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

by Brant, Lucinda

  She doubted she would ever see the like of him again, wishing only that she’d had the opportunity to hear his voice when he was not agitated. She was sure he was possessed of a smooth, deep burr as Becky suggested. As to whether he sounded like hot chocolate tasted—full, velvety, and just a tiny bit sinful—that, too, she doubted she would be privileged to discover for herself.

  Little could she know that she would indeed make these discoveries, and in the most surprising of ways, and within the week.

  FIVE

  LISA RETURNED to Gerrard Street to the uncommon circumstance of the entire household being aware of her absence.

  She came through the servants’ entrance to the comforting aromas of cooking, the kitchen maids in the midst of a baking and cooking frenzy, with biscuits being turned out of a hot oven, several fowls rotating on the spit, and various pots on the boil. Cook was barking orders from the kitchen bench, but as soon as she saw Lisa, she quickly wiped her floured hands on her apron and pounced with the news the mistress had asked to see her, and that was an hour or more ago.

  Cook warned she best have a good story to tell, adding that the mistress’s mood had not improved with the arrival of Mrs. Warner’s younger sister, Mrs. Cobban, even though this was Mrs. Cobban’s first visit since returning from her bridal trip to Paris.

  She then confided information Lisa did not need to know: The first batch of almond biscuits Mrs. Cobban so favored had burned, and the second batch were not near crisp enough. So Cook was having to resort to slicing up the seedy cake from the previous day; she didn’t have time to make another. And then information that was new to Lisa: That everyone knew the secret to a good seedy cake was beating the ingredients for a good two hours or more in a warmed bowl before pouring it into a prepared tin, and then popping it in the oven.

  Lisa was duly solemn and nodded at all the right intervals, and went so far as to say that as much as she loved Cook’s almond biscuits, her seedy cake was the most delicious she had ever tasted. And no wonder, with such love and attention as Cook invested in its making. Cousin Henriette—Mrs. Cobban—would not be disappointed. To which Cook grinned, then retorted she wasn’t certain love was involved, but a good deal of sweat and muscle were! She then threw up her hands and bustled over to scold a kitchen maid who was not turning the spit at an even pace.

  Lisa was quick to exit the kitchen, intent on going straight up to her cousin’s boudoir, but was stopped before she reached the stairs by the housekeeper. Thankfully she did not repeat what Cook had told her, but asked if Lisa had examined the state of her clothes since she had returned from ‘who-knew-where’?

  She had not. Lisa thanked her for the warning, cheeks glowing under the woman’s significant stare at the large damp stain to the front of her plain, brown linen petticoats. Lisa had been oblivious to all else while attending to her patient. Now it seemed that in her haste to wipe his face clean she had squeezed the excess water from the cloth not into the basin but down the front of her gown. She had also neglected to rearrange her mittens, which she had pushed up over her elbows, out of the way. All this she kept to herself. With another thank-you, she went up to her room and changed her petticoats, exchanged her half-boots for house slippers, and tidied her hair in the looking glass she kept in a drawer of the small desk by the window.

  Mrs. Warner’s much-put-upon maid answered her scratch at the door, and let it be known with a significant lift of her eyes to the ceiling that all was not harmony with the mistress. Lisa smiled at her kindly and went through to the boudoir, and there hovered in the doorway, listening, and waiting to be noticed.

  Minette Warner and Henriette Cobban—the de Crespigny sisters—could not be more dissimilar had they been unrelated. Minette was dark haired, tall, and languid. Her younger sister, Henriette, a short curvy blonde, was prone to fidgeting. If they had a similarity it was to be found in the pleasing oval shape of their faces, possibly the only feature Lisa and her cousins had in common, and the sisters shared a misplaced confidence their fashion choices were the right ones.

