“I am sorry, but my arms they will not lift above my head, and I am very cold now. So please, I need your assistance...”
“Certainly, Mme la duchesse,” Jonathon responded in a neutral tone. Inside he was jumping for joy that she had lowered her defenses sufficiently to seek help. “You won’t need to move or turn around. First let’s get you out of that sodden cloth before you catch your death. Sorry! That was a very poor choice of words. Blame it on light-headedness. I’ve not eaten since leaving the city at first light and then only a coffee, a roll and a cut of cheese. If you can cross your arms and gather up the hem I will help you get the chemise up over your head. The thing of it is,” he continued in the same light tone as she did as he asked of her and he then took hold of the hem with her from behind and guided her arms up, “there are very few inns that cater for a jolter-headed fellow like me who doesn’t eat animal flesh.”
“Pour quoi? Not eat meat? Everyone eats meat.”
He laughed at her indignation.
“Not everyone, Mme la duchesse. Not on the subcontinent and not if you lived there for as many years as I did and with a father who eschewed his English heritage to live as a nabob, with his hookah and his harem. I have the chemise now, Mme la duchesse. You may let go. There,” he said with satisfaction as he swiftly stripped off the sodden chemise and tossed it aside in the general direction of his greatcoat and hat where it landed with a splat.
“But you went to Harrow and Oxford,” she countered, hands crossed over her naked breasts, the thigh-length tangle of hair the only covering to her narrow back and round bottom. “Did you not eat meat at school? Is that why the boys they made fun of you?”
“Ah, so you remember me telling you that about my school days, do you?” he responded, quickly bunching up the white nightshift so he could place the neck opening over her head without fuss, a sudden frown at the flimsy material between his fingers. If this was what she usually wore to bed, cotton woven so fine it was gossamer thin, with pretty lace bordering to the three-quarter sleeves and low neckline, she would need a heavy coverlet or a male bed warmer to keep away the chills. He pulled up his mind where those thoughts were headed and hoped Michelle had indeed put a woolen shawl in the satchel or if he would need to give Antonia his frockcoat to cover the shift and buttoned up to her chin, to keep her decently attired. “No, that was not the reason the boys teased me. What I should have said to be precise is that I do not eat beef. Cows are sacred to Hindus. I ate fish and fowl while at school, it was the least I could do to try and fit in. I still eat fish but never the flesh from a warm-blooded animal. Head up and I’ll throw this poor excuse for nightwear over your head. You then need only find the arm holes.”
“You are a Hindu, too?” Antonia asked when her head appeared from deep within the nightshift. When he did not immediately reply she swiveled, gathering her hair over her left shoulder, and found him on the floor by the bench rummaging in the satchel.
“One must be born Hindu,” he replied, getting to his feet having found the woolen shawl. “But I do try to abide by their ethical code: Do not harm another; be truthful; never take what is not yours; be content with life.” He shrugged a shoulder thinking of the pain he had inflicted on the physician and had no regrets. “Unfortunately, it is not always possible to be good. Here, this will help keep you warm,” he said, fussing with the fall of the shawl about her shoulders. “Wrap it tighter or—”
“I am not ailing, M’sieur! I can take care of myself!” she snapped, pulling away at his touch on her shoulders and hastily crisscrossing the shawl over her breasts. She immediately recanted. “No. That is not true. Forgive me. I am not... I am not—myself.” She put her face in her hands and after a brief moment sat up to stare straight ahead, quickly dashing the tears from her brimming eyes. She shuddered in a great breath. “I told you I could take care of myself and this you see before you is the result! Julian he thinks me self-pitying and selfish. My neglect of Henri-Antoine it is unspeakable. Deborah... Deborah she must wonder if I am at all fit to be a grandmere to her babies. And Frederick... My darling little boy he is most confused about his Mema and her behavior. And now I worry that my babies will be kept from me because Julian he gave me into the care of a sadistic madman. Renard, I tell you he is truly a lunatic and Julian you must not blame. He thought it was for the best because I have not been behaving as a duchess ought and been walking about as one dead for so long... But that madman he is two people—one face he shows to our son, the other he keeps well hidden and only brings out when—when he—when I—It is truly too hideous. I cannot tell you!”
