Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (42 page)

“No! No!” Charlotte cried out. “Please,
Theo, there must be some other way…”

“Unhand me, m’sieur!” demanded the Vicomte
d’Ambert, recovered enough of his nerve to appear haughty, though
one glance at the Duke caused him to cower. “As I explained
earlier, Antonia and I—”

“Don’t dare say her name!” barked Lord
Strathsay, twisting the Vicomte’s cravat a turn.

“As m’sieur wishes. But I point out to him,
Mademoiselle Moran and I have been on the most familiar terms for a
very long while.”

“Liar! My niece has never given you cause to
believe she considers you anything more than friend. And as a
friend you have no right to force your attentions on her. Look at
her! Look at your disgusting handiwork! You—you—”

“Strathsay,” the Duke interrupted softly,
but it was enough for Lord Strathsay to release the Frenchman.

The Vicomte loosened his cravat and wiped
his hands on his breeches as if he had touched something repellent.
“M’sieur, I ask that you be very careful of what you accuse me. I
remind him Mademoiselle and I are betrothed. Thus, it is none of
his business what I—what we care to do in the privacy of this
garden.”

“Betrothed be damned!”

“
Eh bien
. Mademoiselle was hardly
unwilling.”

Lord Strathsay choked with rage. “Why
you—you…”

“Theo! No!” screamed Charlotte and promptly
fainted when her betrothed slapped the Vicomte hard across the face
with the back of his hand.

Lady Paget rushed to her assistance, put the
young woman’s head in her lap and waved air onto her face with her
gouache fan.

“I mean to teach you a lesson. God damn you,
d’Ambert!” shouted Lord Strathsay and followed up the slap to the
face with a blow to the Frenchman’s chin which sent the young man
reeling into a clump of bushes. “Stand up! Stand up and fight!”

“This has gone on long enough,” sighed the
Duke with impatience. He felt Antonia stir in his arms and looked
down.

“Monseigneur. Please, you must not let them
meet with swords,” she said. “Étienne he was best in his class, and
he said it was you who taught him how to—”

“Yes,
mignonne
, I know that well
enough,” he said gently and held her closer. To the two men staring
fixedly at each other, one standing over the other who scrambled
further in to the bushes holding his tender jaw, he spoke in a
voice of contemptuous boredom. “If I desire to watch two cocks
fight I lay my money at Dartmouth cockpit. Theophilus, your lack
of—er—manners disappoints me. You know well enough what I think of
a gentleman who can so lower himself as to come to blows in front
of a lady. See to your betrothed. She has fainted and is proving a
burden on Lady Paget.”

“Your Grace! I protest! I demand—”

“It is not your place to demand anything,”
the Duke seethed. “I am master in my own home, am I not?” He held
Lord Strathsay’s gaze without a blink. “Your silence is gratifying.
M’sieur le Vicomte,” he said icily, regarding the young Frenchman
with such detestation that the young man hurriedly fumbled to his
feet, “you will do me the favor of your company in the more
dignified atmosphere of my study. Immediately.”

“M’sieur le Duc! I claim the right to
meet—”

“You, my very dear friend, have forfeited
all your rights.”

The Duke re-entered the library an hour
after depositing Antonia on a sofa by a fire. He had issued
instructions that she remain there, attended by her maid, her feet
in a soothing footbath. If she wanted for anything she was to ring
the silver hand-bell for Ellicott, and if she got bored there were
enough volumes on the shelves to keep her occupied until his
return. But he was not surprised to find the sofa deserted, the
coverlet a crumpled heap on the floor, and several opened books
scattered about the footbath. He scanned the length of the
book-lined walls, and up to the walkway with its Chinese carved
banister that ran around the three walls and gave access to the
higher shelves, but Antonia was not to be found. He checked the
terrace (although he was quite certain she would not leave the
warmth of the house without proper footwear), and was about to ring
for his butler when he noticed the odd angle of one of the
bookcases.

It was not actually a bookcase but a
carefully concealed door that hid a private staircase. It gave
access to the library via the Duke’s private apartments above. No
one used the stairs except the Duke, and at odd times, his valet.
He wondered if it had been Ellicott’s laxness which saw the door
left wide, or if Antonia had found it for herself. He was inclined
to the latter explanation.

“Inquisitive chit,” he smiled to himself and
closed the secret door behind him.

The stairs led up to the Duke’s closet, a
room crammed with the most personal of his effects. A desk on
precariously thin legs of gilt stood by a long window, its surface
scattered with rolled parchments, gold seals, books, and petitions
seeking his patronage; there was a japanned beech cabinet with
glass-front doors crammed with bottles of blended snuffs, unusual
snuffboxes and a collection of small objects picked up on his
travels; and a long mahogany table was up against one wall and held
busts of Roman Emperors and Greek vases.

The paneled walls displayed landscapes,
portraits of friends and ancient relatives, and of favored
animals—all subjects fit for the discriminating eye. Only one set
of engravings—eight in number, and a limited edition by the artist
Boucher—could be considered unfit for the eyes of young ladies,
maiden aunts and priggish gentlemen parsons. Their subject had a
recurring theme; of a satyr of familiar face indulging in various
sexual acts with nymphs in wooded settings. The nymphs, of
recognizable face and form, were all known for their breathtaking
beauty, high birth and notorious reputation.

When first published the engravings had
caused an uproar in polite circles; were bought up faster than they
could be printed, and so enraged the Duc de Richelieu that he had
quit court for a month in a fit of jealous pique. All because it
was Roxton’s face and not his that breathed life into the satyr.
This particular set had been presented by the artist himself and it
had pride of place above the snuff cabinet.

