Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (26 page)

He had not gone far when he was bluntly commanded to wait up. The shock of being so rudely addressed caused him to turn about with a thunderous expression that scattered the stable hands to all corners of the stable yard.

Joseph stood his ground and waited for the Marquis to come to him. Now was not the time to show nervousness. He had genuine concerns about Deb to raise with his lordship, and it was for her that he must remain resolute. Yet, when Alston came over to him, a liveried flunky in pursuit, Joseph quickly stubbed out the cheroot under the toe of his boot and was momentarily lost for words under the lofty, angry, yet nonplussed gaze of a pair of emerald green eyes.

“Joseph? Why are you in Paris? I thought you had returned to England?”

“I’ve been to Bath and back, my lord,” Joseph answered levelly and in English, a glance at the steward who had come part-way across the cobbles in anticipation of Joseph receiving a whipping for his insolence. “I went to see Miss Deb for myself.”

Alston flinched and, sensing the steward at his back, turned on the astonished lackey, who couldn’t believe his master was conversing socially with this inferior oaf, and growled at him to go away. He turned to Joseph with a scowl. “Favored family retainer you may be,” he enunciated in English, “but you will address my wife as is her due. Is that understood?”

“Aye,” Joseph answered demurely. “Beggin’ your lordship’s pardon, but it’s her health and happiness which concerns me, not her elevation.”

Julian took a step forward. “Damn your impertinence—”

“’cause I care about her, my lord!” Joseph argued, taking a nervous step away. “She’s never been ill a day in her life and when I’m told she’s taken to her bed and is so weak she can’t eat, that worries me. That ain’t like her. So I decides I have to see her for myself. I don’t care to take the word of a sawbones and leave it at that! Beggin’ your lordship’s pardon, but… neither should you.”

“I cannot leave Paris at this time,” Alston muttered, a heightened color in his cheeks. “The trial…”

“Well I can and I did!”

“And is my wife as ill as Medlow makes out?”

Joseph heard the note of sneering disbelief. “It ain’t like her to feign illness, my lord. And Medlow ain’t the sort of man who exaggerates. And he ain’t one of them quacks who panders to a man’s imaginary ills.”

“So satisfy my curiosity: What illness does her ladyship suffer that has made it impossible for her to join me?”

“Medlow wouldn’t say. Said it was against his hypocritic oath.”

“Hippocratic oath,” Alston corrected. “Very convenient. Now you will excuse me. I need to get out of these Court clothes.” He turned his broad back and strode toward the imposing archway that proclaimed the entrance to the inner courtyard and the main building of the Hôtel where only soft-footed household livered servants were permitted.

“I do know what’s kept her bedridden, my lord!” Joseph announced, scrambling across the cobbles to keep up with the big man’s strides, never mind he was in heels. When the Marquis did not stop, he added, “And I know where she is!”

That stopped Julian in his tracks. He turned from the stairwell. “So tell me: What has kept her ladyship bedridden?”

Joseph swallowed under the mutinous gaze. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell you, my lord.”

“For the love of God! Out with it or leave me in peace!”

“I know Deb would prefer to tell you herself.”

Julian looked out across the inner courtyard and then down at his large feet before meeting the old retainer’s gaze openly. “Joseph, believe me when I tell you that had it been in my power to do so, I would gladly have gone to Bath to fetch her ladyship myself. But I cannot leave France. Lefebvre’s lawyers have seen to that.”

Joseph nodded. “I thought that was how it was, so when she was well enough to travel I went and fetched her for you.”

Julian grabbed his elbow. “She’s here? Here in Paris? Tell me. Where?”

Joseph pointed to the clouds. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the Marquis turned on a heel and took the stairs two at a time.

“Upstairs. M’sieur Ffolkes’ apartment.”

The Marquis entered his cousin’s apartment on a soft scratch and made his way toward the melodic sound of the viola, ignoring the goggle-eyed valet who hopped about on the balls of his feet screeching in a whisper that there was no female in his master’s apartment and if there was she was a lady, despite owning a pistol which she kept in a holster sewn into her boot. He Philippe had seen it while tidying the bedchamber, where the lady had most definitely
not
slept and not had a bath. So would his lordship kindly leave before the young lady splattered their brains across the paneled wall.

