Darling Jasmine. Bertrice Small

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СКАЧАТЬ bring a wily vixen to heel, Jemmie?” he asked, a wicked smile upon his lips.

      “You know where she is?” James Leslie replied, his tone cold.

      “No, but if you are quick, I know how you may find her,” Robin Southwood replied. Then he went on to explain that his stepfather had died, and Skye had said she would go to France to tell Jasmine.

      “In the spring?” James Leslie said. “Then there is time.”

      “My mother said in the spring, but she is guileful as always. I would wager she’ll be on the road now, racing for the coast, because she knows full well that on my way home I have come to London to tell you. I set two riders on my brother Murrough, who did not go straight home as he said, but rather has headed for Harwich according to information I received today. Mama will cross to Calais from there. You must get to Dover so you may intercept her and follow her to wherever my niece has hidden herself.”

      The earl of Glenkirk’s green eyes narrowed in contemplation. Thanks to Robin Southwood, he was finally to catch up with the recalcitrant dowager marchioness of Westleigh, Jasmine de Marisco Lindley. A woman he had once believed himself in love with, but whom he had learned to hate these past twenty-one months since she had made him the laughingstock of the court by jilting him in the face of King James’s order that they marry. Worse, she had taken the king’s grandson, the late Prince Henry’s infant, their child, with her. Yet the king had appointed Glenkirk the boy’s legal guardian. But now for the first time in almost two years he had a serious chance of catching Jasmine, and this time, he instinctively knew he would catch her.

      He had known she was in France all along, but the three times he had crossed the Channel to entrap her she was always gone, and her French relations always claimed no knowledge of her, shrugging in that particularly irritating Gallic way the French had. Yet his informants were his own relations who had married into France. They had played a very crafty cat and mouse game these many months, but somehow Jasmine always knew when he was coming, and was gone, with her children, before he could reach her. This time it would be different because no one knew he was coming. Because he would follow the old countess of Lundy right to Jasmine’s door. And then. He smiled wolfishly.

      “I take it,” Robin Southwood said, “that you are pleased with my information, my lord.”

      “Aye,” Glenkirk said.

      “One thing, my lord,” the earl of Lynmouth spoke in quiet, yet serious tones. “Charles Frederick Stuart is now the duke of Lundy, but Queen’s Malvern is my mother’s home, and has been for decades. You may take whatever vengeance you wish on my niece, Jasmine, but you will treat my mother with the dignity and respect to which she is entitled, and you will not dispossess her. If you render her any discourtesy, you will not have just me to contend with, my lord. Remember that BrocCairn is her son-in-law, and related to the king. And BrocCairn is Jasmine’s stepfather as well. And do not forget Alcester, Kempe, and Lord Burke. They would be most unhappy should mama be discommoded in any way.”

      The earl of Glenkirk gave his friend a frosty smile. “I am more than well aware of Madame Skye’s familial connections, Robin. I have no quarrel with your mother although I suspect she is more behind this than either of us knows. Besides, did you not know that Queen’s Malvern belongs to her outright. It is not entailed upon the title.”

      “Of course!” Robin said. “She and Adam bought it years ago from the queen. Bess was always short of money. While it was a royal property she loaned it to them. The old queen sold it to my mother and stepfather when she couldn’t pay her bills and needed the ready coin.”

      “So you need have to worry that your mother will come to live with you,” Glenkirk mocked his friend.

      “Live with me?” The earl of Lynmouth laughed. “My sister suggested to Mama that a widow of her many years should not live alone and insisted Mama come to live with her. Need I tell you the outcome of that altercation, Jemmie? My mother has done what pleased her since birth and will continue to do so until the day she dies, but between us I am not certain that God above wants her back too soon.”

      Glenkirk laughed loudly. “You may be right,” he said.

      Robin Southwood took his leave of James Leslie and continued on with his family to his home at Lynmouth in Devon. There he found his man but an hour ahead of him.

      “You was right, my lord,” the servant said. “Cardiff Rose was docked at Harwich, and was scheduled to put out today with the tide for France. Yer mother was expected aboard her. I passed her coach two days ago on the road as I left, but they wouldn’t recognize me now.”

      “Do you think James Leslie will find Jasmine this time?” Angel, the countess of Lynmouth, asked her husband.

      “If he didn’t dawdle he could have gotten to Dover and be in Calais before Mama,” the earl considered. “Even with a fair wind it will take her at least overnight from Harwich. The Dover crossing is far shorter, my love.” He patted her pretty hand.

      “Why did Madame Skye not take that route then, Robin?” she inquired, curious.

      “Because Mama would not want to come anywhere near London for fear of being recognized by someone, although there are few now at court who would know her. Still, she would not take the chance. She would risk the sea before she would risk being found out in her little deception. This time, however, she is doomed to failure.”

      “But surely Jemmie will not reveal himself to her until she is safely with Jasmine,” Angel said.

      “Nay, he will not,” Robin agreed. “Actually, I am not certain what he will do, but I believe my niece has made an enemy of the man who is to be her husband. She will have to work hard to win him back.”

      “I think,” Angel said, “that it is James Leslie who must put aside his pride and work hard to woo Jasmine, else their life together be a misery. Neither of them is easy.”

      Robin laughed. “You are a wise woman, sweetheart,” he told her. “And, you are beginning to sound like my mother.”

      “Why, Robin, what a lovely compliment,” Angel Southwood said, her eyes twinkling, her pretty mouth turned up in a smile.

      He chuckled. “With any other woman I might believe her to be sarcastic, but not you, my love. You actually are pleased I have said you remind me of Mama.”

      Angel nodded. “She is a grand woman, Robin!”

      “Aye,” the earl of Lynmouth agreed. “She is a grand woman, but dear heaven she is no less troublesome in her old age than she was as a girl.” He chortled again. “James Leslie is going to have his hands full with those two! I do not envy him his journey.”

      Chapter 2

      James Leslie had left London with his servant, Fergus More, almost immediately. They had embarked from Dover as the earl of Lynmouth had suggested and were waiting upon the docks when Cardiff Rose put into Calais. Standing in the shadows they watched as the vessel was made fast, its gangway run up, the unloading done. Skye’s great traveling coach had made the short journey lashed to the deck of the ship. Now it was carefully rolled off onto the land to the doors of a large warehouse. Immediately the doors were opened and sturdy horses brought forth to be harnessed to the vehicle. The activity in and about the coach held little interest for the earl of Glenkirk once it had begun. He watched the gangway, and eventually Madame Skye came forth, the captain of her ship escorting her to her coach, СКАЧАТЬ