The Duke chanced to look at this series and
rolled his eyes at fate. He strode through to his dressing room on
an oath, and went into the large bedchamber beyond. Here was a good
fire in the grate. The heavy velvet curtains had been pulled to
shut out a late afternoon light, and only those candles absolutely
necessary to cast sufficient glow to see had been lit in their
sconces. The four poster was untouched.

Antonia was curled up asleep on the sofa by
the fireplace, Grey and Tan huddled at her bare feet. She was
dressed in one of his yellow silk banyans, her torn petticoats a
discarded heap on the floor beside a basin of scented water and a
tray holding the remnants of an afternoon tea.

Without waking her he returned to his
dressing room and sat down heavily in front of the looking glass on
his dressing table.

Damn all Salvans! he sighed, addressing his
reflection, elbows on the table and fingers in the thick hair at
his temples. I’m too old for her, he told the reflection, yet it
dared to smile back at him. Don’t be a fool. Marry her and be
damned what society thinks of the match. And Étienne, what of him?
The reflection frowned. Yes, I’d run him through as soon as let him
touch her again. What? The reflection dared to raise its brows at
this. You would go as far as murdering your own flesh and blood for
her? The reflection continued to stare at him, as if willing him to
confess aloud what he had never confessed to another living soul.
He was saved the confessional by the unfamiliar in the reflection
of the looking glass and the Duke swiveled about to better view the
settee.

Expertly laid out on the settee was a
collection of female attire: an open-robed gown of embossed damask,
the color of old gold; a bodice and stomacher and several
petticoats of similar color, but of a lighter fabric, possibly
silk; a pair of white clocked stockings folded neatly in half;
satin-covered garters laid on top of these; several ribands, the
color and fabric of the underskirt; and a small velvet box
containing an assortment of pearl-headed hairpins and clasps, and a
pair of diamond shoe-buckles he knew well enough. A domed hoop of
whalebone sat on a Turkey rug beside the sofa. The only piece of
raiment missing was a pair of shoes.

The collection was so incongruous to his
apartments as to be disbelieved. And as if to assure himself they
were of this world he picked up one of the garters. He inspected
the rest of the garments as if they were all new to his experience,
for he had certainly seen an array of female underclothing in his
time, but never so neatly laid out. It made him smile for it
brought back memories of those six wonderful days spent with
Antonia at his Parisian hotel. There was something comforting in
her clothes thus arranged, as if time had again stood still and not
an hour had elapsed since he had been forced to send her away. They
could now continue on as before, as if the ten weeks of separation
had simply never happened and this was but day seven for the two of
them.

He was peering at the construction of the
domed hoop, absently running one of the stockings through his
fingers, when the paneled servant door to his left opened silently
and in marched his valet carrying a pair of damask-covered
slippers. Neither master nor servant acknowledged the other, and
Ellicott went about his business as he had in Paris, as if the room
was unoccupied. He placed the slippers by the settee, picked up the
stocking the Duke had unceremoniously flung to the floor, folded it
neatly, and put it back with its twin. He then set to straightening
brush, tortoiseshell comb, etui, ribands, and patch boxes laid out
on the dressing table. His back was to the Duke who, for want of
something to cover his embarrassment, unfobbed his snuffbox.

“I took the liberty of procuring
mademoiselle a change of clothing,” the valet said
conversationally. “I also took the liberty of making mademoiselle
as comfortable as possible on the sofa in Monseigneur’s bedchamber;
mademoiselle finding her way to these chambers via the
stair-well.”

“You seem to have taken quite a
few—er—liberties,” the Duke replied in English.

“Yes, your Grace,” Ellicott answered
stoically. He ran an eye over his master’s riding habit and dusty
jockey-boots. “I have laid out a fresh outfit for your Grace and
trust you will be comfortable in my quarters. I have prepared
mademoiselle your Grace’s hipbath, on account that the workmen have
not finished with the mosaic work in the bathing room.” He stood on
the threshold to his room. “If your Grace would care to come
through...?”

“Thought of everything haven’t you?” the
Duke murmured crossing into the valet’s bedchamber.

Ellicott patiently waited on his master,
fussed over a crease in the sleeve of a white linen shirt, and all
conversation was carefully avoided, except the commonplace. When
the Duke was sufficiently decent in black velvet breeches and white
shirt they returned to the dressing room so the valet could braid
his master’s long hair into a que with benefit of the looking glass
on the dressing table. He affixed a satin bow to the braid. It only
remained to shrug his master into a velvet frock adorned with
silver lacing, but the Duke waved this aside, to be put on later,
and had the valet secure the diamond shoe-buckles in the leather
tongues of his black shoes. Ellicott’s duties completed for the
afternoon, he stood up and bowed slightly.

“If your Grace permits I will see if
mademoiselle has completed her toilette.”

Roxton looked up from polishing the nails on
one long white hand. “Oh resourceful Ellicott, do you intend
offering your services as a dresser to mademoiselle?”

“No, your Grace. That is—”

“No doubt it will please your moral
sensibilities that I will deny myself the enjoyment of watching
mademoiselle bathe and dress until after we have exchanged our
vows?”

The valet blinked and thought he had
misheard. “Your Grace?”

The Duke tossed the file amongst the clutter
on the dressing table and stood to stretch his muscular legs. “I
must be growing moral in my old age.” He sighed. “I will exile
myself to the closet and occupy myself answering correspondence
while mademoiselle bathes and dresses. Does that meet with your
approval?”

The valet dared to smile. “Yes, your Grace.
Thank you, your Grace.”

The Duke watched him go to the servant’s
door, then called him back. “A moment. If you please.”

“Your Grace?” said Ellicott with
surprise.

“Remind me, if you will, how long you have
been in my employ.”