Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (38 page)

Antonia wondered if he was jesting, but he
looked so serious that laughter bubbled up in her throat. Despite
her efforts to be good she started to giggle.

Lady Strathsay turned a smug smile on her
son and raised her perfectly arched brows. “Did you expect
different?”

“A moment ago you were foretelling doom,
Mamma,” Theo reminded her, gaze on the young couple. “Both of us
must be thankful the reunion went better than anticipated.”

“Better for whom?”

Lord Strathsay saw a familiar glint in his
mother’s eye and frowned. “Don’t interfere in this, Mamma. Roxton
knows what he is about—”

“Kate!” the Countess called out, ignoring
her son. “What think you of our young Frenchman?”

Lady Paget disentangled herself from a
discussion with a local gentleman farmer on the cultivation of
exotic fruits and followed her friend’s gaze to where Antonia and
Étienne sat together talking. “He seems personable enough. Too
serious for one so young. Why, my dear? You’re not thinking…”

“Certainly not!” retorted the Countess and
glared at her son who dared to grin. “But for my granddaughter
certainly.”

“I can see no objection to such a union,”
said Lady Paget. “But I don’t know the boy. But as your son intends
to leave the decision up to Antonia, any efforts on your part to
push the match will be wasted, my dear. Shall we go into dinner? I
see the Duke has arrived.”

Lord Strathsay offered Lady Paget his arm
and joined the rest of the guests filing through the heavy mahogany
double doors. Duvalier stood behind his master’s chair at the head
of the long table and a footman was consigned to stand behind each
of the twenty chairs, their red and silver livery a complement to
the rich Brussels tapestries that adorned the four walls. Three
heavy crystal chandeliers cast a shimmering glow from the paneled
ceiling, and from up high in the gallery that ran the length of the
long room, came the melodic sound of a string quartet.

The Vicomte sat himself beside Antonia with
a shake of his head. “He lives better than Louis!” he whispered, as
he took in the blaze of wax, the shimmering of crystal, and the
mountains of food expertly arranged in priceless porcelain dishes
along the table. “It is as well my father is not here. All this
magnificence, it would send him into an apoplexy!”

Antonia permitted an attentive footman to
fill her glass with burgundy. “Then be sure to tell him of
everything you see,” she said, and smiled when Étienne was struck
with this idea and laughed out loud.

At the far end of the table Lady Paget kept
an eye on the couple as best she could through the elaborate
arrangements of food, and the movement of powdered heads and
footmen. She could not see Lady Strathsay, who was seated at the
far end playing hostess to an elderly General and a self-righteous
spinster. She considered herself more fortunate seated as she was
on the Duke’s left with Lord Strathsay beside her.

She awaited the opportunity to speak with
the Duke who was listening politely to the inconsequential
chatterings of one Susanna Woodruff, a pretty blonde with big blue
eyes and the daughter of Sir Jasper—a breeder of Arabians. Susanna
knew all the latest gossip. This fact, thought Lady Paget with a
wry smile, and her blonde beauty, placed her in such a privileged
position on her host’s right hand.

Her opportunity came when Miss Woodruff’s
attention was diverted by the young man at her side who interrupted
her flow of scandal with an impertinent observation of his own.

“I wonder if Susanna has any idea she is
speaking to the very man she just maligned as Beth Ruthmore’s
coxcombical lover?” mused Lady Paget and pushed aside the remainder
of her pea soup. But when the Duke did not respond, or look her
way, she tapped his lace ruffled wrist with her fan. “Roxton!
You’ve just put away a second asparagus tart, and I know you loathe
asparagus!”

The Duke stared at his plate and pushed it
aside with a shudder.

“Forgive me, Kate. I am a neglectful
host.”

“And a distracted one; to me, and all your
guests,” she quipped. But he did not smile. “Augusta informs me
your sister is on her way to London. Do you expect her any
day?”