  Cousin Minette reclined on the sofa, doing her best to appear as a sultana of the Ottoman Empire in a figured silk banyan, the color of which could only be described as Oriental orange. A little turban sat atop her teased hair, and her feet were encased in silk slippers with curled toes. Her sister Henriette sat straight-backed at the end of the sofa in a Chemise a la Reine, the layers of diaphanous white muslin gathered under her ample bosom with a large blue sash tied in a bow, with which she fiddled, and on her feet matching blue silk mules.

  Other than upbraiding her for her truancy to Lord Westby’s house, of which her cousins could not have the slightest idea, Lisa racked her brain to wonder why they wished to see her. Henriette had made it plain almost from the day Lisa was orphaned, that she was unwanted. Henriette had maintained her hostility while they were at school together, when they were at home, and whenever she visited her sister’s home.

  Lisa was indifferent to this dislike, for the most part because she had nothing in common with Henriette, whose conversation was almost entirely about other people’s lives. She was chattering now about the latest gossip sweeping Parisian salons—the trial of those involved in what had become known as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

  Lisa had followed this sensational series of incidents involving a cardinal, a female confidence trickster, a supposed sorcerer, and a fabulous necklace made for the Queen of France, which was somehow spirited to London, when they had first appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine. Although she seemed to recall being more interested in news of the latest balloon ascent, and this one in Edinburgh. The thought of soaring into the skies and looking down on the world like a bird was far more exciting and fascinating—though she knew her cousins would never agree—than the machinations of a bunch of swindlers at the highest levels of French society.

  “Don’t loiter, Lisa. We might think you eavesdropping,” Minette Walker complained, beckoning her forward with a slow wave of a lace-bordered handkerchief. She held it up for her inspection. “Aren’t these little squares divine? Henriette tells me all the best people are using square handkerchiefs in Paris these days. She’s bought me a dozen.”

  “It is lovely. And they’re square because King Louis made it law—”

  “Law? What law? About handkerchiefs?”

  Lisa picked her way across the carpet strewn with opened gift boxes, careful not to step on lids, ribbons, and torn tissue paper. Thankfully the gifts were piled on a low table in front of the sofa.

  “Yes. King Louis had it written into law just last year that all handkerchiefs made in France must be square,” Lisa replied simply, and lightly kissed the powdered and rouged cheek Henriette presented to her. “I’m glad you’re safe home, Henriette. Did you and Mr. Cobban enjoy your stay in Paris?”

  “La! You are full of the most absurd knowledge,” Minette said without heat, and dropped the handkerchief into its box and tossed it onto the table. “Naturally Henriette enjoyed Paris. Who doesn’t?”

  “We did,” Cousin Henriette agreed. “Mr. Cobban is the most attentive and generous of husbands, and I’ve come home with a carriage load of new dresses and necessaries that will take my maid at least a week to unpack.”

  “But where have you been, Lisa?” Minette asked in the same languid tone. “We have been waiting to speak with you this past hour or more. And it’s not as if you have anything of a pressing nature, is it? It’s not one of your days at the dispensary, so the poor aren’t lining up demanding you write letters for them about God-knows-what-nonsense, are they?”

  “Is she still making a nuisance of herself in the dispensary?” Henriette asked, surprised, not a look at Lisa, and reverting to French, the sisters’ first language.

  “Oh, she’s not a nuisance,” Minette countered. “Dear Dr. Warner has only good things to say about our cousin’s assistance. He says she is good at scenting the rooms free of miasma, which is all I care about, and for keeping the poor orderly.�
� She shrugged. “Someone has to do it and it might as well be Lisa. As I just said: It’s not as if she has anything else to do with her time, and it does give her something to do.”

  “It will have to stop,” Henriette stated. “And at once. It’s bad enough her fingers are ink-stained, nothing a good scrubbing with soap and a pumice won’t take care of, but what if she were to get an infection handling all that filth?”

  “I’d not thought of that… I dare say you are right…”

  “What if the poor were to give her a hideous fever, or a rash? Mama would not be pleased.”

