Sir Titus gave a little nervous jump finding Jonathon so uncomfortably close and a bead of sweat trickled from under his powdered wig into his ear. Suddenly the mouth-watering food set before him was unappetizing and the throbbing pain between his legs more acute. He needed more ice to apply to the swelling, he was sure his cock and balls were black and blue, but he was not about to send his men out of the room, not with a dangerous stranger, title or no title, looming large over him. In the end the choice was taken completely out of his hands.
Without warning, one attendant dropped his spoon to clutch at his stomach, an acute stab of pain opening wide and then shutting tight his eyes as he scraped back his chair to double-over, gripped with agonizing cramps. Fear sparked in his fellow’s eyes, and within minutes he too was in the same gut-wrenching agony. Moaning loudly and with chairs clattering to the polished floorboards, both men scampered from the room, bent over, arms wrapped around their convulsing stomach, and with no control over their bowels.
“Pierre, je vous salue!” Jonathon declared with a laugh and a handclap over his head. “Now, healer, down to business,” he said in a wholly different voice, flicking the smoldering cheroot into the fire. He dragged the physician’s chair backwards, away from the table, scraped it about to face him and with a hand firmly to each arm of the chair, pinned the physician’s fat hands under his. Face stuck in Sir Titus Foley’s startled countenance, he had the physician trapped before the door closed on the backs of the two suffering attendants. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”
“Done with her? I don’t know what—”
Crack.
The physician convulsed and screamed.
“What have you done with her?”
“I’ve not done anything with—”
Snap.
Again, the physician convulsed and screamed.
“I repeat: Where is the Duchess of Roxton, you piece of rectal filth?”
“Stop. Stop,” the physician pleaded, panting with pain, face a lather of perspiration. “For pity’s sake. Are you mad?”
“Well, you’d know all about that,” Jonathon snarled. “Should’ve kept to treating real lunatics. You should never have touched her.”
“I didn’t—”
“Liar.”
Crack.
The physician howled piteously.
Jonathon’s furious face was so close to the panic-stricken Foley that the sweep of his thick brown hair fell across the physician’s sweaty contorted face, tickling the tip of his snub nose. His voice was barely above a whisper but despite being in excruciating pain, Sir Titus heard every word.
“You took something precious and reverential, of the upmost intimacy between husband and wife, and turned it into an utterly disgusting and perverted act, all to slake your depraved lust. No man has a right to touch her. No man, not even her noble husband, a Duke, who worshipped every luminous hair on her head, put a finger to her bare flesh without permission. Roxton set his trust in you to take care of her. You abused that trust and you abused her and for that alone he will see you hang from a gibbet. You imprisoned her; tortured her; debased and defiled her and if I killed you here, right now, no one would give a tester for your life it is worth less than nothing.”
“No! No! I never meant—I-I lost my head!” the physician pleaded, eyes wide with terror, tears of pain and fear coursing down his reddened cheeks, nose running of its own accord. “I-I couldn’t help myself! It’s not my fault. She—she—I-I-I’m a-a physician but I’m also a-a man. For God’s sake, you’re a man. You’ve seen her. You can’t be immune. I did my utmost to resist... But those magnificent breasts... She’d make a blind eunuch ha—”
“Shut your foul mouth! Where is she?”
“You must believe me! I did nothing more than fondle her breasts. I swear it on my mother’s grave! Please! You must believe me.”
“Where is she?”
“How would I kn—”
Snap.
“There’s the thumb and then I start on the left. Tell me what you’ve done with her.”
The physician was beyond screaming. He stared up into Jonathon’s face contorted with rage, face blank and eyes misty. It was as if the whole of his right hand was on fire. And when Jonathon let go of his wrist and stepped aside Sir Titus dared to glance down the length of his arm and he saw the damage Jonathon had wrought. There was something odd about his hand. It just didn’t look right. The medical man in him pondered why. The fingers. It was his fingers. They were at bizarre angels to each other, so twisted up in fact that he had never seen the like before. How very odd. And then the realization hit him and so hard that an excruciating pain exploded in his hand, shot up his arm and invaded his entire body.
