Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (34 page)

Theo Fitzstuart watched Antonia flee
outside, Charlotte close on her petticoats, then turned to the Duke
who leaned against the balustrade frowning down at the crop in his
gloved hands. “That was ill-timed of me. I should have heeded
Charlotte’s warning.”

“Yes,” the Duke said curtly without looking
at him and went up the stairs two at a time.

“I apologize, your Grace, but had I known…”
Theo Fitzstuart tried to explain, following up behind the Duke.

“Where is your mother?”

“My mother?”

Roxton strode down a passageway and invited
himself into the Lady Strathsay’s salon, waving aside an agitated
footman and causing her ladyship’s chambermaid, who stood with an
ear to the bedchamber door, to shriek and burst into guilty
tears.

“Get your mistress out of bed,” he ordered
and threw back the damask curtains to look out the window into the
square below. “And tell Hawthorne to send up the breakfast I
ordered to this room. Fitzstuart, are you joining us?”

“Breakfast, your Grace?”

“Oh, do stop being obtuse! Well, girl, must
I break in the door for you?”

“Surely, whatever you have to say to Mamma
can wait?” Theo Fitzstuart suggested, as horrified as the maid at
disturbing his mother at such an hour.

“No. I have waited long enough,” Roxton said
bitterly. “However, by all means do not stay if the thought of
wrenching your dear maman from the arms of her lover disturbs you.
Which Dick is it today? Or did she forget to send this week’s list
to the Court-Calendar?”

“That was uncalled for!”

“Yet, very true. I make no apology.”

“I did not ask for one. I know my mother’s
habits well enough,” said Mr. Fitzstuart stiffly. “But for you to
condemn such behavior when your own has entertained tea-table
gossips for almost two decades—”

“Unlike Augusta, I had the decency to
conduct my—er—liaisons under someone else’s roof,” the Duke
sneered. “Your mother has the bad manners to flaunt her depravity
one floor above her own granddaughter!”

Mr. Fitzstuart could offer no argument. He
sat down on an arm of a Chinese carved chair and swung a leg in
moody silence. The Duke took snuff and continued to look out the
window until the chambermaid reappeared from the bedchamber. She
was quaking and had acquired a red welt across her left cheek. Theo
grimaced at his mother’s handiwork. The Duke merely put up his
quizzing-glass.

“How medieval,” he drawled. He waved the
cowering maid away. “See to your face.”

The maid curtseyed and was gone.

“Ah, here is breakfast,” said the Duke as
the butler and a wide-eyed footman deposited a coffee pot and a
heavy tray on a side bureau. “Hawthorne, pour out for Mr.
Fitzstuart. I will be but a moment, Theophilus.”

“What do you intend to do?” asked Mr.
Fitzstuart in alarm. “My God! You’re-you’re not seriously going in
there?”

“My dear boy, I am at my best in a
bedchamber. Any tea-table gossip will tell you so.”

The Duke and Mr. Fitzstuart were drinking a
second dish of coffee and had requested another plate of rolls when
the Lady Strathsay emerged from the darkness of her bedchamber, not
unlike a lioness from her lair. Her red hair fell in knotted curls
down her back, she had colored her lips a vibrant red, and she
smelled of fresh scent. A flowing robe of Chinese flowered silk was
thrown carelessly across her shoulders. It did nothing to cover a
thin silk chemise and left no doubts that she still possessed a
shapely thigh and the figure of a woman half her age.

“How charming. You’ve put on your face,”
said the Duke, stretching out his long legs. He glanced at Theo who
had scrambled to stand up the moment the Countess had whirled into
the room. “Be a dutiful son and pour out for your dear maman.”

“I don’t want any!” she snarled, squinting
in the late morning light that flooded the salon. “How dare
you—”

“Spare me your outrage,” said the Duke
coldly. “I have heard it all before, and your son hardly deserves a
taste of your waspish tongue. I suggest you take a dish of coffee.
I intend to keep you entertained for some considerable time.”

Instinctively she glanced back at the
bedchamber door.