  “Would she not?” Minette wondered aloud. “I’d have thought that if Lisa were struck down with a cold or flu or something more potent, poor Mama could then breathe a sigh of relief, and refuse the invitation she has accepted on her behalf with a clear conscience.”

  Henriette’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes! That would work in our favor!”

  “But there is no point to be hopeful on that score. Lisa has never been ill a day in her life. Have you, Lisa?” Minette added loudly, reverting to English, and enunciating each word as if her cousin was incapable of understanding her. “You’ve never been ill a day in your life, have you?”

  “No, Cousin Minette. I am blessed with good health, and good hearing.”

  “You see. As healthy as a milkmaid and the cow she milks,” Minette Walker replied in French to her sister.

  “What a shame,” Henriette mused. “Declining the invitation due to ill health would solve all our problems.”

  “It would. But as that is not about to happen, we must do as poor Mama has asked. We owe it to her, and to our noble patroness.”

  “Invitation? May I know what it is, this invitation Aunt de Crespigny has accepted on my behalf?” Lisa interrupted politely, and in French, and with just a hint of a wry smile at their tactic of excluding her from a conversation they knew well enough she could understand.

  The sisters turned their heads to regard Lisa with mild hostility, that she dared to intrude into their conversation and do so in French. Speaking in English to her, while they spoke in French between themselves, was just one of the many ways in which they imposed their authority on her, the poor relation, who would forever be an embarrassment and a burden on the family. Just as they deliberately kept her standing in the middle of the carpet, knowing she could not sit until given permission to do so.

  That their impoverished cousin had received an invitation to attend a wedding and spend two weeks at a country estate—a wedding to which no one else in the de Crespigny family had been invited—was an unwelcome rupture to the social fabric of society and a way of life all the best people followed and to which their adherents aspired. The wedding was no ordinary wedding and the estate no ordinary country estate. The Duke of Roxton’s niece was getting married, and the wedding celebrations were being held at Treat, the ancestral home of the dukes of Roxton. Such an occasion would surely be the social event of the summer, populated with the titled and wealthy of Polite Society, to be written up in all the newssheets, talked about in all the best drawing rooms, the gilt-edged card of invitation proudly displayed, propped on many a noble mantelpiece for guests to see and envy.

  For Lisa to have received an invitation to such a wedding was to the sisters extraordinary, incomprehensible, and disquieting. An impoverished orphan, who knew nobody and went nowhere, did not receive invitations to such momentous occasions. It simply wasn’t done. And yet, it had been done, and there was nothing either sister, or their dear mama, or the de Crespigny family, could do about it.

  And while the sisters felt impotent and affronted at this startling turn of events in their cousin’s life, there was something they could do to show their displeasure and reassert their superiority in this moment, before their cousin was even aware of her newfound good fortune. Which was why both sisters were uncharacteristically and petulantly interested in Lisa for the first time in their self-absorbed lives.

  Minette took it upon herself to demand of Lisa to know her whereabouts of the previous hour, while Henriette was even more hostile towards her cousin than usual.

  “Lisa, you seem to have forgotten that you live here because dear Dr. Warner and I have taken you in when no one else in the family would have you. And as you are not of age, I must bestir myself from time to time to ensure you live within the proper restrictions for your age and station in life. At nineteen, you are not permitted to leave the house, least of all go gallivanting about the town, without my permission. Which you did not seek, and most assuredly should have done so.”

  “I am sorry I did not ask your permission, Cousin Minette,” Lisa replied contritely. “But I did not wish to disturb you, and I did not think—”

  “You must certainly did not think!” Henriette threw at her, itching to contribute to this chastisement.

  “—you would mind if I ran an errand with Becky Bannister.”

  “Becky—Bannister? Do I know this personage?”

  “Yes, Cousin. Becky is the niece and haberdasher’s assistant to Widow Humphreys at Humphreys’ Haberdashery. She has been here several times with her trimmings and—”

  Henriette goggled at her, horrified. “You were seen out in the company of a—of an—haberdasher’s assistant?” She looked at her sister and reverted to French. “How are we to correct such social ineptitude, and in a fortnight? It is impossible! Impossible!”

