Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (49 page)

“Where is Madame la Duchesse, you disgusting
trencherfly!”

No sooner had Lord Vallentine drawn his
blade than there was the sing of polished steel on steel as four
blades were instantly unsheathed and pointed in his direction.
Vallentine’s sword did not waver. Instead he twisted it a turn, but
so swiftly and skillfully that the movement went undetected. Its
sharp tip pricked the soft underside of the Comte’s chin, causing
the little man to smile in panic. The musketeers held their ground.
One dared to glance at the Duke who was seemingly unperturbed at
the prospect of either gentleman’s demise and was warming his hands
by the fire.

“Ah, M’sieur Vallentine, Salvan is offended
at the reception he receives,” whispered the Comte in a constricted
voice, his eyes on the murderous weapon. He dared to move his head
and shuddered at the feel of the cold metal. “Roxton, your brother,
he is not himself. You must calm him or I fear my men—”

“You’re a damned coward, Salvan! I don’t
fear you or these scum at my back. Give the order! But this blade
will be well up into your brain before I fall! You followed my
carriage here, didn’t you, eh? Well, didn’t you!”

“Vallentine, if you will permit—” began the
Duke, but was interrupted.

“I had a mind to run you through in Paris! I
should have! Where is the Duchesse?”

“Remove your blade, m’sieur,” said the Comte
in his most haughty voice. But the sweat that glistened on his
upper lip told the lie of his calm. “I am here only to collect what
belongs to me—”

Vallentine gave a snort and twisted the
Comte’s skin a turn. “Yours? Damme that’s rich! She’s the Duchesse
de Roxton and that’s all there is to it! You have no claim on
her!”

“Put the blade away, Vallentine,” said the
Duke in English, his eyes still on the grate. “The
four—er—gentlemen at your back are not Salvan’s serfs, you fool.
They wear the King of France’s insignia.”

Lord Vallentine’s eyebrows went up and he
pulled a face. “Musketeers?”

“Exactly so.”

His lordship gave a faint whistle.
“Jesus.”

“In fact, one is your old sparring partner,
the brother of your wife’s first husband,” Roxton told him. “I am
certain it is only the esteem in which they hold your skills that
has prevented them up to this point from engaging you in
a—er—bloody struggle. They will, however, dispatch you if my very
dear cousin gives the word.”

“I want to kill him, Roxton,” said
Vallentine with choked rage and reluctantly sheathed his blade with
a flourish. “By Christ I wanted so much to spill his guts all over
this floor!”

“My desire to do just that is no less
strong,” responded the Duke calmly and looked back at the
mantelpiece. “But we must think of Antonia.”

Vallentine bowed his head. “Aye, it was for
her I…”

Freed from the threat of imminent death the
Comte tried to regain command of the situation. Some of his
artificial urbanity returned. He ordered his men to put away their
swords and smiled broadly at his cousin. But the musketeers had
seen his fear and noted the sweat on the little man’s upper lip and
forehead, and although they did as he commanded, they had nothing
but contempt for this son of France. All four men acknowledged the
Duke and Lord Vallentine with a stiff bow, and the one known to the
Duke saluted him. It was a slap in the face for the Comte whose
pitted cheeks turned red under the lead cosmetic.

Roxton regarded his cousin with an
expression Vallentine found impossible to fathom. He wondered what
would happen next. One never knew with his friend. Yet, the next
moment he was forced to blink. In one stride the Duke had the Comte
about the throat and had pushed him up against a wall. The little
man laughed nervously and choked. His eyes flew to the musketeers.
They stood to attention, a hand on the hilt of their swords.

“What an incompetent fool you are!” snarled
the Duke and threw Salvan off. “My instructions were plainly
written. You were to meet the boy at Calais and return him under
guard to Paris. What are you doing here?”

