Satyr’s Son: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Family Saga Book 5)

by Brant, Lucinda

  “Indeed?” he purred. “But… I seem to recall… Yes! Those were your exact words as we stumbled up the steps into Frau Dortman’s cathouse in Berne… You made the same lame protest in the vestibule of Signora Lucia’s bordello in Milan. And while we were in Florence—Well! Your attempts to resist the charms of that pretty redhead were feeble at best. You—”

  “Shut up, Harry!” Jack demanded hotly and shot to his feet. “If you dare say another word—”

  “Your wishes are noted. So is your prudery.”

  “I intend to be a devoted husband, and you know it.”

  “I do.” Henri-Antoine sighed heavily. “Regrettably, uxoriousness is a family failing.” He threw back the last drops of brandy. When Jack continued to stand over him with hands clenched, he briefly closed his eyes. If Jack had one failing—no, two—it was that he was earnest to a fault, and that he rarely, if ever, appreciated Henri-Antoine’s playful provocations. So he said to placate him, “I see I’m being vile again… I do beg your pardon.”

  “Jack? Don’t tell me Harry is demanding first pick of the rosebuds?” Seb called out, happy to witness a rare altercation between the best friends. He sneered. “Are you surprised? After all, he paid for the bunch!”

  Henri-Antoine waved a languid hand in Seb’s direction without looking at him. “Take your pick, Westby. My treat.”

  “Any particular favorite?” Seb asked. “I presume you’ve tasted the delights of all eight of the lovelies coming here?”

  “Ignoring your woeful mixing of metaphors, I would never serve a dish I hadn’t tried and could recommend myself.”

  Seb puffed on his cheroot and blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling in direction of Henri-Antoine. “Flower or dish, it makes no difference. I’m sure they’re all fragrant and delicious. Perhaps I’ll try them all.”

  “You do that,” Henri-Antoine stated flatly, and turned back to the fire and closed his eyes.

  “Harry?! I say, Harry!? Is this your mark beside the Jamaican beauty of Litchfield Street?” Bully enquired, unaware Henri-Antoine had turned from the conversation because his nose was back between the pages of the little book. “Says here she treads the Cyprian stage. Says she’s got white teeth and dark brown ringlets.”

  Henri-Antoine called out without turning around or opening his eyes.

  “Miss Wilson would be well worth your time, Bully.”

  Randal Knatchbull’s eyes widened. “Would she? Would she indeed? Thank you. I’ve always fancied a golden brown beauty, and it says here she—”

  “But will she fancy you, Bully?” Seb interrupted with a snort of derision. “Sounds a bit exotic for your bland tastes. Best stick to the pap you know, and what they can stomach.”

  This cutting remark, made in an attempt to have the others laugh at Bully’s expense, caused Henri-Antoine to rally and fix his derisory gaze on Lord Westby.

  “Had you bothered to read Miss Wilson’s excellent précis, Westby, you’d have kept your mouth shut. Now you’ve opened it… It behooves me to point out that her—um—purse requires a lover in possession of a telum of superior length and breadth—”

  “Your telum I suppose?” Seb scoffed.

  “Naturally. I’d not have wasted my money or insulted her talents by offering her anything less than she demands.”

  “Harry’s in the right, Seb,” Bully said, scrambling along the sofa to shove Harris’s list in Lord Westby’s face. “See. It’s written here that Miss Wilson can contain the largest thing any gentleman can present her with but not the smallest—”

  “I’ve no interest in a whore with a diseased purse,” Seb interrupted, snatched the book and tossed it aside. “Or to know anything about—”

  “Not diseased, Bully,” Henri-Antoine assured his friend when Randal Knatchbull instantly looked to him for reassurance. “Seb seeks to malign the winsome Miss Wilson because he cannot meet her terms.”

  “Be damned I can’t!” Seb growled, jumping to his feet, cheroot stuck in the corner of his mouth. “If that’s a challenge, I readily accept!”

  “If you want the truth to stay buried in your breeches where it belongs, sit and be quiet.”