She turned away from addressing the blackness to be gathered up in Jonathon’s comforting embrace.
“It’s all right, sweetheart, Monseigneur he understands only too well,” he murmured, a wary eye to the sarcophagus opposite the bench Antonia had been addressing.
He now knew to whom the massive monument belonged and his gaze travelled up its elaborately carved length. It had all the hallmarks of James “Athenian” Stuart and his master sculptors the Scheemakers, with its Doric columns and classical pediment, sculptured figures of grieving Greek Gods and Goddesses in funerary procession along the lower heavy plinth of red marble. And there, through the darkness he could just make out her Monseigneur, the most noble His Grace the fifth Duke of Roxton, sculptured life sized, seated, dressed in his ducal robes and wearing his star and garter diagonally across his waistcoat, one arm with a languid hand resting across the arm of the chair, one foot in a heeled buckled shoe slightly forward, the other turned to show a well-exercised calf muscle, the face with its beak of a nose and penetrating stare looking out and down on the world with thin lipped self assurance—disdainful even in cold white marble.
Such a man would have killed Foley as give him a second glance, Jonathon thought with a wry smile. How fortunate then was the physician to be confronted with a follower of the Hindu path to Swarga Loka—Heaven. Undoubtedly Monseigneur was furious with his widow’s new friend, and more so that he was comforting her under his very nose. Well, you had best get used to the idea, your Grace, he warned as he squared his shoulders, because I’m not going away! He blinked his surprise to think he too was now talking to a marble likeness, even if it was in his head. And he didn’t even know the man! His movement made Antonia sit up.
“I am sorry. My behavior is not as it should be,” Antonia stated, pulling the shawl back over her shoulder, gaze in her lap where her fingers fiddled with the fringe. “It must be because me I am very tired.”
In Jonathon’s opinion, the whole family from Monseigneur down had cause to answer for Antonia’s tiredness, if that’s what she chose to call the fact that her son was critical she was not living up to her exulted position as a duchess. He wanted to reassure her that all that mattered to him was her happiness and being the carefree woman he had seen glimpses of in the pavilion. Instead, he scooped up the towel and mopped up the rainwater by the bench saying casually,
“We’ll eat and then get snug for the night but first you need to put on your stockings.” He went down on his haunches before her with the soaked towel. “But before we can do that I need to remove the dirt you collected walking up the hill. Give me your foot.” When she hesitated he looked up. She had a hand to her mouth and was shaking her head. “You, well perhaps you don’t but I know there is nothing worse than putting a dirty foot into a perfectly clean stocking. Michelle will not be pleased with you,” he added and when this elicited a watery laugh he took the liberty of placing her bare left foot upon his knee. When she tried to withdraw it he held her firm, but not about the ankle for there were ligature welts there too, but cupped his large hand around the bridge of her foot. “Your feet are little blocks of ice and you can’t do this yourself, so let me help,” he said steadily, swallowing hard at the sight of the red raw flesh caused by her captivity. She must have put up quite a struggle. Why hadn’t he broken the bastard’s every finger and toe? Her ankles and wrists would need bathing, ointment and
bandaging as soon as they returned to the dower house.
“Do you—Do you speak their language, the language of the people on the subcontinent?” she asked, watching him gently clean her toes. “Were you speaking in their tongue with your daughter at the regatta?”
“Yes. Sarah-Jane speaks Hindi fluently. I had her taught, thinking it more practical she learn the language of the people she lived amongst than say French or Portuguese, the other conquerors of the subcontinent. And here we are back in England. Something I had not planned on for her or for me...” He glanced up at her with a smile. “Do you want to know what I said to Sarah-Jane that day at the regatta that I did not want others to know?” he asked rhetorically, tenderly wiping the dirt from her heel. “I told her to make damned sure that if she accepted an offer of marriage from Dair Fitzstuart she knew she was marrying the man and not the prize of an earl’s coronet.” He looked up at her again, this time with a frown. “That when all’s said and done she’ll go to bed with the man, not his coronet. I told her to picture him naked wearing his earl’s coronet—”
Antonia gasped and sat forward. “Cela je ne croit pas! You said no such thing! You are her father.”
