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

by Brant, Lucinda

  “Don’t be nervous, Miss,” Becky said encouragingly when Lisa paused in the middle of the lawn, drew in a breath and squared her shoulders. “You look a picture. No one could say otherwise.”

  “Thank you, Becky. If we can get through this first day of introductions, I am sure we shall enjoy ourselves all the better. Let’s see who awaits us…”

  But when they arrived at the pavilion, they found it devoid of guests and family members, and with only servants going about the business of decorating fat columns with ribbons, and setting chairs and tables in place. Lisa and Becky took the opportunity to admire the pretty pavilion from its set of steps, looking up at the painted ceiling, and out across the marble flooring to the costly fabric-covered chaise longue and chairs, and to one side the scatter of large cushions arranged about a long low table of polished mahogany. They were left wondering at the whereabouts of the guests invited to nuncheon, and if they had arrived much too early for the event.

  Before Lisa could ask the question, Becky reiterated, “’er ladyship did say the pavilion. Per’aps everyone is still inside the ’ouse?”

  “Perhaps that’s so. You stay here in the shade, while I take a walk across to the terrace. I may find some of the guests wandering about. If people begin to arrive here, come find me. Otherwise, I shall return shortly.”

  Becky did not feel comfortable sitting on any of the furniture, it was all too grand, and what if a guest arrived and found her there? So she waited until Lisa was off across the lawn and sat on the top step, back up against a fat column, ignored the cluster of servants going about their duties, and admired the view. She was intent on committing it all to memory so she could tell her Aunt Humphreys upon her return to the city.

  And while Becky watched swans gliding past and ducks swimming in and around the jetty and the bobbing row boats, Lisa crossed to the terrace where she found winding stone steps leading up through the gardens to the house. But something made her turn away from the steps and walk further along the edge of the gardens until she came to a large oak tree halfway between the gardens and the lake. It was a majestic tree and very old, and there, supported in its lower heavy branches, was a tree house fashioned to resemble the quarter deck of a sailing ship. She was so fascinated by this that she walked up under the oak’s branches to take a better look, and finding her straw hat partially obstructed her view, she removed it, and let it dangle by its ribands at her side. She had walked halfway round the tree with her chin pointed in the air before she became aware she was not alone.

  A little girl was watching her. She was standing by a swing, holding on to one of two ropes affixed to either side of a damask-covered seat, the ropes rising high up into the branches of the oak, where they were affixed. She did not move or acknowledge Lisa in any way. In fact, her brow had furrowed, and her gaze was solemn. She was a beautiful child with large brown eyes that were slightly oblique, like a cat’s, and a rosebud mouth in a heart-shaped face framed by dark honey ringlets threaded with fat silk ribbons. But for all her beauty, it was at her clothing Lisa stared at most. The girl was dressed in a round gown of finest cotton, painted in vivid colorful detail with cherry blossoms and little song birds. Underneath the gown were bright white cotton petticoats edged in delicate lace, and on her feet she wore matching slippers in the same cloth as the gown, tied off with silk bows that matched her pink hair ribbons. She looked to be dressed for a grand occasion, but Lisa suspected that such exquisite clothing was everyday wear for the children who lived in such a magical place.

  Lisa came over to her.

  “Hello. My name is Lisa.”

  “Hello.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “No. But I should, shouldn’t I.”

  “Everyone knows who I am.”

  “Do they? Everyone but me, it seems.”

  The little girl looked Lisa over. “Are you a lady’s maid?”

  “No. I’m a guest staying at the Gatehouse. I arrived yesterday for Miss Cavendish’s wedding.”

  “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t know who I am.”

  “How fortunate for me to be the first stranger you have encountered,” Lisa replied with a smile, doing her best to remain unnerved by the child’s solemn questioning air.

  But she had dealt with worse in the dispensary when children, ill or injured, wanted nothing to do with anyone who might make them feel worse than they already were. She wondered why the girl was alone, for surely a child possessed of such noble self-assurance and dressed in the expensive attire of the privileged few would be surrounded by a veritable army of nurses and maids.

