Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series)

by Lucinda Brant

  “You are a good and generous father. You will miss her very much.”

  “Every day,” he agreed, a hand to the small of her back. “But I must content myself that she is well-loved and has chosen her own path. Her letters will be small consolation but perhaps all is not lost? I predict the war will take years to run its course, as all wars do, and if the French become involved, even longer. So Sarah-Jane and her Charles will be settled in Paris for some time. If they cannot come to us, we shall go to them.”

  “We?”

  “We’ll take Henri and Jack. You’d like to visit Paris again, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. But I no longer have a house there. Roxton he sold it.”

  “We’ll get ourselves another.”

  Antonia pinched his chin, laughing. “Another? You think these houses they grow on vines and can be picked like grapes?”

  Jonathon frowned, toying with the uppermost pink silk bow of her low cut décolletage, one of a dozen down the front of her bodice. “Sadly, we won’t be able to visit for awhile. I’ve given my word to go north for six months but I suspect we’ll be there for nine; there is so much to do.”

  “Given your word? To whom? How far north?” Antonia was intrigued but also wary of his constant use of the first person plural we, as if it was now a forgone conclusion she would fall in with his plans. “What is this to do you speak about?”

  He stopped fiddling with the bow and looked into her green eyes.

  “Tonight my ancient relative finally died. I say finally because he has been near death’s door for at least three years. Old fool was on a hunt, attempted to jump a fence, fell off and as a consequence lost the use of both his legs. I was sent for from my sun-soaked sub-continental veranda after the accident because he wasn’t expected to live. He did. He was chair-ridden, then bed-ridden, and then dying. I am his only living relative. His son died when I was five, and then my brother died and that left me. Reason I was sent to Harrow and Oxford. I had seen him upon only four occasions in my life, when I was called to his deathbed, so there is no need for anyone to feel sympathy for me, particularly when he has left me nothing but a pile of debts, a crumbling estate and a title I do not in the least want and had every intention of disclaiming.”

  “How far north?”

  “I’ve been to the estate. There is a bluestone castle very much in the French manner with circular turrets and mansard roofs of grey slate, and a fanciful drawbridge at the end of a four arch stone bridge because the castle itself is on an island in the middle of a lake—which is called a loch in Scotland; Loch Leven to be precise.”

  “Écosse? Scotland?”

  “The aspect is charming and the castle more a chateau, but it needs work,” he said conversationally, ignoring her wide-eyed horror. He might as well have said the estate was in Batavia, such was the ends-of-the-earth look on Antonia’s face. “To point out fact, it needs a great deal of time and money spent on it. So does the estate. The tenants live in hovels and are half-starved. I shall change all that.” He flicked her cheek with a smile. “There’s also a splendid townhouse in Edinburgh which also could do with new wallpaper, drapes, furnishings; new everything. The rest is debts, which I can take care of rather quickly now Kinross is dead and soon to be buried. But I see I have given such a glowing picture that you are likely to suffer a nightmare so let’s leave the rest of my unwanted inheritance until breakfast, shall we?”

  “You did not think to say no to this unwanted inheritance and stay in India?”

  “Oh, I thought about it for all of five minutes. But then I remembered the first time I met Kinross. I was Henri-Antoine’s age and sent north to spend Christmas with him. He wanted to instill in me how fortunate I was to be his heir and what I could look forward to one day.” Jonathon puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. “The degradation suffered by his tenants is staggering. The burden of responsibility on my young shoulders was almost too much to bear. I sailed back to the subcontinent knowing I didn’t have a choice; that I had a duty to return when the time came.” He smiled at her. “And that time has come. I think nine months should give Sarah-Jane ample time to build her Parisian nest, don’t you? Who knows, I could be a grandpapa in the New Year.”

  “Grandpapa?” Antonia giggled, and was suitably diverted, which was Jonathon’s aim. “She and Charles have yet to marry and you instantly have yourself a grandfather? Absurd man! I hope they are able to spend some time together without babies.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No. I was instantly pregnant which did not please me at all.”