He passed out.
“No, you don’t!” Jonathon growled and dashed a glass of wine in the physician’s face. He slapped him hard across the left cheek. “Foley! Wake! Where is she? Where is the Duchess?”
The physician gave a start. “My hand! Fingers. God in Heaven I can’t feel my fingers. You’ve broken them all! You’ve broken them!”
“That was the point, you bloody bastard! I’ll start on the left and then there’s your tackle. Where is she?”
Sir Titus let out a squeak of incredulity mixed with absolute panic and dropped his useless right hand between his legs. It was a mistake. Unable to feel his fingers the hand fell heavily and despite the bladder of ice nestled on his groin his cock and balls were so agonizingly tender that he yelped. Jonathon tossed aside the bladder and pressed his knee into the physician’s tender groin.
The physician screamed and then began to blubber. “I don’t—I don’t know... God’s honest truth... Disappeared this morning... Last I remember... She had me hard about the ballocks. I thought she’d ripped them off. I passed out. God in Heaven, my hand...”
Jonathon chuckled and with his jockey boot pushed away the chair holding the blubbering physician, not wanting the touch or nearness of him. “The ends of the earth won’t be far enough away for the Duke not to find you; and if he doesn’t, I will. Disappear.”
In the kitchens he found the Duchess’s servants waiting for him with the light of expectation in their eyes. They had seen the two assistants dash from the room in search of the nearest latrine and heard the physician’s screams and pleas for mercy. They had stood huddled in the servant passageway savoring every moment of the pompous physician’s agony. Michelle begged the question.
“He is dead, yes?”
“You’re a blood-thirsty lot!” Jonathon said with a huff of embarrassment and accepted the tumbler of ale from the cook and downed it in one.
Fury cooled; he was discomforted by the intensity of emotion the physician’s reprehensible behavior towards the Duchess had elicited in him. His violent response was uncharacteristic and surprising for one who had eschewed violence at an early age, finding the practices of the Hindus on the subcontinent more to his liking than the fire and brimstone prophecies of the religion into which he had been christened. He did not have the time to ponder what had come over him, but was well aware of the source, because he had had a flash of inspiration while the physician was sniveling on at him about not knowing the Duchess’s whereabouts. The more he thought about it the more he was convinced his intuition was right.
Instead of answering the question he made several quiet demands.
“Go fetch a few articles of Mme la duchess’s clothing; nothing bulky. No petticoats,” he said to Michelle. “Stockings, nightshift, a woolen shawl should suffice. I’ll need a waterproof satchel,” he added, turning to Pierre. “Throw in a couple of tapers and some food. She hasn’t eaten since this morning: Bread, a bottle of wine, cheese and fruit if you have it. And I’ll need a hat.”
“Do you want Guy to saddle a horse, M’sieur?”
Jonathon shook his head. “And be thrown with the next thunderclap or strike of lightning? No. I’ll walk. It’s not that far that I’ll get completely soaked before I reach cover.”
&
nbsp; Michelle had bustled to the door but turned and asked before going up to the bedchamber, “You know the whereabouts of Mme la duchesse, yes?”
“Yes. She is with her loved ones.”
He found her curled up against the iron gates, trying to stay out of the driving rain. Heavy chain threaded through the black and gold painted wrought iron kept the gates closed. A padlock secured against trespass. An ornate key sat limp in the locking mechanism. Antonia had not the strength in her wrists to turn the key to release the shackle.
Jonathon stripped off his leather gloves to work the lock and remove the chain. He swung the gates wide and opened one of the heavy brass inlaid double doors. With the oiled leather satchel still slung over his left shoulder he scooped up Antonia and carried her inside the mausoleum, kicking shut the oak door on the inclement weather with the heel of his jockey boot.
Beyond the vestibule the interior was pitch black. Jonathon had a sense of expansive space and moved cautiously forward, hoping the family sarcophagi were arranged along the edges of the walls or deeper within the mausoleum.
