“I will always be married to Monseigneur.”
“Sweetheart, I am fully sensible to the fact there will always be three in a marriage with you, that I will forever share you with Monseigneur, but I am willing to agree to such an arrangement because I love you and want you in my life.”
It was Antonia’s turn to swallow hard and tears welled up. Her voice was little more than a whisper. She forgot her Italian and said in her native French,
“I don’t deserve you.”
He laughed at that and stooped to swiftly kiss her toes. “And I don’t deserve you! So we are well matched.”
Antonia was oddly comforted, and as the carriages had pulled up at the Crown Inn in Alston for a change of horses and to allow the occupants an opportunity to stretch their legs and take refreshment, she rallied, sitting up and saying flippantly in Italian, because Michelle had woken with a yawn,
“I do not see why we cannot just make love and enjoy ourselves and not worry about anything else but that. What is wrong with you? Any other man would be more than satisfied making love to me without the need to declare his love and devotion! I think the sun, it has affected your brain in more ways than you know!”
“You may be right,” Jonathon answered good-naturedly and stretched out a hand for the whippets’ leads. He waited for the carriage door to be opened and handed the whippets into a waiting servant’s care to be walked, relieved and watered, then stepped down and turned to take Antonia’s gloved hand, saying as he helped her alight, “I will say no more. But I will ask you again, and soon, because events have conspired against me and when we arrive in London I must bow to duty and obligation.”
“Duty and obligation?” She glanced up at him with surprise. “What is this duty and this obligation?”
“I’ll tell all when we get to Hanover Square,” he replied, slightly distracted, patting his frockcoat pockets as if he had lost or misplaced something of value. “Do you have any money on your person, Mme la duchesse?”
“Money? Why do I need money?” she said with a moment’s imperiousness. “The Roxton name is sufficient credit at this inn.”
“I am sure it is. It is just that... No, it is of no matter now. You can settle our account later.”
“Our account?” Antonia was nonplussed and stopped in the middle of the sunless cobbled courtyard, pulling her fur trimmed velvet cloak closer about her shoulders, her maid at her back. “What account?”
She was oblivious to the noise and activity that continued on around her, trying to recall a time when she had borrowed even so much as a penny from Jonathon Strang, as stableboys ran to the spent horse’s heads, and her contingent of servants from the second carriage, the outriders and drivers from both carriages and wagon were provided refreshment by the eager innkeeper’s serving hands come out into the courtyard; it was not every day a carriage emblazoned with the Roxton ducal coat of arms graced the Crown with its presence.
Jonathon, who had kept walking and was now stooped under the lintel of the seventeenth century inn’s entrance, waited for her to join him. The puzzlement in her green eyes as she looked up at him with frank enquiry forced him to suppress a grin at his ruse.
“I’m sadly disappointed you cannot remember, Mme la duchesse,” he said with all the solemnness he could muster, “and to think you have no recollection of the circumstances under which you lost the wager leaves me mortified.”
As soon as he said the word wager she knew instantly to what he alluded and her face flamed in response. “You are a-a fiend,” she whispered angrily.
“So you do remember?”
“We will talk of this later. I am thirsty and hungry and your large carcass it is blocking the entrance way!”
Jonathon did not budge.
“So you don’t recall calling out—”
Antonia turned swiftly to her maid, startling Michelle, and said before Jonathon could finish the sentence, “Remind me to present M’sieur Strang with fifty guineas immediately we arrive at Hanover Square.”
“Fifty guineas? Yes, Mme la duchesse.”
“Perhaps you would care to increase the wager to a hundred guineas?” Jonathon whispered at her ear with a grin. “Double or nothing you’ll call me Jonathon out from under the covers before the week—ouch.”
Antonia had brought the two-inch heel of her silk embroidered shoe down hard on the bridge of his booted left foot, mute with fury, but his exclamation was said in jest rather than a response to any feeling of pain, and increased her infuriation. He watched with unconcealed amusement as she swept passed him into the inn, all of her five foot two inches very much a Duchess, and his duchess before summer, if he had anything to say in the matter.
