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

by Brant, Lucinda

  “And you are my favorite niece in the whole world, Teddy dear,” the Countess of Strathsay replied with a smile, and because she was sitting closest to Teddy, reached out and grabbed her hand and squeezed her fingers. “I—we—are all so happy for you that Mme la Duchesse was able to find your friend, and in time for your wedding.”

  These noblewomen—including the Lady Mary, who had looked up from feeding her infant who had fallen asleep at her breast—all directed their gaze at Lisa and smiled benignly and fell silent, no doubt in expectation of Lisa offering a suitable reply. But Lisa remained mute, despite replying to the Lady Juliana. This was not only because she was nervous at being presented to two duchesses, a countess, the daughter of a duchess, and the daughter of an earl—more nobility seated before her than she ever would have expected to encounter in her entire lifetime, least of all in one sitting—but also because these women looked to be sweet, kind, and unassuming. No doubt their preeminent position at the apex of society gave them the confidence to be themselves and to presume they would be treated with the respect and deference their positions demanded. But for Lisa, it was their genuineness, not their status, that most affected her. She had few females in her life who were unpretentious, and even fewer who had shown her genuine warmth and kindness, Teddy being one of them, and the other being Becky, and that thought brought bittersweet tears of happiness.

  Being part of such a world was beyond Lisa’s reckoning. Being on its fringe and looking in was delightful enough, and she was grateful for this glimpse, however brief. It would provide her with a lifetime of memories and, being ever practical, a grounding in his family, should Henri-Antoine wish to talk to her of his relatives when he came to visit her in his Queen Anne house on the outskirts of Bath.

  She now knew what Henri-Antoine meant when he’d commented that he came from a family of exceptional beauty. And no wonder he was affronted when she had giggled, thinking his response absurd. But his assertion was not unreasonable. He had not been exaggerating about his female family members. Still, she did not think him a thorn. It made her eager to meet the husbands, fathers, brothers, and male cousins of these women, to see if they were masculine equivalents worthy of inhabiting this fairy tale.

  Lisa’s preoccupation lasted only a matter of seconds in the lingering silence and Teddy was about to speak on behalf of her tongue-tied friend, when Antonia addressed Lisa in English with her decidedly French enunciation, “Was your journey a pleasant one, chère fille?”

  This brought Lisa’s eyes up to the Duchess’s face and they widened momentarily in surprise at the directness in Antonia’s gaze. The gentleness in the Duchess’s tone and the kindness in her smile were genuine, but they also masked an intent, for Lisa was certain she was being acutely scrutinized by Henri-Antoine’s mother. She wondered if there were more to it than just discovering precisely what sort of girl her goddaughter Teddy had befriended at Blacklands, and what, if anything, her Aunt de Crespigny had said about her that could be confirmed or discarded. More worryingly, she wondered if the Duchess had some knowledge of her son’s interest in her, and would not have been surprised to learn that Elsie had told her mother she had left her brother in conversation with her newest friend. This increased Lisa’s nervousness tenfold.

  “Thank—Thank you, Mme la Duchesse, I had—I had a-a most pleasant journey,” Lisa replied haltingly though she did her best to suppress her unease, swallowing hard to clear her throat which made her voice more breathless than intended. She dropped another curtsy, gaze again flickering up to those steady green eyes, before politely lowering her lashes, the heat in her face having nothing to do with the warm summer weather.

  “Teddy tells us you traveled down by the common stage, Miss Crisp,” the Duchess of Roxton said in her straightforward but pleasant manner.

  “Quelle? Cela ne peut pas l'être!” Antonia demanded, reverting to her native tongue. “How is it you were put on the common stage when I specifically instructed Gabrielle—your aunt—to have a diligence hired to convey you here.”

  “I assure you, Mme la Duchesse, it was no inconvenience to take the stagecoach,” Lisa replied diplomatically in French.

  “But wasn’t it crowded with all manner of travelers?” asked the Duchess of Roxton with concern. “The stagecoaches I have seen on the London road are so overbooked that persons are sitting on the roof, which cannot be safe.”

