Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (34 page)

“Fraud?”

“The vow I made was far more important than any momentary tawdry satisfaction to be gained from a casual liaison, yet I never corrected the assumptions Society made about me, in particular about my love life. That’s nobody’s business but my own.” He smiled shyly. “And then I met my wife and I was determined she would not be influenced by slander and gossip that swirled about the Marquis of Alston, but get to know me, Julian Hesham, as I truly am, in every sense.”

“And what are you, Julian?” she asked softly.

His smile was bashful. “I’m afraid your noble husband is rather straight-laced and conventional.”

“Oh? You aren’t one of these noblemen who is a sad rake and a profligate, with a string of discarded mistresses left in your wake?” She feigned disappointment, adding with an encouraging smile at his surprise, “That is as well because this wife intends to keep to herself that she has a husband who is a wondrously inventive lover.”

“Am I?” he said with a self-conscious grin, her simple sincerity vanquishing any discomfort he felt at being so brutally honest. “Do you have any notion how very necessary you are to my health and happiness?”

“Tell me.”

He kissed her, first gently and then savagely, a kiss full of urgency and need as her lips parted to receive him.

“No. Let me show you…”

~   ~   ~

Julian went to sleep smiling with his wife in his arms. It was the most contented sleep the couple had had for many months. They would’ve been greatly surprised to know that not only did they enjoy an unbroken slumber but so did the Marquis’s valet and her ladyship’s maid. Julian was not smiling when Brigitte woke him five hours later with the news he was to present himself in the south wing at once. She was asked to repeat the command; he had not been in that part of the Hôtel since a boy. The south wing was his parents’ private domain, off limits to family and guests alike and was serviced by a half dozen of the Duke’s most discreet and trusted servants.

There could be only one explanation for his summons by the Duchess and so he quickly returned to his apartment, telling Brigitte to let her mistress sleep for as long as possible. He bathed quickly in tepid water and dressed in haste. Frew was lost for words when his master refused to be shaved and went off with the beginnings of a beard and in his shirtsleeves, only throwing on a dark-blue damask frock coat as he went up the wide main staircase two steps at a time. Before he had reached the top step, where two sentries stood guard at the entrance to the private rooms the Duke and Duchess had shared for over a quarter of a century, the news had whipped through the myriad of servant passages like a blast of cold November air: The Duke of Roxton was on his deathbed.

~   ~   ~

The Duchess was seated at a black lacquered breakfast table, dressed in marked contrast to the rich Oriental magnificence of her surroundings in a simple low cut gown of printed Indian muslin, white skin devoid of cosmetics and jewelry and her thick honey curls braided into plaits and caught up in a silver net at the nape of her slim neck. She was reading a letter while a soft-footed footman cleared the table of the remnants of breakfast. A curl of steam rose from the coffee pot and two clean porcelain coffee dishes had been placed on the table.

Julian took all this in with one hurried glance as he strode across the wide room buttoning his frock coat without announcing himself. “Maman!?”

Antonia looked up, startled. “Oh! I did not expect you so soon.”

“I came at once.” He glanced at the footman. “Where’s Father? What’s happened?”

She slowly folded the letter but did not return it to the pile of correspondence and invitations stacked on a silver salver at her elbow. Instead she propped it against the porcelain milk jug and stared at it as if able to read the scrawled sloping handwriting on the reverse before turning away to look up at her son.

“Monseigneur is in his library.”

“In his library?” he repeated in a whisper and let his wide shoulders drop, the tightness in his limbs easing knowing his father was no better or worse than the day before. Anxiety was replaced with annoyance. “Maman, do you have any idea what your summons has done to your household?” he demanded. “If Father is well and he did not request to see me then I will return to my apartment to shave. I should not linger here.”

The Duchess waved away the footman and put her hands in her lap and studied her eldest son. She was well aware that her ambiguous summons would produce immediate results, and that she had been deceitful in its execution. She knew Julian would come at once because he suspected something had happened to his father. But she needed to talk to him and on a subject that had remained unspoken between them. But how to do this with a son who chose to remain aloof because it was easier than dealing with the past? She sighed and decided the best approach was to appear stronger than she was.

