Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (37 page)

Frantically he tried to push his way through the immoveable crowd that seemed to swell in number by the minute. Swarthy faces, toothless and unshaven, began to replace those of the gentleman and women come to the gardens for a leisurely stroll. Tumblers, stilt walkers and a band of rowdy musicians clogged the avenue and when he tried to break through their ranks he was rudely and unceremoniously shoved backwards and told that this section of the gardens was now closed to the public.

His second attempt saw him knocked off his feet, the promise of gold extinguishing all deference to rank, for although the acrobats who wrestled Julian to the ground took in the fineness of his clothes, the whiteness of his soft hands and the ornate hilt of his sword and rightly concluded that here was a gentleman if not a nobleman, they had their orders. Besides what could one nobleman do against a gang of muscular circus performers?

What they failed to assess was that the nobleman’s fine lace ruffles and exquisite coat of superfine disguised a well-exercised physique whose strength was fuelled by a furious anxiety in his need to rescue his wife and unborn child from danger. He refused to stay down and had knocked out cold two tumblers and was all for taking on the third when Joseph materialized beside him. The groom’s nose was bloody and he had the beginnings of a black eye but his grin was enough to convince Julian that the man was enjoying the fray hugely and obviously looked worse then he felt.

He jumped in to assist the Marquis, who was beating off a particularly hard-set gypsy, and shouted out for his lordship to go after the Marchioness. He, Joseph, would take care of this ugly customer. Julian nodded his understanding and took off running down the avenue. He was almost upon the procession of performers and musicians when he saw the two footmen in Roxton livery leave the path and set off across the flowerbeds. He slowed, wondering what they were up to and whom he should follow, the liveried footmen or the procession, and then to his surprise Robert Thesiger appeared from the back of the procession and disappeared between two stalls, alone.

And then not a minute later there came the deafening noise of a pistol being discharged. The explosion rang out across the expanse of gardens and for one shocked moment an eerie silence descended on the Tuileries. The sound of pistol fire brought out everyone’s worst fears and panic overwhelmed even the most phlegmatic of temperaments. Pandemonium ensued. Fearing shots meant a pistol-wielding madman was on the loose, visitors to every quarter of the terraced gardens panicked and instantly sought escape.

People ran in all directions. Wild-eyed parents scooped up crying children, agitated shopkeepers and their customers dived under chairs and into the back of stalls seeking refuge from the unknown assailant and the stampeding hordes. Puppeteers, mime artists and street performers, animal handlers with their screeching monkeys and barking little dogs, all leapt out of the way or were pushed aside as hundreds of people trampled over carefully tended flower beds, dived into ornamental ponds to hide with the fish or raced with frenzied determination for the nearest exit.

Shouts went up for the militia.

At the sound of pistol fire Julian’s heart missed a beat and the blood rushed up into his ears. He had a nauseous presentiment that the pistol fire was connected to Deb’s abduction and it fuelled a furious determination to get to her as quickly as possible. He elbowed his way through the fleeing hordes, withstanding the mindless jostling and knocks from the onslaught of a frenzied mob. Size and height saved him from being trampled but it also meant he stood out in a crowd seeking help to escape from a phantom madman. More than once he was appealed to, but he ignored all requests for assistance and ran on.

And then Julian saw her, his beautiful, courageous wife, watched over by the two liveried servants he had instructed to be her shadow whenever she ventured outside the protective high walls surrounding the Hôtel Roxton. She was sitting calmly on the steps that led up to the river, clothes and hair disheveled, but very much alive. The noise and madness surrounding him ceased to be important, the shouting and the screams barely registered. It mattered little that somewhere in the Tuileries there might be a madman with a pistol. Deb was unharmed and no one and nothing else mattered. He breathed deeply, as if, for the first time since he saw her together with Robert Thesiger, a great stone weight had been lifted off his chest.

He strode towards her, a hand held up above his head to let her know he had seen her. When she waved back, he smiled for the first time since entering the Tuileries. Yet she did not look happy and when she averted her face with tears in her eyes his happiness evaporated and in its place was a heaviness of heart that made each step closer to her as if he was wading through thick mud. He felt empty and hollow thinking that some harm must have come to her or the baby, for what else would make Deb look so stricken? He then chanced to follow her tearful gaze and there standing at the end of the avenue, sword drawn and waiting him was Robert Thesiger.

