Antonia had her silk mules kicked off and her stockinged feet up on the chaise, sipping weak tea; a vision of loveliness in a gown à l'anglaise of delicate Indienne cotton. But never in all his days would Roxton have foreseen his mother in these surroundings pregnant with another Duke’s child, and at her age. He thought she would always be married to his father… He missed his father’s acerbic wit, his omniscient eye, and his company. He wondered what he would make of it all. Particularly on this day, with their cousin Alisdair being married in the family chapel, and to the granddaughter of his best friend from Eton days. He was certain his father would approve of his goddaughter marrying the Major, and no doubt make some quip that she had tripped him up with her stick, that sent their cousin head over heels in love with the little beauty.
He shook such maudlin thoughts away the instant a footman admitted his duchess. His face split into a grin as she strode up the long room with her familiar firm tread, resplendent in blue damask petticoats, her rich auburn hair swept up off her lovely neck and dressed with strands of pearls. She never failed to look majestic, and like her walk, took each pregnancy in her confident stride. He thanked God every day that she had good pregnancies and easy deliveries (if any delivery could be called such) because the thought of losing her in childbirth, or at any other time, would surely make his life meaningless.
“Your face is remarkably transparent to your thoughts, your Grace,” Deborah teased her husband, and kissed him. “I didn’t go into an early labor dealing with Charlotte and Mary, if that is what is meant by that look in your eye. And I managed to send them up to dress, without Charlotte demanding to see you. So for that I deserve another kiss. Thank you. But I do now need to sit for a bit before we head off to the chapel.”
She broke from her husband’s embrace and eased herself into the closest wingchair. Roxton quickly placed a footstool in front of her, put up her feet, slipped off her shoes, and sat on the edge of the foot stool so he could rub her stockinged feet.
“Thank you, Maman,” she said to Antonia, when handed a cup of tea. She sipped at the tea and shifted against the cushions, a smile at the Duke. “And thank you, dearest. You had best have another cup of tea yourself, or perhaps something stronger. I have invited Mary and Teddy to stay—”
“When and for how long?” Roxton interrupted.
“—for a month, as soon as she can arrange it. Teddy is presently still at Fitzstuart Hall nursing a fever. Nothing serious.”
“A month? I think I will have something stronger! But I am pleased Teddy is not in any danger. A pity she could not join us…”
Daughter and mother-in-law exchanged a smile at the Duke’s expense as they watched him pour out a snifter of brandy.
“That was kind of you, Deborah,” Antonia said, and to tease her son, added with practiced naivety, “But is a month long enough…?”
“Yes! Yes it is, Maman. What with the baby due in two months time—Oh! How droll!” he added when both women giggled behind their fans.
“Mon chou, I am sure Mary gave up her infatuation for you a long time ago.”
Deb glanced at the Duke but addressed her mother-in-law. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Maman. Sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking, Mary will gaze at him like this,” She opened her eyes wide and fluttered her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion that had Antonia giggling.
“P-poor Mary!”
“Stop it! Both of you!” Roxton demanded. Blushing, he threw back the brandy and set down the tumbler. “The poor woman has lost her husband and is practically destitute. The least we can do is offer her some comfort in these surroundings.”
“What a marvelous idea, my love,” Deborah agreed, a knowing smile exchanged with Antonia. “Then I will make the necessary arrangements and let Mary know you have extended her an invitation.”
“You could have her stay on and send for Theodora when she is well…?” Antonia suggested. She put aside her teacup on its saucer and looked up at her son. “I will have Mary stay with me for a few days after the wedding, and then, when we know her daughter she is on her way, I will return her to you.”
“That is a generous offer, Maman.”
“It is nothing of the sort, Julian,” Antonia corrected him with a light laugh. “Me I am lonely and bored, and even Mary’s company is preferable to that!”
