Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (9 page)

Mrs. Dawkins-Smythe saw the envy and smiled smugly. “She is lovely, isn’t she?” And to twist the knife further, “Is it a wonder Mr. Thesiger seeks her out? She always dresses splendidly, to the envy of us all. That sapphire blue gown is divine and shows off her statuesque figure to perfection.”

“Vulgar!”

Mrs. Dawkins-Smythe smiled sweetly. “Not a match for your two beauties, to be sure, Sarah. But no one can deny Deb is a diamond of the first—”

“Flawed! Remember her flight to France, to her brother’s sickbed so it was put about. But it is generally acknowledged that she attempted to elope with a musician. A
musician
. No wonder she remains unmarried. No parent wants a bolter for a daughter-in-law,” retorted Lady Reigate and presented her friend with a view of her profile, her daughter Sophia having completed the minuet with Mr. Thesiger. She expected him to ask Rachel for the final minuet and was all smiles as he deposited Sophia into her care once again. But he did not ask Rachel. Nor did he hover to make light conversation. He took his leave and mother and daughters watched him saunter off and disappear to the back of the room. His choice for the second minuet froze their smiles.

Deb, who had been fanning Lady Cleveland, while General Waverley fed her sips of iced lemon water to take away the cough, glanced over her shoulder, wondering why there was a sudden hush to the crowd. She had not intended to dance, that was why she had chosen to sit at the back of the room. But she knew she could not refuse to dance the minuet with Robert Thesiger. So it was with a fixed smile that she took his hand and went out onto the dance floor; one couple in the middle of the vast ballroom, scrutinized by an audience of upwards of five hundred people.

It was not a dislike of dancing which gave her a dread of being Mr. Thesiger’s dance partner. She enjoyed the country-dances very much. But the minuet was the most public of all dances at the Assemblies and she knew that those mammas with eligible daughters must be willing her to trip, to make a wrong step, to appear awkward and stilted if just to show their own daughters to better advantage. She might smile and look as if she was enjoying herself in the company of her partner, but underneath she was trembling and praying she would not make a fool of herself in front of all Bath society.

As they turned and touched hands Robert Thesiger came near enough to say, “You suppose that by turning me away at your door this afternoon I would magically disappear?”

“Can you? I did not know you for a conjurer, Mr. Thesiger,” she quipped and gave him her hand again as they moved across the floorboards toward the orchestra.

“You could do worse than I, my dear Miss Cavendish.”

Deb’s thoughts went immediately to her injured duelist. Yes, she could do worse indeed! She mentally castigated herself for even thinking about him at all. She had promised herself that she would not spend one thought on him the entire Assembly. She felt a fool. She had been consumed for weeks by fears for her injured duelist’s well-being but after his cavalier treatment of her that very morning she was now furious with him for teasingly pretending to want to marry her. The gall of the man!

“Miss Cavendish…?”

Deb blinked at her dancing partner. “Mr. Thesiger?” She came to a sense of her surroundings and said kindly, “You seem to have forgotten that when I marry I must have Sir Gerald’s approval.”

“Ah. Yes. And yet, it is my belief you use Sir Gerald like one does a shield. You bring him out to hide behind, hoping he will protect you from all manner of declarations from prospective suitors, only to throw dull Gerry in a corner, forgotten, when your suitors are in retreat.”

Deb could not deny this because it was true. Whenever she felt the need to put a stop to the verbose compliments of overeager gentlemen callers she routinely trotted out her brother’s name which produced an immediate effect; not unlike dousing the hopeful gentlemen with the contents of a pail of cold water. Yet, Mr. Thesiger remained persistent and she really had no wish to hurt his feelings. After all, unlike a certain other gentleman, Robert Thesiger was nothing if not sincere in his wish to marry her. She made no comment and they continued along the dance floor, Mr. Thesiger squeezing her hand before releasing her and saying with a sad smile,

“I have been mistaken in you, Miss Cavendish. I had taken you for an independent thinker.” The quick angry knot between Deb’s brows was evidence enough that he had made a direct hit and he added in a voice full of resignation, “I had no idea you held to medieval principles.”

It was impossible for her to answer him, such was the sequence of their dance movements, but as they came together again, he circling her sweeping petticoats, she was angered enough by his comment to retort, “I am not at liberty until my twenty-first birthday. Then I may do and say and marry whom I please.”