But even the best laid plans, however carefully constructed and thought through, can be unraveled by the interference of others, as Jonathon discovered upon their arrival in London.
“His lordship and Sir John are in the book room, sir,” Mrs. Phelps the housekeeper informed Jonathon, and distracted by a commotion at the front door, turned to the entrance vestibule.
At sight of the Dowager Duchess of Roxton the woman’s jaw fell open. It was not Antonia’s physical presence, but her demeanor that so surprised and delighted the old retainer. The Duchess was as she remembered her when the old Duke was alive, so brimful of vitality, that the housekeeper blinked and wondered if time had somehow wound itself backwards. So much so that she half expected the old Duke to come sauntering in behind his wife.
Antonia came into the black and white checkered marble entrance foyer in a whirlwind of fine cotton petticoats over which was a fur trimmed cloak, the calash hood thrown back to reveal her upswept honey curls, mussed from travel. She allowed Phelps the butler to divest her of this travelling attire, gave him her muff, stripped off her lavender kid leather gloves, turned to a liveried footman and handed over her two whippets into this startled servant’s care, gave her curls a quick prod with her finger tips and then turned back to the butler and asked after his arthritic knee and if he had tried the feverfew decoction prescribed by the apothecary to relieve the pain as she had suggested in her letter at Christmastime? No? She looked over her shoulder at her personal maid and told Michelle to send for the apothecary. Then turned back to Phelps and chided him for not taking better care of himself.
In the next breath she was apologizing to Mrs. Phelps, who had come to stand beside her husband and bobbed a low curtsey, for arriving on the doorstep with very little notice and she hoped that she had not put the household to too much bother, and if it wasn’t an extra burden would she please see to it that her dressmaker, shoemaker and milliner were informed of her arrival and that she would see them all on the morrow.
“And what of my son, Mrs. Phelps?” Antonia asked in her thickly accented English as she bustled through the vestibule into the main hall towards the book room, where she saw Jonathon had gone on ahead of her. “Are Lord Henri-Antoine and Sir John behaving themselves? I hope they have not been a burden on the servants?”
“Not at all, your Grace,” the housekeeper assured her. “They have been as proper young gentlemen ought, particularly since Mr. Strang has come to stay. May I be so bold as to say how gratifying it is to see you looking so well, your Grace!” Mrs. Phelps exclaimed at the double doors to the book room and bobbed another curtsey, stepping aside to allow her husband to do his duty. “So very, very gratifying, your Grace. I shall have refreshments sent in directly, and your bath drawn.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Phelps,” Antonia replied with a kind smile, and followed the butler into the book room, wondering what was behind the housekeeper’s comment that Jonathon had come to stay yet setting this and all other considerations aside at the prospect seeing her youngest son for the first time since Christmastime.
Jonathon had gone on ahead to the book room reasoning that if he had learnt anything of Henri-Antoine and Jack Cavendish’s habits in the week he had spent coming and going from the Hanover Square mansion to his dying relative’s death bed in
Upper Brook Street, it was that they spent most of their time laying about the book room smoking cheroots and drinking the old Duke’s cellar dry of fine brandy; two vices any mother of a fifteen-year-old boy would not look kindly upon, particularly when the said youth was considered by his mother to be incapable of functioning without a physician as his constant shadow. What Jonathon privately thought of Henri-Antoine’s health, ill or otherwise, was unimportant; not upsetting Antonia was very important.
Thus he swooped down on the two youths, who were indeed sprawled out on respective sofas, books and maps scattered about every surface and across the Turkey rug in various stages of being read and thumbed through, brandy decanter and used glasses on a silver tray on the low table between them, and rising above the leather bound volumes each youth had stuck up to his face a thin curl of smoke, clear evidence that they had succumbed to the addictive attractions of the rolled leaf.