  Swaying, Seb waggled a finger in Henri-Antoine’s direction. “You’re a fine fellow to offer advice! You’d do well to keep yours in your breeches—”

  “But that’s just it, Westby,” Henri-Antoine drawled, a slight twitch to his upper lip. “I do have a fine fellow. Much in demand. As Miss Wilson—and others too numerous to mention—can attest. Ask her. Though… if you know what’s good for you…”

  “Eh? Who are you to know what’s good for me?”

  “Seb! Seb! Don’t be a complete zany,” hissed Bully, grabbing at Westby’s shirt sleeve and attempting to pull him back down onto the sofa. “Seb! You never win with Harry! Never!”

  “Shut your porthole!” Seb snarled, and yanked his shirtsleeve free so violently that Bully lost his balance and fell sideways into the sofa cushions.

  “Hey! That was a bit rough and ready, Seb!” Jack complained. “Don’t leave him there. Help him up, Seb!”

  But Seb ignored Jack, and Bully flailing about on the sofa cushions, attention wholly fixed on Henri-Antoine who remained cross-legged on the wingchair, unperturbed and lightly holding the brandy glass by the tips of his long fingers. His friend oozed arrogant self-assurance. And why not, when he had inherited a king’s ransom from his father to live life as if he were a sultan of his own empire, employing more servants than most ducal households. He never left his house without two of their number as his constant shadow. They were downstairs now, kicking their heels.

  And if Henri-Antoine’s wealth and arrogance weren’t enough to gnaw away at Seb’s insides, it seemed that any harlot with a beating heart couldn’t get enough of Harry Hesham’s fine fellow. And that included Seb’s mistress. Last night she had rejected his advances, boldly telling him, as she stretched across the bed like a satisfied feline who’d just finished a dish of cream, she was exhausted after an afternoon spent with Lord Horn. He knew to whom and what she was referring, and he had stormed out to her harsh laughter ringing in his ears.

  Now, as he continued to stare at Henri-Antoine, the wonder of it was that after all these years of festering resentment, his internal organs hadn’t rotted away.

  “What do you know what’s in my breeches, eh?” Seb finally spat out. “Over my dead nutmegs will I allow you to malign me! Stand up, Hesham! Let’s settle this here and now! Jack! Bully! Furniture against the walls!”

  “It’s not slander if it’s the truth,” Henri-Antoine drawled, and without moving a muscle in response to Seb’s threat. Although he was well aware his next words would goad his friend beyond tolerance, he said them anyway because Seb was a fool and needed to be verbally shaken awake to his enslavement to a second-rate actress whose best role was between the sheets. “I have it on excellent authority that I am—quite literally—twice the man you are.”

  “Why you-you—whoreson,” Seb raged, face burning bright as he scrambled over the low table to get to his quarry. “I’m going to break your beak, Hesham. I’m going to mash it all over your face. Stand up! Stand up I say!”

  He launched himself at Henri-Antoine as if he was jumping off a jetty to board a boat, both legs in the air, and arms swinging wide.

  Jack intercepted him, stepping in front of Seb just as he landed by Henri-Antoine’s chair, who remained seated and did nothing to defend himself. But he did not need to. Seb crashed into Jack and they were knocked sideways in the collision.

  Jack threw his arms about Seb and tackled him to remain on the ground. They wrestled and as they grappled with each other the low table was overturned, the remaining glasses and bottles not collected up by the footmen crashing to the floor. Cheroots, maps, books, and several small paintings stacked at one end were tossed in the air and scattered across the room.

  “Bully!? Bully!” Jack rasped in a thin voice, Seb’s fingers twisted up in his neckcloth pressing on his windpipe. �
�Get—over—here! Help!”

  “You get off me! Damn you!” Seb demanded, thrashing about because Jack now had him pinioned to the Turkey rug. “Stop playing brother’s keeper! He needs a lesson! Some humility knocked into him! Dammit, Jack!”

  Jack wrenched Seb’s fingers free of his throat, and gulped in air. While he was coughing, Bully scrambled up off the sofa, sending that piece of furniture banging up against the window. He scuttled across the room, but far from helping either of his friends, he just stood there staring down at them with his arms folded, watching them struggle.

  “You’re as drunk as an emperor, Seb,” Bully observed. “The felines will be here soon, and you don’t want to look a crazy or they’ll be too frightened to come near you.”

