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

by Brant, Lucinda

  “Did you indeed, Vi?” Westby purred, and with a lift of his brows encouraged her to continue.

  “I was never more shocked, and neither was the headmistress. And did the proud little pauper deny it? Not her! She confessed to it. Bold as you please. And then refused to give him up to save herself. She’d have remained at Blacklands if only she’d named him. More fool she!”

  “Dear me, Vi,” Westby drawled with a heavy sigh of false sincerity. “More fool she, indeed.”

  “I don’t know whom you’re telling tales about, but I don’t like it one bit,” Jack grumbled.

  “And what’s worse,” Vi added in a breathless whisper, ignoring Jack’s censure now that she had several pairs of male eyes fixed on her, including the unwavering gaze of Lord Henri-Antoine. “It happened more than once. We saw them behind the shop too many times to count. Isn’t that the truth, Meg?!”

  Meg looked about at the silent faces, and then at her friend who was glaring at her in a way that told her to agree or face the consequences of her displeasure later. “Yes! Yes! It’s all true. Every word.” She nodded, then nodded again, adding with a contemptuous sniff, “And they weren’t sharing a bun back behind the shop, if you get my meaning.”

  “Well!” Westby said with exaggerated emphasis, adding with tongue firmly planted in his cheek, and another sidelong glance at Henri-Antoine. “It looks as if our hero of the hour not only knows how to handle his bat, but his tongue—”

  “Shut up, Westby!” Henri-Antoine snapped, his gaze on Vi and Meg. “As for you two…”

  Vi and Meg smiled saucily, huddling together and bobbing curtsies. Emboldened by Lord Westby’s misplaced encouragement they were thrilled when England’s wealthiest bachelor and the brother of the Duke of Roxton had finally turned his singular attention their way. They had misjudged his mood entirely, which made his blunt denunciation all the more devastating.

  He stared at Meg. “You’re a bitch. And you,” he said with undisguised disgust, gaze transferring to Vi, “you’re worse. You’re a bitch and a snitch. A pox on you both.”

  “Egad, Harry, that was uncalled for, surely?” Westby complained with a sad shake of his head as Meg Medway and Violet Knatchbull burst into tears and fled, howling, up the slope of the lawn towards the marquees. Privately, he was enjoying every moment of his friend’s discomfort. “Unless,” he goaded, “you, like our hero Banks, has some—um—prior experience of Miss Crisp and her oral talents that you’d care to share—”

  “That’s it, Westby—” Henri-Antoine growled, taking a step toward Westby with fists clenched.

  But at the mention of Lisa by name, Jack came to life, shouldered past Henri-Antoine and stood over Lord Westby.

  “No one has anything to share about Miss Crisp,” he seethed, glaring at Westby. He took a menacing sweep about him. “No one. Not now. Not ever. Or you’ll answer to me. Got it?”

  There was a deathly silence amongst the group, in marked contrast to the noise and activity surrounding them. And then, just as Teddy and Lisa announced their arrival with flushed cheeks and smiles, Henri-Antoine turned on Jack with a sneer, hands still clenched into fists.

  “Got it? Oh yes, you’ve given us all a mind’s eye full of just what you’ve got yourself, Jack Cavendish.”

  Jack blinked. He flushed scarlet at the inference. And when Henri-Antoine went to turn away, he grabbed his arm and pulled him back around.

  “I don’t like your tone!”

  “I don’t bloody well care!”

  “Take back what you said! Take it back!”

  Henri-Antoine pulled his arm free. “Go to hell!”

  He stormed off. Jack would have followed, but Teddy caught at his arm and held on. It was Lisa who went after Henri-Antoine. She picked up her petticoats, and rushed across the lawn as he strode out towards the cricket pitch. She only managed to catch him up when he suddenly stopped, looked to the sky, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. He stood there like that, as a statue, with his face warming in the sun, for several seconds before sensing someone was behind him. He dropped his chin and let out a breath.