“I had the archery boards set up for the children on the lawn just beyond the terrace,” Deb told them conversationally. “They’ll be as tightly wound as clocks after the ceremony, so best they run around while we are enjoying the wedding breakfast.” She looked at Antonia. “I thought perhaps Harry and Jack might do the honors of keeping an eye on them.”
“After all the years I kept an eye on them while they fired off arrows at who-knows-what, and whom! Let them try and get out of it!” the Duke said, only half-jokingly. He glanced at the mantel clock and then checked his gold pocket watch. “We’d best be getting ready to move. I know who’s as tightly wound as a clock at this moment, and that’s Dair. The poor fellow is quite frozen with nerves. If he faints during the ceremony, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“And so it is with large vigorous males,” Antonia added with a sigh of remembrance. “Your father he was the same—”
“What? Papa was frozen with fear at the prospect of marrying you? I don’t believe it!”
Antonia sat up tall. “Julian, you think I would lie about such a thing? Your poor father he was one big block of frozen water I tell you!”
Roxton gave a bark of laughter and shook his head. “Mon Dieu, I wish I’d been there to see that!”
Antonia’s green eyes twinkled and she smiled a secret smile, saying quietly, “In a small way, you were, mon cher.”
“Oh! I almost forgot,” Deborah said spontaneously into the silence between mother and son, which moved time on and cleared the Duke’s furrowed brow. She had remembered the two letters in her pocket, and wished she had not. She gave them both to her husband, saying, a worried glance at Antonia as Roxton sat at his desk and put the two sealed packets before him, “Please tell me, Julian, that these letters will make no difference to today’s arrangements; to the happiness of the couple about to be married.”
Both letters were from the Indies. Both were addressed to the Duke of Roxton. Why both had been sent to Fitzstuart Hall in Buckinghamshire, and not here, to Treat in Hampshire, he could only guess at. But both were vastly different. One letter was sealed with a red wax seal, impressed with the coat of arms of the earls of Strathsay, and in handwriting he recognized as belonging to that of his great uncle, Theophilus, Earl of Strathsay. He had no hesitation in opening this letter. He read the two pages, while his wife and mother waited patiently, if anxiously, for him to tell them its contents.
It was indeed from the Earl, and written some six weeks ago. Roxton skimmed over the words, looking for any sign of what might be to come in the letter with the black seal. But there was no mention of sickness, or symptoms of illness, nothing to suggest the man was in any way not his usual healthy self.
After reading it, Roxton gave it to Antonia to read.
There was news of the sugar plantation, how his two natural children were faring, how proud he was of his son’s ability with the cricket bat, and how his daughter was growing into a beautiful accomplished woman. There was even talk of a planned family journey to the Continent, when the twins were a little older, to visit Italy in particular.
Only one paragraph dealt with his legitimate family. And that was all about his second son Charles, his escape to France, and his elopement with a wealthy heiress. There was no mention of Dair. In fact more ink was used up on describing the coming of the hurricane season, and the worrying news from the port that a ship had just docked with news a large weather depression was headed their way, than there was on his family here in England. And there being no mention of Dair’s plans to wed, it was presumed this letter had crossed with Dair’s letter to his father informing him.
It was the
second letter that bothered the Duke most, and enough for him to turn it over several times before holding it up for his mother to see. This letter was not in his great uncle’s fist, and was addressed to both him and Alisdair Fitzstuart, care of Fitzstuart Hall. That it was not sealed with red wax but with an inky black wax, and with an impression the Duke did not immediately recognize, usually meant one thing only: A death in the family.
Seeing the black seal, Antonia was up off the sofa in her stockinged feet, a fist to her mouth, as if to stop herself from crying out. Deborah took one look at her husband, and then one at her mother-in-law, and said aloud what they were both thinking.
“You think it is Lord Strathsay who is-is dead, Maman?”
“Julian! Put that letter in a drawer and forget about it this instant!” Antonia demanded. “Do not open it. Do not think about it now. I do not want to know, and he, Dair, does not deserve such appalling news, if it be true, on this of all days! You cannot do this to him!”
