should find yourselves caught up in risky ventures. I am not like that at all. While I did visit France with you and Papa once, I have remained content at home in the bosom of my family. Like Papa I do not like the court. Too many young people who do not bathe regularly, with deceitful tongues, all seeking out the latest gossip, and making it up if they can’t find it.
Non, merci.”
“Even in simple country places, Fortune, there are deceitful tongues all too ready to gossip. Perhaps you have been too sheltered within the safety of our family gathering, but be vigilent, poppet. Always follow your intincts even when they war with your practical nature. Your instincts will be right every time,” her mother advised.
“Have you always followed your instincts, Mama?” Fortune asked.
“Aye, most of the time. It’s when I didn’t that I got into difficulties,” Jasmine responded with a smile.
“Like when you took us to Belle Fleurs after old King James ordered you to marry Papa?” Fortune probed.
The duchess laughed again. “Aye,” she admitted, “but don’t ever tell Jemmie that I said so, poppet. It will be our secret. Ohh, look! We’re entering Dundalk Bay. The Irish call it Dundeal. We’ll be landing soon. I wonder if Rory Maguire will be there to meet us as he was all those years ago when your father and I first came to Ireland to see our new estates. That dreadful little devil who later killed Rowan had brought him along to drive the coach. Your father was quick to learn that Rory Maguire’s family had been the lords of Erne Rock for centuries. They left with Conor Maguire, their overlord, and the earls, but Rory would not leave his lands, or his people. We made him our estate agent, and he has served me loyally and faithfully ever since.”
“Shall he remain, Mama?” Fortune asked.
“Of course,” Jasmine answered. “Listen to me, Fortune. Maguire’s Ford will be signed over to you on your wedding day. It is to be yours alone, and not your husband’s. We have been over this, but I cannot make it clear enough to you. A woman who does not possess her own wealth is doomed to a life of servitude. You may want a simple and quiet life, poppet, but you will have neither if you are not your own mistress.
“In Ulster the Protesants and the Catholics have a tenuous relationship at best, but any malcontent can cause trouble easily. That is why we have isolated Maguire’s Ford from the estates around it. There are both Catholics and Protestants in our village now. Each attends his own church, yet they work together in peace. That is how I want it, and how you will want it. Rory Maguire has spoken for me for twenty years now. He has kept the peace along with my cousin, Father Butler, and our Protestant minister, the Reverend Steen. You will now be responsible for seeing that the peace continues. Your husband can have no say in the affairs of Maguire’s Ford, nor should you be influenced by him to make any changes. The people of Maguire’s Ford coexist contentedly. It must remain that way.”
Above the two women the wind filled the canvas of the great sailing ship, ruffling it with a faint booming sound. The salt spray faintly misted their lips, and the air was damp with the scent of the sea.
“Why do the Catholics and Protestants fight, Mama?” Fortune asked her parent. “Do we not all worship the same God?”
“Aye, poppet, we do,” Jasmine answered, “but the churches have become bases of power for men very much like governments and kings are bases of power. Unfortunately power is never quite enough. Men who have it always want more. To have power you must have a hold on the hearts and minds of the people. God is a most powerful weapon. The churches use that weapon to intimidate the people. Each wants his way of worship to be the right way,
the only way.
So they fight each other, killing, they believe, in God’s name, convinced that they are right because they do.
“My father, your grandfather, the Grande Mughal Akbar, long ago brought representatives of all the world’s religions into his court. For years they argued with one another about the nature of God, the proper way to worship, and why each was right in his thinking, and the others all wrong. While my father tolerated them, and listened to them with much interest, in the end he founded his own personal religion, but no one other than he was asked to follow it. Faith, my dearest, is a matter between you and God alone. Let no one tell you otherwise.”
“So men use God to pursue their own ends, Mama,” Fortune said thoughtfully. “I think it very wicked.”
“It is,” came the reply. “I have raised you to be tolerant of all people and faiths, poppet. Do not allow anyone to change you,” Jasmine advised her daughter.