“I took the—er—liberty of ordering John his
breakfast,” said Roxton and smiled crookedly when she glared at
him. “Hawthorne will see to everything, even the morning’s
newspaper and—er—tankard of ale? That is what he prefers?”

“When I think you had the-the
audacity
—”

“Please, no thanks are necessary. It was the
least I could do,” said the Duke with an arrogant wave of a white
hand. “A tankard of ale is small compensation for wrenching you up
off your knees. Though I received the impression John thought the
episode not without its humorous side. He did laugh when I offered
to wait until he’d—But no, let me not embarrass you further.
Especially not in front of your son.”

Lady Strathsay looked at her son as if
seeing him for the first time. “What are you doing here?”

Mr. Fitzstuart pursed his lips. “If you
would prefer I was not…”

“You will stay,” the Duke commanded. He
indicated a chair. “Sit down, Augusta.”

Abruptly she stopped pacing the Aubusson
carpet and faced her cousin, eyes slits of green light. The Duke
took snuff, seemingly unaware he was being defied, and with an air
he expected her to do his bidding without argument. Theo thought it
possible she would disobey him. When Roxton did care to glance up
from under half closed lids there was an end to her mutiny and she
sat where directed.

It was not a meek action. It embarrassed her
son. He turned away to fuss with the coffee pot and dishes. She
slumped in the wing chair, chemise and robe sliding off one
shoulder exposing a quantity of rounded breast that she did nothing
to cover. She even went so far as to throw a leg over the chair’s
padded arm, and with one small bare foot with painted toe-nails
pointing toward the window she lounged at her ease.

“When Kate said you had changed she failed
to mention in what way,” she said in a voice heavy with irony. “In
fact she was very reluctant to say much at all last night. I was
surprised to see her return early from Drury Lane, and with Antonia
in tow. But when she mentioned your sudden reappearance I wasn’t
surprised she fled. Poor Kate—and poor little Antonia! One will
recover, she’s young enough. As for Kate?” Lady Strathsay shrugged
and chuckled. “I used to envy your eternal youth, Roxton. But, no
more. I do believe there is a little grey at the temples of those
raven locks. And lines, yes, deeper, more pronounced lines about
that sneer. A heavy conscience mayhap?”

Theo stuck out a porcelain dish and frowned.
“Your coffee, madam.”

Lady Strathsay looked up at him. “Dear Theo,
are you angry with me? What would you have me say when it was I who
was dragged from my bed?”

“A little respect for—”

“—his Grace?” she mocked. “The Duke knows me
better than that. We have never stood on ceremony.”

“This is not a social visit, Mamma.”

“What? Oh! You want me to make my curtsey to
the Head of the Family? Good God! Open your eyes, my son. Roxton
may be a Duke but he hardly deserves my respect, not when I tell
you the latest piece—”

“Enough,” said the Duke very quietly. He
stood up and wandered to the window.

“That sneer becomes you more than you know,”
teased Lady Strathsay. “But think of those lines about your mouth!
Have a care—”

“You’re a fool, Augusta,” the Duke drawled.
“It is a pity you have never cultivated your mind half as much as
you have your vanity. It may have saved you from a lonely old age.
Once your beauty fades into insipidity what will you have left to
offer a man? ’tis never too late to cultivate a little humility,
Cousin.”

“Thus spake humility itself!” retorted Lady
Strathsay.

Roxton showed her one of his rare smiles.
“Arrogance is a male
quality
, my dear. In a female it is a
liability
. But I did not come here to waste my time in
playful argument. Theophilus: Go to your mother’s escritoire and
search the drawers.”

“For what, your Grace?” asked Theo
Fitzstuart, looking from the Duke to his mother who was suddenly
pale. “Mayhap, Mamma, you would care to…?”

“That is where you keep your
correspondence?” interrupted the Duke.

“What right have you to order my son to go
through my private papers?”

The Duke put out an open palm. “The key,
Augusta.”

“It is never locked.”

“The key to the only drawer you do keep
locked.”

“Your Grace, I don’t understand why this is
necessary.”