She put out a hand to pick up the silver coffee urn off its pedestal but Julian was quick to do this for her. He poured out only into one dish.

“You will please sit, Julian,” she commanded. “I do not care in the least if you have a full beard upon your face, or if you do not drink my coffee but me I mean to speak with you.”

The Marquis remained standing. “There is little we can have to say to one another within these four walls that could not be said elsewhere.”

The Duchess sat up straight and raised her arched brows. “Is that so? Perhaps you would prefer to talk with your maman in the middle of the open field surrounded by animals of the barn,
hein
? That I could easily have arranged, but me I do not want to get my silk slippers muddied.”

Julian’s jaw set hard. “I would gladly have you sacrifice one pair of slippers, Maman, than flame speculative gossip by having me summonsed here to your private apartments.”

“An open field would do you more harm,
mon fils
.”

When he threw up a hand but did not contradict her she knew he understood. She watched as he went to the window to stare out at the rose garden with its rows of fragrant white blooms planted for her by the Duke and carefully tended by a team of gardeners. After what seemed a silence of minutes she said, “I have never questioned your father’s judgment. But when he sent you away I thought my heart it would break. And then later, much later, when he finally told me he had married you off in such a cold-hearted way I was so very angry with him. I have never been angry with him before or since. You understand, Julian, yes?”

“He did what he considered necessary.”

“But… An arranged marriage it was not what I wanted for my son.”

That brought him back to the table and for want of something to fill the awkward silence between them he poured out a dish of coffee and stirred in a spoon full of sugar. His eyes locked on hers.

“But what choice did my father have? Allow me to make an imprudent match on the Continent just to spite him or secure his dynastic future by arranging my marriage with a Cavendish heiress in the hopes that one day in the future there would be children of the match before his death? It is no worse than the situation he finds himself in: old enough to be a grandfather to his own children and married to a woman almost half his age who will outlive him by thirty years. I know which I prefer.” When his mother looked away swiftly, emerald-green eyes awash with tears, he wished he could have cut out his tongue than have wounded her by such unthinking truths. He drew up a chair. “Lord, Maman, I didn’t mean—I just wanted to reassure you—”

The Duchess cleared her throat. “I am perfectly well aware your father… He and I we will not grow old together,” she interrupted in thickly accented English; the first time he had heard her speak his native tongue in many years. “I realize this concerns you; that one day soon your father he will—that he will no longer be with us—and I will have to live—live without him…”

“There really is no need—”

“Yes. There is a very great need!” she said in a rush. “This opportunity I may never have again. You think it is easy for me to talk of Monseigneur leaving me? That we will soon be parted on this earth? It is a thing that is the most horrid imaginable and I never dwell on it. It is only that I must tell you how it is so you will stop worrying about me. And you do worry, don’t you, Julian? That is the truth of the matter.” She stared at the opposite wall with its patterned wallpaper of lotus flowers and cranes. “I do not know why it is so, but it is easier to explain these things to you in the English tongue, it makes it less real to me. So you will please excuse my pronunciation; I am out of practice.”

She was trying desperately to be strong, but it only served to make her appear even younger, more fragile and more vulnerable. And her green eyes were so full of sorrow that Julian could not look at her.

“We understand one another, Julian. Yes?” she asked. When he nodded his bowed head, she rallied herself. “I count each day with your father as a blessing and I do not care what those fools, those idiot physicians say! I intend that your father live a great many years yet.”

“Of course he will, Maman, a great many years,” Julian assured her gently; privately he did not hold to such a conviction.

“You think because your father he is in frail health he does not
see
? Never forget, Julian: Monseigneur is as omniscient as ever. He knows you frown on the consequences his dissipated past has brought to his family, that you conduct your life very differently from what his was like when he first became Duke.”

“But I have never judged him, Maman!”

Antonia covered her son’s fingers with her small hand and smiled. “That is very true,
mon fils
,” she said, unconsciously reverting to her native French tongue. “But he sees that you view your future as Duke with trepidation and reluctance.”