To a connoisseur who was intent on eschewing the delights of the tobacco leaf, Jonathon had no hesitation in forcibly removing Jack Cavendish’s cheroot from the corner of his mouth and quickly consigning it to the flames in the fireplace. Henri-Antoine’s would have gone the same way but Antonia was almost up the length of the room and there being no time to dispose of the cigarillo Jonathon stuck it between his teeth as if it was his and inhaled long and leisurely, keeping the cheroot between two long fingers as if it had been there all the time.
In the uproar of being deprived of such a small pleasure, the youths both sat bolt upright, protesting at the high-handedness of their host until they saw the reason for his actions and were on their feet in an instant; Henri-Antoine pushing a mop of black hair from his forehead and blinking at his mother as if she were an apparition. And then he tossed aside the book in his hand rushed to meet her and twirled her about in his arms.
“Maman!? You’ve put off your black!” he announced and set her down but did not let her go. “What are you doing here?”
“Do I need a reason to see my son?” Antonia asked, pretending to be affronted, and put out a hand to Jack Cavendish who had scrambled over a stack of books, sending the tomes toppling to the rug, and with a grin, copper curls falling into his eyes. “You are both looking very well, if a little unkempt.” She laughed when Jack attempted to brush the deep creases from his rumpled oyster silk waistcoat that was buttoned irregularly, and pulled the youth to her to kiss both his flushed cheeks and brush a copper curl from his eyes. “I have missed you both so very much,” she said softly, leaning into her son and trying her best not to tear up. “And by the state of this room and your clothes, it is as well I came to London,” she added, a sweeping glance about the disorderly state of the book room, at the empty brandy decanter and glasses and at the two porcelain tea saucers on opposite sides of the low table between the two sofas that were full of cheroot tips and ash, and which she chose to ignore though she did raise her eyebrows at Jonathon who was leaning against the mantle puffing on a cheroot she did not remember him having when they had entered the house.
She stepped away from her son, still holding his hand, to look him up and down, from polished leather shoes with diamond shoe buckles to the neatness of his black silk breeches and waistcoat with short skirts and tight cuffs with silver lacings and plain white linen stock, and fixed finally on his lean handsome face. His dark eyes and strong nose were so reminiscent of his father it brought a lump to her throat and she swallowed hard and forced herself to smile.
“You have grown taller, Henri,” she said evenly. “And look very well. But where is Bailey?”
Henri-Antoine kissed her hand and looked into her damp green eyes with an understanding smile. “Bailey was given his freedom more than a year ago, Maman.”
“Pour quoi?”
“I came to an agreement with Roxton. One year free of seizures and Bailey need not be my shadow. A second year free of seizures and my long suffering physician could be free of me and I of him.”
“You have not had a bout of the Falling Sickness in three years?”
Antonia was amazed and she glanced at Jack, who was grinning, and then at Jonathon before staring anew at her son. To hide a myriad of emotions at such welcome news, not least of which was remorse at neglecting her youngest son, and to stop the tears from falling onto her cheeks, she said with asperity,
“I am very pleased the Falling Sickness it has left you alone and Bailey he is no longer your shadow, Henri, but it does not give you and Jack leave to drink Monseigneur’s brandy like it is water and to take up this silly new habit of smoking tobacco leaves, whatever other foolish young men do, it is not for you to do. Now that I am here,” she added, looking significantly not only at her son but at Jack and Jonathon too, “everyone will behave as they ought or me I will become very cross and none of you want to make me cross, n'est-ce pas? You understand me?”
“Perfectly,” Henri-Antoine and Jack replied obediently, but Jack was unable to contain a laugh when Jonathon rolled his eyes and tossed the cheroot into the fireplace. Before Antonia could turn to see what had amused Jack, Henri-Antoine pulled her into an embrace, saying with suppressed emotion, looking over his mother’s shoulder at Jonathon,
“Maman, you have returned to us, and that pleases us so very very much.”