The valet then retreated, a quick glance into the salon in time to see his master kiss the beautiful young lady’s fingers and say something that made her laugh. She playfully pinched his chin in response. Philippe glanced swiftly up at the dark look on the impassive handsome face of the Marquis and ran back through the rooms of the apartment and down the servant stairs as fast as his fat little legs would take him. He wasn’t going to be the one to wipe the blood off the walls!

The Marquis stopped in mid stride just inside the door. Reclining on a chaise longue with her stockinged toes to the warmth of the fire was his bride. She was more beautiful than his remembrance of her; with liquid brown eyes full of laughter, luminescent skin, and a thick braid of hair that he knew shone wine red in the sun; hair he had once caressed and brushed and liked best when it cascaded freely to her thighs. She also glowed with vitality.

In fact, she was such the epitome of bountiful good health that his happiness at seeing her turned to anger, at being duped by the physician Medlow’s written assurances that his wife was too ill to travel; that he had worried himself needlessly about her welfare; that he had spent every night wanting her, needing the touch and the warmth of her, and seeking solace in excessive exercise to take away the constant ache of not having her, and all the while she was feigning illness to bide her time so that her lawyers could find her an escape from their marriage.

Annulment be damned!

He had been without her for twelve long weeks. They had been apart longer than they had shared a marriage bed and it felt like a lifetime.

And so his words to her were cold and mean, fuelled by jealousy and thoroughly unwarranted and served to startle apart the couple by the fire. Evelyn scrambled to his high heels and Deborah sat up, tucking her stockinged feet under the froth of her pretty muslin petticoats, and in so doing scattered the sheets of musical composition across the Turkey rug.

The Marquis ignored his cousin, a smoldering eye on his furiously blushing bride. “Well, Lady Bountiful, how gratifying to find you in good health. I can now look forward to an immediate resumption of my conjugal rights.” He glanced at his cousin. “Of course I need hardly remind you that your paramount wifely duty is to remain chaste until you’ve given me a son. I want no by-blows, however closely related.” And with that blunt speech he turned on a heel and was across the room before Deborah’s retort made him return to the chaise longue. “What—did—you—say?” he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, hoping his hearing had not deceived him.

The Marquis had been in the room a full thirty seconds before it registered with Deb that the nobleman in Court dress was her husband. His face was powdered and patched, his shoes had stacked red heels with enormous diamond encrusted shoe buckles and his black unruly curls were plastered to his scalp with pomade and wax. It was only his deep mellow voice that alerted her to the fact that somewhere beneath all that grease paint and gold thread was Julian Hesham, the man she had fallen in love with. But as he appeared first and foremost the epitome of a French courtier, it was easy for Deborah to appear just as cold and unsentimental as he.

Her chin had tilted up in defiance with his first sneering words, and she clasped her hands behind her back, effectively bunching up the yards of light muslin so that her petticoats were taut across her stomach, exposing the growing roundness of her belly and leaving him no doubt she was heavily pregnant.

“I assure you, my lord, I pray daily to be delivered of a son,” she repeated as he came back to stand before her, adding with an icy calm she did not in the least feel, “Because
nothing
will induce me to share your bed again!”

For what seemed an eternity of minutes the Marquis stared at her and such was the change in his expression, the softness that came over his handsome features, that for one heart-stopping moment he was again Julian Hesham. His gaze finally met hers as he gingerly put out a hand but Deb released the bunched up yards of muslin and quickly stepped back out of his reach.

“So that’s why you could not come to Paris; why you were ill?” he asked in a voice filled with wonderment, and when she nodded without looking at him added gently, “When—when did you know?”

“On our return from Cumbria.”

“Back then? How far along is the babe?”

She bit her lip and focused on his intricately tied lace cravat with its single large diamond headed pin. “Five and a half months.”

“
Five
and a half months
?” he repeated in the same tone of disbelief. He smiled broadly. “Then you conceived almost from our first night together…?”

