Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (38 page)

“Dominique! Desist with these theatrics at once!” Evelyn Ffolkes called out, and tottered up to his startled cousin in his high heels to pry the beauty from his chest only for the girl to turn and throw her arms about his neck. He bore her suffocating embrace for ten seconds and then demanded in a voice one used with a spoiled child that she release him at once or be responsible for the ruin of a perfectly good Brussels lace cravat and his favorite silk Chinoiserie waistcoat. He had endured enough this afternoon to fill three lifetimes and he wasn’t about to add the ruination of his clothes to the list!

“You missed the performance, such as it was, and are extremely fortunate to find me in one piece,” he grumbled, still so overcome with angry annoyance that his first open-air musical performance had turned into a musical fiasco when it was interrupted by gunfire and then a riot, that he was completely oblivious to the situation at hand and that not twenty feet away lay the covered bloodied body of Robert Thesiger. “If it hadn’t been for my quick thinking in overturning our chairs to form a Roman barricade of sorts, I doubt we would’ve survived our ordeal with the stampeding cattle!”

“Cattle?” The girl’s blue eyes opened very wide as she looked about her. “But, Evelyn, there are no cows here, surely?”

“Cattle! Cows!
Canaille
! They are all one and the same! Philistines!” Evelyn argued, setting his wig to rights and shrugging his shoulders in a bad-tempered way.

It was then that out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the state of the carnage: Two militia were inspecting the lifeless body sprawled out in the gravel, lifting a corner of Thesiger’s embroidered frock coat as if needing to verify for certain that the man was indeed dead. More militia on horseback was dispersing a group of onlookers to this macabre scene.

The composer looked swiftly up at his cousin, took in his tousled hair and soiled shirt, saw the makeshift bloodied bandage about his upper arm and drew an audible breath. “What happened here, Alston?”

“I thought that obvious,” Julian stated coldly. “Thesiger attempted to kidnap my wife and child and now he is dead.”

“
Mon Dieu
!” cried the composer and crossed himself, a shaking hand to his mouth. “Is Deborah—Is she—safe?”

Deb stepped out from behind her husband then, gown brushed down but irreparably creased, and with her long dark red hair littered with pins and tumbling loosely about her shoulders. She glanced curiously at the blue-eyed beauty clinging possessively to the composer’s silken arm and knew her identity at once. “I am safe, Eve. I used Otto’s pistol. I’m afraid that’s what started the riot.”

Julian viewed his wife anew, eyebrows raised. He was not pleased but was all admiration for her quick-thinking courage. “Did you indeed. Shoot my pheasants by all means, Madam wife, but no more carrying pistols on your person. Do you hear?” When Deb nodded meekly, but couldn’t hide the twinkle in her eye or the dimple in her cheek, Julian put his arm about her shoulders to whisper near her ear, “I shall deal with you in my own way later, vixen.”

“
O là là
! So this one, she is Madame la Marquise d’Alston?” the beauty blurted out with something akin to awe. “Evelyn,” she said accusingly, “you omitted to tell me how very beautiful she is!”

“It is Dominique, yes? But you prefer to be called Lisette?” Deb asked calmly and stuck out her hand when the girl dropped a respectful curtsey.

“
Oui
, Mme la Marquise,” Lisette Lefebvre answered diffidently, a shy glance up at the Marquis who was staring fixedly at his cousin.

“Well, Cousin, this is your last opportunity to explain yourself,” Julian stated coldly. “If not for my sake, then you owe it to Deborah to tell her the truth.”

The musician swallowed and looked from his noble cousin’s expression of implacability to Deborah who was smiling kindly upon him. But before he could offer a word of explanation, Lisette Lefebvre took a deep breath and decided it was time to be brave.

“M’sieur le Marquis, Evelyn you cannot blame for the—the
predicament
in which you find yourself with the Lieutenant of Police! The blame it rests entirely with me. I had no idea that one little lie, told so long ago, would fester into an even bigger more horrible lie.” She glanced at the composer and confessed with guilty downcast eyes, “I was most offended, M’sieur le Marquis, when you ignored me at the Opera, and at the Duc d’Orleans ball when you would not stand up with me, which was most cruel of you so I told a-a lie—”

“Ah! Dominique!” Evelyn burst out in despair. “I told you over and over but you refused to listen! Alston loathes being the center of attention.”