  “I’ll wager it pleased Monseigneur. It would please me.”

  Antonia did not know where to look. “I am not—I do not know—I do not know why we are having this meaningless conversation!” she snapped when he grinned at her awkwardness. “If people overheard us talking of babies they would think us fit for bedlam. I have a son who has four children and with another on the way and you talk to me of babies—of us having babies? Why are you grinning at me in that idiotic way?”

  “But you’re not barren, are you? So the conversation isn’t meaningless, is it?”

  Antonia sat up tall. She was horrified. “How-how do you know this?”

  “Your outrage is adorable,” he grinned, pulling playfully on the little pink bow. “I didn’t interrogate your maid or your servants, if that is your objection. And I don’t have an overpowering desire to have children, to have an heir. I never have. It’s just that if it happened, if we were to have a child...” He grinned. “Well, we can at least spend the rest of our lives trying!”

  She pouted. “It is most inconvenient for a woman of my age to still be cursed in this way! It is not humorous at all, so please, you will put away that ridiculous grin!”

  “A curse to you mayhap, but...” he muttered and broke off, distracted when the silk bow unraveled between his fingers; no mere decoration after all, the bows had a purpose: to hold fast the bodice, which now gaped, revealing the little lace edge of her transparent cotton chemise and more of her cleavage. He tugged the chemise away with his chin and breathed in deeply, enjoying the scent of her warm skin mingled with the perfume he had given her, marveling at the glorious weightiness of her full breasts, and silently praising Monseigneur for preferring his wife in jumps to laced back stays. With her hands about his neck, he used his free hand to tug on the second bow. “Mon Dieu but you’re so damnably luscious.”

  “And you, curse you,” she murmured, shrugging off the gossamer fichu from her shoulders; breasts spilling forth from the gaping bodice as he deftly untied the remaining little pink bows then pushed the jumps off her shoulders and down her slim arms, “you are too virile for your own good.”

  He chuckled. “Shall we go to bed?”

  It was her turn to grin.

  “Yes,” she said, dropping the jumps to the floor. “Later; much, much later...”

  Charles Fitzstuart was good to his word and he and Sarah-Jane arrived at the Hanover Square mansion as daylight streaked the cold morning sky. The servants were just up and a bleary eyed footman showed the couple into a downstairs drawing room, where a newly lit fire was doing its best to warm the room, while another woke Jonathon Strang’s valet with the news his master had visitors. To Lawrence’s surprise his new master had already bathed and dressed himself; not surprising was the fact his bed had not been slept in.

  The interview in the drawing room took longer than expected, with tears all round, questions answered and assurances given over endless cups of tea, a startling confession by daughter to father and a not so surprising admission by father to daughter; Charles acting as happy witness. A more surprising witness to this emotional leave taking was Mrs. Spencer and when Sarah-Jane asked to see the Duchess alone for a few moments before setting off on the journey for France, it was Mrs. Spencer she asked to accompany her to the Duchess’s boudoir, not Charles and most definitely not her father.

  Antonia was seated at her dressing table in dishabille with b
arely enough time to splash water on her face and thread a ribbon through her curls when Michelle admitted the two women. She had no idea what to expect from this meeting with Jonathon’s daughter but she certainly did not expect to see one of her ladies-in-waiting and her trepidation was so starkly evident that Sally Spencer smiled reassuringly and was the first to go forward and curtsey, saying with a smile,

  “I am not here on the orders of His Grace, Mme la duchesse. Nor is my sister with me. I am now companion to Mlle Strang and am accompanying her and Mr. Fitzstuart to Paris.”

  Antonia glanced at Sarah-Jane with some surprise but said evenly,

  “And your sister?”

  “Susannah has decided to remain with Lady Strathsay,” Sally Spencer informed her. “Particularly,” she added in English with a glance at Sarah-Jane, “as this is a most distressing time for the Countess. Susannah has been such a comfort.”