Roxton continued to stare at the letter with the black seal, and for so long that Deborah eased herself to her feet and joined Antonia at the Duke’s desk.
“Maman-Duchess is in the right, my love. Dair and Rory deserve this to be a day of joy and celebration.”
“And what of the day after that, or the day after that one? Surely those days, too, should be joyous?” Roxton asked. “If I don’t break the seal today, or tomorrow, when should I? You see my dilemma?”
“If you do not open it, then what does it matter?” Deborah asked in a small voice. “If you put it in a drawer and forgot about it for a-a week, what is a week in Dair’s life?”
“A week?” Roxton huffed. “In a week’s time the newlyweds will be on their way to Fitzstuart Hall. Should I tell him after he returns from Swan Island, or after his wife presents their Majesties with the Talbot Pineapple, or perhaps just after that, before they go on to Fitzstuart Hall?”
“Julian! You are being infuriatingly pedantic!” Antonia stated angrily. “Not in a week. In a month. Open it in a month. When Alisdair and Rory their honeymoon it is over. You can grant them that time. And you can think me cold-hearted, but what is a month, if it is true my uncle he is dead? He will still be dead in a month! It is the living we must worry about.”
The Duke bit back the retort that less than six months had passed since the dead was all his mother could think about, and now she was telling him to think only of the living? He went to pick up the letter, but she scooped it up first.
Antonia was about to demand that he lock it up, when she realized there was something other than parchment contained within the packet. She held the letter for some moments, weighing it in both hands, and then let her fingers move over the outer parchment, over the string that tied up the letter and held the large bump firm. There was a small heavy object wrapped inside it and from the pattern of indentation, she would hazard a guess the object was a ring.
If it was the ring she assumed it to be, then she knew it well. She had seen it on the finger of her grandfather. Dubbed the Fitzstuart Fire and Ice, the gold ring was set with a large ruby and a diamond of similar size. It had been gifted to her grandfather as a baby in his cradle by his father Charles the Second, to be passed on to the male heir upon succeeding to the title. The ruby represented the blood royal and the diamond was unbreakable; meaning the royal blood bond between father and son, and the male line, could not be broken, regardless of its illegitimate beginnings.
It was only then, feeling the weight of the ring, that the enormity of what was contained within the letter hit her, and so hard she had to sit down. She knew then, she knew as sure as if she had read it in ink, that her uncle, her mother’s brother, the son of her grandfather and grandson of Charles the Second, was dead. She did not know how or why, or when, but Theophilus James Fitzstuart, second Earl of Strathsay was no more.
But she would mourn for him another day. Not today. Today was to be a celebration, for the coming together of two people very much in love. For all she knew, her uncle had died over a month ago, such was the time it took for news to travel between the Indies and England. So what was the point of this day becoming one for mourning his death? And then what? The wedding it would have to be called off, postponed at the very least, and Alisdair, what would he have to do then? Journey to Barbados to be assured his father was dead, or wait seven years for him to be declared legally dead? Was that any way to begin a marriage, a new life as husband and wife?
And this is what Antonia told her son and his wife.
She expected her son to argue the morality of withholding such news from their cousin. That he was obligated, as head of the family, and as guardian of the Fitzstuart estate and holdings, to do what was right and proper, regardless of the consequences. And the right thing to do was inform the family as soon as possible. The couple would understand, the guests, too. Dair, indeed the Countess and her daughter, too, all had a right to know the second Earl of Strathsay was dead; that Dair had succeeded to the title and was now third Earl of Strathsay, and third Viscount Fitzstuart.
But the Duke surprised his mother.
“Here, Maman,” he said gently, holding out a small brass and enameled key on a short length of gold chain.
Antonia took it unconsciously, so deep was her preoccupation. When she realized she was holding a key she looked up at him with a frown, wondering what she was supposed to do with it. He told her.