“But, Evelyn, that is inconceivable to me. Why would the son of a duke not want to be the focus of everyone’s adoration? It is most natural and expected that a nobleman—”

“Dominique, for God’s sake, get on with it before my mother has the Duke send out the militia for me and then we will never be able to marry,” pleaded the composer, a shaking hand to his throbbing temple.

The girl flushed scarlet and continued, a fearful glance up at the handsome nobleman whom she had failed to ensnare with her sweet voice and great beauty. “When M’sieur le Marquis you would not dance with me my friend Beatrice she laughed that I should be so cruelly ignored. I was angry at Beatrice for making fun of me so I told her a lie in the strictest confidence, knowing she would tell the other girls: That M’sieur le Marquis you were only feigning to ignore me and that in truth we were lovers.”

A groan escaped from the composer and he hung his head.

“Evelyn! If you look at me in that horrid way again I will cry and not be able to go on. I admit I did not see the harm in adding myself to the string of beauties M’sieur le Marquis has seduced! What was one more name when it is rumored—”

“
Rumor
? A rumor has no more substance to it than a meringue, you little fool! Rumor is mere speculative nonsense! It is not fact,” Evelyn argued angrily, adding with no regard for the presence of his stony-faced cousin, “If you want fact, my love, then let me disappoint you and all those scheming, doe-eyed creatures who have ever thrown their heaving bosoms at my cousin’s noble chest, by telling you that M’sieur le Marquis is the greatest stiff-necked moralist I have ever met. He would no more get between a whore’s legs as willingly step on a dog turd!”

Lisette Lefebvre sniffed back tears and said pettishly, “Evelyn, you are merely jealous because these females they did not throw themselves at your chest too! But as I have told you before today M’sieur le Marquis he is to be a duke one day. Besides, what I said to Beatrice was not so very far from the truth because you and I we were lovers by the time of the Duc d’Orleans’ ball and as M’sieur le Marquis’s cousin you—”

“And that makes it acceptable to—”

“Allow mademoiselle Lefebvre to get on with her story,” Julian interrupted coldly.

“Thank you, M’sieur le Marquis,” Lisette answered in a small voice, the quarrelling lovers coming to a sense of their surroundings. “When I was telling this little lie to Beatrice we were sitting in the Duc D’Orleans’ beautiful gardens, with Chinese lanterns in all the trees and floating candles on all the ponds, but it was too dark for us to notice that our conversation it was overheard by M’sieur Thesiger who was in the shadows. Me he must have followed out into the gardens. When Beatrice returned inside M’sieur Thesiger revealed himself to me and wanted to know if what I said was indeed the truth.” Lisette shuddered and appealed to the Marquis with big blue eyes swimming with tears. “You know Robert Thesiger, do you not, M’sieur le Marquis? He wanted to marry me. Many, many times did he ask and me I said no, no and no! I could not marry a man who boasted of being a bastard son of a Duke! That is a thing most abhorrent to my family. And so I thought if I confirmed the truth of my lie to M’sieur Thesiger he would hate me and leave me in peace.”

She glanced at Deb and hung her head, feeling the heat of shame in her cheeks. “Robert Thesiger did indeed believe me and he did indeed hate me after that. He told my Papa and it broke my Papa’s heart. I did not think such a little lie would turn into one big scandal. After all, what could Papa do against a nobleman? I never dreamed Papa he would lock me away and have his lawyers question me. That horrid Lieutenant of Police he had me sign a paper condemning you, M’sieur le Marquis. I did not want to sign it but Papa he would not let me out of my rooms until I had done so. And how could Evelyn elope with me if I remained locked away? Please, M’sieur le Marquis, I beg of you, if you cannot forgive me please forgive Evelyn. Evelyn he loves you like a brother but he could not tell you the truth until our elopement it was all arranged and my Papa he was not to find out the truth before we were on our way to Italy. None of this is Evelyn’s fault. It is mine entirely!”

She burst into tears and clung to the composer who took her in a comforting embrace and whispered soothing words in her ear until she took a great shuddering breath and was quiet. A heavy silence followed this confession, broken only when Julian addressed his cousin.

