You Are My Light Part II

283 - Complication *Modern*

"Sit down, Mary-" Kenna says, leading her away from the window towards the couches. "you shouldn't be standing for so long, the babies won't allow it." she states, helping Mary sit down gingerly, her large bump getting in the way of most forms of mobility now that she neared her due date for the little girls inside her.

"Do you need anything?" Aylee asks her, appearing in the doorway to the kitchen area of Kenna and Bash's private home in the Bordeaux mountains. "Some tea, a sandwich, some cake? Mother always said she loved soft and sweet things when she carried Johnathan and I."

"No, thank you, Aylee. Come and sit with me, perhaps you can take my mind of things for the moment." Mary sighs, leaning back into the pillows, trying to gain relief from the horrid lower back pain and hip pain she'd been feeling since month four.

Aylee obeys her Princess with ease, rubbing her side as she closes her eyes in exhaustion.

Things had been so perfect before, how did this happen? When did things get so complicated?

When they were young, and free -as free as people like them could be- and so happy, things had been so simple. The run rose, and the sun fell, they lived and they loved and they were free to do as they pleased. But then Henry tired of the crown on his head and the mistresses in his bed, and everything burned.

Francis -her dear, beloved Francis- had been crowned King of France when he was sixteen, and suddenly the warm summer evenings as the heirs to France and Britain volleyed about in the sunflower fields came to an end. Francis was cooped up in his meeting rooms and was now too busy to even see her in luncheon or when they broke their fasts or feasted for the evening, for a regent wouldn't be required due to the fact the new King wasn't a child anymore. their one blissful hope was that one day, things would settle under his rule, and he could take the girl he loved as his Queen, and that was the plan.

Until it wasn't, of course. The new Queen mother of France revelled in the fact she could finally rid herself of her greatest rival -even bigger than Diane de Portiers and her bastard son- and did so with joy when she announced that her sons Queen wouldn't be the heiress to the throne of James the fifth of Scotland, first of England, Ireland and Wales, but the daughter of a wealthy Italian Lord, Lord D'amencourt. Lady Olivia was beautiful, vain, cultured and wealthy, and she took great pleasure in taking her place at Francis' side, practically cackling as the Princess of Wales was sent back home with her bags packed and a broken heart. Things had ended badly between Francis and Mary, what was once love and trust now nothing more than tears and resentment.

And that broken heart had lead her to Henry Stuart, the Lord of Darnley. A handsome devil with little to occupy his mind besides drink, gambling and women, but he had been charming and daring and brave and sassy and she had fallen for him rapidly. Granted, the romance had started purely physical, a way to forget their stolen loves, but something had blossomed for a time. That was when the King and Queen of England had decided that their daughters' second cousin would make a mighty fine groom for her, and the engagement had been announced three days before the official notice that the King of France would be marrying the blonde Italian woman who had broken Mary's heart.

When they were twenty one, and by that point, the love had fizzled out into a sombre understanding of heirs and duty and lovers hidden in the shadows, Mary married Henry Stuart, out of nothing more but false pretences and duty to her country, and the small child within her womb.

In a bold, dramatic move, the King of France did not show up to his royal nuptials, instead sending a public statement that due to circumstances that were unforeseen, he would be officially ending his relationship with Lady D'Amencourt, while only few knew the true reason he couldn't go through with his vows. But it was too late, because that reason announced her pregnancy two months later, just three days after Lady Olivia was left at the alter.

Mary had delivered a healthy baby boy in early December, and that bouncing baby boy with dark hair and shimmering blue eyes had been her only reason to live and breathe, and the scandal that had been Henry's deranged kidnapping of the boy Prince had made world wide headlines for nine days, until he was found by a sheep farmer in the very north of Scotland. Henry had been locked away in a physyciatric hospital for months, before he could re-join society, his marriage ending in divorce, and his former wife swept away by her handsome, brave, gallant, true Lord Bothwell.

And that's all well and good, yes? Until greed and power and lust and anger and hatred had sizzled the second royal marriage before it really began. Mary ad been turned from her family and her friends and everybody she had ever loved, assaulted and reprogrammed by the bastard, until he forced two girls into her womb and dragged her up the isle, unwilling and forced, but having no choice. A royal Princess, who was one day going to be Queen, delivering two bastard daughters? How could she come back from that?

That was answered when the body of the false King had been found floating in the waters of Argyll, his beaten wife stumbling around the wood laden shores in barefoot, bloody, spouting a story of domestic abuse and rape, her son being threatened and then her husband falling into the water, sinking before she could save him.

That's a small mercy Mary granted the world, nobody knew the truth of her second marriage and her second husbands' death. It was far too horrific to inflict on anybody.

So that's how the future Queen had found herself here, in this room, two babies soon to come into the world, a bouncing little boy just shy of two years, never willing to forget that one, great love she had in her youth, its memory sustaining her until she will die.

"Let me get you some water," Greer suddenly stands up, her green dress swaying at her ankles. "I'll check on James, too, yeah? He's just down anyway," she states.

"Thanks." Mary whispers, rubbing her stomach as one baby kicks out.

"Are you alright?"

Mary looks at Aylee. "I'm gonna be fine."