“Not soon enough. I was the unfortunate who
experienced the Grand Tour in Lucian Vallentine’s company. Thus, I
don’t expect they will be here when I want them. A regretful
circumstance and one that will displease Estée. But I don’t intend
to sit idly by to await Vallentine’s pleasure.” He leveled his
quizzing-glass at a bowl of fruit offered him by a footman and
selected an apple. “I fear that was not all Augusta told you…”

“Oh no,” she assured him. “But I don’t break
confidences.” She accepted a wedge of apple from the Duke’s
pearl-handled paring knife and smiled at him when he frowned. “I
have always been discreet, my dear. You, however, have been
remarkably lax. Though that never bothered you in the past.” When
the Duke’s gaze travelled half the length of the table and held,
the apple consumed in silence, she gave an impatient sigh. “There
really is no hope for you. Damn you! There was a time when I, and
several others, would’ve been most offended by such blatant public
unfaithfulness.”

“It is exceedingly difficult to put into
words, Kate… It’s as if she’s shown me the existence of color,” the
Duke marveled and dragged his gaze from Antonia to look at Lady
Paget with a self-deprecating smile. “The world is no longer
grey.”

Lady Paget smiled and squeezed his sleeve
affectionately. “You know of course that this means there is no
hope of recovery. You must marry her without delay.”

“It is not that—er—simple.”

“You hesitate because that handsome French
boy thinks himself betrothed to her?”

The Duke returned to slicing up the second
half of the apple but the hard set of his features told her
something of his feelings. She shrugged.

“There is a solution,” she said quietly, for
Miss Woodruff had ended her discussion with the young man and was
intent on recapturing the Duke’s attention. “Elope.”

“As her mother and her grandmother did
before her? And as my mother did also?”

“You have given the idea serious
consideration, I see?”

“It is a neat solution—for myself. And for
the Salvans? My dear cousin’s guilt would be absolved and he
sympathized with in the wake of the scandal of our elopement. To
argue the illegalities of his claim on Antonia after she becomes
Duchess of Roxton is petty retribution.”

“What is scandal to you? Is not the fact she
will be your duchess punishment enough for the Salvans?”

The Duke downed the of his wine and signaled
for Duvalier. “You forget the Vicomte. He is innocent…”

She showed surprise. “But Augusta
said...”

“Told you everything didn’t she,” he said
with a crooked smile. “He believes himself betrothed.
His—er—condition only makes the situation that much more delicate.
Tell me, Kate,” he said as he rose to bow the ladies out, “would
the Duchess of Roxton be received in polite circles once the
elopement became public?”

Lady Paget had an eye on the train of ladies
departing for the drawing room. She also noted that Susanna
Woodruff hung back by the door waiting for her. “I see your
dilemma,” she said with a sigh. “You know the answer as well as I.
I have never understood why we females, once cloaked in the
respectability of marriage, may be as lax as we please with our
favors. But to elope? No. I doubt she would ever lose that
stigma.”

The Duke smiled thinly. “I watched my mother
suffer most cruelly from such social ostracism and I will not allow
my wife to suffer as she did.”

Lady Paget pressed his hand. “Just so, your
Grace. But I do believe Antonia does not care a fig for society’s
dictates. Because of her father she has been a social outcast all
her life. Only one circumstance matters to Antonia: being with
you.”

At that Lady Paget quickly followed the
ladies to the Long Gallery where card tables had been set up and
tea and coffee awaited them. Three footmen stood in attendance by a
lacquered sideboard laden with dishes and plates of sweetmeats. A
huge silver coffee urn stood on its walnut stand and a similar one
for tea was placed at Lady Strathsay’s elbow so she could pour out.
The ladies grouped themselves on the satin-striped sofas and
spindle-legged chairs arranged about one of two large
fireplaces.

Along the exterior wall was a series of
French windows draped in heavy brocade curtains of blues and gold.
Beyond the windows stretched a terrace of black and white marble
with a low-columned wall on three sides and a set of stairs leading
down to the Ornamental Gardens.

Antonia stood at one of these windows
watching a footman light tapers that stuck out at right angles to
the low wall. She was not in a very good mood. Dinner had been a
strain. What with Étienne on one side of her with his incessant
questioning of everything she had done while in London, and his
constant derogatory opinions of the English and all things English;
and on her right, Sir Jasper Woodruff, a good humored gentleman,
who thought himself doing Antonia a great courtesy by conversing in
French. But the kind gentleman’s French pronunciation was
atrocious. Antonia remained polite and did not request that he
speak in English, so struggled through a conversation with the
greatest difficulty.