  “Do you wish to be here by yourself, or do you have friends coming to join you at the swing?” she asked.

  The girl surprised her by choosing to answer her in French, and it made Lisa wonder if when she was petulant the girl spoke in the language that was second nature to her.

  “I wanted to be alone because I am never alone. And so I ran away.”

  Lisa was unperturbed by the girl’s assertion she had run away. In this idyll there did not seem to be anywhere to run off to where she would not be easily found. Unless she were to swim across to the island out in the middle of the lake, or take up oars and row herself away.

  “Then I will leave you to be alone,” Lisa replied evenly in French, and turned towards the pavilion.

  “Attendez! Ne pars pas!”

  Lisa turned at the girl’s order for her to stop and wait, and waited.

  “I would like you to stay—please.” She regarded Lisa curiously and asked again, “Do you honestly not know who I am?”

  “Honestly.” Lisa smiled. “Unless of course you are a fairy princess who lives here under this oak. And as I have never been formally introduced to a fairy princess, I do not know if it is polite to curtsy, or should I kiss your hand, too?”

  Something in what Lisa said made the girl giggle. She shook her head and then with her chin tilted up and a superior smile full of secrets said, “I don’t live under a-a tree. I live over there in that house.”

  “Of course you do. It is a very fine house. A fairy princess could live in such a house.”

  “But I am not a fairy princess. I’m a marchioness, and one day I will be a duchess.”

  Lisa hoped she did not appear as startled as she felt to discover a girl, who looked to be no more than seven or eight years old, to not only be ennobled, but who was also acutely aware of her status. Yet, there was nothing conceited in her declaration. It was said as a matter of fact. Just like her presumption that everyone should know who she was.

  “How splendid,” Lisa replied with a smile, masking her astonishment. She made a fuss of putting aside the wide-brimmed straw hat and fan, lifted her petticoats to her ankles so she could sink onto the grass, and then looked up at the girl. “Would you like to sit with me? Here, sit on my gown, so that your pretty petticoats are not ruined.” Adding when the girl eagerly took her up on her offer, “I should think that as a marchioness who will one day be a duchess, you still must have a Christian name, yes? Perhaps you might like to share this with me, now we are no longer strangers to one another…?”

  The girl considered this for a long moment, and such was the solemnity in her expression that Lisa was quick to stifle a smile, lest the child think her insincere or laughing at her. She could see the girl was weighing up whether she should trust this stranger with information that everyone else in her world knew as a matter of course. But once her mind was made up to put her trust in Lisa, there was no holding back her confidences. It was as if she needed to verbalize the explanation to make sense of it to herself. Lisa was certain the girl had never had to think deeply about her family connections before; those connections, like the existence of the sun and the moon, were just there, and everybody in her world knew it to be so. But now, thinking about them and trying to explain them to another, she realized her family ties were possibly beyond the comprehension of a stranger. So she g
ave it her best effort, and Lisa patiently listened, giving the convoluted explanation the gravity it was due. Surprisingly, in the end it all made perfect sense to them both.

  “I have three Christian names,” the girl stated. “Elspeth. Henrietta. Jane. Maman and Papa call me Elsie. And so do my big brothers. I have two. Roxton is much older than me. He’s a duke. Henri-Antoine is my younger brother but he’s also a lot older. And I have a big sister, too, and her name is Sarah-Jane. But she is not Roxton and Henri-Antoine’s sister. She is Papa’s daughter, not Maman’s. She lives in France and has four children, three girls and a boy. Her husband, Cousin Charles, is here for Teddy’s wedding. But Sarah-Jane could not come because she is still nursing her baby. His name is Benjamin Franklin Fitzstuart and Papa says Baby Benjamin was named after a very important man called Benjamin Franklin. Papa says he is more important than him, even though my Papa is a duke, too. And everyone knows that after the king and his ministers, dukes are the most important men in the country.”