“Which is even more reason for me to say it! As she has no mother to tell her such things, it is left to me to advise her.” He removed her left foot from his knee and put her right foot in its place. “I told her to consider if such a sight was at all appealing—a naked man in his coronet—or utterly farcical. I hoped such a ludicrous picture would make her see sense.”
At this Antonia giggled, so much so that it hurt her sore throat and she took a moment to collect herself. “Parbleu! Foolish man. See sense? It is not sense she is seeing. Naturelment it appeals. Dair Fitzstuart he is my cousin but I am not blind that even I do not see that he is a very strapping young man. I would hazard a guess that all of him it is strapping, so this coronet upon his head, while ridiculous to you would be the last place her eyes they would be looking.”
Jonathon would have smiled to see her laugh at any other time but her response made him frown and pull a face. He tossed aside the dirty towel and put out a hand for one of the white-clocked stockings. She passed it to him without hesitation. He deftly gathered the finely knitted cotton stocking up into itself so she could easily slip her toes into its foot. “Please point your toes and I will be as gentle as I am able... It’s still a valid argument,” he grumbled, a heighten color to his lean cheeks, not liking her description of Dair Fitzstuart. It annoyed him for all the wrong reasons. “What I was trying to convey to my daughter is the importance of seeing beyond the superficial. What is important is his heart, not his coronet or-or anything else!”
“That is very true,” Antonia responded quietly and touched his wrist when he slid the stocking up over her knee and proceeded to tie up the blue riband that kept the stocking in place. “I was flippant. I am sorry. You are right to warn her. Too many girls they marry and only after it is done do they realize it was for the wrong reasons. Who she weds is fundamental to her future happiness...”
He nodded and repeated the task with the second stocking in silence then collected the bundle of tapers lying by the satchel. “Upon reflection, I will amend my previous statement,” he said, placing and lighting the tapers at intervals along one end of the lower marble plinth of the Duke’s massive tomb, “and say that while Fitzstuart’s future coronet is unimportant to me, and my daughter should see it as utterly superfluous to her decision to marry the man, how he chooses to use what he’s got between his legs is very important to me.”
Antonia picked at the knots in her hair with the polished tortoiseshell comb as he lit the final candle, not at all shocked by his words, and followed him with her eyes when he snatched up the discarded greatcoat and shook it to dislodge the last raindrops, then returned to spread it out, oiled side down, between the bench and the monument.
“You do not like him.”
Jonathon dumped the satchel near the makeshift picnic rug and proceeded to empty its contents. He held her gaze. “I like his brother a hundred times better.”
Antonia watched him arrange two silver tumblers, a bottle of wine, a loaf of crusty bread, a small wheel of cheese, slices of mushroom terrine, a pottage of pate, a couple of apples and a knife and realized she was famished. She could not remember when she had last eaten. She hopped off the bench and joined him on the upturned greatcoat under the glow of candlelight and waited to be served. He pulled off a chunk of bread from the loaf, cut slices of the terrine and the cheese and using the bread as a plate offered it to her.
“Charles I prefer, too, but Dair he is the one the females want.”
“Possessing morals and high ideals just doesn’t cut it amongst silly young things,” Jonathon replied, an edge to his voice. “It’s title and wealth that attracts them in droves.”
He offered her a tumbler of wine.
“I do not think it is only your money that interests them. They see you as they do Dair.”
She took the tumbler but he did not immediately let it go.
“I was not referring to myself. But if you think me strapping,” he added with a grin, and let go of the tumbler and sat back, “then I accept the compliment.”
“It is not a compliment,” Antonia said dismissively, “to state the obvious. You are fishing, M’sieur!”
