When the travelers had disappeared from view around the bend in the drive Adam heaved a mighty sigh. "Let's go home, little girl!" he said, and he helped her into the smaller waiting carriage.

Skye climbed into the vehicle feeling terribly depressed. Her elder children were gone, and her three youngest would be staying at Archambault for several days visiting their cousins. She sighed deeply as the carriage moved down the drive and onto the forest road back to Belle Fleur. "I am old," she announced in a sad voice.

Adam looked at his wife's beautiful woebegone face, and began to chuckle. "Have I domesticated you so, sweetheart, that you are that lost without your brood of chicks?"

"Don't you understand?" she said. "My two eldest sons are married. After last night their wives could already be with child. My eldest daughter is off to court to seek a husband. I could be a grandmother in a year! I am old!"

He began to laugh, and pulling her into his arms, he slipped a hand into her dress to capture a plump breast. "Madame," he said as he began to tease at her nipple, "you are a woman of maturity, I will grant you, but you've not yet attained your thirty-fourth birthday, Skye." His fingers skillfully undid the laces on her bodice, successfully freeing both her breasts. "God, they're beautiful!" he groaned, burying his face in the valley separating them and covering her suddenly trembling flesh with hot kisses.

Skye felt herself begin to grow tingly with the pleasure he was arousing in her. Her slender hand entangled itself in his thick black hair, and began to slip softly down to the back of his neck to rub against the soft flesh. "If you think to turn my interest, monseigneur," she murmured with faint protest, and then as his other hand slipped beneath her skirts and moved upward, she cried out, "Adam! Oh, my darling!"

"What a shameless hussy you are, old woman," he teased her.

"I am not old!" she said suddenly, realizing how foolish she must have sounded, and also realizing that she didn't feel one bit older now than she had at twenty. Feeling better, she mischievously moved her hand to caress him, and felt her heart quicken at the hard, hungry length of him. "I shall never be old as long as I can do that to you, my darling," she whispered in his ear as she loosened his garments and released him.

Roughly Adam pulled her onto his lap, raising her skirts to position her on his mighty lance. With a gasp of delight she found he had taken the most complete possession of her. Her legs were over his thighs, her feet pushing into the velvet upholstery of the carriage seat. His arms were tightly about her as hers were about him, and he was suddenly kissing her ardently, his tongue fencing with hers while they rocked back and forth with the motion of the coach.

The sensation was one of complete rapture, and Skye cried out softly to her husband as the delicious warmth and excitement of his lovemaking began to fan a flame of incredible passion within her dazzled and stimulated body. "Ohhh, Aaadam," she breathed as the first small wave of pleasure swept over her, and then, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" as the full impact of the delight rendered her weak and satisfied, and she fell against his chest panting.

His breathing was ragged in her ear, but she was too weak to move for the minute. Finally, as the wild beating of their hearts calmed, he said softly, "Haven't you ever made love in a coach before, little girl?"

"No, though once Geoffrey mentioned it as we came down from London. In the end, however, he decided it was far more comfortable to do so in a bed," she laughed softly, remembering.

"Yes," Adam considered, "Geoff was always one for his comforts, as I recall. Tell me, madame, are you still feeling ancient and haggard?"

"I feel marvelous!" she enthused.

"How quickly do you think you can make yourself presentable?" he queried.

"Why?" She snuggled against him.

"Because, little girl, Belle Fleur is in sight, and I should hate to shock the footman who will open this coach door in a few moments."

With his amused aid she quickly scrambled off him, and began relacing her bodice, smoothing her skirts and her hair. "You had best see to your own dishabille, monseigneur," she teased him as his smoky eyes fastened upon her bosom.

"How long are the children gone for, little girl?"

"A fortnight," she answered.

"Good," he said. "I intend to spend all of that time with you, my love, and most of it in our bed. It has been a long time, it seems to me, since we were alone and free to be lovers."

"Can we not ride, and picnic in the forest?" she teased him.

"Only if you allow me to make love to you beneath the stately oaks."

Her face softened, and she whispered, "Yes, oh yes, mon mari!" just as their carriage clattered over the drawbridge and into the courtyard of the château.

Adam de Marisco was a man of his word, and so for the next two weeks he and Skye spent almost every waking and sleeping moment together. It seemed to them both that they were more deeply and powerfully in love than they had ever been. When the three youngest children returned Adam took it upon himself to begin to instruct young Padraic in the business of running an estate, while Deirdre began to follow after her mother, learning all that was necessary to the running of a household.

Of all her children, Skye noted, Deirdre was the quietest. She seemed to learn with ease whatever she was taught, be it the proper way to make soap and perfume, or her Latin. She was a pretty child who looked very much like her mother, but Skye could only assume Deirdre's shyness came from all the time she had spent away from her mother in her early years. Now Skye worked very hard to make up those years to her daughter. Still, it was to Adam that Deirdre always went with her successes and her problems.

"I don't think she likes me," Skye said to Adam one day.

"She is in awe of you," he said, "and she fears you a little, but I believe she loves you."

"She loves me because I am her mother," Skye replied with keen insight, "but she does not like me. I don't understand why. I have tried so hard with her."