“I gave you ample time and opportunity to make a clean breast of it and still you hesitated to do the honorable thing and tell the Duke and your mother the truth,” he said bitterly. “And, by God, when you finally drummed up the courage to set matters to rights you left it damnably close! What would it have taken, the loss of my child, Deborah’s death perhaps, before you claimed responsibility for the consequences of your despicable actions?”

“Julian! I’d never have let you enter that courtroom, my word on it!”

“Your word became worthless the instant you bought into mademoiselle Lefebvre’s lie. If you’ve a shred of decency left, find a priest and marry her without delay!”

Evelyn glanced pleadingly at Deborah. “I did not mean for this business to drag out as long as it has. It’s just that I didn’t want Thesiger to know about us until I could safely get Dominique away without him—”

“—challenging you to a duel?” Julian interrupted contemptuously. “Heaven forbid you should risk your precious life for the woman you love!”

Evelyn lowered his gaze, unable to refute his cousin’s inference because it was true. He was only too glad it was his cousin and not himself who had fought a duel with Robert. “Dominique and I are eloping to the Italian States,” he said quietly. “Who knows when we will see each other again; if the Duke will ever allow me back into the family fold… Julian, you and me, we were once the best of friends, as close as brothers. I need—no I
beg
—your forgiveness.”

The Marquis met his cousin’s impassioned gaze, features implacable as ever, but it was Deborah’s hand in his and the faint scent of perfume in her tumble of hair that softened his features. It made him say on a more conciliatory note,

“Not yet. When you return from your bridal trip—perhaps. That’s the best I can offer you.” And with that he turned on a heel and walked away to greet two happy laughing boys coming along the avenue. Beside them Joseph, black-eyed and bloodied but looking none the worse for fighting a bunch of sinister acrobats with his bare hands, and Brigitte, hair mussed and gown crumpled; both servants looking relieved and pleased to see Deborah and Julian unharmed.

Deborah put out her hands to Evelyn and kissed his cheeks.

“I wish you happy, Eve. I truly do. If you ever return to England, please come and see us. I’m sure, given time, Julian will forgive…”

Evelyn embraced her. “
Ma cherie
, he may forgive but, like his father before him, he will be a most obdurate Duke. But I shall come, if only to visit your brood and to see how Jack progresses with his viola. I expect great things of that boy.”

Lisette Lefebvre bobbed another curtsey, and then with Evelyn’s hand in hers, they walked off up the avenue, neither one looking back. It was only when they’d disappeared from view behind a row of abandoned stalls that Deb turned her back on them to discover the body of Robert Thesiger being loaded onto a cart by a couple of men under direction of the militia. She averted her eyes and walked over to where Julian had carefully herded Harry and Jack to the other side of the steps, out of the line of sight of such a macabre scene.

Jack and Lord Henri-Antoine were regaling the Marquis with a vivid account of their adventures, considering it a great lark that people had panicked and begun running everywhere at the sound of a single shot. And they had enjoyed themselves immensely helping to build a barricade of chairs with the musicians from behind which they had front row seats, particularly to the futile attempts of the animal handlers to regain control of their stampeding, squealing and rearing charges. Lord Henri-Antoine magnanimously conceded that it was a pity the concert had been interrupted at the precise moment of Jack’s solo performance but both boys exclaimed that never in their wildest imaginings had they dreamed a dull garden concert would turn out to be the best day’s entertainment they had ever seen. What did Alston think?

The boys were so bright eyed and keen for the Marquis to enter into the spirit of their adventures that Julian hadn’t the heart to deflate their exuberance with recriminations about his brother’s truancy. And he was so relieved that both boys were unharmed and unaffected by the day’s traumatic events that he merely ruffled their hair with a grin and sent them off with Joseph to await him at the carriage. He then returned to Deb, whom he found sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, with her face in her hands.

He immediately went down on one knee beside her. “Darling, what is it? Tell me!”

“’tis nothing,” she replied with a watery smile as she lifted her face. “Just a thought. I’m sure my condition is making me exceedingly missish.”

He frowned. “Thought? You are well? You aren’t hurt?”

“No. That is… I don’t think so,” she said quietly, looking with concern at his unshaven face. “But what if later—What if… Julian, what if I lose this baby?”

“Nonsense!” he said with a bravado he didn’t completely feel.

“But… What if these exertions today bring on the child too early? Then, Thesiger, he-he gained his objective…”