The earl of Glenkirk swallowed hard. So Queen Anne had known all along about her husband’s youthful passion for his mother, yet she had said nothing. His respect suddenly grew for this woman, whom most considered silly and childish. “She is well, ma’am,” he replied. “A widow, but content to remain in the kingdom of Naples. My younger brother and two sisters are there with her. She says she could not bear Scotland’s climate after so many years in the warmth of Naples.”
“How long has it been since you saw her?” the queen asked.
“I visited shortly after my wife and children were killed,” he said quietly. “I needed her counsel then, but it has been many years since I beheld my mother’s face.”
“The Leslies of Glenkirk will be quite relieved that you are finally marrying again,” the queen noted. “I assume you and Lady Lindley are already lovers. She is quite fecund, and you will undoubtedly have sons off her. Her children are delightful. Not simply fair of face and form, but bright and clever for such little creatures. Do they like you, James Leslie? It is important that you get on well with them.”
“I believe we have already formed a comfortable attachment, ma’am,” he replied. “They have taken to calling mePapa.Young Henry wants me to begin his lessons in swordsmanship this summer.”
“That is to the good,” the queen said approvingly. “You will be an excellent father to the young Lindleys and my grandson.” She noticed that his eye was straying to Jasmine and the marquis of Hartsfield. “If she loves you, you need have no worry,” Queen Anne told the earl of Glenkirk, but James Leslie could see Jasmine growing impatient, and his concern was not whether she could be suborned, but how soon it would be before she hit the marquis and caused a row.
Piers St.Denis had firmly eased Jasmine from before the king’s throne, walking her across the room. “You are far more beautiful than I was led to believe,” he said, “but then, of course, you know how beautiful you are. I know you have been told it many times, madame.”
“Your compliment is accepted,” she replied. “I am marrying the earl of Glenkirk on June 15. We love one another. I cannot imagine why the king, having insisted on this marriage, is now playing this coy game with us. I am furious!”
“The king seeks to please me,” the marquis said, “especially now that the country bumpkin has dared to look above hisstation, and cast his net for the earl of Rutland’s daughter. God’s blood! Villiers doesn’t even have a title. Rutland will hardly give his daughter to a backwater squire,” Piers St.Denis sneered. “But, old king fool has promised his Steenie that he will make it all right, and the bumpkin bragged on it, so now the king must make it all right for me as well. Are you and Glenkirk lovers? You have the ripe and lush look of a woman who is very well loved. Ahh, you blush. How charming!”
“Why does the king call George VilliersSteenie?”Jasmine asked the marquis, ignoring his query by substituting one of her own.
“Have you met Villiers? Obviously not. Look over by the king’s left hand. The young man with the face like an angel. Old king fool says he is reminded of St.Stephen when he looks at Villiers. Hence, Steenie, a diminutive of Stephen. It is sickening. Now, answer my question, beauty. Are you and Glenkirk lovers?”
“It is not your business,” Jasmine replied tersely.
His fingers tightened upon her arm. “If you are to be my wife,” he told her, “I need to knoweverythingabout you, my beauty.”
“I am not going to be your wife,” she said angrily. “Release my arm. You are bruising me, you brute!”
“Ahh, so you are lovers. Well, it matters not. You weren’t a virgin anyway. Not with four children, and one of them a royal bastard,” St.Denis said. “You are a passionate little bitch, aren’t you, my beauty?”
“Let go of my arm,”Jasmine replied. “If you do not, I shall scream, and cause a lovely scandal, placing you at center stage, my lord!”
He released her arm, laughing. “I do believe that you would,” he told her. “When we are married I shall beat you if you misbehave.”
Jasmine looked absolutely outraged. “A man who would raise his hand to a woman is no real man at all,” she said. “Now, go find yourself some silly little heiress to wed. I am pledged to Lord Leslie.” Then, turning on her heel, Jasmine hurriedly made her way across the room to where James Leslie stood by the queen. She curtsied low to Anne. “I am happy to see you again, ma’am,” she said.
