Darling Jasmine. Bertrice Small

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      “I am not helpless, Willow. I have not yet lost my reason. I have absolutely no intention of closing up my home, displacing my servants, and moving myself in with any of my children. I intend remaining here at Queen’s Malvern until I die. Is that quite clear?”

      Daisy Kelly, Skye’s faithful tiring woman, felt her mouth turning up in a small smile, but she withheld her laughter as she sat by the fire, mending the hem on one of her mistress’s gowns. She was surprised at how little Mistress Willow seemed to know her mother if she actually believed Skye would come and live with her, or any of her other children. They might not be as young as they once were, Daisy ruefully admitted to herself as she squinted to see her stitches, but she and her lady were perfectly capable of looking out for themselves.

      “But, Mama,” Willow persisted, “Queen’s Malvern no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the little duke of Lundy, Charles Frederick Stuart.”

      “Do you really believe that either my granddaughter, or the duke’s guardian, the earl of Glenkirk, would dispossess me, Willow?” Skye snapped. “I think it is you who have lost her wits, and not I.”

      “Jemmie Leslie was back at court this autumn, Mama,” Willow informed her mother. “He is very angry that he has not yet been able to track Jasmine down in France. It will be two years this spring since she fled him, taking the children with her.”

      Skye chuckled wickedly. “I do not know why he has been unable to find her,” she said. “After all, Adam practically told him exactly where to look, but then, of course, I did send a messenger to warn her of her grandfather’s lapse in judgment.”

      “Ohh, Mama, how could you?” Willow wailed. “You will make an enemy of the king should your interference with James Stuart’s will become public knowledge! Was it not enough that you made an enemy of our good queen, Bess? Has age taught you no discretion?”

      “My darling girl has made two marriages to please her family,” Skye said in firm tones. “I hope that this time she will be able to make her own choice, Willow. No one, not even the king, should force Jasmine to the altar. It was foolish of James Stuart and his silly romantic queen to even try.”

      “But Jemmie Leslie loves Jasmine, Mama,” Willow said softly.

      “I know,” Skye said, “but it is not all a certainty that Jasmine loves him. I shall go to France in the spring, and tell my granddaughter of her grandfather’s death. Then we will see what she wants to do. Though I miss her, the choice must be hers to make.”

      “You will go to France?” Willow looked horrified.

      “If you suggest that I am too ancient a crone to travel any longer,” Skye told her daughter, “I shall surely smack you, Willow!” Her Kerry blue eyes glared at Lady Edwards.

      “I was not thinking any such thing,” Willow replied, although in truth she was.

      “And when the snow stops you will leave,” Skye said firmly. “You and all of your siblings. I need time to come to terms with the fact my dearest Adam has departed. I must be alone. I realize that you do not understand that Willow, but you must accept it.”

      Willow nodded, defeated, and, curtsying to her mother, left her apartments, making her way to the family hall where her brothers and sister awaited her.

      “Well?” demanded the earl of Lynmouth, Robin Southwood, his lime green eyes twinkling. “Is Mama come to live with you in her dotage?”

      “Oh, be silent, Robin!” Willow snapped. “I hate it when you are smug. Mama is most recalcitrant, as she always is when asked to be reasonable. I could get nowhere with her, as you fully expected, but I had to try. She wants us all to leave as soon as the snow stops.”

      “Should she be left alone?” Angel, countess of Lynmouth, worried.

      “She absolutely insists upon it,” Willow said sourly.

      “I can understand that,” said Deirdre, Lady Blackthorne, Skye’s middle daughter. “Mama will show no weakness to anyone, even her children. Have any of you yet seen her cry? We must all go home as soon as we can, so she may mourn Adam in her own fashion.”

      Her siblings, and their mates, even Willow, nodded in agreement.

      “ ’Tis not a strong storm,” Padraic, Lord Burke, said. “ ’Twill be over by the morrow. We had best set our servants to packing.”

      “Mama says she is going to France to tell Jasmine herself,” Willow informed them. “Sometime in the spring, she says.”

      “Has anyone sent to my mother and my father?” asked Sybilla, the countess of Kempe, a granddaughter of the de Mariscos.

      “I dispatched a messenger the morning after,” Robin Southwood told his niece. “I don’t imagine he has reached Dun Broc yet with this weather, but in a few more days Velvet will know her father is dead.”

      “Poor Mama,” Sybilla said softly, and her husband put a comforting arm about her shoulders.

      “Aye, Velvet will be devastated,” Murrough O’Flaherty said soberly. “She adored Adam. Hell! We all did now, didn’t we? He was the one father we can all remember. None of mother’s other husbands lived long enough though we may recall them slightly.”

      The others nodded solemnly.

      “Adam was father to us all,” Lord Burke said, “and a good father, too. We learned much from him.”

      “Do you think Mama can survive his loss?” Deirdre wondered.

      “She will miss him greatly,” Robin said quietly, “but I do not think Skye O’Malley is ready to give up the ghost yet, sister. She has survived the others well enough.”

      “But she was younger then,” Willow noted.

      “True,” Robin agreed with his elder sibling, “but she is stronger now than she has ever been. We will leave our mother to mourn our father as she wishes to do. Then we will see.”

      “I wonder if she will wed again,” Valentina Burke mused.

      “Never!” Robin spoke emphatically. “Of that I am certain.”

      The snow had stopped the following morning as Skye O’Malley’s children and other relations departed Queen’s Malvern. Each had bid the matriarch a fond farewell, and then clambered into their separate coaches to begin their journey home.

      “Ye’ll send for me if ye need me, sister, won’t ye?” Conn O’Malley St. Michael, Lord Bliss, asked his elder sibling.

      “If I need ye,” Skye told him.

      Conn shook his head. She was a proud woman, his sister, but he and his wife, Aidan, were near enough in case of emergency.

      “Cardiff Rose will be ready when you need her, Mama,” Murrough O’Flaherty said softly so only she might hear him.

      Skye nodded and kissed her second born, and then his wife.

      “God speed you safely home,” she told them.

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