  “I dare say her social blindness can be attributed to the time she spends in the dispensary,” Minette replied begrudgingly. “Dear Dr. Warner says that disease is the great leveler—that no matter what our social status, illness visits us all—”

  “Minette! Forget the poor and your dear doctor’s dictates for the moment, this is far more important,” Henriette hissed. “Poor Mama’s reputation—our reputation—is at stake. And if Lulu had lived, we wouldn’t be facing this dilemma, now would we!?”

  Minette sighed heavily. “There is no use making ourselves ill with sadness thinking of the past. We must deal with what is in front of us, and do the best we can.”

  At that, the sisters turned again and this time they looked Lisa up and down, both with the same thought: If their younger sister Louise—affectionately known as Lulu—had not died of scarlet fever, Lisa Crisp would never have been sent in Lulu’s place to Blacklands boarding school for young ladies. And had Lisa not attended Blacklands, where she had mixed with girls far above her social station, who were the daughters and sisters of politicians, merchant princes, and the like, she would never have received an invitation to the society wedding of the year—an astonishing turn of events which none of the family could have anticipated.

  “Sit. We have something of great importance to explain to you,” Minette said in English, indicating a chair piled with emptied gift boxes and ribbons. She waited until Lisa had perched on the very edge of a cushion and placed her hands in the lap of her linen gown, before exchanging a glance with her sister—who was reaching for the last almond biscuit on the plate. “I do not know why the seedy cake has not arrived…” She looked back at Lisa and drew in a breath, as if the task ahead was going to be fatiguing in the extreme. “While Henriette was in Paris, she visited Mama—and before you ask it—Mama, Papa, and Toinette are enjoying their stay immensely. I do believe Toinette wrote you a letter. Is that so, Henriette?”

  “I gave it—or did I leave it on the table? No matter. Once your girl clears everything away it will be found. It’s not important. Full of childish chatter, no doubt,” Henriette said dismissively of her twelve-year-old sister Toinette. “Papa spoils her beyond tolerance. He always has.”

  “She was so excited to be calling upon her French cousins for the first time,” Lisa said with a smile. But she also remembered how fearful Toinette was about returning to England, because upon coming home, she was being sent to Blacklands for the first time.

  Lisa vividly remembered her first few days at Blacklands. She had arrived at the school in the middle of term, when all the girls were kn
own to one another and she was known to no one. Worst of all, her cousins in their grief at the passing of Lulu, had not provided her with new clothing. Her clothes were clean, but worn and patched and thoroughly unacceptable for such a school. And so she had had to wear her only gown, and scuffed half-boots, in those first few days, under the sly looks and whispered jeers of her classmates, until more suitable clothing could be made, and her Uncle de Crespigny agreed to pay the expense of outfitting her with everything necessary for a boarder at Blacklands. At least Toinette would have a better start to her school year…

  “…So you must understand why it is you cannot blame Mama for withholding such letters,” Minette was saying. “She thought it was for the best not to raise your expectations that anything could come of such a friendship.”

  Lisa nodded absently. She had not heard the first part of her cousin’s sentence and so was unsure what Minette was talking about, though she sensed by their defensive posturing—their chins had most certainly lifted—that her cousins were expecting her to react in a way that required them to justify what it was their mother had done on her behalf, and without her knowledge. But she had heard Minette’s mention of letters and was so surprised by it that she blurted out,

  “Aunt de Crespigny has letters—letters for me?”

  “Do open your ears and pay attention!” Henriette retorted. “How are you to go into society, to make yourself pleasant and interested in what is taking place around you, and be able to make polite conversation, if you do not listen to your betters?”

  “Mama withheld the letters for your own good, and ours,” Minette explained patiently. “And we—Henriette and I—agreed with her. Given the shocking nature of your expulsion from Blacklands, it was thought best that you leave those days—and any associations with the school—behind you for good.”