"Let us be off!" the Earl of Lynmouth fussed impatiently. "She has either learned her lessons, Mother, or she has not. Willow has always been bright, and I do not expect her to be an embarrassment to us."

Skye next advised her eldest son to attempt to remain neutral in the continuing fight between the English and the Irish.

"It won't be easy," she said, "but try to consider the long run. You have a wife now, and soon there will be children, Ewan. All you have to offer them is Ballyhennessey, and it's been O’Flaherty land for over three hundred years. Don't be driven by the hotheads or the Church into losing your heritage, my son."

"It will come down to religion in the end, Mother."

"I know that, Ewan, but ask yourself this. What difference does it make how you worship God as long as you worship Him? Ask yourself why you should endanger your lands and your family because an Italian pope and an English monarch cannot decide, and argue over dogma?"

"Is that why you never took sides, Mother?"

"Your grandfather, Dubhdara O'Malley, of sainted memory, God assoil him, taught me that the family came first, Ewan. It has ever been thus with me. I have not had as much of a hand in raising you as I would have wanted, but you are my son. You will do what you believe best, and you will follow your conscience. I do not envy you, Ewan. Ireland is a torn and angry land." She held out her arms to him, and walking into them, he hugged her. "God speed, my eldest," Skye said.

The others came then for their hugs and kisses while his young and impatient lordship, the earl, stood tapping an elegantly shod foot. He had said his good-byes privately, as Robin believed befit his dignity. Finally the others were ready, and the three young women climbed into the coach. The men were to ride. Leaning from the windows of the vehicle as it pulled away, they waved happily to Skye and Adam. Behind them came a second, larger coach containing the tiring women, the valets, and the luggage. The household goods that the newly married young women would need had gone on to Nantes several days earlier.

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."