"If you feel that way then why don't you ask her, sweetheart. Best to get it out in the open rather than let whatever is disturbing her fester until it is blown so out of proportion that it cannot be controlled."

"I will if you will be with me when I do."

"No. If we stand together while you attempt to interrogate Deirdre she will feel we are allied against her, and she will say nothing, and deny all. This must remain between you two."

It was not easy, but Skye finally screwed up her courage one afternoon in late summer as she and Deirdre sat on the lakeside making daisy chains. "Why is it you dislike me, Deirdre?" she asked bluntly.

For a moment Deirdre Burke looked startled, and she slowly flushed a beet-red. Then as bluntly as her mother had spoken, she replied, "Because you left Padraic and me when you went off to your new marriage. Because when you finally brought us to you, you sent us quickly away, again promising to bring our real father back to us. You never did, Mama. Before you married Adam we had not a happy life, and I cannot help but wonder how long it will be before you run off from us again with some excuse or another."

Skye was shocked by the venom in her small daughter's voice. "Does your brother feel this way, too?" she asked.

"Padraic says you love us. It seems to be enough for him."

"But not for you, my daughter, I can see. Your brother is right, you know. I do love you. It never, however, occurred to me to explain to a baby the difficulties of my life, Deirdre. If you had asked me when these things began to fret you, I would have told you anything I felt you needed to know."

Skye took her daughter's resisting and stiff little form into her arms. "Deirdre," she said, looking down into the child's cold and closed face, "I love you. You are a child born of love, the love that Niall Burke and I had for each other. I will try not to ever go from you again, although there will come a day when you go from me to marry."

"You say you will try not to go from me, but you must promise me you will not go!"

"Deirdre, I cannot," Skye said. "I have never lied to you, and I will not lie now, even to gain your approval. I will try!"

Suddenly Deirdre burst into tears, her whole small face crumbling with her distress. "Don't leave me, Mama! Don't leave me!" she begged her mother between sobs.

Wordlessly Skye took her daughter onto her lap and rocked her soothingly. All the others had survived her travels, but despite her stiff little spine, Deirdre was a creature easily bruised by life. In a way, Skye thought, she is much like Niall, despite the fact she looks like me. "I have no plans to go anywhere, Deirdre," she said quietly. "Do not weep, my baby. I'll not leave you, my precious one."


***

On Michaelmas the servants were paid for the year, but the nursemaid who had tended Velvet since her birth found herself with child by a footman, and was quickly married. A new girl, a plump, cheerful lass from Archambault village, was found to replace the first nursemaid, and Velvet seemed to take to the change well. But less than a week after the girl had been hired, both she and the baby disappeared, and could not be found.

Both Skye and Adam were frantic, afraid that the girl and her charge had fallen into the moat, but they quickly discarded that thought, for the château gatekeeper had seen Margerie and the baby walking across the drawbridge and down the forest road. A search was quickly made for fear that a wild animal had attacked the pair, but no trace of them was found. The search expanded to Archambault and its village in the hopes that Margerie had simply taken Velvet on a visit without requesting permission, but the girl's family had not seen her. Her best friend in the village, however, came forward timidly to say that Margerie had told her that she would soon have enough gold for a fine dowry, and it would not come from drudging at Belle Fleur.

Comte Antoine could see that his big stepson was close to the breaking point, and very desirous of shaking the informant until her teeth rattled. Taking the girl by the hand, he gently said, "Jeanne, ma petite, try and remember exactly what Margerie said to you. Did she mention where she would get the gold for her dowry?"

The peasant girl scrunched her brow in thought, and then suddenly she grinned. "But of course, M'sieur le Comte! Margerie said she met a man-though he spoke our language, she said she could tell he was a foreigner, for his accent was something terrible. He told her that he had heard that the petite Velvet was the most beautiful child in Christendom, and if Margerie would bring the baby to him to see with his own eyes he would give her six gold ecus!" Jeanne finished trumphantly.

"Where was Margerie to bring the baby?" the comte probed further.

"To some inn at Tours," was the reply.

"Did Margerie tell you the name of the inn, Jeanne?"

"No, M'sieur le Comte, but Gilleet the carter would know. Twas he who gave her a ride yesterday."

"Find the carter!" the comte ordered. "You're a good girl, Jeanne," he said, and then he dropped several pieces of silver down her bodice.

The carter, who had only just returned, was quickly brought before the comte, and readily admitted having given Margerie a ride from Archambault to the nearby city of Tours. Yes, she had a little girl with her, her sister's child for company, she said. He let her off at an inn, Le Coq D'Or on the west side of the town. Adam, the comte, and his two sons immediately rode for Tours. When they returned several hours later to Belle Fleur, Adam carried with him a heavy sealed parchment addressed to Skye. With grim face he handed it to her.

Skye broke the seal and tore the letter open. For a moment she could not breathe and her vision blurred at the sight of the familiar hand. The message was brief.

Madam, it began. I have need of your services. Come immediately. It was signed Elizabeth R.

"Where did you get this?" Skye demanded of her husband.

"It was awaiting me on my arrival at Le Coq D'Or in Tours. It had been left by two gentlemen who arrived alone, and departed with a nursemaid and a child. The innkeeper said they took the Nantes road, and they left the parchment for whoever came looking for a woman and a child."