“Keep it safe. In a month’s time, bring it to me, and I will unlock my desk drawer and break the seal on that letter. And then I will do whatever it is I must do. Vous acceptez, chère mère?”
Antonia nodded and slipped on her mules. With her son and his wife, she left the library, the key secured in a pocket under her sheer Indienne cotton petticoats.
The Duke went with the groom and his male attendants to the chapel. The Duchess joined the guests assembled in the Sea Green salon. Antonia took a peek in at the bride, to see how last-minute preparations were progressing. The letter with the black seal was forgotten as the entire congregation watched on misty-eyed and smiling as the beautiful bride joined her handsome groom at the altar of the Roxton chapel.
RORY HAD NEVER looked more delicately beautiful in her pink lavender silk petticoats, her straw-blonde hair upswept and arranged, pinned and beribboned, and with a cascade of curls falling over one bare shoulder. She wore her mother’s pearl choker and bracelet, and the pale lavender sapphire betrothal ring. If there was a change in her wardrobe from the night Dair had seen her sitting on the stair of the Gatehouse Lodge, it was her shoes. From her grandfather’s home in Chiswick she sent for her pair of specially-made silk shoes with pineapple motifs embroidered across the bridge and heels. They matched her walking stick, and the little pineapple purse, crocheted by Edith for her twenty-first birthday, dangling from her wrist.
When her grandfather brought her to stand beside Dair, she wondered if he was as anxious as she. But she could not bring herself to look at him. The importance of the occasion weighed heavily with her. And being married before their peers, with all eyes upon them, particularly her, made her feel faint. She kept her eyes straight, and could barely feel her fingers about the ivory handle of her walking stick, she was gripping it so tightly. And while she heard the Duke’s chaplain speaking, such was the ringing in her ears, she had no idea what he was saying. She doubted then if she would make it through the ceremony without mishap.
And then, within a few seconds, everything changed. She was no longer nervous or worried.
Dair felt for her hand, and gave her fingers a little squeeze.
Rory finally got up the courage to steal a nervous glance up at him.
He smiled down at her and winked.
She saw then that he was just as nervous, and yet he had made the effort to put her at ease. And while she continued to appear solemn, as the situation demanded of a bride, she was flooded with such happiness she could not stop smiling on the inside.
A little while later, she dared to glance
up at him again. This time she noticed his bronzed silk frock coat with its beautifully embroidered collar, the froth of lace under his clean-shaven chin, and how his hair was dressed formally, and so unlike the Dair she knew. But it was the ribbon tied in his hair that she stared at, and for a good few seconds. Then she quickly glanced away, a hand to her mouth to stop a sob, but she could not stop her tears.
He was wearing the lavender satin ribbon he had taken from her as a spoil of war, the night he had collided with her at Romney’s studio. She had quite forgotten about that ribbon, but he had not. It was such a heartfelt gesture she could hardly breathe.
Before she knew what was happening, she had a handkerchief pressed into her hand. But such was her emotional state, she was left bewildered by it, and had no idea what she was supposed to do with it. And then, as if by magic, her chin was lifted and her cheeks gently patted dry. Dair disposed of his handkerchief in a frock coat pocket. He then squared his shoulders and nodded to the chaplain to continue. All of this done with the minimum of fuss, and to the collective sighs of every female in attendance.
The bride and groom survived the rest of the ceremony without mishap. Neither faulted on the declarations. They exchanged vows in a clear voice. And the groom managed to keep hold of the wedding ring when Lord Grasby offered it to him. The slim gold band slipped on to Rory’s finger with ease. It was only then that there was a deviation from the service. Dair could not help himself. With the ring secured, he lifted Rory’s hand and kissed the gold band, another smile and a wink at her before releasing her fingers and turning back to the vicar. Not only was there another collective sigh from the females in attendance, but one of their number burst into tears and continued to sob throughout the blessing.
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