All the Sweet Tomorrows

enfants! Mes enfant*!' Gaby cried. 'You must wait to greet your brother until after I have introduced our guest.

'Pardon, maman,' the three said with one voice as they stepped away from Adam.

'Skye, my dear, these three ill-mannered creatures are my daughters. This is Isabeau, and Clarice, and Musette.'

The three women curtseyed, as did Skye in return. She knew that Isabeau Rochouart, and Clarice St. Justine were Adam's full sisters, children, like him, of Gaby's first marriage to John de Marisco. The two sisters looked like their mother, but their hair was dark, as was their brother's. Musette de Saville Sancerre was Adam's half-sister, and she, a miniature of her mother, was just twenty-five, the youngest of Gaby's children.

Now the others came forward to be introduced. Alexandre de Saville, the oldest child of the comtesse's second marriage, a widower with three young children. Yves de Saville and his wife, Marie-Jeanne, with their children. Robert Sancerre, Musette's husband, and their three children. Then there was Isabeau's husband, Louis, and their daughter, Matilde, who was sixteen. The last to be introduced was Henri St. Justine. He and Clarice were the parents of four children ranging in age from nineteen to eleven, and they had all come to see their Uncle Adam.

Skye was both delighted and astounded by the size of Adam de Marisco's family. This was certainly a side of him that she had never known or even suspected existed. For her, he had always been the rather lonely island lord whose mother had remarried and lived in France. He had mentioned his sisters, Isabeau and Clarice, in passing, but she had never realized that his mother had had a second family, and that Adam was so obviously beloved by them all, even his two younger half-brothers. She stood now almost shyly as they clustered about him, kissing and hugging him, and chattering all their news.

Then she felt a hand on her arm, and she was led off to a comfortable settle. 'They will all talk at him for the next ten minutes until they realize he is really here, and intends to stay for a time,' said the Comte Antoine de Saville, smiling at her.

'I did not realize that his family was so large,' Skye said.

'He does not talk about them?'

'No,' she answered slowly, 'but now I suspect he kept this knowledge to himself lest he grow lonely for you while living by himself on Lundy. He would not neglect his small holding.'

'Perhaps now,' the comte said, 'that will change, madame.'

'Of course it will, darling,' Gaby said, seating herself next to them. 'Adam tells me that he plans to wed with our lovely Skye.'

'No!' The word burst harshly forth from between her lips as Skye reddened with embarrassment.

'Oh dear,' Gaby murmured, looking equally chagrined.

'You don't understand, Gaby,' Skye said in an effort to explain. 'I love Adam, but I will not marry again. Each of my husbands has suffered death. I am a jinx! Besides, I want to be my own woman now, not someone's possession. Has Adam told you that I spent close to a year in the harem of a wealthy Moroccan in my effort to rescue my husband? For the Arabs a woman is a possession like a sword, or a hawk, or a garment; and I was treated exactly like that. I have had all I can take of that sort of treatment at a man's hands, and I have been most frank with Adam about it. Still he persists!'

'You say you love him, my dear,' Gaby said.

'I do! It is a strange love, for it has grown during the time I have been happily married to others, yet love Adam I do. I want his happiness, Gaby, but I am not that happiness. He must understand that!'

'Of course, my dear, of course,' Adam's mother soothed. 'Men can be so obstinate when it comes to women. They simply do not understand us.' She smiled at Skye, thinking what a lovely daughter-in-law she would be. The Irishwoman was everything Adam had written of her. She was beautiful, intelligent, and warm. That she did not know her own mind right now was most apparent to Gaby de Saville. When the shock of her experiences in Morocco and the death of her husband had worn off, then she would see clearly that Adam de Marisco was the only man for her. 'We are going up to Paris in a few weeks,' she said brightly to Skye. 'King Henri of Navarre is marrying with our own Princesse Marguerite de Valois on the eighteenth of August. You will naturally come with us.'

'I should love it!' Skye exclaimed. 'I have never been to Paris.'

'Then that is settled,' Gaby replied. She stood up. 'Come, my dear, I will show you to your apartments now. You must be exhausted after eight days on the road.'

“I am,' Skye admitted. 'We passed through some lovely cities- Avignon, Lyons, Nevers, Bourges-but we didn't stop. Adam very much wanted to get to Archambault to see you all.'

Gaby de Saville led her guest from the salon, where Adam was still surrounded by his family. Catching Skye's eye as she passed him, he grinned and shrugged helplessly, and she was forced to smile back at him. He blew her a kiss with his fingertips. 'He is a good son,' the comtesse was saying as they moved up the main staircase of the chateau to the bedroom floors. 'You have no idea how hurt and ashamed he was when that wretched Athenais Boussac spurned him, and then, not satisfied with merely refusing my son, made his bad luck a public thing. He has, of course, told you of her?'

'I have heard the story,' Skye replied. 'He never mentioned her name to me.'

'How like my Adam! A gentleman even in regard to that one!'

'She was a fool, Gaby! The fact that he cannot sire a child has had nothing to do with his abilities as a man.' Skye stopped a moment as they reached the carved door of what was to be her apartment while at Archambault. 'You know that we have been lovers, Adam and I.'

'But of course, my dear!' the comtesse laughed.

'It does not shock you?'

'You are both free of any spouses, and of an age, my dear Skye, if you will forgive my mentioning it, that should allow you both to choose your own course in life. You and my son are good for each other, and despite what you say, I suspect that one day I shall welcome you as my belle-fille. No!' Gaby put two fingers on Skye's lips to stifle her protest. 'Do not argue with me, my dear. Leave me some hope!'

Skye had to laugh. Gaby's attitude was so very much like Adam's. 'Now,' she said, 'I know where Adam gets his stubbornness.'

Gaby chuckled back as she opened the door to the chamber and ushered Skye into the small salon. 'His father was equally pigheaded,' she said. 'Oh, the fights John and I used to have! They fairly made the old walls of Lundy Castle ring. He's been dead over thirty years now, my dear, and I still miss him! Without my dearest and kindly Antoine I don't know what I would have done.'

'Then Lundy was still whole when Adam was young?' Skye looked about the little salon. It was a most charming room with its linenfold paneling and a wall of diamond-paned windows that overlooked the river and the fields. There was a small fireplace flanked by stone greyhounds with a fire already laid and ready to light.

'Yes,' the comtesse replied. 'John de Marisco unfortunately got into an argument with Henry Tudor over the favors of a rather amply charmed lady of the court. She was more than willing to take on both King and courtier.