He smiled, the scar on his left cheek puckering up, and made her a bow, the white lace at his wrists sweeping the polished floorboards. “It warms my heart to hear you say so. And to know that in less than a month you will be freed from your brother’s shackles.”

“Is that so, Mr. Thesiger?” Deb said with some surprise, intrigued he should be so blunt in his opinions about matters that were none of his business. “You and I are the only ones who hold to the belief that I am shackled.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “I have heard a rumor, of course it is absurd but I will mention it anyway, that Sir Gerald has plans to marry you off to the Marquis of Alston.”

“I beg your pardon? Gerry betroth me to the Duke of Roxton’s rakehell heir?” Deb stopped dead in the middle of the floor, forgetting where she was and that a hundred pair of envious eyes watched her every move. Robert Thesiger’s idea was so absurd she wanted to giggle. “No one has seen Lord Alston on English soil since he was a youth. Sir Gerald certainly hasn’t had the pleasure of his company or he would be lacing his correspondence with his lordship this and his lordship that.” She was skeptically amused. “What an absurd and quite fanciful notion, Mr. Thesiger.”

Robert Thesiger smiled weakly and made her his final bow, the lace ruffles at his wrists again sweeping the floor. “That you are to marry Lord Alston or that he is debauched beyond redemption?”

Deb frowned and remembered to curtsy. “I can assure you that my brother has never put to me such a ridiculous proposal nor have I any desire, despite my brother’s slavish devotion to the Roxtons, to ally myself with that family. As for the latter?” She shrugged her lovely bare shoulders. “Everyone has heard the whispers about the Marquis’s many mistresses, his Parisian orgies and his total disregard for his good name. That does not mean there is any truth in the rumors, of course.” Without expecting an answer she teased him, “Perhaps you have attended one his lordship’s Bacchanalian affairs and can make comment?”

Robert Thesiger’s smile did not waver, yet there was no laughter in his blue eyes. The music had ceased and the crowd began to shift in their seats, restless for the country-dances to commence. He did not take her flippant remark as intended. “You will excuse me if I do not give an account of our history here and now, Miss Cavendish. Suffice for me to say that Lord Alston and I were once intimately acquainted. Indeed, when we were boys we were enough alike to be taken for brothers. But now, sadly, I have no wish to be associated with a nobleman who lives such a depraved existence, so depraved in fact that unlike other noblemen’s sons, Alston chooses to live outside the unwritten rules of his kind. He does not confine his whoring to females of his own class, or to women who make a living from their favors. He preys on the innocent daughters of the Parisian middle-class; girls who are ignorant of the ways of the aristocracy and thus are easily taken in by the debonair Marquis. Alston offers them marriage like one offers a pretty girl compliments, and when he has gained their confidence with this lie he deflowers them and moves on to pick the next budding rose.”

Deb put up her gloved hand, nauseous at the prospect of ever coming into contact with such a predatory creature. “Please, Mr. Thesiger, I have heard quite enough. If what you say is true, and I have no reason to doubt you, then he is certainly beyond redemption.” She rested her fingers in the crook of the silken sleeve he offered her and allowed him to escort her from the dance floor. “You may rest easy, sir,” she said, looking into his blue eyes, blue eyes that remained troubled. “When I marry it will be to a gentleman of my choosing. Sir Gerald has as much reason to hope of his sister agreeing to an arranged marriage with the Marquis as a leper has of being cured.”

Robert Thesiger smiled with relief, the tension easing in the dueling scar that indented his left cheek. “Thank you, Miss Cavendish. I always knew you for a female of independent mind. Thus I will continue to hope.”

“I have already told you…” Deb began and faulted, angry for becoming flustered in a public place and before this gentleman who had never been anything but open and patient about his intentions. “Please, you must excuse me. I need refreshment.”

“Allow me to accompany you—”

“No! No, there really is no need, thank you,” said Deb and picking up her satin petticoats made a hasty exit for the refreshments, shouldering her way through the laughing groups forming for the country-dances, neither looking left or right. She was about to follow two couples through to the Octagon room when the lace flounce at her elbow was ruthlessly tugged and a voice from behind a column whispered near her ear,

“Come outside.”

