Skye stiffened. What was she thinking? There was nothing between Jasmine and Rory Maguire.
Absolutely nothing!
Aye, the young fool loved Jasmine, but she was totally, completely, unaware of it. She was still in love with Rowan Lindley, and would be for a time. Skye knew the pattern of grief that followed the loss of a beloved husband.
Yet where had that red-gold hair come from?
In the days that followed Fortune’s baptism, while they prepared to depart Ireland and return to England, Skye could not help but wonder about the new member of her family. Her eyes would stray to the young Irishman and then back to the baby. With each passing day, the more convinced she became that Fortune Lindley was not Rowan Lindley’s daughter. What she could not decide was how such a thing could have happened. Jasmine did not seem like a woman with a guilty secret. She was always speaking to her children about their father, and even to the baby. There was apparently no deceit in her.
“Am I growing dotty?” Skye wondered aloud to herself. This was not a secret she would burden Adam with, but she needed to speak with someone about it.
Adali
. Jasmine had no secrets from him. He knew everything, but would he tell her? “I will tear his fingernails out one by one if he does not,” Skye muttered darkly.
The night before they were to leave, she waited until they were alone in the Great Hall. Everyone else had gone to bed.
“Adali, I would speak with you,” Skye told him.
He came immediately, deferential and polite as always. “Yes, my lady? How may I serve you?”
“You can tell me the truth, damnit!” Skye said.
“What is it you would know, madame?” he asked her warily.
“Why does my great-granddaughter, Fortune, remind me so of Rory Maguire, Adali?” Skye demanded bluntly.
“Because he is her father,” Adali replied as candidly. There was no use lying to this glorious woman, Adali knew. She would accept nothing but the truth.
Skye let her breath out in a long hiss.
So there it was
. No deceptions. No evasions. She accepted the rather large goblet of wine Adali now poured her, and sat down heavily in a chair
by the fire. Motioning him to sit opposite her she said, “Explain this phenomenon to me.”
Choosing his words carefully, Adali told Skye how he and Cullen Butler had engineered their plot to save Jasmine’s life. He concluded by saying, “I tell you honestly that I felt sorry for the young Maguire. He truly loves her, yet realizes that there can never be a marriage between them. He would always be torn between this land and her. If war comes to Ireland again, and I suspect from what I have seen here that it will, they would be on different sides of the issue. She is loyal to England’s king, but he cannot ever really be.”
“No,” Skye said. “He cannot.”
“The princess never suspected our plot, nor does she now, my lady. When she announced she was with child again, it did not occur to me that the one brief encounter with the Irishman would bear fruit. She had made love with her husband the night before he was murdered, and regularly prior to that last night. It was not until I saw the child that I realized the truth of what had happened. There is much of her mother in little Fortune, but more of her sire, I fear. It is good that we are returning to England. There will come a time when, if Rory Maguire and Lady Fortune Lindley are in the same room together, there will be no denying their relationship. Still, I saved my mistress’s life, and that is to the greater good, I believe, my lady.”
“Aye,” Skye agreed, “it is, Adali, and as long as we can keep Fortune from Ireland, who is to know? India and Henry are too small to clearly remember Maguire. Jasmine, although pleasant to him, pays him very little heed, poor fellow. As long as I harp upon Velvet’s auburn hair, if the question of Fortune’s hair comes up, we will be safe. Rowan Lindley’s tawny-blond hair had a bit of red in it, I think. Perhaps her hair will grow darker with age,” Skye considered. “But if not, I shall tell all who listen that Fortune resembles my late mother.”
“Will you tell the good father of your knowledge, my lady?” Adali asked Skye.
“Aye,” Skye responded, “I will. Perhaps I can ease his sore conscience in the matter, Adali, for his religion will yet be warring with his more practical side in this matter. Does he know that Fortune is Maguire’s child? Oh, poor Cullen!”
“Aye, he knows,” Adali said. “He noticed the hair almost immediately. It has troubled him greatly, but he will say nothing, for he feels the baby is an innocent and must not be
harmed. Besides, as everyone, including my lady, assumes that Lord Lindley was Fortune’s father, he will not stir up a hornet’s nest.”
“I will go and speak with him now,” Skye said, placing her goblet on the stone floor and arising. “Thank you, Adali, for your candor. I feared I was growing old, and foolish.”