“M-mon c-cousin! It was not as simple as you
suggest,” the Comte explained, gasping air into his deprived lungs.
“My mother, she would not hear of his incarceration!” He adjusted
his cravat with shaking hands. “Parbleu. Think of the shame—the
gossip—the sc-scandal! I-I did as you ordered. I went to Calais and
waited. But she—my mother—she would have none of it and she got to
him first—”

“Spare me the petty details. I hope for your
sake you managed to right matters.”

The Comte looked confused. “But… He was not
at Calais! He’s disappeared! No sooner was he set down on French
soil than he immediately boarded a return packet for England. We
followed and at Dover were told he had asked directions to this
your estate.” He glanced at Lord Vallentine and pulled a face.
“Though why he would return here…”

“Sweet Christ,” escaped from the Duke, and
he wiped his mouth with a trembling hand. “You think he is here,
in my house
?”

“Eh? What’s this?” demanded Lord Vallentine.
“Don’t Salvan know where Antonia is? Ain’t he got her?”

He was ignored.

The Duke addressed the musketeers. “He is
still inside my house?”

“We believe so, M’sieur le Duc,” answered
their leader. “We thought we had cornered him here, in this room,
but unfortunately it was a false lead. Although we did find—”

“Yes?”

The musketeer crouched by a bookcase. “Here
there is much blood on the carpet.”

Vallentine stooped and pressed a finger to
the soiled Aubusson rug. The dark stain was large, wet and sticky.
“Oh God, Roxton,” uttered his lordship with a shudder, “it’s a damn
bad injury.”

“No! That I do not believe,” stammered the
Comte. “It is impossible! A cut! Nothing more than a cut. I am sure
of it!”

Roxton went to a panel in the wall, pushed
on it, and the bookcase near where Vallentine and the musketeer
crouched swung inwards to reveal a darkened recess. There were a
few drops of blood even here. His lordship scrambled into this
void, while the musketeers stood back and awaited the Duke’s
instructions. He immediately dispatched three of them via the main
staircase to his private apartments above. Their leader was told to
follow the Duke and Lord Vallentine up the secret stairwell. Not
wanting to be left behind, the Comte trotted after his cousin and
forced his way forward to grab at the Duke’s sleeve.

“What are you going to do to him?” he asked
the Duke in a whisper.

The Duke shrugged him off and went up the
stairs. “What do you think? If he has dared to lay a finger on
her…” He looked over his shoulder at the little man’s upturned
painted face. “Salvan, she is with child.”

“
Eh bien
,” hissed the Comte in
wide-eyed disbelief. “With child? You are certain of it? Jesus, if
he discovers this…”

The Duke turned away and gestured for the
others to follow quietly at his back, the Comte only too happy to
allow Lord Vallentine and the musketeer to pass him on the stairs.
He had shown his cousin a face full of concern and sympathy, yet in
the darkness of the stairwell he permitted himself a leisurely
grin; he almost sniggered.

There was an eerie silence in the first of
the rooms above. Nothing had been over-set in struggle and all was
untouched. The Comte turned up an envious nose at so much comfort
and opulence, as he had done on first seeing Treat, but he could
not help an interested glance at his surroundings. He was careful
to stay well back. Lord Vallentine and the musketeer were blind to
everything except the urgency of the situation and finding the
closet deserted they were eager to press on to the dressing room.
The Duke stopped them.

“Let me go first.” Vallentine whispered.
“Quiet, ain’t it?”

“Trying to spare me, my dear?” said the Duke
with a crooked smile. “No. I go. Stay here with the others. If the
boy sees a regiment he might panic and—”

“Look here, Roxton,” lectured Vallentine.
“There’s a pitcher-full of blood on that carpet downstairs! That
boy ain’t in his right head. He’s dangerous. Understand? You can’t
expect to reason it out with one such as he. Christ! Who knows what
he’ll do when he sees you? I only pray he doesn’t know the full
story—that she didn’t tell him—” He broke off seeing a look of deep
pain cross the Duke’s pale face and he gripped his friend’s arm.
“Insensitive brute, ain’t I. You go on. I’ll wait. But give me that
pistol.” He took it and cocked the trigger. “If anyone is going to
do any firin’ it’s me!”