  “Go away! Damn you! Leave me in peace!”

  TWENTY

  ‘IWILL. If that’s what you want. But first we need to talk.”

  Henri-Antoine swiveled about to face Lisa. But if he was surprised she was the one who had followed him he did not show it. In fact, he stared at her, dark eyes expressionless, as if she were a stranger, and kept his lips pressed together. He wasn’t going to be the one to start a conversation, not with her.

  She swallowed down her nervousness and refused to cower. It was time to be brave. So she came closer, removed her fingers from her petticoats, straightened her spine, and held her hands close against her bodice. She hoped that by effecting a pretense of restraint she could remain in control and not allow her feelings to bubble up and overwhelm her. In a small way his aloofness helped; living with her cousins’ intransigence meant she was resilient to offence and not easily overwhelmed.

  “You left the dinner early. I hope it was not on my account, or because you were unwell.”

  He stared at her for so long she thought he was not about to reply. And when he did, his response sent her spirits plummeting, yet she would not let him see how much he upset her.

  “I left because there was nothing to keep me there.”

  “Oh? The prospect of watching Jack dance with his two left feet, or standing up with me, was not inducement enough?”

  “No.”

  “I wish you had stayed.”

  Again he said nothing, and again she waited. They stood a few feet apart, both with so much to say, and yet said nothing. That they were now the actors in a deeply personal performance being played out in an open-air theater to a rapt audience did not occur to them. Everyone from the cricket players on the edge of the field, to the family and guests under the marquees on the hill, the handful of upper servants at the windows and those under their own marquee, to the gardeners resting in the shade, and the local tenant farmers and their families who had walked across to join in the day at the Duke’s invitation, all eyes were on the Duke of Roxton’s enigmatic brother and the poor girl from Soho.

  It was Lisa who broke the silence.

  “You’re angry with me. I do not know why that is when I—”

  “Spare me your indignation, Miss Crisp. I neither have the inclination or patience for your garbled excuses.”

  “My-my garbled—excuses? I have not the slightest notion what excuses, garbled or otherwise, you think I possess.”

  “Let’s end this here and now. Put in simple terms: You accepted a better offer.”

  “Accepted a better—offer?”

  He rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Are you intent on repeating everything I say?”

  “I find that I must because I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “So you have just said, Miss Crisp—”

  “Am I no longer Lisa to you?”

  His voice was cold. “You are no longer anything to me, Miss Crisp.”

  It was her turn to press her lips together, and to stifle a sob. She tried to hide that his words sliced deep, but she could not conceal the desolation in her eyes, which instantly filled with tears. She tried to blink them dry, and took a breath, but she could not stop them rolling down her cheeks. She kept her gaze on his chest and the small diamond-encrusted heart-shaped shirt buckle.

  “His lordship is-is—retracting his-his offer of a house in the country, pin money, and a companion?” she asked in what she hoped was a light tone, and with a watery sniff. “Does His Lordship forget he made such an offer and that I accepted it in-in good faith?”

  He took a step closer. “Retracting? Good faith? You dare to imagine you are the injured party? Say it like it is. You received and accepted a better offer.”

  “No. I-I will not. You cannot make me say what it is not—what is not true.”

  He threw up a hand in frustration. He was suddenly
dry in the mouth, and the sun beating down on him was making his eyes ache and his temple throb. What was worse, she was crying, and he hated himself for making her miserable. But the way he was feeling physically, and the unalterable fact she’d been taken from him, made him say harshly, “For God’s sake! Are you pretending you didn’t know? That you had no hint of what was to come last night. That the announcement was to you as a bolt of lightning that appears as if from nowhere? You cannot think me that buffle-headed!”

  “It was as you say—a bolt of lightning, and it-it—hit me, as it must have you, suddenly and without warning. It was a-a shock. And it was not an offer. How can it be an offer when I was not given a choice?”

  He grunted his disbelief.