“I want what is mine. And you do still have
what is mine, don’t you, Augusta?”

The Countess shifted uneasily and would not
look at him, or at her son. “I haven’t the least idea what I could
have which would be of interest to you,” she said airily.

“Letters.”

“Letters? I burn all my correspondence. It
does not do to leave one’s little affairs of the heart lying about.
You should know that better than I.”

“You allowed one to slip through your net. I
want the others.”

“A-are there any?’

“Your face betrays you. Those letters were
written to me. They belong to me. I will have them.
Now
.”

“I—I destroyed the rest!” she said
impetuously. “I did not see the point in keeping them. What good
were they? Just pages of inconsequential chatterings of a child.
Barely comprehensible for the most part, and full of old news—well,
it is old
now
.” She teased him. “Did you hope they would
contain pages of undying love for yourself? Hardly! Though, there
was one, or were there two? written in Italian. I couldn’t decipher
that. Mayhap it is easier to explain one’s disordered emotions in
some sort of ordered way in that language, rather than French?
After all French is her native tongue and when—”

“My-my—God, Mamma! You-you stole Antonia’s
letters off the table in the hall?” Theo demanded angrily. “And
read
them?”

“No. Hawthorne stole them. I merely kept
them in a safe place.”

“I-I don’t know what to say, your Grace,”
apologized Theo Fitzstuart, red-faced with embarrassment. “I never
dreamed—That is, had I known—All those weeks—All those
letters—Jesus! She thought you chose to ignore her.”

Lady Strathsay laughed nervously. “Don’t be
so shocked, Theo! Surely you guessed? And I did not do it out of
spite, so you need not glare at me as if I was a witch fit to be
burnt. Whatever you think, I did it in the best interests of my
grandchild. So unhealthy for a girl of Antonia’s tender years to
correspond with a man of Roxton’s reputation,” she said with
distaste. “What would society have made of it had her letters gone
astray? God forbid her name should be linked with his in any
way.”

She watched her son stride to the japanned
walnut escritoire, jerk down the folding desk-top, and rummage
through the contents of the small drawers. “How dare you touch my
private correspondence!”

“Rather late to appear outraged, Mamma,”
stated Theo. He found what he was looking for and inserted the
small silver key in the lock that secured the row of drawers below
the desk top.

“Sit down,” demanded the Duke when the
Countess half rose out of her chair.

“I have a mind to call John!”

“By all means. If you think it will help,”
answered the Duke. “I very much doubt it. He probably quite
sensibly took himself off to White’s.”

The Countess groped for a suitable retort,
then closed her mouth hard, her eyes widening at the change that
came over the Duke’s features when her son put a bundle of opened
letters tied up with ribbon on the chaise longue beside him. She
thought he looked almost capable of emotion. Points of color dotted
the clean-shaven cheeks and a small private smile hovered about the
thin mouth. She smiled crookedly and went in for the attack.

“Such devotion in one so young is a rare
thing indeed,” she said silkily. “I had supposed, if there was no
reply, she would tire of writing you after a fortnight. But no, she
persisted. What a darling girl. Delightfully beautiful,
sweet-natured, and still young enough to be molded to one’s will. A
little head-strong, but some men find that attractive. This
childish infatuation for you will pass, of course. I shouldn’t
think the Vicomte d’Ambert has a need to concern himself, do
you?”

Roxton looked up from thumbing through the
correspondence.

Lady Strathsay smiled sweetly. “I sympathize
with you, oh, I do. I always knew that when you finally allowed
emotion to get the better of you you would have a very great fall
indeed.” She sighed tragically. “Possibly you’ve lusted after my
granddaughter from the first moment you set eyes on her lovely
face. No small wonder Kate was devastated. But she is a brave
soul.” She glanced at her son who shuffled his feet by the
fireplace, looking very uncomfortable. “Theo? Tell me, Theo: Do you
intend to sit back and allow this noble satyr to plunge his rod
between your niece’s soft virginal thighs? Is it fair on the young
Vicomte to receive a bride with a torn veil on his wedding night?
Well, is it, Theo?”