An hour later he again caught her attention.
This time, having drunk a goodly quantity of fine French claret, he
confided in English that the pretty blonde on Roxton’s right was
his daughter. He had great expectations of his good friend the Duke
offering for Susanna. He misinterpreted Antonia’s look of
incredulity for one of astonishment that the Duke, so long a
bachelor of notorious reputation, would ever consider the married
state. He further confided in her that Susanna had been brought up
a sensible female and as such would not make demands that the Duke
change his lifestyle in any way. She would turn a blind eye to his
indiscretions in exchange for the title of Duchess.

As if to illustrate this point, Sir Jasper
proudly pointed out his daughter’s exemplary behavior, when across
the table from her was Kate Paget. Now what other female could so
conduct herself without blushing, when there before her was the
Duke’s mistress of many moons in intimate conversation with her
intended?

Antonia wondered if she had heard Sir Jasper
correctly, or missed something in the translation. But thinking it
over for the rest of a long meal that she only picked at, she knew
Sir Jasper was not spreading mere rumor. Somehow it really did not
surprise her. Madame de La Tournelle and Madame Duras-Valfons she
had dismissed as mere diversions, as she had the Duke’s rumored
visits to that notorious bordello catering to the French nobility,
the Maison Clermont. But knowing Lady Paget and liking her company
made this liaison all the more painful to disregard.

These thoughts ran through her mind as she
shivered in the breeze of the open window, oblivious to the cold
and the imperious loud command from her grandmother that she
instantly rejoin the rest of the group about the fireplace. The
ladies continued to drink their tea, nibble on sweetmeats, and
exchange the latest gossip. But they were not oblivious to the
strange girl with the oblique green eyes who spoke English with a
thick accent and, it was whispered, was betrothed to the handsome
young Vicomte.

Miss Woodruff was the first to ask the
question all were thinking but dared not voice. “My lady,” she said
to the Countess, her blue eyes on Antonia’s back, “I could not help
noticing that divine collar of emeralds about Miss Moran’s throat.
Do tell us its history. Is it a betrothal gift, a family heirloom,
or—”

“I am sure it will become an heirloom,” cut
in Lady Paget before her friend had the chance to reply. “It is
divine, isn’t it? A gift from the Duke for her birthday, so I am
told. Would anyone care for another macaroon? They are
delicious.”

The plate was passed around and Lady Paget
drifted over to the French windows and slipped an arm about
Antonia’s small waist. When the girl looked up, blushed and pulled
away, she was a little hurt but did not let it bother her.

“Close the door, or you’ll catch your death,
my dear,” said Lady Paget with a smile. “Your grandmother requires
your presence at her tea party. But if you like I will walk the
Gallery with you.”

“I am sorry—I did not mean…”

“There is a large portrait over the far
fireplace I would like to show you, and several others in between
you might find most interesting. Or do you prefer to take a dish of
coffee first?”

“No.”

“Good. Come along then,” said Lady Paget and
linked arms with Antonia. “This must be the longest room in the
house. Or is the library just as long? I can’t remember precisely.
It has been quite some time since I was last here. Roxton has done
extensive modifications to this wing so I am rather disorientated.
Huge, isn’t it? An Elizabethan mansion burned to the ground by
Cromwell—barbarian! Only the ruins of the chapel remain and part of
the wall which enclosed the churchyard. This present structure, or
should I say what is left of it after the fourth Duke and Roxton
got their hands on it, dates from King Charles’s time. It was the
largest residence in the kingdom until Blenheim was built.” She
glanced at Antonia. “Did you think it hideous on first seeing
it?”

“Oh no, my lady. I thought it
monstrous.”

Lady Paget’s brown eyes twinkled.
“Monstrously hideous?”

Antonia had to smile.

“There,” said Lady Paget looking up to a
painted canvas in an ornate gold leaf frame above the Italian
marble fireplace.

Against a dark painted background of muted
volumes and mahogany paneling were four figures in a splendor of
vivid colors. The lady was seated, dressed in a blue velvet gown
the same shade as the color of her eyes, her dark hair swept off
her face but with one long curl over her shoulder. On her lap was a
baby of about two or three years in age with the same colored eyes,
and with short curly hair. The lady was very beautiful and the baby
was in her image.