“Your eye will ever be sharp, my lady,” Adali told her. “You love my mistress even as much as I love her. You will never hurt her.”
Skye found her nephew in his cottage and faced him with the truth. Her words at first brought a flush to his cheeks, and then he grew pale with his distress. “Do not wallow in your supposed guilt,” she scolded him sharply. “You and Adali did exactly what needed to be done in this matter. To have allowed Jasmine to die would have been criminal. Thank you for having the courage to act as you did, my dear Cullen.” Then she kissed his cheek.
“Why is it that you make what I know to be a moral wrong, right, Aunt Skye?” he asked her with a small smile.
“Standing by and allowing someone to die without doing your utmost to save them is a far greater crime than anything that is legislated by our society’s supposed morality,” Skye told him.
“Are you saying that the Church can be wrong, Aunt?”
“I certainly am,” she replied spiritedly, “and many before me have said it, and many after me will too. The Church and its laws have been made by men, Cullen Butler. Men are fallible. God is not, mind you, but men are. ’Tis far better to use one’s common sense!”
The priest laughed aloud. “You will never change, Aunt Skye, will you? Independent in mind and spirit always.”
“And do you think God will condemn me for it, Cullen?”
“Nay, Aunt. He knows your heart is good. As he made you, and has let you go your merry way for so long a time, I must assume he is satisfied with his handiwork. Try to keep Fortune out of Ireland, Aunt. If she grows up favoring her father, and they are ever seen together, ’twould, I fear, be a great embarrassment to us all.”
“Do you think he suspects?” Skye asked her nephew.
“Nay.” Cullen Butler shook his head. “He was, of course, happy that his actions produced Jasmine’s recovery, but he still carries a burden of shame at having done what he did. You see,
he truly loves Jasmine, though I’m sure he realizes a union between them would be impossible.”
“He should marry,” Skye said. “A good woman would ease him.”
“Nay, Aunt. The political situation is too unstable in Ireland. Rory has lived his whole life with it. He has seen his family and his overlord forced to leave here. He no longer has the possession of these lands, but husbands them for an English landlord. In another short generation or two that could lead to difficulties between his descendants and Jasmine’s. Nay, ’tis better he remains single, devoting his life to Maguire’s Ford, its people, and the horses. They will all survive under the protection Jasmine’s ownership affords them.”
“And what will you do, Cullen, and what will you advise the people here to do when the bigots finally rear their heads again? They will, you know, my lad,” she told him.
“I will tell each one of my parishioners to follow their conscience,” he said quietly.
Skye snorted at him impatiently. “By that you mean adhere to the teachings of the Holy Mother Church and be slaughtered, Cullen. For shame! I expect better of you, my lad. You will have to advise these people how to survive. If there are two branches of a family, brothers perhaps, or a sister and a brother, one branch must follow the teachings of the Church of Ireland, and the other branch will remain as they have always been. In this way no family may be wiped out entirely. If the two faiths live side by side, there can be no mystery about either. Ignorance, my lad! Ignorance is what turns people against one another!”
In the morning, Skye sought out Rory Maguire.
“Do not be a patriot, Maguire, but if you must, disassociate yourself from Maguire’s Ford first,” she warned him quietly.
The Irishman shook his red-gold head. “I am weary of fighting,” he said, “yet I could not run as the others did. I love this place too much to ever leave it. Your granddaughter has been more than kind to me in allowing me to remain. I promise you that I will not fail her.”
“You have more courage than the others,” Skye told him. “Running away was the easy way out. Remaining, and finding a way to make peace, even if the peace was not to your liking, was far harder, Rory Maguire.”
“You learned the same lesson, I think,” he said with a smile.
“Many years ago, and ’twas not a lesson easily learned for me,” she replied, returning his smile and giving a small chuckle. “ ’Twas Adam who became my rock and my salvation, I tell you honestly.”
Jasmine came to them. She was dressed in her traveling garments, a burgundy silk skirt, and a jacket for riding. She wore a small starched ruff at her throat, and the long sleeves of the jacket were edged in ecru-colored Irish lace. Her hair was parted in the center and affixed in its usual chignon. She was today, as she had been that first day Rory Maguire had seen her, the most beautiful woman in the world.