The Comte, who had picked up off the writing
desk a lady’s fan, sat down and crossed his stockinged legs with
all the calmness of one waiting an appointment. He fluttered the
fan like a woman and sighed. Lord Vallentine glared at him,
confused by the bland look on the Frenchman’s face, when not five
minutes before he had been a quacking mass of nerves and sweat.

“You’re mighty cool for a man whose maniac
of a son is runnin’ amok and has possibly caused someone a grave
injury, ain’t you, Salvan?”

The Comte raised his eyebrows. “But, M’sieur
Vallentine, I am all devastation, I assure you.”

The musketeer grunted.

“If Roxton gets his hands on him he’ll kill
him. You know that, don’t you?”

The Comte continued to fan himself. The
musketeer rolled his eyes. He thought this nobleman as mad as his
son, and wondered what wrong he and his fellows had committed to be
sent secretly on this equally insane adventure into a country that
was at war with France, and where all men, save the phlegmatic Duc
de Roxton, spoke a harsh tongue and possessed no manners.

“Your lovely wife, she is resident in this
great lump of a house, too?” asked the Comte, looking about the
room with interest.

Lord Vallentine’s brow darkened. “What of
it?”

Salvan shrugged a padded shoulder. “Do not
look at me with such a jealous passion. I only want her advice. She
is my cousin, enfin.”

“Advice?”

“But of course,” replied the Comte and threw
the fan aside. “I am about to remarry and I need Estée’s advice on
what I should do ab—”

“You’re fit for Bedlam!” hissed Vallentine
“Your son is a maniac on the loose, damme! And he’s got the Duchess
holed up, and someone’s bleeding all over the rugs and you—and you
talk to me about your damned notion to remarry? What’s the trick,
Salvan?”

“Trick, m’sieur?” asked the Comte and
offered his snuffbox. “I do not think I understand you.”

Vallentine waved the pistol menacingly. “Get
away from me you trencherfly, or I’ll end the whole Salvan line
here and now!”

The Duke found the dressing room similarly
deserted but he did not call for the others to come through. He was
about to cross into the bedchamber alone when he was confronted
with his valet. Ellicott came out of the bedchamber holding his
left arm above the elbow; blood oozed from between his fingers and
was smeared down the front of his shirt. When he saw his master
framed in the doorway, a hand on the hilt of his sword, all the
fight drained from him and with shoulders slumped he hung his head.
When he dared to glance at his master’s ashen face it was to blink
away tears.

It was enough to send the Duke to the edge
of madness.

He was barely able to speak.

“The Duchess?” he asked huskily.

The valet dared to hesitate and wished he
had not for the Duke’s face took on a deathly hue. “No! No! She—the
Duchess is unharmed,” he assured him in a rush. “When you see her
there is blood on her petticoats but it is not hers, it is Grey’s
blood. He—the Vicomte—he slit Grey’s throat—”

The Duke shut his eyes.

“—in front of her. In the library. A
madman’s act. The Duchess fainted. When I attempted to go to her
the Vicomte came at me with the knife but I managed to fend him
off. It’s nothing serious, your Grace,” he said when the Duke
glanced at his bloodied arm and before the question could be asked.
“I—I made the mistake of trying to interfere in his plans. And in
his present frenzied state he—he has the strength of ten men.”

The Duke glanced at the bedchamber door. “He
is in there with her now?”

The valet nodded. “Yes. He thinks I have
gone to fetch a footman to help with the bags. He is taking the
Duchess with him to Paris. We thought it best to humor him. The
Duchess is doing her best to fall in with his plans. She even
packed her bag herself. And now—”

“And now?”

“She is sitting with Tan on her lap in the
window seat.” Ellicott looked at the drops of blood on the polished
floor. “He has threatened to slit Tan up too if she does not do as
he asks. Your Grace…”

The tone in the valet’s voice made the Duke
look at him. “You had best see to your arm, Martin. I will deal
with him now.”