  She leaned in to Lisa and said confidentially, “Maman told me that she corresponds with Benjamin Franklin—not the baby, the old man. And that whatever Benjamin Franklin’s greatness in the world, Papa will always be the most important man in the whole world to us.”

  “That is as it should be,” Lisa replied earnestly, and said no more because she could see the girl had more to say.

  “When we were in France in the spring, Maman and Papa and I lived in a house near Sarah-Jane and Charles, and every day we walked up the avenue to call on them. The houses there have blue shutters on the windows and high archways so the coach can pull right up at the door, which is not at the front of the house but at the side in the courtyard. The house was near the palace where the French King lives, and where Cousin Charles does important work for his new country. Maman once lived at the palace, but that was very long ago when another king ruled France.

  “We went to France so Papa could meet his grandchildren, and I could meet my sister. Papa cried when he saw Sarah-Jane, and that made me cry, too. But Papa says his tears were happy tears so I was not to be sad. He told me he had not seen Sarah-Jane since before I was born. It is strange that I have a Papa who is a grandpapa when he does not look like a grandpapa. He has no gray hairs at all, even though Maman has many. But hers are silver. And she has been a grandmamma since Freddie was born, and he is twice my age.

  “Sarah-Jane and Charles call me Elsie. Roxton’s children do too. They live over in the big house. Maman says as most of my big brother’s children were born many years before me, it is polite for me to let them call me Elsie and not Aunt Elsie. Maman lived in the big house when my brothers were little like me, and she was the Duchess of Roxton. But now she is the Duchess of Kinross and so we live here, and sometimes we live in London, and then there are times when we go to a big house with turrets that is on a lake called a loch very faraway in a country called Scotland. But it is still not as big as the big house that Roxton lives in. I like it here at this house the best, even though there are much better places to hide over in the big house. Henri-Antoine knows all the best hiding places, and so does Jack. You can call me Elsie, too, because we are no longer strangers. And because I would like you to be my friend… If you would like to be my friend…?”

  “Thank you. I would like to be your friend very much, Elsie. And because we are friends you may call me Lisa. And thank you for telling me all about your family, which I found most interesting because I do not have a family of my own—”

  “No family?” Elsie’s eyes widened. She was intrigued. “None at all?”

  “No brothers or sisters, and no mother or father. My parents died when I was about your age—”

  “I’m eight years and six months old.”

  “Then yes, about your age.”

  “And cousins. Do you have any cousins?”

  “I have three female cousins. Two are married, and the youngest is twelve—”

  “Julie is twelve, and she wants to be a duchess one day like me. Which is why she is sometimes not nice to me. Maman says that’s because I will be a duchess regardless of who I marry, but Julie must find a duke to marry her. I think she will find a duke, because Julie is very pretty and she has a great look of my Maman; everyone says so.”

  “Then I am sure a duke will want to marry her.”

  “Are you sad not to have any brothers and sisters and parents?”

  “I was sad when I was your age. But I am not now because I keep myself occupied helping other people, and I have friends, and my best friend in the whole world is Miss Theodora Cavendish. I am sure you know her.”

  Elsie smiled and nodded. “Teddy? I do! I like Teddy very much. She makes me laugh.”

  “Me too. She is always happy. So you see I am blessed to have such a good friend, and you are blessed to have a Maman and Papa, and two brothers, and a sister, and many cousins. All of whom must love you very much. I cannot wait to meet them all.”

  And there was one member of Elsie’s family in particular she was looking forward to meeting again, and who she was more than ever convinced had deliberately kept his nobility from her, and for reasons she could only speculate. Perhaps, like Elsie, he assumed she would know who he was without the need to inform her? Perhaps he did not feel the need to make himself known to one who was a social inferior. Perhaps he had just been amusing himself with her… But her intuition told her that these excuses did not ring true, that he did like her, and as much as she liked him, and so there had to be another reason he had made such an effort to remain anonymous. Whatever his reasoning, she would not speculate further and wait for him to tell her himself… She glanced at the swing.