Jasmine smiled at him. “Grandmama has, I have no doubt, given you instructions to follow, Maguire. I will not overrule her for her advice is always good. I will add, however, my own small admonition to take good care of the horses. Nighthawk, his wee brood of mares, and the babies must be carefully watched over. Put Nighthawk to those two mares who did not conceive last year, and see what happens. There will be a vessel arriving at Dundalk shortly with several other mares. You will be sent word. Bring them home yourself, and breed them to our stallion as soon as they are rested and over their journey.”
“What of the little colt, my lady?” he asked. “Shall we geld him in the spring? And what shall we name him?”
“He’s useless to us gelded,” Jasmine replied. “I know that once he matures a bit more his father will be jealous, but you must keep them apart. When he reaches maturity, put him to stud as well, but not just with our mares. Nightbird will grow into a handsome and swift fellow. We’ll race him in two years, and then those wishing his offspring will come to us, Maguire.” She laughed. “Am I not clever?”
“If he proves a winner,” her grandmother chortled, “you are clever. If he does not, it is another matter, eh, Maguire?”
The Irishman grinned. “Aye, m’lady, it is.” Then he turned back to Jasmine. “Nightbird, is it, then?”
She nodded. “His mother is Swallow, his father Nighthawk. I think Nightbird is a good name, Maguire.”
“May we please get going,” Adam de Marisco grumbled, sticking his silvery head from the coach. “I’d like to get home before winter!”
They all laughed at his impatience, but Skye nodded to Rory Maguire, and with a footman’s help clambered up into the coach to join her husband.
“Godspeed, my lord, and my lady,” Maguire said.
The priest came up to them. “Good-bye, Aunt, Uncle Adam. Go with God,” Cullen Butler said.
“Yes! Yes!” Adam could be heard agreeing with him from inside the carriage. “God’s nightshirt, let us be on our way!”
Thistlewood, who had come to Ireland with his master and his mistress, grinned down at them. “We cannot sail until we’re all in Dundalk,” he noted, “but I’d best go before his old lordship has a fit.” Gathering up his reins with an expert hand, he cracked his whip over the horses’ heads and they were off.
Jasmine ran to the second coach, and, satisfied that her children and their nurses were comfortable, told India’s nurse, “Now, when Fortune becomes hungry, you have but to call to me and we will stop, Martha.”
“Aye, my lady,” was the crisp reply.
Adali, Rohana, and Toramalli took up a third coach, and there were three baggage carts as well behind them. Satisfied that all was in order, Jasmine mounted Ebony and looked down at Maguire.
“You are a true and faithful friend, Rory Maguire. I shall not forget you, and your good heart. I need not ask you to watch over Maguire’s Ford and her people. They are more yours than mine, if the truth be known, but I know you will not break your trust with me, or the memory of my beloved husband. I thank you for the loan of your family’s vault in which his body has lain until two days ago. Now I shall take him back to Cadby to lie in his native soil.”
“I will never forget you, my lady,” Rory Maguire told her. “I will indeed watch over this land for you, and your children.” He took her hand in his, his lake-blue eyes devouring her face for a swift moment, and then he kissed her gloved hand reverently. “God grant you a safe passage to England, my lady. I hope you will return to Ireland soon. If all the English were like you, madame, we should be friends with them instead of bitter and deadly enemies.” He released her hand.
“Farewell, Cousin,” Cullen Butler said, making the sign of the cross over them all. “I hope we will meet again, but if we do not, I thank you for my little stone church.”
“Watch over them all, Cullen,” Jasmine told him, and then turning her mare, she led the caravan of carriages and carts off down the road after her grandparents’ coach.
They watched her go, each man wrapped in his own thoughts. Cullen Butler wondered if Ireland would remain at
peace now that the English were settling Ulster in such great numbers. Or would there be bitterness that continued through the next hundred generations? Antipathy between Celt and Anglo-Saxon seemed to be a way of life, ingrained into their very souls. Yet there was no real difference between them. The priest shook his head. He did not understand it at all.
Rory Maguire thought the eyes would fall from his head. He stared intently after the departing people and horses, silently desperate to keep her in his sight.
Farewell, my only love
, he thought sadly.
Farewell, my heart
. He felt the tears pricking at the back of his eyes.
I will not cry! Men do not weep like disappointed maids
. Then, as they reached the bend in the road, he saw Jasmine turn in her saddle a moment and wave at them a final time before disappearing around the curve in the path. Waving after her energetically, Rory Maguire, the lord of Erne Rock Castle, scrubbed vigorously at the tears slipping down his handsome face with his other hand.