Deb hesitated, confused. This nobleman certainly appeared the arrogant Marquis of Alston, but the deep, gentle tenor of his voice was pure Julian Hesham. She wondered which man she should answer. But when she looked up and saw that grin, when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and realized Evelyn, who had stooped to pick up the sheets of musical notation from the Turkey rug, was sharing in his cousin’s delight, she blanched white with embarrassment that the Marquis was openly discussing intimate details that were the private preserve of husband and wife.

“Impregnating a bride on first mount must be a feat worth bragging about to your male compatriots. Eve certainly shares in your conceit. What a shame your lordship wasted two tiresome months in Cumbria. Had I realized my condition earlier, you could’ve returned to France and your whoring—”

“I beg your pardon?”

Julian looked so shocked and affronted that Deb almost burst into incredulous tears that he could stand there pretending moral outrage. Instead she turned away and fell into Evelyn’s embrace, burying her face in his silk waistcoat on a shattering sob.

“Deborah,
ma cherie
,” he murmured soothingly on a heavy sigh and looked imploring to his cousin. “Julian, you must understand—her condition…”

“I understand all too well, Cousin.” Julian enunciated bitterly, a significant look at the composer’s hand that stroked his wife’s back. He turned on a heel, saying at the door before he strode from the room, “When you’ve done
comforting
my pregnant bride, be so good as to send her to the library. The Duke will be home on the hour.”

Evelyn called him back but Julian strode on not looking left or right until he reached the stairwell that led up to his spacious apartment on the second floor. Here he stopped and hesitated to ascend the stairs. It was as if all the emotional fight suddenly drained from him. He slumped back against the wall and slowly slid down the paneling to the bottom step where he covered his face with his hands.

E
LEVEN

S
IR
G
ERALD
Cavendish stumbled upon the Marquis ten minutes later and made a bumbling speech full of verbose compliments and inane observations about the weather because he was nervous at having a private word with his noble brother-in-law. But what made his delivery even more blundering was the fact he had not expected to find his lordship slumped on the floor with his head bowed, particularly when he was dressed in gold thread and diamonds.

He just didn’t understand it and wondered if the Marquis was drunk, or having an attack of some kind, because the nobleman’s face was flushed and his eyes were red and glassy, as if he’d been sobbing like a girl. It certainly wasn’t the sort of behavior Sir Gerald deemed usual for the son of a Duke.

With a heavy sigh of resignation Julian invited his wife’s brother into his sitting room where Frew kept a good fire burning. The valet momentarily emerged from the closet off the bedchamber but as his master appeared distracted and was not alone he retreated, leaving the connecting door ajar and affording Sir Gerald a glimpse within his lordship’s inner sanctum. He saw the valet quietly going about his duties; with him were two lackeys, one carried a pail of steaming scented water that was poured into an enormous hipbath central to the room, the other draped a richly embroidered banyan of red silk over an ornately carved arm of a gilded chair.

That these preparations for the nobleman’s bath continued unabated made Sir Gerald realize how ill judged was the timing of his visit. He felt most unwelcome and this feeling deepened into acute discomfort knowing the Marquis was newly returned from Versailles and obviously wished to change out of full Court dress. When Julian silently stood his ground by the fireplace and did not offer Sir Gerald to sit on any of the chairs in the room, but merely took snuff from a gold and enamel snuffbox, Sir Gerald coughed to clear the nervousness from his throat.

“I must tell you how grateful I am to your esteemed parents and to you, my lord, for permitting my nephew the honor of spending time in the company of Lord Henri-Antoine.” Sir Gerald ended this rehearsed speech with a smile but the Marquis remained unmoved. It was as if he stared straight through him, with emerald-green eyes so piercingly clear that they were unnerving. Sir Gerald’s palms began to sweat. “No one was more surprised than I to learn Jack had such an esteemed school friend. He has always been an impetuous youth, somewhat wayward at times, and often given to speaking his mind—”

“A circumstance of residing with his aunt perhaps?”

“Yes. Yes. Not the most ideal of circumstances for my nephew.”

“Yet, the only option open to him?”

“Um—er—Well, I am confident that time spent in the elevated company of your brother, who is a most worthy young nobleman, will be most beneficial to my nephew’s uneven temperament.”