  “Now that we are friends, would you like me to push you on your swing?”

  “I am not to swing by myself. Two of my maids and a footman must be here with me.”

  Lisa screwed up her mouth in response to such prescriptive coddling before she realized what she was doing. Elsie saw this and giggled.

  “Henri-Antoine does that, too. So does Papa. But they do not let Maman see them do it because they do not wish to upset her. When they are with her they do as they are told—”

  “—and when they are not, sometimes they are naughty?”

  Elsie put a finger to her lips and said in a loud whisper, “I am not to tell…” She grinned and nodded. “Very naughty.”

  “I do not know how much time is left to us before we are discovered… But perhaps we could be a little bit naughty, too?” Lisa asked airily, a pointed sidelong glance at the swing.

  Elsie was up off Lisa’s petticoats, but instead of turning to the swing she rushed over to the base of the oak and scooped up two dolls which Lisa had failed to notice were propped against the trunk. Both were outfitted in court gowns of silk and embroidered with spangles that would have been the envy of any grown woman. One doll had black hair and was dressed in plum brocade, the other was blonde and wore a gown of ivory silk, and both were much loved.

  “This is Mademoiselle Yvette,” Elsie said, holding up the doll with the blonde hair. “And this,” she said, holding up the doll with the black hair, “is Signorina Simonetta.”

  Lisa curtsied. “It is a pleasure to meet both your friends. Shall we sit them just over there in front of the swing so they can watch you, or shall they take turns with you?”

  “They will take turns. Mademoiselle Yvette will be first, because she is my newest doll and Simonetta has had many swings.”

  “That is fair.”

  Elsie placed Signorina Simonetta sitting up a few paces from the front of the swing, arranging her dress to cover her stockinged legs, and placing the doll’s hands in her lap. She then returned to Lisa, who was holding Mademoiselle Yvette. And when Lisa was sure Elsie was sitting securely on the swing’s padded damask seat, and her hands were tight about the ribbon-covered rope, she put the doll beside Elsie, tucking it in securely with a quantity of the girl’s cotton petticoats.

  They had enough time for Signorina Simo
netta and Mademoiselle Yvette to take turns on the swing with Elsie, and then on the third turn, both dolls watched on while Elsie went higher than she had ever been swung before. She was so excited that she was like any other child who enjoyed the wind in her hair and the thrill of going up in the air so that the toes of her slippers tipped the blue of the sky, heart racing and breath held, knowing that in the blink of an eye the swing would fall back again, and she would feel the drop in the pit of her stomach, and gasp every time.

  Lisa came around to the front of the swing, letting it slow of its own accord, and sat cross-legged in the grass, with both dolls in her lap, watching Elsie enjoying her freedom. And because she was facing the swing, she was oblivious to the activity behind her. If Elsie saw the small battalion of women headed her way, she chose to ignore them, intent on remaining on the swing for as long as possible, and doing her best with the movement of her stockinged legs to propel the ride herself to make it last as long as possible, now she was no longer being pushed.

  Lisa was so engrossed in watching Elsie enjoying herself without a care in the world that she only became aware that they were no longer alone when a cloud moved in front of the sun at her back, or so it seemed, leaving her in shadow. In truth someone had come to stand directly behind her, blocking the sunlight. And then before she could turn to see who had cast her in shadow, a wave of women surged forward, either side of her, in a flap and rustle of petticoats and concerned chatter, all of it in French.

  She scrambled to her feet, assisted by a firm hand about her upper arm. When she was let go she brushed down her petticoats, before turning about and looking up and straight into the face of the gentleman who consumed her dreams and who was never far from her thoughts.

  “HELLO,” he said in that deep purr peculiar to him, and in something of the same cheeky manner in which she had greeted him in Gerrard Street that day he had visited as a trustee of the Fournier Foundation. If he was surprised to see her here at his family home, he had made a herculean effort not to show it.