“You do not like the marquis of Hartsfield,” the queen said bluntly.
“No, ma’am, I do not,” Jasmine replied with equal frankness.
“Neither do I,” Queen Anne answered.
“Will the king force me?” Jasmine asked.
Queen Anne shook her head in the negative. “Since Steenie has been promised that eventually he shall have Rutland’s heiress, Jamie feels he must give St.Denis a bride of equal value. This is really your own fault, my dear. If you had married Glenkirk when we expected you to marry him, you would not have been vulnerable now to St.Denis; but Jamie has a good heart, as you well know. He will not force you. He does mean the choice to be yours, but he will try to get you to approve his beautiful marquis in order to please St.Denis. I did not know he was going to meddle in this affair, or I should have convinced him otherwise. After all, our meddling after dear Henry’s death, may God assoil his sweet soul, caused you to run away in the first place. I don’t want you to run away with our little Charlie-boy again.” She patted Jasmine’s hand with her slender fingers. “It will be all right, my dear. I am certain of it. But you must not run off, and I shall charge you, Jemmie Leslie, with the responsibility for Lady Lindley.”
Across the room the marquis of Hartsfield watched the exchange. He could not hear what was being said, but he would wager his name had come up in the intense discussion betweenthe queen, and the beauty. “What do you think of her, Kipp?” he asked the man by his side.
“She’ll want serious taming,” his companion said, “but I imagine that you’ll enjoy that, Piers,” and he laughed.
Kipp St.Denis was the marquis’s bastard half brother. The two men had been raised together; the bastard being taught complete and total obedience to his father’s only legitimate heir. Kipp’s mother had been the personal maid of the young marchioness of Hartsfield. Her mistress’s betrothed husband had raped her a week before the wedding. She had been a virgin. After the wedding night, the previous marquis had insisted upon having the two women in his bed each night. He was a violent, amoral man. His bride, an orphan whose dowry consisted of the acreage adjoining his estates, loved her husband and was willing to do what he wanted. The estate was isolated, and there was no one to gossip but the servants, and they rarely did for fear of their master.
The half brothers had been born an hour apart, in the same bed, as the two women labored side by side. Had Kipp been the legitimate son, it was he who would have been the heir, as his was the first birth. Piers had joined him in the same cradle in the next hour, and they had been rarely separated since. Kipp was his mother’s image while Piers was his father all over again. Both men, however, resembled their father in temperament. Despite the difference in their stations, the half brothers were completely loyal to one another, and there was no trace of jealousy between them. Kipp went where Piers went, serving his brother as secretary, valet, and general confidant.
“Ahh, Kipp, this is no ordinary mare to be tamed, but a finely bred creature who will take special handling,” the marquis said. “Did you notice her breasts as they overflowed her gown’s neckline? Little creamy love cones that were just begging to be caressed.”
“If you want to win her over, you’ll have to get rid of the earl of Glenkirk, Piers,” his half brother said. “As long as he is here, you will have not the slightest chance with her. I heard her when you had her by your side. She is completely determined to wed him. And, brother, he is living in her house on the Strand with her—probably sharing her bed and giving her a good fucking every night. We don’t want her with child—his child—do we? Tell the king, and he will see to the rest, I promise you. Does not old king fool love his darling boy, Piers?” Kipp St.Denis laughed suggestively.
“You are right,” the marquis agreed. “I don’t want to lose this chance. Lady Lindley is fabulously wealthy in her own right, and of even greater importance, she had the king’s only grandson. A bastard like yourself, Kipp, but a royal bastard. Until little baby Charles gets himself a wife out of Spain, or France, and has a child of his own, the little duke of Lundy will remain his grandpapa’s darling. To have control of that laddie is to have real power, Kipp! Villiers can have his whey-faced little heiress. I will have both a fortune and power over the king!”
