Bedazzled

had turned a snowy white, just faintly tinted with gold. Her leaf-green eyes, however, had not changed. They were as clear and beautiful as they had always been. Now they fixed themselves on him. 'Jemmie,' she said, 'you are my eldest child, and I love you dearly, but I will not leave Bothwell, as I have already told Jasmine. Besides, as I have also said, my old bones are too used to the sunshine and the warmth of the south. Going home to Scotland would take ten years off my life. While I miss Francis, I am not all that anxious to join him yet. I enjoy my grandchildren too much, I fear.' She laughed, and patted his hand. 'You have done very well all these years without me.'

'Do you not miss your children?' he queried her. 'My brothers and my sisters hae given you grandchildren, too, Mother.'

'And all have at one time or another come to Naples with their families to see me,' she responded. 'They do not need me, either, Jemmie. A woman raises her bairns, and then no matter how much she loves them, she must let them go on to live their own lives. A mother and father are like the sun around which their children move. Then one day it all changes. The bairns are grown, and become like the sun themselves, which means the parents must take a lesser position in their lives. There is no tragedy in this, for a mother wants her bairns to nourish and lead their own lives. They go on, and we go on. I loved all my bairns, but you were not my only life.

'Soon Jasmine's three eldest will be ready to leave the loving nest you and she have built for them. You must let them go, Jemmie, as I let you, and your brothers, and sisters go. And you must let me go, my son. While you may not realize it, you did so years ago when I left Scotland, and you became head of the Leslies of Glenkirk. Seeing me after so long a time has but made you nostalgic.'

'I dinna realize how much I hae missed you, Mother, until now,' James Leslie said. 'Will you nae return to Scotland ever?'

'You know I will never leave him,' she replied.

'He would like it if he were buried in the soil of his native land,' the duke of Glenkirk said slowly. Then he chuckled. 'I'll wager he was awaiting Cousin Jamie at heaven's gate, and Queen Anne with him. She always liked Bothwell, Mother, didn't she?'

Cat nodded. 'All the women liked Francis,' she recalled with a small smile, 'but if he were awaiting Jamie at heaven's gate, surely the king thought he had been sent in the opposite direction from which he anticipated, although seeing his Annie might have reassured him.' She laughed, and then grew pensive again. 'Aye, he would like to have been laid to rest in his native land, Jemmie.'

'Do you think he would object to being planted in Leslie soil?' the duke inquired of his mother.

'On the grounds of the old abbey,' Cat said softly. 'Could you, Jemmie?'

'Did we nae once hoax the royal Stuarts, Mother?' the duke answered her. 'You and I together?'

'You would not think it disloyal to your father's memory?'

'My father is nae buried at Glenkirk,' the duke said. His mother did not know it, of course, for she had been gone from Scotland, but the duke's father, the fifth earl of Glenkirk, had not been lost at sea as had been reported, before the king ordered him declared dead. Actually, he had been captured by the Spanish, and gone exploring with them in the New World, where he had made himself a new life.

The duke had learned of it almost twenty-five years ago when his father appeared suddenly at Glenkirk to make amends for his long absence. He was extremely relieved to learn he might go on with his new life, and return to the young woman who awaited him in a place called St. Augustine. James Leslie had never seen his father again, although every few years a missive would arrive filled with news of his adventures, and the half-siblings his new wife had borne him. 'My father was a good Scotsman, Mother, and if it had been possible, he would have been buried at Glenkirk himself. I dinna believe he would object to you and Bothwell being there. He owes you that much,' the duke said meaningfully, and then, 'Besides, who will know it but us?'

'Then one day we shall come home to Scotland together, he and I,' Lady Stewart-Hepburn said, and suddenly her eyes were filled with tears, which slid down her beautiful face even as she attempted to prevent them. 'Ahhh,' she said softly, 'we had such grand times, he and I, as we rode beneath the border moon.' Then, catching hold of her emotions, she said, 'We will travel in a single coffin. That way there will be no questions. Just the duke of Glen-kirk's old mother returning to be buried in her native soil. And no one shall ever know where Bothwell's grave is, Jemmie, for even in Naples there are those who believed those scurrilous tales of witchcraft and magic Cousin Jamie and his Protestants spread about Francis. There are some who come to take soil from his grave, believing it has powers. I must keep a watch there all the time, or they would surely steal his body away to use in their vile rites.'

'I dinna think I will get you home too soon, Mother,' the duke said, seeking to lighten the moment.

'No,' she replied with a small laugh. Then she hugged him. 'Thank you, Jemmie, for your generosity.'

'I hae always enjoyed sharing secrets wi you, Mother,' he chuckled. 'Only Jasmine shall know besides we two.'

'Agreed,' she answered him. 'I will miss you.'

'And I you,' he told her. And then the duke of Glenkirk took his mother for a final stroll in his sister's gardens.

Chapter 2

“Such extravagance!' the countess of Alcester said, in very disapproving tones. She turned to her niece. 'You are spoiling the chit, Jasmine, by allowing her to have such a wardrobe. Every fortune hunter at court will descend upon you when India parades herself in this splendor.'

'Am I so witless, Great-aunt,' India defended herself, 'that I cannot separate truth from fiction? I have turned down half a dozen matches in Scotland for the very reason I knew it was my fortune that attracted the gentlemen in question and not me. Fine clothes will do little, if anything, to dull my perception of men.'

'Your tongue is too quick for a girl of respectable upbringing,' the countess snapped. India was too damned headstrong, even as her mother had been. Even as my mother was, Willow, Lady Edwardes, countess of Alcester, thought irritably. Thank heavens my daughters have all been obedient girls, and my granddaughters, too, although perhaps one or two of them bear watching. 'If you will take my advice, Jasmine, although I suspect you will not, you and James will make a good match for India and cease this nonsense and outrageous expense.' Then, heaving her bulk from the chair in which she had been sitting, Lady Edwardes shook out her own dark skirts. 'I do not like London anymore,' she grumbled, 'and no one should live here at this time of year. It is too warm, and much too damp, but what could we do? We had to come to London to greet the new queen.'

'I think the queen is very pretty,' India noted.

'All young girls are pretty,' her great-aunt said, 'and this one no more or less than many, but there will be difficulty over her religion, mark my words. And if all those French with her persist in their rude habits, the king will do well to send them away.' She moved toward the door. 'I am going back to your uncle's house now,' she announced. 'I will see you all in the morning when we go to court, and I hope, Jasmine, that your daughter will be suitably garbed like a proper young Englishwoman, and not decked out like some foreigner.' The countess of Alcester stamped through the open door, which a servant held for her, her skirts swinging indignantly as she went.

'Fat old cow!' India muttered when the door had shut again.

'She has just forgotten what it is like to be young,' Jasmine told her