A series of lightning strikes directly overhead flashed bright light through the glass oculus at the apex of the domed roof conveniently illuminating the center of the vast interior for the few seconds Jonathon needed to find his footing and orientation. Half way along the length of the black and white marbled flooring there was a stone bench directly opposite an ornately carved marble sarcophagus with a suitably grand marble effigy of a seated nobleman.
Jonathon carried Antonia to the bench and sat with her on his lap.
Water from the oiled greatcoat pooled at his booted feet and dripped off the rim of his hat, the satchel hung awkwardly from his shoulder and also dripped water, yet he did not move. He sat still and silent, listening to the sounds of constant rain upon the glass oculus high above their heads and the distant rumble of thunder, staring unseeing into the blackness, needing just to hold her, to feel her in his arms, to know she was alive and out of danger.
He was unsure how long he sat cradling her. They were both so still. He would not have been surprised had she fallen asleep from exhaustion. Yet, when she slowly turned, snuggling in, as if seeking the warmth of him, he came to life. She was shivering and her scant clothing soaked through. He dared not look down for he was very sure she was dressed in nothing more than stockings and a chemise that clung like a second skin to every womanly curve.
He needed to get out of his wet greatcoat and hat to rummage in the satchel for her clothes Michelle had given him. There were also tapers and a small tinderbox and the hamper of food hastily put together by the estimable Pierre. But how best to go about getting her clothed without drawing attention to her nakedness and dishevelment, which would surely underscore the horrendous ordeal endured over the previous week. Being alone with him, a male, and almost a complete stranger, after all she really didn’t know him from Adam, would surely only add to her distress. But there was no way round their predicament if he wanted to ensure she did not catch influenza, if she hadn’t already, and was to be made comfortable.
So he approached the situation as if it was his daughter Sarah-Jane in the same situation. Which also helped him overcome any reservations he felt at being cast, however tenuously, in the same mold as the lecherous Sir Titus, for while in London surrounded by attorneys, fawning men of business and demanding Scots kinsmen all waiting for an ancient distant relative to breathe his last, he had had plenty of time to ruminate on his future. It was a future that was not the one he had mapped out for himself. That had been taken wholly out of his hands by the misfortune of birth. Others, such as Tommy, saw it as the greatest piece of good luck that every other relative up for the title and estate had died without leaving an heir; Jonathon considered it a burden he could well do without. Not his aging ancestor’s debts or the mismanagement of the estates, he would pay those off and turn around the estate with ease, but the responsibility of people and dealing with such intangibles as social position and precedent and the bowing and scraping to noblesse oblige—he’d never get used to that. He didn’t want that.
One thing he was very sure he did want in his future was this woman in his arms. He desired Antonia Duchess of Roxton with every fiber of his being. He did not try and wonder why he just knew it as fact and that was that. He had felt the same about Emily all those years ago. But what left him startled and shaken this time around was that he seemed to have regressed into the nervous callow youth of Oxford days that he had been with his Emily. The realization that as far as his future was concerned no other woman but Antonia Roxton would do scared him witless.
Lightning and thunder brought him out of his reverie and he gently disentangled Antonia from his arms to sit her on the bench, saying tenderly,
“Come on, sweetheart, time to get you out of those wet things and into something dry.”
He then immediately turned away to off load the satchel onto the floor and tossed aside the hat. He struggled out of the greatcoat and set it aside with the hat and began searching in the satchel for the tapers and small tinderbox. He went about lighting one candle and once lit left it on the marble tile so that there was just enough of a soft glow to see the immediate surroundings, reasoning Antonia would be more comfortable dressing in the relative privacy of a dim orange glow; he would then illuminate the rest of this marble palace for the dead to prepare them something to eat. And then there was the hurdle of bedding down for the night, for there was no expectation in this weather of horse and rider until morning and clear skies.