“Of course I am reluctant! To inherit my birthright he must be dead. You think that is a prospect I relish? That in order for me to strut the world stage as Duke, my father, a man I love and respect, must be cold in his grave? Lord, Maman, you above all others must see that I dread the coming of the day when I am saluted as His Grace the Most Noble Duke of Roxton.”

“Yes, I see it, Julian,” the Duchess replied sadly, tears glistening on her cheeks, “but I ask that you not
show
it. He wants to leave this world knowing you embrace his exalted position with all the enthusiasm and energy in which he inherited the title from his grandfather. What he needs now, at this the end of his long life, is the reassurance that your future it is secure… and to be at peace. Deborah’s pregnancy has given him reassurance but only you can give him peace.”

Julian sat back in his chair, momentarily uncomfortable, and rubbed the tips of his long fingers across his stubbled cheek. “If he is concerned the annulment will go forward…”

Antonia dried her eyes on a scrap of lace she called a handkerchief and shook her head and smiled. “I am not talking about that great piece of nonsense at all! A one-eyed idiot can see that you and Deborah are very much in love. That pleases us both more than I can tell you.”

In spite of himself, Julian felt his face flood with heat. “Strange,” he muttered, “Deb knew instantly the same about you and Father…”

“Because she has a pure heart and thus sees the truth,” the Duchess stated. She sat forward in the lattice-backed chair, as if fearing to be overheard. “Listen to me, Julian. What I have to tell you your father and I have never told a living soul, and you must promise it will go no further,
mon fils
,
hein
?” Julian’s nod of assent made her continue. “I tell you this without your father knowing I do so. It bruises my heart to go behind his back in this way because me I have never done so before, but… It is important for your future and the future of your sons that the past is finally laid to rest. You see, Julian,” she said in a halting voice, gaze lowered to where her hand rested on her son’s embroidered upturned cuff, “The Comtesse Duras-Valfons has always maintained that her son is Monseigneur’s son also; that her child was conceived at Fontainebleau when Monseigneur was hunting with the King. The parish records bear this out, for the boy was indeed born nine months after the King’s Hunt, around the time of your own birth…” Her green eyes flickered to Julian’s immobile face and then lowered again with a small sigh. “Your father and I we were married two months after this Hunt and you were born just seven months later. Before your time, we said. But that was a convenient lie. You were a small baby and that made it easier to convince others, but you had not quickened early.”

Julian frowned. He wanted to stand to stretch his legs for the conversation had taken an intimate turn that he was not convinced he needed to hear. It made him shift restlessly on his chair. “What is the point of this, Maman? Given the Duke’s past, I am not at all shocked to learn he bedded his mistress then turned around and married you out of hand. What’s important to me is that he reformed his wicked ways for you.”

Antonia squeezed his arm. “Listen to me, Julian,” she demanded imperiously. “Do you not understand that if Mme Duras-Valfons and I conceived around the same time that your father he was not bedding that woman at all! I may have fallen in love with a great rake but your father he knew very well what was expected of him before I would give myself to him.”

Julian cocked an eyebrow at her. “And you think I don’t know who rules this noble roost?”

The Duchess waved her hands at him. “Please do not interrupt again or I may not be able to tell you all of it before Monseigneur he returns. Particularly when this is the most difficult part to explain.” She sighed again. “I tell you the rest bluntly. Your father he did reform his ways for me. From the moment he became my guardian around the time of my eighteenth birthday—while I was living here in this house—which was many months before we were married, he rejected all other females, and this while I was still engaged to another. It is true I tell you, Julian!”

“I believe you, Maman,” he reassured her, hiding his astonishment and spreading smile at her scowl.

“The day Monseigneur relinquished his guardianship of me I was to go to London to stay with my grandmother. Your father he went off to Fontainebleau and your Aunt Estée she went with Vallentine to visit her Tante Victoire in Saint-Germain, and so the Hôtel it was shut up. But I did not go to England straight away and Monseigneur he did not go to Fontainebleau. He returned at nightfall… to be with me. Martin he is the only one who knows this. We spent a week here alone in this apartment. That is when you were conceived.” Her gaze flickered to her son’s face. “You understand now, Julian, yes, why your father he will not speak of this time. Why it must remain between us?”