  “You made no protest to the contrary.”

  Her gaze flew up to his and she blinked away her tears. Her voice was clear and strong and full of indignation.

  “And how does His Lordship propose I was to do that? I was in shock. Nor was it the time or place to say anything to the contrary. Teddy and Jack were so happy, and so were their family. You must see that, surely?”

  He did see it, and she made perfect sense, but he did not want to see it, and nothing made sense to him anymore. He was in shock himself. Teddy’s announcement had hit him as if he had been struck by lightning. One minute he saw a future, sharing his country manor house with Lisa, and the next, that future and she were taken from him, he left with nothing. He felt swindled, and the demon on his shoulder wanted him to believe that she could not be entirely blameless, that she must have known something of what Teddy proposed—after all they were best friends. And so he let the demon persuade him that she had led him on; she was just like the rest of the females from the lower orders who threw themselves at him. They wanted what they could get out of him. They did not want him for himself, and they certainly would not want him if they knew he was cursed with the falling sickness. And if he’d not had position and wealth, what was he, and how wanted would he be? But he was pragmatic. He’d wanted what they could give him, too, and that had suited his carnal appetites just fine at the time.

  But Lisa… He had thought her different in every way…

  Intuition. Common sense. His finer feelings. All warned him the demon was wrong. But after the salacious gossip he had just been fed about Lisa and Jamie Banks—which he would have considered baseless had he not spent a brooding half hour watching them take a stroll together—he was inclined to think there was a grain of truth in it. They had walked close together and there were several times when she had touched his arm, and he hers, and they had talked and talked and not stopped for breath. Jamie had carried her tumbler for her, and he was a strapping young man just like his father, and just as handsome, and knowing their backgrounds, he was certain they shared a mutual interest in the medical sciences.

  The deterioration in his health, Teddy’s shock announcement at dinner, and the mental image of Lisa in comfortable conversation with the physically robust Jamie Fitzstuart-Banks, set him on the path to self-destruction. He let the demon have its way.

  “Bravo, Miss Crisp. I am almost convinced by your performance. As convinced as I was at the oak tree, when you led me to believe you had never kissed another. But there, too, I allowed myself to be taken in.”

  Lisa blinked at him, mortified.

  “You think—You think I have-I have kiss-kissed another the way I kissed you?”

  “Have you?”

  “Need you ask me that?”

  He put up his chin. “Need you hesitate? You either have or you have not.”

  She swallowed, sadness making her shoulders droop, and let the tears course down her cheeks. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “I have not, sir.”

  He put up his brows, surprised.

  “Indeed. Perhaps not behind an oak tree, but behind the Chelsea Bun House…?”

  “Behind the—” Her gaze flew up to his again and her throat was instantly dry. “You hold against me one kiss between a girl and a boy who look upon each other as brother and sister?”

  “Brother? And-and sister? I watched you taking a stroll with our batting hero—as did everyone else here today. I doubt anyone thought ‘there goes a brother with his sister’—”

  “I don’t care what anyone else thinks—I care only what you think.”

  He scoffed. But far from her words appeasing his jealousy, which subconsciously he knew was ridiculous in the extreme, he was left even more wretched by his own outlandish assertions against her. What was wrong with him? Why was he being such a facile reptile? Being aware of his appalling behavior towards her did nothing to stop it continuing.

  “Perhaps you should have thought about me before you went for a stroll with him.”

  “I was unaware I needed your permission to-to—do—Oh! To do anything at all! But I am glad this is now out in the open between us, because I intend to continue my association with Jamie—and yes, I do call him Jamie and he calls me Lisa—because he is a dear friend—”

  “Who you kissed behind the Chelsea Bun House. Some friendship.”

  “I was seventeen, and he the same age, and I kissed his cheek. He was—he still is—just a boy.”

  “If you are so determined I should know about the friendship between the two of you, tell me why you refused to give his name up to your headmistress at Blacklands.”