He found the bundle of clothes wrapped up in a towel with a silver-backed hairbrush and polished tortoise shell comb—Michelle, you’re worth your weight in gold pieces—and returned to sit beside Antonia. She was staring out into the blackness, knees drawn up to her chin, arms wrapped around her bare legs—Jesus. The physician had even deprived her of stockings—The weight of wet honey-blonde hair was a mass of knotted curls falling like fish netting about her shaking shoulders. He put aside the nightshift, stockings with ribbon ties, the brush and comb and showed her the towel.
“Why don’t we dry off your hair first and then once you’re in dry clothes you can untangle it with brush and comb?” he suggested chattily. But when he made a move towards her she shied away, glaring at him in warning, green eyes wary. He offered her the towel but otherwise did not move. “All right, you dry it off. I was only trying to be helpful. Sarah-Jane was the same. Must be a female fixation: precious about your hair. When she was small and I’d take her swimming she wouldn’t let me put a hand to her hair. Had to tie it up herself before we went for a swim and then dry it off afterwards. Papa, you always make a muckle of it,” he said, mimicking his daughter at about seven years of age and smiled at the memory. “I gather she meant muddle, but it didn’t matter, it was hands-off with her hair. I don’t know why she thought I would be unable to brush it properly when I wore my hair braided and it reached to the middle of my back, just like hers. Yes, you can look surprised, Mme la duchesse,” he said with a laugh, heart racing because Antonia had inched back up the bench with a frown of enquiring surprise, “but it’s the truth.” He tugged a lock of his wavy shoulder-length hair. “A more respectable length for good society, so Sarah-Jane tells me. And when combined with my brown skin, Tommy was adamant that if I’d left it long I’d be mistaken for a Sioux Indian chief! What are relatives for if not to be brutally honest?”
He held out the towel again but when Antonia gently pushed it away with a shake of her head he waited, gaze never leaving her face. Through the orange glow he saw her swallow. It took effort and when she put a hand to her throat he understood. It was impossible not to notice the ligature welts encircling her wrist, and he quickly bit down on his tongue to stop an audible intake of breath, hoping his features remained stagnant. When she turned her back to allow him to dry off her hair, only then did he breathe easy. He was anything but calm when it came time for her to change out of the chemise and into the nightshift.
“Let’s tackle the knots once you’re warmed up and then you can pass judgment on my ability to braid or not. I apologize for only having a nightshift but the satchel wouldn’t accommodate petticoats. And given the weather, I was not about to stride up here with a set of panniers over my head. Could’ve got myself struck by lightning and left charred; an unidentifiable black blob atop Treat Hill; a curiosity for the surrounding villagers to gawp at. A scientific experiment gone wrong and one Mr. Franklin would enjoy writing up in his scientific journal on how not to conduct electricity. Not to mention being fodder for the amusement of the local newssheets as “Gentleman wearing panniers found smoking” and I’m not talking about my cheroots! You may giggle at my expense, Mme la duchesse, but think of the shame for poor Sarah-Jane. Not only did her father wear his hair down his back like a woman but upon his miserable end she discovers he looked as if he’d strayed from a Molly house. I suppose that would at least give her an explanation for the long hair...”
There was a short silence punctuated by another series of lightning strikes and flashes of white light through the glass oculus that lit up the interior to eerie effect. Jonathon was shown glimpses of ducal opulence, walls painted with dramatic scenes from the classics, marbled sculptures recumbent atop polished granite plinths under which coffins were secreted, there was even a marble statue of two greyhounds, or were they whippets? No doubt the favorite faithful hounds of a noble master. He was wondering where Monseigneur was to be found within this ostentatious celebration of centuries of noble blood and reasoned his memorial would be the most magnificent of all, his arrogance demanded it, when a thundercrack, so loud they both jumped, interrupted his private reverie. The lightning strike had been very near, Jonathon relieved to be in a substantial stone building, even if surrounded by long dead noblemen and women.
In the ensuing quiet where there was only the sound of steady rain falling on the glass oculus, Antonia spoke over her shoulder,
Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Page 23