S
IXTEEN

S
O IT HAD COME TO THIS
: A duel in the Tuileries in the broad light of day, with the formalities ignored and his pregnant wife watching on. The ludicrous reality brought a crooked smile to Julian’s mouth as he watched Robert Thesiger make an elaborate display of flexing his rapier. The man’s intentions couldn’t be cruder, nor his methods more dishonorable. Julian was in no doubt that Thesiger meant a duel to the death. So be it.

Julian stripped off his frock coat and tore the ruffles from his shirtsleeves, rolling the ragged edges up out of the way to his elbows. He then scraped back the curls that had fallen into his eyes during the fight with the acrobats and retied the ribbon at the nape of his neck. Preparations concluded (he would not allow himself even one brief glance at his wife) he approached Thesiger with sword drawn. They briefly saluted one another in the formal manner, and then steel hissed against steel.

The duel commenced.

From the moment the swords crossed, Thesiger went in for the attack, his frenzied swordplay instantly putting Julian on the back foot. Time and again Thesiger lunged, employing every trick of the fencing master’s art, forcing his opponent back across the gravel at a furious pace in the hopes of wrong-footing him. He saw an opening in Julian’s defense and delivered a lightening thrust. At the last moment, it was expertly deflected. But the tip of Thesiger’s rapier caught inside Julian’s rolled sleeve, flexed the steel shaft of the sword bow-like and then it sprung forward and upwards. The sleeve of Julian’s shirt ripped, the needlepoint tip of Thesiger’s blade glanced up along his bared upper arm and split the taut flesh of hardened muscle. Blood instantly flowed from the stinging wound and trickled down Julian’s arm and the blades disengaged.

But Thesiger wasn’t about to give Julian any respite. He snarled “on guard” and the fight went on. Far from giving Thesiger any advantage, the wound made little difference to Julian’s ability with the sword, the stinging and the trickle of blood ignored as he met Thesiger’s every thrust and parry with a strong-wristed foil of his own.

Repeatedly the blades clashed with a sing of steel on steel, neither achieving supremacy. Each man was able to counter every move of the other but Thesiger was beginning to tire, evidence in the sweat that soaked his shirt and beaded his forehead. At one point he leapt back and wiped the sweat from his brow and Julian gave him the moment, lowering his blade to wipe the sticky blood from his forearm onto his damp shirt. Thesiger’s blade came up again and the fight resumed, a little less frenzied than before.

They came in close, blades sliding off one another, Thesiger scrambling backwards and fending off a powerful lunge. He fell hard up against the stair wall where just above his powdered sweating head Deb was seated on the step, watched over by a bear-sized footman wielding a pistol. He pushed his shoulders off the wall and righted himself, Julian awaiting his pleasure. It was Thesiger who called “on guard”. With a smile and a sideways glance up at the Marchioness he taunted the husband hoping to whip him into such a white-hot rage of unguarded passion that he would let down his guard. Panting air into his deprived lungs Thesiger said with a sneer as their swords disengaged,

“Your wife—Your cousin—When she was in Paris last—They were lovers—He had her first.”

“Liar!” Julian growled savagely, white-lipped fury and not the cool-headedness of time honored tactics drummed into him by his fencing master causing his lunge to go awry and giving Thesiger the tactical advantage he was seeking.

It was Thesiger who now forced Julian against the wall, flexing the nobleman’s wrist sideways and twisting his grip so that the rapier came down at an angle, enabling Thesiger to get under his guard. He made a final thrust for the nobleman’s heart but Julian’s reflexes were the quicker and his sword came up to thwart the thrust. He managed to push himself off the wall and using his superior strength and stronger wrist forced Thesiger back again, Thesiger’s sword wide of its mark, the point stabbing at air between Julian’s arm and torso.

Unable to halt the momentum of his final lunge, Thesiger stumbled forward and, as Julian leaped out of the way, he fell hard against the wall and then onto his knees in the gravel. He scrambled to pick himself up and put out a hand for his rapier that had spun out of his grip. But the Marquis was there, looming large over him and he grabbed Thesiger by the collar of his wet shirt and hauled him to his feet. Righting him he then scooped up his sword and this he tossed to him, stepping back and calling “on guard”.