They were sitting down to dinner when the messenger arrived. Phelps was reluctant to interrupt. He had not seen the Duchess so animated and full of life in many years and this was the first family meal she had shared with her son in the Hanover Square house since the death of the old Duke. The conversation was unflagging and punctuated with bursts of laughter from the diners; Mr. Strang lounged at the foot of the table in a bright yellow silk embroidered waistcoat, his attire almost as resplendent as the Duchess who sat opposite him in an open robed gown with shell pink silk petticoats embroidered with bud roses on the vine and a matching low-cut bodice, hair upswept, heavy curls falling forward over her left shoulder; the two young gentlemen dressed with all the sartorial splendor they could muster for the occasion, as was the dapper little librarian in his scarlet waistcoat, a large silk bow of the same color holding his shoulder length grey hair to the nape of his neck.
The arrival of Mr. Gidley Ffolkes to dinner was a surprise only to Antonia, who welcomed the librarian with so much enthusiasm that he blushed and when she scolded the others for not informing her that he was a guest in the house he stammered for a suitable response, and it was left to Jonathon to explain that it was he who had engaged Mr. Ffolkes’ expertise to make an inventory of the collection in the book room, a task commenced some three days ago. Jonathon conveniently failed to mention that he was in discussions with the librarian to have him travel north of the border to take charge of the library at Leven Castle; the inducement being that Jonathon’s ancient relative not only had a vast library that was in total disarray and thus required the much needed services of a bibliothecary, he had one of the best, and possibly the most extensive, collections of illuminated manuscripts in Europe.
Finally, with the dishes cleared away and the Duchess declaring that coffee would be served in the book room, the butler delivered the sealed missive, apologizing in an under-voice that the messenger remained in the withdrawing room awaiting an immediate response. Jonathon read the short note and told Phelps he would need his greatcoat and gloves whereupon the butler informed Mr. Strang that the messenger had arrived in a hackney and that it awaited them both in the square.
Antonia had never seen him so grim faced and she sent the boys and Gidley Ffolkes on ahead to the book room, her first thought with Jonathon’s daughter but he shook his head, slipping the note into a waistcoat pocket saying on a sigh,
“Sarah-Jane remains with Kitty and Tommy at their townhouse. I was to send for her to join us tomorrow but now, with this news...” He rubbed his brow as if suddenly tired and tried to be flippant, giving her an affectionate flick under the chin, “Don’t wait up for me. I could be away two hours or ten.”
Antonia went with him into the entrance foyer
and watched as he was shrugged into his greatcoat, a frown between her brows.
“I do not want to add to your burden but there is much you are keeping from me,” she stated. “And so I will wait: two hours or ten. Time it is unimportant. What is important is that you tell me.”
He looked up from fitting on his gloves and nodded. “Yes. It is time.” And was gone out into the night. When he returned three hours later he found Antonia in the book room curled up in a wingchair closest the fireplace reading, and in the wingchair opposite, swirling brandy in a glass and staring broodingly into the fire, Charles Fitzstuart.
Seeing Jonathon, the young man leapt to his feet and said without preamble, “Sir! I’ve come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage and I need your answer tonight!”
Charles Fitzstuart’s startling declaration stopped Jonathon advancing to the fireplace. For a full five seconds he stared at the young man wondering if he had misheard him and then he spied the heavy silver tray holding brandy decanter and glasses and poured himself a thumb width full and drank without tasting. The second glass he savored and finally turned to face Charles, a quick look exchanged with Antonia who, by the widening of her green eyes, told him Charles’ declaration was as much a surprise to her as to him.
“I must say I applaud your direct approach, Charles. Most young men would at least provide several minutes of inane conversation on all manner of topics designed to bamboozle the girl’s father into thinking them a complete paperskull before verbally hitting him over the head with such a declaration. Not you.” Jonathon peered keenly at the red-faced young man. “I dare say you’re incapable of inane conversation.” He looked at Antonia and jerked his head in Charles’ direction. “Is your cousin too earnest for drivel, Mme la duchesse?”
Antonia put aside Rousseau’s Du Contrat Social and rang the small hand bell at her elbow. “It is you who are spouting drivel, M’sieur. Charles he has asked you a perfectly reasonable question which deserves a reasonable response.”
Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Page 34