“For compliments?” he replied with a laugh and held up his tumbler in a toast. “From you? Always.” Then added seriously, “Dair Fitzstuart keeps a mistress and child in Chelsea and he has no intention of giving them up upon marriage. He should do the honorable thing and marry the girl. She’s breeding again too.”
“You kept a harem on the subcontinent. Is there a difference?”
“No. Not a harem,” he said very quietly, wondering where she could have gleaned such misinformation. “A mistress, yes; many years after Emily’s passing. Then she, too, died. After that?” He shrugged. “The usual sort of temporary but necessary satisfaction men engage in: nothing important; nothing I would care to repeat; no female that has engaged my finer feelings,” he added, holding her gaze, “or caused me to channel my lust into a singular devotion.”
Antonia looked away first and said with practiced lightness, “To many females none of that matters. What matters is the coronet. What their husbands do with—as you say—what they have between their legs—is an unimportant detail when weighed against title and social position.”
“But not to you...”
“Not to me...” She smiled, the dimple showing itself in her left cheek, adding mischievously over the rim of the tumbler, “What was between Monseigneur’s legs was very important to me.”
“It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway,” Jonathon added with a huff of embarrassment as he roughly quartered an apple, “and what he did with it!”
“Mais bien sûr. Of course. Now please to pass me slices of the apple and then you, too, must eat.”
“It’s as well then I like nothing better than to rise to a challenge,” he muttered as he organized a collation for himself.
But he did not eat immediately, merely took a mouthful of wine then proceeded to shrug out of his dark velvet travelling frockcoat. He could see that despite the shawl and stockings Antonia was shivering with cold though she did her best to suppress the involuntary shudders. He undid the silk covered buttons of his peacock-blue silk waistcoat, removed it and put his frockcoat back on over his white linen shirt.
“Females of my daughter’s tender years seem to think it is romantic to marry an arrogant rake who will magically reform his ways upon marriage. Utter twaddle. That rarely happens. And before you say it,” he added when Antonia sat up very straight, “you’ve already set me straight about Monseigneur, but he is the exception to the rule and you wouldn’t have married him unless he had reformed himself before marriage. Here, let me help you put this on,” he said holding open his waistcoat. “You’ll be much warmer and can use the shawl across your lap. Now turn about so I can do u
p the buttons and roll up the cuffs.” When she did so without argument he smiled and chuffed her under the chin. “On you it’s almost a banyan.”
He resumed his place opposite her on their makeshift picnic rug, back up against the cold marble with one long leg stretched out, the other bent and with his hand over his knee. Antonia observed that he looked supremely at ease and not at all disturbed to be spending the night in the family crypt with the wind howling, the rain pouring and lightning flashing outside. The weather was unpleasant to be sure but she had spent so much time here, in this very spot surrounded by her loved ones that it was the most comforting place in the world to her. It was the first and only place she had in mind when fleeing the dower house and that maniac of a physician. What she had been put through in the icehouse all in the name of medical treatment no person, not even the criminally insane, should be forced to endure. And when she thought about the times she had been left alone with that perverted weasel... She snatched up the tumbler and drank deeply of the wine, as if it would somehow cleanse her, body and soul.
Jonathon watched her keenly, saw the moment the heat came into her face, her throat constricted and her hands began to shake, and knew her mind was wandering where it should not. He downed his wine and made a fuss of what she had left uneaten.
“Is that how you eat when you’re starving? Picking at the crumbs daintily? Leaving the cheese half eaten? My God, woman, we’ll never get to sleep at your rate of consumption! And the thunder has taken itself elsewhere so we might even get an unbroken couple of hours if you have a mind to eat up.”
Antonia returned to the present with a smile and continued to eat her cold collation but in small bites.
“My son Julian he thinks Charles may be a spy for the American rebels.”
Jonathon’s eyebrows shot up. “Does he indeed. I’m sure he has his reasons.” He dug into his frockcoat pocket and pulled out the letter from Tommy and the pamphlet entitled Common Sense he had borrowed from Charles Fitzstuart. He tossed the pamphlet onto the rug and shoved the letter back into his pocket saying,
Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Page 24