parent's advice. 'She will not be obedient much longer, I think.'
'I agree with your mother,' Jasmine said. 'There is a wild streak in India that I have never really recognized before. Perhaps I have not wanted to see it because it reminds me of my brother, Salim. But suddenly I see familiar traits in India, and I remember that my father indulged Salim, even when his disobedience was unforgivable. And yet our father forgave him. Drunkenness, lechery, theft.
Curious, Lady Stewart-Hepburn asked, 'What?'
'Salim desired me as a man desires a woman. My father could not countenance it, and I was married to my first husband, Prince Javid Khan. Salim had him murdered, and knowing he was near death, my father smuggled me out of India. When I was India's age I was about to be wed to my second husband, who was India's father.'
'Then you must find a husband for India,' Cat said. 'It is obvious it is time for her to be settled before she causes a scandal. I wish I knew a suitable match for her in Naples.'
'Oh, no!' Jasmine cried. 'I should not want her so far away from us. Like my grandmother, I want my family about me, and we have all our family in England and Scotland, madame. All but my Uncle Ewan O'Flaherty, who lives in Ireland. And, you, madame, who remain in the kingdom of Naples. Jemmie has told me of your, ah,
'Bless you, my dear Jasmine,' Cat said, her voice thick with emotion, 'but my beloved Bothwell is buried in Naples, at the foot of our villa's garden, and that is where I will lie one day, beside him in death as I was in life. Besides, my old bones are too used to the warmth of the south to tolerate the damp and chill of Scotland any longer.'
'Your great-grandmother returned home from a warm climate,' the duke said quietly.
'I am not Janet Leslie,' Cat said as quietly.
Outside the salon where they were waiting, a canon boomed.
'It would appear the Mass is finally over,' the earl of Carlisle noted dryly.
'Took long enough,' Viscount Kensington responded. 'Do these Catholics really think God is going to overlook their fornications and other mischief just because they spend so much time in church on their knees? Well, let's hope this little queen we've gotten proves as fecund as her old mother.'
'Come to the windows,' the earl called to them. 'The rain has finally stopped, and there are fireworks being shot off.'
They stood watching as the rockets soared into the skies, bursting red or green, gold or blue sparkles against the darkness. The wedding party and its guests made their way to the archbishop's palace where a banquet was to be held in the great hall, which had been newly decorated for the occasion with tapestries from the Louvre.
A banquet table stretched from one end of the hall to the other. The king had been placed in its center beneath yet another embroidered cloth-of-gold canopy. To his right sat his mother. To his left, his sister, England's new queen. The proxy bridegroom was placed on Henrietta's other side. The bride was served by a high-ranking nobleman, her old friend from childhood, Baron Bassompierre, and two French marshals.
When the meal had at last ended, all the guilds of Paris paraded before the new queen, and her brother's Swiss Guards performed an intricate drill. At eleven o'clock, the exhausted bride retired back to the Louvre. For the rest of the week, all Paris rejoiced, and celebrated the marriage that united England and France. There were balls and banquets so numerous it was difficult to get to them all. The finest, however, was given by the Queen Mother in her new and magnificent Luxembourg Palace.
Then, suddenly, George Villiers, the duke of Buckingham, arrived in France. He had come, he announced grandly, to escort England's new queen home. Buckingham was very tall, and extremely handsome. His dark eyes when fixed upon a woman made her feel she was the only woman in the world. His wife was devoted to him, and while he was considered a terrible flirt, Lady Villiers had no cause for jealousy. Buckingham had such beautiful features that the late King James had given him the nickname of Steenie, because the old monarch said George Villiers had the face of St. Stephen, who had been noted for his beauty.
The French queen was openly admiring of the Englishman. The French male courtiers hated him on sight, for they considered Villiers arrogant. It was their opinion he behaved as if he were a king himself, and they could barely tolerate his presence. Their wives disagreed, sending the duke languishing looks each time he came their way; smiling invitingly, sighing over his chestnut curls, his exquisitely barbered mustache and little pointed beard. The queen and the other ladies of the court were always delighted to have the English duke among their company. He swept into their midst one afternoon wearing a suit of silver-gray silk, and gold tissue. The suit was sewn all over with pearls, but the pearls were forever dropping off, and rolling across the floor. As servants scrambled to retrieve the gems, the duke of Buckingham waved them away with a smile. The pearls were naught but trifles, he told them, implying there were plenty more where they came from. Keep them, he said.
'You have done it quite deliberately,' the duchess of Glenkirk scolded George Villiers. 'These pearls are sewn too loosely so, of course, they will drop off. You are intent on annoying these poor French. What a wicked creature you are, Steenie!' They had known each other ever since Villiers's very early days at King James's court.
The dark eyes twinkled. An elegant eyebrow arched mischievously, and then he smiled at her, but he said not a word.
At last, on the twenty-third of May, the new queen of England's great cavalcade finally departed Paris. It was made up of the several hundred people who would accompany Henrietta- Marie, including, besides the lords and ladies who were to make up her household, a large number of servants: cooks, grooms, a surgeon, an apothecary, a tailor, an embroiderer, a perfumer, a clockmaker, eleven musicians, Mathurine, her Fool, and twenty-four priests, including a bishop.
The king had an attack of the quinsy. His throat was so en-flamed that he could barely speak. He bid his sister farewell at Compiegne, and returned to Paris to recuperate. At Amiens, Marie di Medici developed a fever. After a few days, it became obvious that Henrietta-Marie would have to leave her mother and travel onward with her great train by herself. Charles was already sending impatient messages to France requesting his bride come forthwith. Finally, they reached Boulogne where twenty ships were waiting to take the new queen and her retinue to England. There was also a party of English ladies and gentlemen who had come to greet the new queen, but while Henrietta-Marie was polite, she showed little warmth toward these members of her new court. They were Protestants, and must be avoided as much as possible, her foolish spiritual advisors warned her, little caring if she made a good impression on her new subjects as long as her soul was safe.
The duke of Glenkirk and his family had taken their leave of the young queen in Paris. They would see her in England, but it was not necessary that they be part of the great company traveling with Henrietta-Marie to her husband. They returned to the chateau with the St. Laurents so they might have a few more days with Lady Stewart-Hepburn, who would be spending the summer in France with her youngest daughter.
James Leslie tried hard to get his mother to return home to Scotland with them. 'You dinna even know this Stuart king, Mother, and his parents, your last link wi the royal Stuarts, are both gone now. Come home wi us to Scotland. There is always a place for you at Glenkirk.'
Catriona Hay Leslie Stewart-Hepburn shook her head. She had been a dazzling beauty in her youth, and while time had aged her, she was still a stunning woman. Her honey-blond hair