But Thesiger knew he was spent and that if he put up his sword Julian would surely kill him in the short encounter to follow. He marveled at the nobleman’s reserves of strength and wondered how best to extricate himself from a no win situation. Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he glanced first at the Marchioness sitting as a marble statue, oval face bleached white and an unblinking gaze on her husband. He then regarded the large figure of the Marquis of Alston, standing tall, damp black curls falling into his eyes, green eyes ablaze and so resembling those belonging to his mother the Duchess that it brought a sneer full of hatred to Thesiger’s lips, the scar puckered and pulsating with heat. He made a halfhearted effort to raise his sword and then did the unexpected. Tossing his sword at Julian’s feet, he rushed towards the stairs leading up to the river.

In two steps he was standing over Deb.

~   ~   ~

Deb had watched the duel as if it was something of a blurred bad dream. When Thesiger’s blade flashed up and split the muscle in her husband’s arm she muffled a cry behind shaking hands, wanting to put a stop to the encounter there and then. Yet she sat calmly on the step as if she was attending an Assembly Ball and she watching a couple dancing a minuet, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her husband to be fighting a duel with this fiend who had sought to destroy her.

When the Marquis finally had the better of his opponent her sigh of relief was audible and the tension eased in her back and shoulders, although Thesiger’s last desperate lunge at her husband’s heart had her eyes tightly closed for the briefest of moments only for her to open them wide to discover Julian standing over Thesiger who was now prostrate on the ground.

Thus when the man leapt up on the step beside her she was startled into wondering what he was about, for the duel looked for all the world as if it would end in Thesiger’s death. Behind her she heard the cock of a pistol and was about to order the footman to hold his fire when the Marquis shouted out for the servant to lower his weapon. Yet before the footman had a chance to obey the command Thesiger made a grab for the pistol.

There was a brief, close struggle between the two men.

The pistol discharged.

The shot rang out across the eerily deserted Tuileries.

The footman and Robert Thesiger stood very still and then fell apart. For a brief moment it was unclear which man had been shot. Then the footman took a step back, the pistol still in his hand and blood splattered across the front of his liveried uniform. Thesiger turned slowly and came face to face with Deb, who had risen to her feet, and his blue eyes were wide and blank. He had both hands to his belly and blood was flowing from between his splayed fingers. He took a step, pitched forward and fell off the stairs.

In three strides Julian was at his side and went down on a knee to cradle the dying man’s head. Thesiger’s eyes flickered open and recognizing the blurred frowning face high above him he grimaced, showing blood-covered teeth.

“Couldn’t give you the—the satisfaction…” he said with great effort, expelled a last breath and was dead.

Julian fetched the dead man’s frock coat and laid it across his upper body before reaching into his own breech’s pocket for his handkerchief to bind up his own wound. Deb came down the steps and took the handkerchief from him and did the deed, her long fingers shaking as she deftly tied a tight knot in the material to staunch the bleeding. He thanked her and there followed a moment’s awkward silence in which neither was able to form the words to express their feelings. All they could do was stare at one another until Deb fell into her husband’s arms to be enveloped in a warm and protective embrace, relief bringing tears and fear of what might have been.

“Sweet Jesus, Deb,” Julian finally whispered in her hair, voice low and unsteady, holding her more tightly against him, “what hell have I put you through?”

“We’re alive and we have each other. That’s all that has ever mattered.”

He smiled and cradled her, face buried in her mussed hair, shudders of relief coursing through his exhausted body. After what seemed an age he kissed the top of her head and looked up at the sound of approaching voices.

Coming along the deserted avenue was his cousin Evelyn Ffolkes and a rag tag bunch of disheveled musicians, two militia on horseback not far behind them, no doubt come to disperse the small crowd gathered to ghoulishly view the dead duelist. Out from behind this gawping group appeared a blue-eyed beauty dressed in a confection of white and lavender petticoats who, having spied the Marquis of Alston, immediately rushed up to him as if her life depended on his protection. Julian stepped forward, not to greet her, but to shield his wife from the prying eyes of the morbid mob. The blue-eyed beauty took his advancement as an invitation to throw herself against his broad chest in a fit of mild hysterics.