She stood quite still, a shiver passing across her bare neck and the oddest sensation knotting inside her chest. She wondered if the voice had been conjured up in her mind, but she did not hesitate to hurry out of doors.

With an indulgent eye, Lady Cleveland watched Deb Cavendish and Robert Thesiger part and go their separate ways at the end of the minuet, her gaze following Deb as she crossed the room. She stopped briefly near a column and then disappeared, not into the refreshment rooms, but out the entrance doors and into the night. A gentleman who had been lingering on the fringes of the dance floor, seemingly content to hover by a pillar and scan the room with his gold quizzing glass, lifted his shoulder off the marble support and sauntered out into the night air not two steps behind Miss Cavendish.

He was tall, broad shouldered and it was his patrician profile that alerted Lady Cleveland as to his identity.

“Waverley! Look!” she breathed, sitting forward on the settee, a hand hard gripping the General’s large silken knee. “I’d know that nose anywhere. There’s no mistaking it. He’s more handsome than his father, though Roxton has more presence. Ah, but the son, he has so much charm. I wonder…”

General Waverley put up his quizzing glass but missed his chance at a view of Lord Alston. “Who’s that you say, Harriet?” he asked, a magnified eye turned on her ladyship. “Not the satyr’s son? Here? No doubt you’ve heard ’bout the latest mischief he’s caught up in?”

“Mischief?”

“Rumor has it he was run out of Paris by a M’sieur Farmer-General for seducing his unmarried daughter.”

Lady Cleveland gaped at him.

The General nodded. “M’sieur Farmer-General followed him across the Channel with two of his cronies and demanded satisfaction.” He shook his head at the thought. “Imagine! A common little Frenchy demanding satisfaction of an English duke’s son. It don’t bear thinking about. Trumped-up little peasant.” He lowered his voice. “Just between you and me, Harriet: Do you think there’s any truth to the rumor the boy’s touched in the belfry?”

Lady Cleveland’s bosom swelled. “Touched? Roxton’s son,
touched
? For shame, Henry! And the Duke one of your Newmarket cronies.”

General Waverley shrugged, embarrassed at having voiced the doubt that he knew many privately held about the Marquis of Alston. “You can’t deny, Harriet, that Alston’s had a dark cloud hanging over him since that disgraceful episode in his Eton days. Why, it stands to reason we are left to wonder at the strength of his brain when one considers his unforgiveable behavior toward his dear mamma. Such a divine beauty…”

“He was a mere boy, Henry.”

“A boy mayhap, but that don’t excuse such insane behavior, does it?” continued the General, made confident by Lady Cleveland’s slump of the shoulders. “He and that cousin of his, Ffolkes, were hell-raisers at school. Expelled on two occasions and only taken back because old Roxton is a Duke.”

“My dear Henry, have you never considered that Alston was led astray by his cousin and not the other way round, as is common report?”

“Aye. That’s a possibility,” conceded the General. “But that don’t excuse Alston’s insane—some would dare suggest
Oedipal
—behavior toward his mother, now does it?”

The Dowager Marchioness shifted uncomfortably on her seat, painted mouth puckered up with annoyance. “No, it doesn’t, Henry, but… The Roxton marriage is not in the common way, and to a sensitive youth that circumstance is rather difficult to explain.” She unfurled her fan with a snap and rallied. “Besides, we will never know the absolute truth of that night and as the boy’s brain seems perfectly recovered it is better we not dwell on it.”

General Waverley could offer no argument, but added, “But what do you make of the persistent rumor that the Roxtons’ other son is also weak-brained? Complications at birth, it’s said. He’s only nine years old but a physician’s been his shadow since he could walk because he has those fits. What’s it called… the
Falling Sickness
, that’s it! Now if that don’t point to a weak brain in that family—”

Lady Cleveland gave a dismissive snort. “Idiotic rot!”

~   ~   ~

Despite a full moon bathing the cobbles in an eerie light, linkboys lounged about under the portico, there to light tapers for a small fee and accompany those who chose to walk home. Chairmen waited by their sedan chairs, exchanging gossip and ribald anecdotes. A carriage stood in the road with its steps folded down and the door wide, a footman in livery patiently waiting the arrival of its owner. Deb took all this in as she stepped out into the cool night air and looked about her, feeling rather foolish when approached by a linkboy. She did not have her cloak and was rightly at a loss, standing in the street unaccompanied.