The Forgotten Rose {COMPLETED}

Part I: Chapter Seventeen - A Son For York

Isabelle kissed her daughters head as she held her in her arms. She gazed out of the window at the long garden, one day soon enough Margaret would be running along out there, perhaps with a little brother or two. She would play our there in the years to come. Margaret was growing fast and strong. She was feeding well and her size showed that.

"My beautiful girl." Isabelle smiled as she curled her daughters thin hair around her finger. She could not believe her daughters beauty, light eyes and hair just like her father and for such an infant she was the most elegant of daughters. She smiled at each person who passed her, serving girl or duchess, then again to a child of a few months what was the difference?

"She is like all summer babies." George said from behind her. "Big and strong." He loved visiting his daughter on evenings, to see her without her swaddling bands. Watching her move freely frolicking her dumpy arms and legs about. She would grin up at him and sometimes would take hold of a finger in her fat fists.

"My sister was a summer baby, born in early June of my fourth year and she was a sickly child. I hear she still is, having coughing fits." Isabelle told her husband. "She was never well, I had to spend my time looking after her with my mother as a girl."

"But Margaret is our little girl, she would not be ill now would she." George said as he kissed his daughters forehead. "Our girl is strong, she is my daughter after all."

"Yes George." Isabel said reaching up and kissing her husbands lips. "I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this gift, and to think I did not want a girl."

"My lady, Margaret needs her feed." Maggie commanded opening her arms for the infant, Isabel turned and passed Margaret into Maggie's arms. To the side of the room sat a woman, she was dressed in the simplest of gowns and was already feeding a child; her own daughter. Isabel did not know where George had found her, she was half expecting for him one day to announce that the child in the wet nurse's arms was his own.

"She likes her food." Isabelle chirped. Looking fondly at her daughter. "I shall miss her whilst I am away." She turned away to look back out of the window, she adored the view of the garden, the trees all in a row and the bushes. She loved how the frost caught the tree's and small icicles hung from their branches, as snow covered the ground.

"And I shall miss you." George told Isabelle as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "I shall miss you the most." He chuckled kissing the back of her head. "And when you return, the snow shall have thawed and you shall be playing with our girl in the gardens."

"It is early this year." Isabelle said. "Perhaps it is for me." She wondered turning to face her husband, still within his arms. She wrapped her own arms around his neck and beamed up at him. "October snow cannot be good."

"A light coat, we get it often." George told her. "You grew in France, it never snows there, only rains."

"It does snow, each year around Christmas. I remember playing in the snow with Anne, thinking we were being terribly naughty because our father did not know." Isabelle laughed. "Apparently our nurse maid had told him, I never liked that woman."

"That is no way to speak of the woman who raised you, she brought you up well did she not? You are a polite well mannered woman, who is an excellent wife and mother. Shame she couldn't have done the same for your darling sister."

"My sister was a child, she was scared." Isabelle scolded him. "She did not mean to act so."

"She ran away with my brother." George told her. "I should never have come between you two. I feel like I drew a divide."

"No, we were never so close. Well we were as girls, but aren't all sisters. She was good at her writing and her numbers and me at my embroidery. I was there when she needed me." Isabelle said. "She was not the most well mannered of children come to think of it."