  “Pardon, Your Grace, but those passengers who sit on the roof do so either because that is the only ticket they can afford, or it is by choice, because it is twice the fare to take a seat inside the carriage.”

  “Good grief. I had no idea,” the Duchess of Roxton replied, genuinely startled.

  “Gabrielle she should not have put you on a common coach, and there is no excuse for it,” Antonia grumbled. “It is a wonder she did not have you sitting on the roof!”

  Lisa suppressed a smile. “To be fair to my aunt, I do not think she had any part in my travel plans, Mme la Duchesse.”

  “That I believe, ma petite!” Antonia retorted. “No doubt it was her daughters she entrusted with your voyage.”

  “Yes, Mme la Duchesse,” Lisa replied, her nervousness evaporating at the Duchess’s outrage on her behalf. “As thrilling as an outside seat atop the carriage would have been, for all of five minutes, the other thirteen hours would’ve been terrifying. So I am grateful to Dr. Warner for securing us inside seats.”

  Antonia leaned forward, hands in the lap of the many layers of cotton petticoats, her green eyes wide with horror. “Thirteen hours? Mon Dieu! But that is diabolical!”

  Teddy giggled at Antonia’s look of disgust. “Mayhap to you, Cousin Duchess, because you have the most luxurious carriage in the kingdom.” She confided to Lisa, “Mme la Duchesse’s carriage has seats that can be turned into not one, but two beds!” before announcing, “I’d love to travel on the roof of a coach, at least once. How thrilling to think that at any moment, and on any bend, the entire coach might overturn and we’d all end up in the shrubbery!”

  “With broken bones, or a cracked skull, or no skull at all,” Lady Mary stated with a shudder. She appealed to Lisa. “Is that not so, Miss Cr—Lisa?”

  “It is, my lady,” Lisa agreed. She grabbed Teddy’s hand and turned her to face her. “Promise me, and your mama, your godmother, and your aunts, that you will never travel on a common stage, and never on the roof.”

  Teddy rolled her eyes and looked mulish, but then she smiled and kissed Lisa’s cheek before turning to her most senior female relatives. She bobbed a curtsy. “I promise and double promise!”

  As everyone was breathing a sigh of relief, Teddy said to Lisa, “Cousin Duchess may never have traveled on the roof of a coach, but she has done something far more thrilling—She was held up and shot by highwaymen! Isn’t that so, Mme la Duchesse?”

  “It is. But it was a very long time ago.”

  “She was just seventeen—

  “Almost eighteen,” Antonia gently interrupted.

  “Almost eighteen,” Teddy corrected, barely pausing for breath. “Highwaymen held up M’sieur le Duc’s carriage on the Versailles road. And they shot her, here.” She placed her palm against her collarbone. “And M’sieur le Duc he had to staunch the bleeding and get Cousin Duchess to Paris as fast as he could so a physician could remove the bullet.”

  “That must have been terrifying for you, Mme la Duchesse,” Lisa said breathlessly, eyes wide. She could hardly believe it possible.

  “It was,” Antonia admitted, and then surprised Lisa by smiling and giving a shrug. “But only after the bullet it struck me. Before that, when we were held up by highwaymen, I thought the entire episode the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me! And of course I was not at all worried because I was with Monseigneur—”

  “—who shot those brutes dead!” Teddy said with relish. “And deservedly so.”

  “How bloodthirsty you are, Teddy,” Antonia complained without heat, and quickly put up her fan to hide a spre
ading smile. But nothing could hide the twinkle in her eyes.

  “I now know where she gets her sense of adventure,” the Lady Mary commented as fact. “I hope you do not mind that I told Teddy all about your misadventure, Cousin Duchess.”

  “Not at all, Mary.” Antonia’s green eyes sparkled and she revealed her smile. “I imagine that M’sieur le Duc he told you this story when you were a girl, and that you were just as fascinated by it as Teddy. Though perhaps your first thought was not one of wishing you had been held up by highwaymen.”

  “That is so, Cousin Duchess. But I am very sure it was Teddy’s first thought.”

  “Mama! How can you say so,” Teddy complained with a pout, and then she laughed behind her hand and confessed, “That was my second thought. My first was wishing I had been kidnapped from the Versailles palace by M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton!”