  Lisa sniffed and dug in her petticoats to pull the handkerchief from the pocket tied around her waist under her skirts. She dabbed at her eyes and patted her cheeks dry before continuing.

  “You seem to infer I have something to be ashamed of. I do not. If I had given his name up, Jamie would most certainly have lost his apothecary’s apprenticeship. Physic Garden apprentices and Blacklands girls were forbidden to socialize on any level. Which is why when we met on a Sunday at the Chelsea Bun House, we would take our bun to the lane at the back of the shop and there sit and share our bun and talk, oh! about all manner of topics, but mainly science.”

  Henri-Antoine frowned at her, incredulous.

  “You willingly gave up your schooling—let yourself be expelled—all to save Jamie from expulsion?”

  She flushed scarlet, not only at his disbelief, but because by his tone she sensed he thought her action, far from being noble, was foolhardy.

  “I did. It was the right thing to do, and I stand by my decision. Jamie will one day be a brilliant physician. I have always thought so.”

  “I agree. He is also an exceedingly handsome young man.”

  Lisa resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his masculine persistence at stressing Jamie’s physicality, and presumed this to be all part of his male reasoning as to why she would choose to be friends with Jamie. She thought about pointing out that when she had first met Jamie five years ago, he was thin-shouldered and spotty-faced. Instead, she did her best to cajole him out of his sullen moodiness, hoping that with playful teasing he would calm himself enough to finally see reason. For only with a cool head could they discuss what was to be done about the predicament in which they now found themselves, since Teddy’s announcement of the night before.

  “I do not disagree with you. But—” She regarded him with a tilt of her chin and a tremulous smile, “—he does not possess a kissable mouth. I have no desire for him to kiss me in the way you kissed me… I wonder… As you now know who I have kissed, perhaps you would care to share with me the names of the females you have kissed over the years?”

  He stared at her, outraged, as if she possessed two heads.

  “Don’t be absurd!”

  “Because you cannot tell me or will not?”

  “I will not.”

  “But you do remember their names…?”

  “I have never considered the act of kissing a commonplace thing. So of course I remember.”

  “I should imagine then that making love is even less commonplace, or I had hoped to find that out—with you. Though you have had many lovers, have you not?”

  “If you
expect me to name my lovers, you are to be vastly disappointed!”

  “Oh? Because there are too few, or too many?”

  When his jaw swung open, and he stared at her with outraged amazement that she could dare make such a suggestion, she felt the laughter bubble up in her throat, and she quickly put up a hand to smother her giggles.

  Her laughter was infectious and he found himself smiling. She had such a lovely laugh. And a lovely smile. And such beautiful eyes. She was clever and noble and all that was good with the world. He wanted to scoop her up and feel her in his arms and smother her with kisses. And she had this gift, this way of taking his anger and his frustration and by turning it inside out, he saw how petulant and petty and thoroughly unreasonable he was being. All he wanted to do was laugh along with her.

  But he needed to do something to alter this situation they were now in, convinced she was better off without him, and that Teddy’s offer was the right one for her. Because despite his shock and anger, hurt and bitterness, at losing her, he had spent the previous night struggling to find a single reason why she should not live with Teddy and Jack. And because he had decided that this was the way her life should be, not the way he wanted it to be, he needed to do that something here and now, so she would walk away from him, knowing she had made the right decision. He could then stop feeling wretched, about himself, but most importantly so he could stop feeling anything at all for her.

  “It would seem that having a vast experience of women does not make a man immune to the wiles of a predatory female, particularly one who is pretty and lacking in experience,” he drawled, and avoided looking at her. “Therein, no doubt, lay my downfall. I strayed from my usual preference, lost my head, and made an offer I would not have, had I been thinking with my brain.”

  Lisa’s smile faded.

  “I’m not entirely sure what you are talking about, but I sense you think I somehow tricked you into offering me a house in the country where I would live as your mistress?”