  “I do not doubt it,” Antonia agreed, a picture in her mind’s eye of her aunt prostrate on her chaise longue, Willis attentively fanning her with appropriate clucking noises of sympathy that the Countess’s youngest son had run off with a merchant’s daughter, which would be far more devastating to the Countess’s self-consequence than the fact her son had been branded a traitor and was a fugitive.

  “Papa is more comfortably resigned to Charles and I fleeing to Paris before we are married knowing Mrs. Spencer is with us,” Sarah-Jane confessed in English and when offered sat on the sofa opposite Antonia’s dressing stool, Sally Spencer beside her. “Not that Papa could have stopped me going with Charles had Mrs. Spencer not accepted my invitation.”

  This made Antonia smile and relax.

  “You have your father’s determination, which is not a bad thing, cherie,” Antonia complimented her. “You must hold on to this as Charles, he is a very determined young man. So I predict you and he will have some interesting times ahead. And of course I wish you both very happy.”

  “Thank you, your Grace,” Sarah-Jane responded, clasping and unclasping her hands, the only outward sign of her nervousness to be in the presence of the Dowager Duchess of Roxton. “I apologize for not being able to converse with you in your own tongue but Papa assured me your English is very good, and I do hope to learn French. Well, I am resolved to do so given Paris will be our home for the foreseeable future. But I do not wish to talk to you of my future, but my father’s future.” She bravely met Antonia’s gaze and secretly wished the Duchess had been old, grey-haired and plain-faced and not so breathtakingly lovely, and then her father would not have looked twice and this conversation need not have been required. “I do not know if Papa has confided this in you, I dare say not, because he did not confide it in me, Aunt Kitty told me: I am not his daughter.”

  Antonia sat up, startled, and glanced at Sally Spencer who smiled encouragingly at Sarah-Jane, so knew the story the young woman was about to tell.

  “Not his daughter? Why would Lady Cavendish tell you such a thing, even if it were true?”

  “In the hopes that I would reconsider Alisdair Fitzstuart’s offer and accept it, rather than follow my heart.”

  “I am sorry, petite, but I do not understand how such a shocking revelation could induce you to accept the one brother if you loved the other? It is incomprehensible.”

  Sarah-Jane smiled, warming to the Duchess.

  “It is, isn’t it? But as I had always maintained I wanted to marry a Baronet at the very least, Aunt Kitty assumed that knowing I am my father’s natural daughter and not his legal daughter and thus cannot call myself Lady Sarah-Jane, which is the right of a daughter of a peer, I would grab at the chance to be a nobleman’s wife; my desire to hide the base circumstances of my birth far outweighing my desire to marry for love.”

  The Duchess was indignant. “Kitty Cavendish must have cotton between her ears to think such a thing! It is preposterous.” She regarded Sarah-Jane with a tender smile. “You are your father’s daughter and that is all that matters, yes? And now that you tell me it is not such a surprise because your father he told me once that you were born in South Africa and yet your parents, they did not marry until they arrived in Hyderabad?”

  “That is correct, your Grace. When my mother eloped with my father she was still the wife of her first husband. Mr. Spencer died just weeks after I was born and yet under the law, I am his daughter. Legally I am a Spencer, not a Strang-Leven.”

  Antonia waved a hand in dismissal. “It is of no consequence. Your father remains your father and Charles, knowing him as I do, would not care an écu, for this small detail of your birth; it is unimportant. And of course, all that matters is that your Papa he knows that you love him and is happy.”

  “Yes, your Grace,” Sarah-Jane replied and knowing it was the moment to voice her concerns, took a deep breath and said as confidently as she could muster, “It is my father’s happiness that I wish to speak to you about.” When the Duchess’s pale cheeks flushed with color and yet her smile became fixed, Sarah-Jane had a great desire to grab for Sally Spencer’s hand for support. Instead she pressed her fingers together and continued a little less confident than before. “I love Papa very much and it saddens me that we will be separated, despite his assurances that he will visit us in Paris and that if I am happy he will be happy.” She looked down at her lap and then directly at the Duchess. “To be frank, your Grace, I was very much against Papa attaching himself to you. You are not young. You were married to a much older husband who was besotted with you and you still mourn for him. Papa is a decade younger than you and yet he, too, is now besotted with you. It is the stuff of cheap melodrama.

