Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (4 page)

“Martin?” Julian interrupted and turned his head on the pillow to look down the foot of the bed at an elderly gentleman with grizzled hair. “Have I been a sad trial,
mon parrain
?”

Martin Ellicott smiled and shook his head. He showed the physician to the door and then returned to pull up a chair beside the bed, motioning away his lordship’s hovering valet with a slight wave. “How do you feel?”

They spoke in French.

“Passable,” Julian replied. “I have a thumping headache. Have I really been tossing about in bed for three nights?”

“Yes. You contracted a chill that turned into a fever. That is not important now. You must rest and regain your strength.”

“Always in and out of some scrape, aye, Martin?” Julian grinned self-consciously. “But this time it was not of my making. If you can believe me.”

“I never doubt you, M’sieur.”

“
M’sieur
? When has my godfather ever called me anything but Julian when we are private?” He frowned. “Ah. Your expression, or should I say, lack of one, gives you away. You look remarkably like
mon père
when you put on that face. Did you learn from Father or vice versa? Never mind. You are about to lecture me on my folly.”

“No. Not now. Could you eat something?”

“I don’t know. Mayhap something other than that pap I seem to recall having pushed down my throat.” He watched the old man stand slowly. “Martin,” he said abruptly, “was I ever lucid during those days?”

“Occasionally.” He gave a rare smile. “Always in French.”

Julian sighed. “Thank God for that.” He looked past his godfather. “Did I make mention of any particular circumstance?”

Martin Ellicott was silent a moment and it brought the younger man’s eyes back to his face. “You asked that your parents not be told. I did not tell them. You know I would not distress their Graces for the world. I need not add that
Monseigneur
—”

“I am well aware of the Duke of Roxton’s uncanny ability to know my every move. He’ll be as mad as hellfire but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Oh… Then I must have dreamed… I seem to recall asking you—”

“—about a young lady with brown eyes?”

“Yes. She patched me up.”

“Is that so?” mused Martin Ellicott, a twinkle in his eye.

“I didn’t conjure up this female in some opium induced dream. She is flesh and blood.”

“If she is the one who bandaged you up, then you do indeed owe her a debt of gratitude.” Martin Ellicott executed a neat bow. “Now you must rest and I will send Frew in with a tray of something palatable. Tomorrow we will discuss what is to be done to find your savior.”

The Marquis gave a grunt of laughter that made him grimace. “Well, I’d hate for you to think me as weak-brained as Uncle Lucian—”

The old man gave an involuntary shudder. “No one could be as weak-brained as that.”

“—but you shouldn’t have difficulty finding her. She sneaks out to the Avon forest to play her viola because Gerry don’t like it one bit. Then again he’s tone deaf, so he wouldn’t, would he?”

Martin Ellicott refrained from commenting and went out of the room. Opium, he thought. It had to be the opium.

~   ~   ~

The young woman with the brown eyes who occupied the Marquis of Alston’s thoughts in his sickbed waking hours was Miss Deborah Cavendish who lived in a tall, narrow fronted house on the east side of Milsom Street, two doors up from the Octagon Proprietary Chapel. It was a respectable address, close to all the amenities of town and only a short walk to the newly opened Upper Assembly Rooms. Yet, it was not considered a fashionable place to reside by the first families. The street housed chapels and trade, and the great rumble of traffic during the Season was considered unpleasant. The buildings lacked the style and elegance and aspect to be found in Queen Square, the Circus or Gay Street. Such an address might do for the seasonal lodger but could not be considered a comfortable or respectable address for a Cavendish.

Yet the house and its situation suited Deb. So much the better to be crammed in amongst seasonal lodgers, faceless chapel-goers and industrious merchants, who had more to do with their time and energy than to squander it in idle conversation, as did the Quality. The Quality spent their time at the Pump Room sweating out their ills in the hot water of the King’s Bath; ingested scandal with their morning glasses of mineral water, and later in the day, sipped tea laced with the latest gossip in the Assembly Rooms.