“I won’t,” Fortune said firmly.
“If you fall in love, you may be influenced by your lover,” her mother said.
“I will never fall in love, then,” Fortune replied quietly. “Most men today are not, from my small observation, like my stepfather. He respects you, and listens to your counsel. That is the kind of man I would marry, Mama. I hope William Devers is like that.”
“Your father respects me because I have made him respect me, but as for listening to my counsel, he may listen, but seldom takes my advice. Men are stubborn that way, Fortune. You must learn to work around them in order to get things done,” Jasmine said with a smile.
“I have seen you wheedle Papa,” Fortune replied with a rich chuckle. “When we were small, India and I used to wager how long it would take you to get him to do your bidding.”
“Did you?” Jasmine said dryly. “Which of you won the most often?”
“I did,” Fortune answered a trifle smugly. “India was always in too much of a hurry to win. I, however, bided my time, as did you, Mama. Patience can truly be a virtue when dealing with a man.”
Jasmine laughed aloud yet once again. She caressed her daughter’s cheek tenderly. “I never realized you were such a wise child, Fortune,” she said, chuckling. “I fear William Devers may have more of a woman than he is anticipating.”
“The only thing William Devers is anticipating is my dowry,” Fortune said sharply. “He will get quite a surprise when he learns that I intend keeping my own wealth. He may not be willing to have such a girl for a wife, Mama.”
“Then he will be a fool,” came the answer.
“Who will be a fool?” James Leslie, the duke of Glenkirk, joined his wife and stepdaughter at the ship’s rail.
“Oh, we were just speaking of men,” Fortune said airily.
“ ’Tis nae particularly flattering, lassie,” the duke answered. “Are ye excited, my pretty? In just a short time, a few days at the most, ye’ll meet the young man who will probably become yer husband.”
“We will see,” Fortune said quietly.
James Leslie drew a slow, deep breath. What was it about his stepdaughters? He had raised them since they were little girls, and they had, for the most part, been amenable lasses until it came to the matter of marriage. Still, he remembered his breach with the eldest, India, only just healed. He had promised India that he would not doubt any of his children ever again. It was a promise he meant to keep. “Aye, yer right, lass. Yer right. We will see. Why the young fellow could turn out to be a terrible dunce, and I’ll nae hae my lass wed wi a fool, or a villain,” the duke said.
Jasmine Leslie smiled. She had seen the look in her husband’s eye, and knew his patience was being tried. He had done the right thing, however. Perhaps it was possible to teach an old dog new tricks.
“We had best go to our cabin, poppet,” the duchess said, “and see if all is in readiness for the remainder of our trip.”
“Let me stay, Mama, and continue to view the land,” Fortune pleaded prettily.
“Very well,” Jasmine said, and taking her husband’s hand drew him to her side. “She wants to be alone, Jemmie.”
He nodded, and together they left the main deck of the vessel.
Fortune continued to lean against the ship’s railing lost in thought. This was the land of her birth, yet she had been but a few months old when she had left it. Ireland meant naught to her at all. It was the name of a place. Nothing more. What was it really like? And what was Maguire’s Ford like? The castle that was to be hers was not large, her mother had said. It was called Erne Rock, and was set on the lough. Mama said it was a sweet place; that she and Rowan Lindley had been happy there. Fortune’s brow furrowed. Could she really be happy in the place where her father had been so brutally murdered? The father she had never known because he had died shortly after she had been conceived.
She had felt his absence her entire life. How often when she stayed at her elder brother Henry’s seat at Cadby had she sought out the portrait of Rowan Lindley that hung in the gallery of the house? Tall and big-boned, Rowan Lindley had a square jaw with a deep cleft in its center with a dimple. His hair was tawny and his eyes were golden in color. He carried himself with a faint arrogance, natural to a man whose family had held the same lands since before the time of the Norman conquest. Henry Lindley resembled his father in features, but India, a mix of both her parents, had his famous eyes. Fortune loved the portrait of Rowan Lindley. She drank it in each time she saw it as if she might gain something of her father.