  “And to be perfectly truthful, it was humiliating to watch Papa pursue you at the Roxton house party. I begged him to leave you alone. He would not. I told him he was making himself and me the object of gossip and ridicule and we argued. I said that if he did not desist I would never speak to him again. He did not heed my threat and we parted on the most acrimonious terms. I went to Lady Strathsay’s estate distraught and-and hating you.”

  “Cherie, I would never intentionally come between a father and his daughter,” Antonia told her gently, “between you and your father, and it pains me that I was the cause of your distress.”

  “I-I know that now, your Grace,” Sarah-Jane confessed and sniffed, taking the handkerchief Sally Spencer pressed into hands and quickly dabbing at her moist eyes. When Sally Spencer offered her gloved hand, she took it in a firm hold and smiled at her before turning to Antonia and saying with a sniff, “Your Grace, I sincerely believed I was acting in the best interests of Papa. Aunt Kitty and Uncle Tommy have been most persistent that my father needs a young wife who can give him many children, an heir. They still believe, and they are not the only ones, his attaching himself to you is not in his best interests and may even harm his chances of contracting a suitable match. But I have since learned from Mrs. Spencer, and also from my dear Charles, that you are not the sort of female who would trifle with my father’s affections—”

  “Miss Strang, I—”

  “And so I ask you—no I beg you—if you do have feelings for my father, you must consider his changed circumstances and press upon him that he has a duty to his great-uncle and to those who held the title before him, to contract a suitable match with a woman who can give him a son and heir. I fear you are the only one who can make him see reason. As a duchess and as mother of a duke, you understand that if a man inherits a peerage he has an obligation to have a son.”

  She smiled nervously, adding with a deep breath, “And if Papa was to contract an arranged marriage he need not—I would not expect him to—give up his mistress...”

  Antonia was up off her dressing stool and the two women across from her were instantly on their feet. Coincidentally, there were raised voices on the other side of the boudoir door out in the passageway and all three women looked to the door which provided Antonia a moment’s reprieve to collect her thoughts. She did not disagree with the young woman’s sentiments and despite Sarah-Jane�
��s olive branch – that she was prepared to accept Antonia as her father’s mistress – she was mortified. Yet, what else was she but Jonathon Strang’s mistress? And what else could she ever be? If, as Sarah-Jane said, her father had inherited a title of some distinction then yes, he did indeed need to marry and produce an heir, whatever his reassurances that begetting children was unimportant.

  Monseigneur had been Jonathon Strang’s age when he had finally married and within a year she had provided him with an heir. She had been eighteen years old and so there was every expectation of children. Two sons, a dozen heartbreaking miscarriages and regular menses did not give her the right to believe she could give Jonathon Strang a child least of all an heir. That she could even allow herself to contemplate such an eventuality startled her. Knowing the exact nature of Jonathon Strang’s elevation was unimportant, just knowing he was a peer of the realm, in whatever degree, was enough for her to agree with his daughter’s assessment. What solidified her mortification was that this young woman felt compelled to enlist the support of her father’s mistress to see that he followed through on his dynastic responsibilities.

  She was spared further humiliation when her boudoir door was violently thrown open and Henri-Antoine, Jack Cavendish, Charles Fitzstuart and Jonathon Strang bundled into the room, and by the looks on their faces, chased by a lion escaped from the Tower Zoo and enjoying every minute of the frightening experience.

  “The militia are at the door, Maman,” Henri-Antoine announced with annoyance.

  “They’re demanding Charles or they’ll break in the door!” Jack threw in, excited at the prospect of the house being overrun with redcoats.

  “But Strang has a plan,” Henri-Antoine drawled.