Not that Deb was out to shun Bath society or its jostle of habitués. She was often to be seen at the offered entertainments; promenading in the Pump Room; dancing at the Assembly Room Balls; and taking breakfast with a party across the river Avon at Sydney Gardens. She had become a well-known favorite of the year-round inhabitants; indeed was sought after to play at cards with the old infirm gentlemen whose membership boasted three retired Colonels, a General and a sprinkling of beknighted self-made men. And there were the widows, titled, genteel and mercantile, all hypochondriacs of one form or another who confided their ills to dear Miss Cavendish.

Yet, she was politely overlooked by the most intimate of circles, made up exclusively of the sons and daughters and cousins of the first families in the land. These illustrious personages readily rubbed shoulders with all degrees of society at the public entertainments but were highly selective as to who could enter their drawing rooms or put their feet under the dining room table. It was not that Deb’s lineage was to be sneered at, after all she was a Cavendish and cousin to the fifth Duke of Devonshire and a considerable heiress.

Deb’s social consequence and respectability was severely tarnished by her volatility of character. When she was just sixteen years old she had left the sanctuary of her brother’s house against his wishes and traveled to the Continent to look after her ill brother, a musician who was the black sheep of the family. Her two years on the Continent may have been overlooked, after all her disobedience to her brother Sir Gerald was due to her devotion to her brother Otto who sadly, but thankfully for the family’s good name, died in Paris before he could disgrace the family further.

Deb had resurfaced in Bath, fresh-faced and looking for all the world as if scandal had never touched her lovely form but with her orphaned nephew in tow. The nephew was the product of Otto’s coupling with a wandering gypsy. That Miss Cavendish chose to give the boy a roof over his swarthy head when her elder brother Sir Gerald had at first refused to acknowledge such base offspring scandalized society to such a degree that speculation was rife about the sort of life Miss Cavendish had led on the Continent and provided the tea table gossips with a plethora of conjecture.

Deb had heard the whisperings, saw the lascivious glances of disreputable men, and the hostile looks of upright matrons. It would have been too simple to say she did not care in the least what was thought of her, she did. But she also knew there was nothing she could do to change society’s opinion of her. That was carved in stone. As long as society kept its distance and did not interfere in her life, she was quite content to coexist with her peers.

And so it was with head held high that she stepped out of a sedan chair and paid off the chairmen, green velvet riding skirts over one arm, and entered Bath’s noisy and crowded Pump Room in search of her sister-in-law, Lady Mary Cavendish. She had been about to ride out for a breakfast engagement with her French tutor; an elderly gentleman who had settled in a quaint Queen Anne House on the outskirts of town after a lifetime’s service in the employ of some illustrious but nameless French aristocrat. Lady Mary’s hastily scrawled note arrived as she was dressing and requested her immediate presence in the Pump Room.

It surprised Deb that Mary had come to town so early in the Season. Not to have forewarned her of such plans made Deb suspicious. It would be too much of a coincidence for Mary to be in Bath the precise week Deb was making plans to quit the declining waterhole for Paris. She suspected her odious brother had once again sent his wife in his place. Deb had no proof but she believed he kept abreast of her every move by paying a member of her household to spy.

Deb found Lady Mary seated at a window overlooking the King’s Bath and caught in conversation with a stiff-necked society matron who rose immediately Deb came through the crowd towards them.

“Don’t get up, Lady Reigate,” Deb said cheerfully. “I came only to say good morning to Lady Mary.”

“Deb! How good of you to come,” said Lady Mary, fluttering her fan in agitation, a sidelong glance at her conversationalist. “Will you take a glass of water with us?”

Deb leaned over to kiss Lady Mary’s cheek. “No, thank you. I hate the taste and it’s quite fouled you know.”

“Good day, Lady Mary,” Lady Reigate said with an outstretched hand and a curt nod in Deb’s direction. “It’s reassuring to see a familiar face so early in the season. You will come to my
soirée
? I want to hear all about how your cousin the Duchess is holding up, what with her son embroiled in another seduction scandal. Not that I blame Alston. So handsome and so virile, is it any wonder silly French girls swoon at the sight of him? But such a trial on his poor Mamma. Do come on Tuesday, won’t you?”

“Thank you for the invitation,” said Lady Mary, pulling Deb down beside her. “Thank goodness you came when you did,” she said with a sigh, Lady Reigate barely out of earshot. “I’ve heard enough about Alston’s degrading behavior not to want to be subjected to a moral monologue of his ills by that creature!” She noticed Deb’s riding skirts. “I haven’t upset your morning plans, have I?”