  “Get him off me, Bully! Get him off!” Seb demanded, legs kicking out wildly into thin air, Jack now sitting on his chest to keep him down.

  “Sorry, Seb. Can’t do that. Can’t let you break Harry’s nose. It’s the only one he’s got. Dare say he’s fond of it, even if it is a beak.”

  Seb made a sound of disgust in his throat, and decided the only fellow who was going to help him was himself. Fuelled by a drunken fury, he realized he had more strength than he thought possible and so he gave Jack an almighty shove. It worked. Jack was thrust up and off him and with such force that he tumbled and slid on his buttocks across the polished boards.

  “Now you’re for it, Hesham!” Seb declared with satisfaction, up on his feet.

  Having dealt with Jack, he was eager and confident he could deal with Henri-Antoine. But he took less than two steps when Bully came to life. He leapt onto Seb’s back in a last minute attempt to stop him doing violence to Henri-Antoine, who still remained unmoved in the wingchair, an interested spectator to this drunken melee between friends.

  Bully wrapped his legs around Seb’s waist and hooked his stockinged ankles together, and with his arms about Seb’s neck, stuck fast. He would not let go, no matter how many times Seb twisted this way and that. Finally, Seb grabbed Bully’s wrists and yanked them apart. And while his friend was flapping about, quickly pulled his ankles free from around his waist. He then discarded Bully as if he were divesting himself of a winter cape.

  Astonished to be upended with such ease, Bully forgot to drop his feet and hit the floor with a thud. He yelped with pain.

  Henri-Antoine decided it was time to end this farce.

  In one fluid movement he uncrossed his legs and brought himself to his full height. He was the tallest in the room. But his size was deceiving because he was slim and wiry, and with an elegant unhurried ease that tended toward the foppish. His penchant for elaborately embroidered waistcoats and frock coats in shades of purples and blues cloaked his physicality, and so his athleticism was often overlooked. But he maintained the same daily physical routine his father had insisted upon when he was a boy, all to strengthen his constitution in the hopes it would ward off, if not cure, his seizures.

  These days he was pragmatic. He did not now believe he would ever be cured, and as physically fit and athletic as he was, it was all for nought when he was in the grip of morbus caducus. From the onset of a seizure until sometime after it abated he was as oblivious as a newborn, and just as vulnerable. And so he employed minders—his lads, as he called them—to get him to a place of safety and seclusion, and to watch over him until the seizure passed.

  The thudding headache and sudden sensitivity to light should have been enough of a warning, and yet, because it was Jack’s bachelor send-off, and because of his own stubborn pride, he had refused to heed the signs and continued to drink and smoke. More fool he, because now there was a drunken Seb determined to do him a physical harm. But if he left now he would surely appear a coward. Heaven forbid they should ever think him lily-livered! So instead of excusing himself, he remained, and knew he was less in control with every passing minute.

  And then Seb came at him, lunged, and swung his fist. Henri-Antoine ducked and avoided contact with all the grace of a fencing master. Seb’s swing went wide and connected with nothing. But such was the force behind this drunken punch that he couldn’t stop himself from spinning about and over-balancing. Falling sideways into the wingchair, his shoulder became wedged between the cushion and the chair back, leaving his backside in the air.

  Henri-Antoine thought this an ignominious yet fitting end to a one-sided fight that thankfully had ended before it began. Jack and Bully rushed over and peered down at Seb, who was making muffled noises into the horsehair stuffing, but no one made an effort to help him. Jack and Bully looked at Seb and then at each another, and burst out laughing. Henri-Antoine even dared to smile.

  Jack finally wiped his eyes dry and nudged Randall Knatchbull.

  “Come on, Bully, help me pull him out.” He gave Seb’s back a pat. “Don’t you worry, Seb! We’ll get you free!”

  “Wait a minute, Jack,” Bully suggested gleefully. “A rush of blood to the head might unfuddle his brain of foolishness—Oi! Harry? Are you all right?” he demanded, when Henri-Antoine closed his eyes and swayed. He nudged Jack in the ribs. “Jack! Harry’s turned as white as fresh snow.”

  At this pronouncement Jack forgot Seb’s predicament, and turned to Henri-Antoine. “Let’s sit you down, Ha—”

  “Not here,” Henri-Antoine said through his teeth.

