Vixens. Bertrice SmallЧитать онлайн книгу.
here. It would have been difficult for me to do that at Glenkirk. Besides, my family comes south almost every summer to visit. And next year my sister, Mair, will join us. Fancy, however, has crossed an ocean to come to Grandmama. When will she ever see her brothers and sisters, or her parents again?”
The duke smiled warmly at his niece. Diana Leslie was always so thoughtful of others. He had never known such sweetness and often wondered where she had gotten it. And yet when called up to be strong, Diana was exactly that. She was unlike his youngest child, and yet the two, so different, were fast friends. They had been since that summer his mother had asked his brother to leave Diana with them. The duke of Lundy had always hoped Diana would be a good influence on his daughter, but it did not seem that way. Yet there was a bright side to the situation. Cynara had been unable to foist her naughty ways on her cousin. “You have a good heart, pet,” he told Diana.
Cynara rolled her blue eyes, but then she grinned. “Let’s go see what kind of clothing our cousin has brought with her from the Colonies. Her traveling gown wasn’t half-bad at all. I would not have thought a little colonial so fashionable. And what jewelry does she possess, I wonder? Grandmama will give her some, certainly. She has so much,” Cynara noted. “Don’t you just love the ruby ring she gave me for my last birthday?” She flashed the gem before them as she did at least several times daily.
“Please allow your cousin to settle herself before you burst in on her, Cynara,” her mother suggested. “There will be plenty of time to rifle through her possessions over the next few weeks before we go to court. Fancy will be tired, and want to rest.”
“Oh, very well,” Cynara said, then turned to Diana. “Let’s go riding,” she suggested. “We just need to change our gowns.”
“Go for a walk in the gardens,” her father said sternly, “and leave your grandmother alone with this new grandchild. She has missed my sister all these years and is thrilled to be able to have at least one of Fortune’s children with her at long last.”
“The gardens are lovely right now,” the duchess responded, helpfully.
“There are new puppies in the kennels,” Diana volunteered.
“Ohh!” Cynara exclaimed, excitedly. She loved dogs, and had been promised a new puppy from the next litter to be born. “Are they Bella’s?” she inquired.
“Yes,” Diana said with a smile.
“I get first pick!” Cynara responded.
“You know that I prefer cats to dogs,” Diana reminded her cousin as the two girls hurried from the hall.
The duke of Lundy chuckled. “I do believe that with Diana’s help we have saved Fancy from our daughter. At least for the time being,” he amended with a grin.
“Fancy looks so sad,” the duchess remarked. “Poor child! I hope she will come to love and trust us.”
“Why is it,” the duke wondered, “that Cynara did not get your kind heart?”
“She is like my father. Practical,” the duchess said. “And like my mother. Determined to have her own way in all things.”
“You rarely speak of your parents,” he noted.
“No, I do not,” the duchess replied. “My father is long dead, and my mother died just before my first husband, Squire Randall. She was always jealous of my father’s love for me and would have allowed that brute of a second husband of hers to put me into service, even though I had not been raised to be a servant. Thank God for Madame Skye! Who knows what would have happened to me if it hadn’t been for her.”
“She was a remarkable woman,” the duke of Lundy agreed. “I wonder what she would think of these three great-great-granddaughters of hers, all of whom resemble her most strongly. My mother grows more like her each day,” he remarked.
His wife smiled. “Aye, Charlie, she does,” she agreed. “She will brook no nonsense from any of our girls, and she will certainly get Fancy past her melancholy longing for Maryland.”
“I believe she will,” he said, wondering even as he spoke what was going on upstairs in his house right now.
Fancy had followed her grandmother obediently from the hall. She was tired, but the worst was over. She had crossed an ocean in surprising safety and traveled from London to meet her relations. And she had liked them all upon their first meeting. She knew far more of them, she realized, than they did of her. Her mother had never ceased to speak of her family in England and Scotland. It had always been very obvious to Fancy that her mother’s siblings were most dear to her. Of course her memories were of young men and women, little boys, and an infant sister named Autumn. But now all of those siblings were well into their middle years, even the baby sister whom Fortune never knew.
Her grandmother stopped before a carved oak door and opened it, stepping through. Fancy trailed after her, and there was Bess Trueheart waiting with a smile. Fancy let her gaze sweep the chamber. It was large, the walls paneled in an old-fashioned manner, but there was a large fireplace, already blazing brightly on this late afternoon; and there was a big leaden-paned bow window with a seat in it. The room was decorated with velvet draperies at the windows, of rich turquoise blue with gold fringe and rope tiebacks. The furniture was sturdy oak, well polished and obviously comfortable. The floors were covered with a thick wool carpet of turquoise and cream.
“How lovely!” Fancy exclaimed, pleased, and she bent to sniff at a bowl of late roses on a table.
“It was my room when I first came to Queen’s Malvern,” Jasmine replied. “Of course it has been redecorated since that long-ago time,” she concluded with a smile.
“Come into your bedchamber, mistress,” Bess beckoned. “There be another fine fireplace here too, and a bed big enough for a large family, I’ll vow.” She ushered Fancy into the room.
It was, Fancy saw at once, every bit as lovely as the previous chamber, but she was surprised. “Two rooms? For my very own?” she wondered aloud. It was certainly not this way in Maryland where she and each of her siblings had had a bedchamber for themselves, and not one as spacious as this suite was.
“It is called an apartment,” Jasmine explained. “It is the custom in great houses to have a dayroom and a bedchamber.”
“Mama never told me that,” Fancy admitted.
“What did she speak about when she spoke of England?” Jasmine asked her granddaughter.
“She spoke of her family mainly,” Fancy answered.
Jasmine nodded. “I wonder if she missed us as much as we missed her. I still cannot believe that I let my precious child go so far from us. I thought perhaps she might come home to visit one day, but then the troubles began, and King Charles I was executed. The years of the so-called Commonwealth were difficult. I took my youngest daughter and went to France after my Jemmie was killed in the Stuart cause. I could not bear to remain at Glenkirk after that.”
“Mama has been very happy, Grandmama,” Fancy said. “I think only if she lost Papa would things change for her. She is, I believe, very much like you in many ways.” Suddenly Fancy hugged Jasmine. “You have made me feel so welcome,” she told the older woman. “Thank you!”
“Why, my dear child,” Jasmine exclaimed, “you are my granddaughter, even if today is the first time I have laid eyes upon you. I have known you, your brothers, and your sisters through your mother’s correspondence, but I will admit that I am right glad to finally have you here with us, even if it is tragedy that has brought you. We will wipe away those awful memories for you, my darling Fancy.”
“What do you know?” Fancy asked her grandmother tremulously. Her voice had begun to quaver, and tears sprang to her eyes.
“Your mother has told me everything,” Jasmine said. “No one else in the family is privy to that information, nor will they be unless you decide to share it with them one day. We will speak no more on it, my child.” She enfolded