  Antonia rolled her eyes and sighed. “How many times has this story been told and how many times me I must correct it. I was—”

  “—not kidnapped by Monseigneur. I arranged for Monseigneur to kidnap me,” Deb Roxton, Lady Mary, and Lady Strathsay all repeated independently but in unison. They gave a start, gasped in surprise at their unified response, and then burst into giggles.

  Antonia smiled with satisfaction to hear her own words repeated back to her, color in her porcelain cheeks. But there was nothing conceited in her manner.

  “Bon. That is the truth of it.”

  The merriment amongst these doyennes of society paused conversations taking place in the pavilion amongst the coterie of female guests, and they strained to hear what was being said around the Duchess of Kinross’s chaise longue. Their interest had already been piqued by the arrival of Theodora Cavendish’s friend from her schooldays, a girl whose face and name could not be placed, and thus her family connections were unknown to them. This circumstance was not only unheard of, but mystifying. But two amongst their number, who were also Teddy’s school friends, could put a name to the stranger. And while Lisa was being introduced to Teddy’s female relatives, they took it upon themselves to tell all they knew about Miss Lisa Crisp to anyone who was listening, and that was everyone seated around them.

  Thus by the time the Duchess of Kinross was enquiring of Lisa about her journey to Treat, every ear in the pavilion was tuned to, and every eye judging, the newcomer, from her plain half-boots to her faded floral petticoats, the astonishing sight of ink stains on the fingers of her right hand, to her unadorned hair. And with the newly-imparted knowledge that Miss Lisa Crisp was an orphan of no particular family, and if the two school friends were to be believed, had left Blacklands under a cloud. The only explanation as to why Miss Cavendish had befriended such a girl had to be out of a sense of charity, and that was to be commended. Still, having this Lisa Crisp come amongst them was unsettling. It was as well she had a healthy, scrubbed, and clear complexion, and was above average in looks. That helped to settle their unease, though Teddy’s two school friends were left irritated by this begrudging assessment, for despite being pleased with themselves at having spread gossip about Lisa Crisp, they disliked hearing her described as surprisingly pretty and pleasingly robust for a poor girl, when the cost of their hair adornments alone could’ve provided Lisa Crisp with food and shelter for a year.

  ANTONIA DIRECTED her gaze back to Lisa and asked, still concerned about her journey, “Please to assure me, ma petite, that your many hours in the common coach were uneventful, yes?”

  “They were, Mme la Duchesse,” Lisa replied, more at ease since these illustrious ladies had fallen into a fit of laughter repeating the Duchess of Kinross’s assertion about her kidnapping on the Versailles road. “I have never been further from London than Chelsea, so everything along the way captured my interest.”

  “I hope you and your companion were not too inconvenienced with having to share your carriage with others?”

  “Not at all. There were only the one couple and their young son inside the carriage with us, Mme la Duchesse. They were returning to Southampton from London, where they had taken their son to visit with his physicians.”

  “That is quite a journey to undertake to seek out a physician.”

  “It is, Mme la Duchesse. But in my limited experience, devoted parents will do whatever it takes in the hopes a physician can offer them a cure for their child’s affliction or, at the very least, provide some relief with medicinals—”

  “Affliction?”

  “The little boy suffers with the megrim,” Lisa explained. “His physicians are not certain, but they theorize his headaches may be another manifestation of the falling sickness.”

  Antonia sat up, fingers tight about the sticks of her fan.

  “If it is the falling sickness, then me I pity them, because there is no cure,” she stated bluntly. “One can go all the way to Constantinople, and the physicians there they have no clearer idea than they do here how to treat such a despicable illness.”

  Lisa met her gaze openly, alerted to the possibility that the Duchess, who had stated there was no cure, was well aware her son still suffered seizures. And this despite the precautions he had taken to conceal them from his family, particularly his mother. And thinking on it, why, as a loving mother, would she not know? The aristocracy lived with an army of servants catering to their every need and whim. It only required one servant to break the confidence of his master for his mother to remain informed. And if the Duchess did not allow her little daughter to breathe—as Elsie explained her mother’s overprotective coddling—she certainly would be just as worried and protective of a son who suffered a life-long illness, albeit from a distance, now he was an adult.