Deb was staring down at the waders in the King’s Bath, smiling at the bobbing figures in their ridiculous brown gowns and small bars of soap on floating plates. “Not at all, dearest. I intend to ride out to keep my engagement. But your note expressed some urgency. I hope little Theodora isn’t ill?”

“Theodora? Oh, no. Your little niece is very well indeed and I hated to leave her with Nurse at such a time. She is teething y’know. But Sir Gerald is tied up with tenant matters and cannot get away to see you himself for at least a sennight so he thought it best I come to Bath in his stead.”

Deb couldn’t help a crooked smile. “If Gerry is tied up with estate matters for a sennight then I do see the urgency for your visit.” When Lady Mary appeared suitably blank faced Deb shook her head. “I’m sorry you came all this way for little return, Mary. I won’t alter my travel plans.”

“So it is true.” Lady Mary moaned. She grasped Deb’s gloved hand. “I wanted to call on you in Milsom Street but I feared finding a hallway stacked with trunks and so thought it best to talk with you here, in a public place where we could be private.”

“Dearest Mary, how like you to think it more private here in a crowded Pump Room than within my four walls; and yet how true. Yes, my hallway is piled high with luggage because I intend taking Jack to Paris as soon as I receive word from Mr. Ffolkes. Colonel Thistlewaite! How do you do?” Deb acknowledged, hand outstretched to a middle-aged gentleman who had broken away from his own party to bow before Deb with a flourish. “Permit me to present my sister Lady Mary Cavendish.” To which the portly gentleman in purple silken knee breeches and saffron yellow frock coat with black lacings bowed over Lady Mary’s little plump hand, a twinkle in his jaundiced watery eye. “You mustn’t mind the Colonel,” Deb continued with a bright smile. “He admires all the pretty females with the eye of a connoisseur.”

“Have you been out riding, my dear Miss Cavendish?” he asked, his whole attention returning to Deb; the sister thought pretty but not animated enough for this military man. “For shame that you did not spare a thought for Colonel Thistlewaite.”

“You cannot join me upon this occasion, Colonel, for I go to my French lesson as usual. Lady Mary, Colonel Thistlewaite and I are Hazard partners, are we not, Colonel?”

“And fleece all comers!” laughed the Colonel. “You haven’t forgotten our engagement this afternoon?”

“With the Brownlowes? Not I.”

When the Colonel politely took his leave to join his cronies at the far end of the room, Lady Mary said in a thin voice of disapproval, “You don’t sit down with him to cards, Deb?”

“I do, Mary.”

“Can’t you guess what he is?”

“Why of course.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” complained Lady Mary. “The way he looked at you, and those others over there with him. I don’t know who they are, of course because—”

“Then you must not judge them. They’re old and quite harmless, I assure you.”

“But what would Sir Gerald think if he knew you—”

“—played cards with a retired regiment? What do I care for Gerry’s censure?” She said this with a careless shrug but there was an edge to her voice that should have warned Lady Mary to beware. The latter was not very quick on the uptake and rushed headlong into a defense of her husband and thus disaster.

“I’m sure you think them harmless enough, and mayhap they are,” she lectured. “But you were never one to worry your head over gossip, but it really does matter what people think of you if you are to marry well; particularly after your foolhardy behavior in running off to Paris to care for Otto. As I am older than you, and married, I feel I can speak with some authority—”

Deb stood up and shook out her petticoats. “Mary, you’re wasting your time to try and persuade me not to go to Paris. I must: For Jack. He has progressed far beyond what I can teach him. He needs an experienced tutor such as Mr. Ffolkes. I only await his letter of reply to leave this watering hole. You should return to Theodora who needs you. It was quite selfish of Gerry to make you come.”

“I hate to continually remind you of what happened in Paris when Sir Gerald had to drag you home before you eloped with Mr. Ffolkes—”

“Then don’t!” Deb said through gritted teeth.

“How do we—you—know you won’t fall in love with him all over again when you see him?” Lady Mary said in a small voice. “It’s been years but I know Evelyn still holds a candle for you. He never married and says he never shall. Sir Gerald thinks—”