  “I’ll have the lads fetched.”

  “Do—that… Mon Dieu,” Henri-Antoine muttered, willing every fiber of his being to remain in control, though he could not stop the onset of a sudden icy coldness in the palm of his left hand.

  “Jack! Harry! Seb’s got himself unstuck!” Bully announced with all the astonishment of one who has seen his first comet. “That was clever. Now shake hands with Harry and apologize—”

  “Shake hands? Apologize?” Seb growled. “After he maligned me, and in my own house? He’s the one that needs to—”

  Henri-Antoine turned and strode away to the sounds of Seb’s boisterous protests of affront that he get back here now, as Jack and Bully restrained him.

  He had left it too late. He no longer had a headache. That was bad—very bad.

  He must not panic.

  He must keep his wits about him until he was in a safe place.

  He must keep thinking.

  The intense coldness had progressed to his wrist. It was as if his hand had been plunged into a pail of icy water. His tongue was tingling. Sometimes it swelled. He was never sure. All he knew was soon he wouldn’t be able to talk at all, least make anyone understand what he was saying. He clamped his teeth shut.

  He wouldn’t call out.

  He mustn’t make a sound.

  Not here. Not now. Not in front of others.

  He had managed to make it to five-and-twenty without being a public disgrace. He wasn’t about to let it happen now.

  Where was Jack? He needed him to fetch the lads. Why had he sent Michel to the Portland auction? Why was the room full of bright light? He was such a fool for drinking the brandy, for not listening to Jack. Jack had been right. Dear Jack…

  He staggered to the door, or did he limp? He had no idea.

  He had to get away from the light. He squinted to see. The walls had begun to move.

  The icy coldness had reached his shoulder. He no longer had a left arm. It felt as if it were hanging loose and useless at his side, but in truth he knew it looked very different from how it felt. The muscles contracted, forcing the elbow to bend and his arm to adhere to his side and against his chest. His hand twisted at the wrist; the fingers pulling inwards. The muscles down one side of his neck did the same, tugging his head to the left, while his mouth became slack, and he drooled.

  The seizure would not last long, but for how long he had no idea because he always blacked out, always spiraled away into nothingness, and was left to the mercy of others. And while it lasted he was a distorted mess—a freak of nature—and a monstrous form of his true self. And he knew as sure as dawn followed night he would be a slave to his affliction
for the rest of his days.

  He saw the door. It was open. Thank God.

  Now to get out of the room.

  But he could not leave.

  Someone blocked his path. No. Not someone. A female. A girl. Was it one of Harris’s harlots? Even in his altered state he did not think so. Was it an angel? Diffuse light glowed around her hair like a halo. She had big blue eyes in a perfect oval face and she was staring at him in unblinking recognition, or was that fear? Did he know her? No! He was hallucinating. She was an hallucination. His befuddled, knotted, pulsating brain was confusing this girl with the Renaissance paintings he had so admired in the Italian states. Glorious Botticelli females with striking features and flowing hair.

  If she were a Botticelli angel conjured by his seizure, then he reasoned he could simply walk through her. He tried to do just that and bumped up against soft feminine curves. She was flesh and blood after all. Not an ethereal being then.

  She crumpled against him—fainted with fright, he did not doubt it—and he quickly threw his serviceable arm about her waist to stop her falling. She made an instant recover and pulled away. But she still blocked his escape. So he stuck his face in hers and demanded she get out of his way. What he snarled was something else entirely.

  “J'ai désespérément besoin de faire pipi!”

  Botticelli’s angel instantly backed out of the room and disappeared into the blackness.

  Henri-Antoine followed and promptly collapsed at her feet.

  FOUR

  WHEN LISA OPENED the door, Becky at her back holding aloft the single taper, she entered a drawing room filled with the haze of tobacco smoke as thick as a winter morning’s fog. Her eyes instantly watered, and her nose twitched. She thought she would sneeze. There was a lot of noise, and men shouting and scuffling, and furniture being bumped about. She managed a cursory glance at the chaotic state of the room and saw a group of men over by the fireplace in the midst of an affray. She decided the best course of action was to leave the catalog on the nearest chair and flee without further explanation.