Compton Castle, Torquay, Devon, England, Summer 1472

                                    

                                          
Summer is supposed to be a time for mindless pleasure. However, I suspect nobody in my family feels mindless pleasure right about now. With Jacquetta gone all of us are aware that we have lost a great women in our lives. My children are anxious about her disappearance and ask me daily where "Tante Jacquette" has gone. I have to sit down and explain to them that she has gone to live with God and the angels and that she will be watching over them from now on like a guardian angel does. They do not get it and it takes them a while to realize that just like John Neville, a man that they had considered an uncle and very close to them, Jacquetta is not coming back. 
To the best of their ability, Edward, Edmund, and Thomas Howard try to make summer as enjoyable as possible for the rest of us. They drag us out of Compton Castle, in the land that I own as Duchess of Devonshire, to go on picnics and play games in the courtyard. It easily distracts the children but it does little for Elizabeth, Jackie, and I. It also does not help the Anthony's wife, Elizabeth de Scales, Is pregnant again but has been sick recently. It sounds the whole family into a tizzy as we try to make her as comfortable as possible, fearing that she can meet the same date as your mother-in-law. Anthony is beside himself and constantly spends time with his wife trying to make her as comfortable as he can. 
The only thing that saves us from outright melancholy is the children. Margaret of York comes to court after the death of her mother-in-law to comfort her husband. She has been in confinement in a private castle and expresses the great grief that she was not there to wish her mother-in-law safe travels into the next world. He brings her children George (1469), Henry (1471), and Cecily (1473) with her and the young babies brighten up everyone a little bit. 
Anne and Richard are married in a private ceremony soon after our daughter's baptism after receiving a papal dispensation that I lobbied for myself. It is a small ceremony and it is meant to try and appease George,  seems to have no end to complaints about the arrangement. Richard and his young wife don't care however. They are simply happy to be married. George reluctantly gives Richard his wife's control of her states but mostly leaves the running of the estates too Anne herself. She is afraid that she will think that she has married her only for her money. Anne is confused about how to take care of such large lands and I end up tutoring her and how to take care of the household economy and how to inspire loyalty in the local nobility and gentry that count on her leadership. Even I must admit that she is a good student.
After their marriage Richard takes her to Warwick Castle for their honeymoon. Isabel and her troublesome has been George also retreat to their estates. However theirs is not for a loving honeymoon. Isabel and her husband are going back to try and demonstrate George's defiance to Anne Neville's marriage. It is a petty move especially now there is no chance of an ever going back into his guardianship, but George does it anyway. At this point I am not surprised. He has never been one to think things through. The only thing I can do is send Isabel a sympathetic look as George drags her out the gates of Compton. 

Margaret and her husband Jasper come with their children from Wales. It is so nice to finally see her again. I have missed her dearly. When she sees me she runs up and hugs me and it is as though we have never been separated. We are cousins through our shared Lancastrian blood and as such we have always been in a difficult position as wives of Yorkists but with Lancaster flowing through our veins. 
"How have you been?"  She questions and I know she is referring to the death of my aunt and the hard birth of my new daughter.
"As well as can be expected," I tell her softly.
"We have prayed for you often," she reassures me. "You should've seen my Henry, he was devastated when Lizzie wrote to him all upset."
"He will be a wonderful husband for her," I told Margaret happily, "I just hope that she's willing to handle her."