  Lisa decided to test her assumptions, adding quietly, holding Antonia’s gaze,

  “I imagine it is heart-wrenching as a parent to watch your child suffer such seizures, and to remain a silent witness when that child chooses to suffer alone must be unbearably difficult…”

  Antonia’s fan paused mid-flutter, green eyes fixed on Lisa. If she was taken aback by this indirect reference to Henri-Antoine’s illness, she was even more surprised to discover Lisa had intimate knowledge of it. And yet, she forced herself to remain impassive. So when she spoke there was no change in the timbre of her voice, and she quickly and deftly took the conversation in another direction.

  “That is very true. Your French tongue, it is very good. I had supposed Blacklands, it being a French boarding school, you would have excellent teachers in the language.”

  “We did, Mme la Duchesse,” Lisa replied. “And may I say again how grateful I am to you for-for sponsoring me and-and—” She shuddered in a great breath and dashed tears away, “—for-for finding me…”

  Antonia leaned forward with a smile. “I hope those are tears of happiness, ma petite. And now you must stop thanking me and enjoy your time here—Teddy, ma chérie,” she said to Teddy, who was now holding her baby sister against her shoulder, “your school friends they must be eager to be reunited with Mlle Crisp, yes?”

  “Oh, yes! Come, Lisa. I have a surprise for you!” Teddy replied, returning Sophie-Kate to their mother.

  She blew a kiss to her female relatives and turned away, taking Lisa by the hand. She led her through the crowd, weaving her way around ottomans and chairs and small clusters of guests, young and old, who were enjoying the plates of little cakes, sweetmeats, and ice-filled drinks, and who were seated further back in the pavilion, where it was cooler, and the breeze off the lake found its way between the fat columns. She finally came to a halt before a matron in an overlarge frilly cap, seated with two young women Teddy and Lisa’s age.

  Lisa knew these two: The Honorable Violet Knatchbull, and the Honorable Margaret Medway. Known as The Honorables at school, and privately by Lisa as The Horribles. She was not surprised they were guests at Teddy’s wedding, though a small part of her hoped they would be unable to attend so as not to spoil her visit. She did her best to hide her disappointment, for if there were two girls at Blacklands who had cau
sed her the most distress, it was Vi and Meg. Both were daughters of career diplomats on postings abroad and had been placed at Blacklands because no other seminary for young ladies would have them. They were troublemakers and distant cousins, and did their utmost to hide their sour dispositions, and their dislike of Lisa, from Teddy. And because Teddy did not have a wicked bone in her body, she failed to see the true nature of The Horribles. And Lisa would be the last person to tell Teddy that Violet and Meg were the carry-tales who had informed the headmistress Lisa was seen kissing an apothecary’s apprentice behind the Chelsea Bun House.

  She supposed it was too much to ask that in the two and a half years since she had left Blacklands, The Horribles may have changed for the better. Within a few minutes’ conversation, Lisa knew this for wishful thinking. She did her best to ignore their snide remarks. She was not about to let them ruin her stay.

  “What a surprise to see you again, Lisa. Teddy told us you’d been found,” Violet Knatchbull said with a brittle smile. “Meg and I could hardly believe the news when Teddy wrote and told us! London is such a vast place, that you could have been living down any back alley, doing who knows what, never to be seen again. But here you are!”

  “Not a back alley. A dispensary for the sick poor.”

  “Good—grief!?” Violet gave a start, a hand to her bosom in shock. “You’ve not got a contagion, have you?”

  “What? Lisa ill?” Teddy scoffed. “She’s never been ill, ever. No, silly. Lisa was assisting the physician at the dispensary.”

  Violet and Meg stared at Teddy, speechless, and then at Lisa, Violet finding her voice to say silkily,

  “Working with the poor hasn’t done you any harm. You haven’t changed at all, not even your clothes. I’m sure that gown was your Sunday best dress when we were at school, wasn’t it?”