Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (26 page)

By nuncheon all clocks big and small had
been removed from the Duke’s private apartments and now resided
below stairs, the clockmaker and his assistant already busy at
work. Duvalier apologized to the little
demoiselle
that the
task was a painstaking one and would take several days to complete.
Antonia looked suitably grave and hid her smile between the pages
of Tacitus. She was not smiling when the Vicomte d’Ambert made an
unexpected call an hour later.

She had put her book aside and gone out into
the main courtyard, with its cobblestone paths, chestnut grove and
large square of lawn, to play fetch with the whippets. The Duke’s
valet, who had disturbed her in the library to take the dogs for a
walk, had been unable to resist her entreaties that he join her to
play at fetch with Grey and Tan. The capitulation of this haughty
little man caused such an uproar of mirth amongst the Duke’s army
of servants that the housekeeper and Duvalier were forced to order
them away from the upper windows for fear the valet would catch
them with their noses pressed against the window panes and in
retaliation promptly inform the Duke of the lax behavior of his
servants in his absence.

Antonia had no wish to see Étienne and
Ellicott came to her rescue. He informed the Vicomte that
Mademoiselle Moran was not at home. The youth lingered in an
anteroom without a fire for thirty minutes before finally departing
with a warning to the valet that he would return on the morrow and
that Mademoiselle Moran would be at home to him then or he, the
Duke’s lackey would face the consequences. Tomorrow he would not
leave the house until he had seen her. The valet bowed him out
solicitously, wondered what consequences the Vicomte could possibly
enforce, and returned to the courtyard without repeating the boy’s
threats to Antonia. The game of fetch continued without further
interruption until nuncheon.

Antonia’s buoyant mood remained with her
until night fall. It was only when she had undressed and prepared
for bed, and sat at her cluttered dressing table in her thin cotton
chemise that she had her first doubts. Her spirits began to flag.
Perhaps her intuition had failed her upon this occasion and the
Duke did indeed mean to stay away to hunt with the King? But for
how long would he be gone? And would he return before Madame and
Vallentine?

Antonia knew that the King’s hunts lasted
for weeks. And she also knew that Madame had planned to be married
by the end of the month and expected the Duke to be party to all
her plans and preparations. Reason enough for him to stay away,
thought Antonia with a chuckle, but she also knew that he was
enough of a friend to Lord Vallentine not to let his lordship
suffer such preparations alone. Having cheered herself up she
decided she should trust in her instincts. And so she threw a silk
flowered banyan negligently over her chemise and slipped out of her
rooms with a single lighted taper, and, much to her maid’s horror,
with her hair left down her back and no night cap.

The hotel was very still as she traversed
the countless corridors, rooms and staircases that took her as far
from her apartment as was possible in this mansard-roofed mansion.
She arrived at the second floor of the south wing that housed the
Duke’s private apartments via the servant stairwell. She thought
herself very clever to have located this private stairwell used
only by the valet and a handful of male servants. No one trespassed
into these rooms, not even servants, unless honored with their
master’s implicit trust. Antonia had gleaned this interesting fact
and other facts from Ellicott in the middle of their game of
fetch.

It surprised Antonia that once she had
gained entry to the second floor there were no doors on the
cavernous rooms that led one into another. Every room was also
surprisingly warm and well-lit, decorated with fine furniture, deep
carpets and heavy curtains. Large gilt framed paintings by current
artists such as Fragonard adorned every wall and japanned cabinets
contained a myriad of ornaments and objects d’art. There were busts
of Roman Emperors, statues of naked nymphs and deep chairs to curl
up in with a good book. There were plenty of books in floor to
ceiling bookcases, much to Antonia’s satisfaction, and had she not
been growing increasingly nervous with every new room she entered
she may well have been tempted to take a moment to read the spines
of the leather-bound volumes.

In the second to last room she heard
activity coming from the room up ahead and it was only then that
she took stock of her surroundings and realized she was standing in
the middle of the Duke’s bedchamber. The ornate four poster bed of
carved mahogany with velvet curtains in blue and gold appeared
inconsequential in such a vast chamber. Even more so the chaise
longues, sofas, cabinets and occasional tables. There was a massive
marble fireplace where blazed a good fire and which had an
elaborately carved overmantel that reached to the decorative
plaster and gilt ceiling. A long desk with fine spindle legs and
matching chair, its inlaid surface covered in parchments, stood by
an undraped French window adjacent to the bed. Through the window
Antonia could just make out the stars.

Her gaze returned to the four poster and she
wondered if the Duke had ever shared this bed with another and
guessed he had not. This was his private male domain, free of the
responsibilities of his position, of family, friends, retainers,
servants, all those who relied on him in one way or another for
their existence… and it was free of his lovers.

The thought was a sobering one and for the
briefest of moments Antonia almost turned tail and fled, until
curiosity led her forward when she heard the splashing and pouring
of water and low voiced conversation coming from the next room.

She stood framed in the doorway, hesitant to
venture further, not as brave as she thought she’d be upon
discovering her intuition had not let her down. The Duke had indeed
returned home, and she had wanted to run up to him and throw
herself in his arms, but for one all important fact that held her
suspended on the threshold.

He was naked.

He had just finished bathing in his plunge
bath and stood on the deep Aubusson carpet in front of the warmth
of the fireplace unselfconsciously toweling himself dry.

Antonia had considered him a splendid
specimen dressed in his customary black velvet and white lace, with
all the trimmings of his class and wealth, but naked he was
magnificent. A tall, well-built man, velvet and lace had disguised
muscle definition and contour in all but his large calves and wide
shoulders. His broad back tapered to narrow hips and small firm
buttocks that accentuated the flare in his muscled thighs. And his
feet were long and just as elegantly formed as his long
fingers.

Watching him move, bend and stretch as he
dried his well exercised flesh of moisture brought the heat of
desire flooding into Antonia’s throat and face and she finally
permitted her yearning gaze to follow the thin trail of dark hairs
from his navel, down the plane of his stomach to where his
essential maleness nestled between his thighs. She knew instantly
why the ladies at Court had tittered behind their fluttering fans
that the English Duke brought a whole new meaning to the expression
too big for his breeches
.

Her gaze lingered in fascination at this the
most vulnerable and sensitive part of a man’s body, for she had
never seen a naked man before and certainly never expected to do so
at such leisure. And she shocked herself at her reaction to this
new and enthralling experience because her overwhelming desire was
to caress him
there
and to see him take pleasure in her
touch. She didn’t know why but just having such thoughts made her
feel weak at the knees and at the same time were strangely
pleasurable.

Finally he stopped moving about and stood
still, facing her, totally on show and unselfconscious of his
nakedness. He had thrown aside the damp bath sheet and was tying a
band to the end of his long black braid, having just deftly
replated the damp ends. Color and heat deepened in Antonia’s face
and breasts and she moistened her parted lips as she forced her
gaze up to his face.

He was staring straight at her.

Antonia dared not move.

Time indeed was suspended as they stood on
opposite sides of the room, neither moving nor speaking.

She willed herself not to take her gaze from
his. And if desire had fired her cheeks and throat, trespass and
discovery fixed her bare feet to the floorboards and tied her
tongue in knots. Yet, the intensity in his black eyes made her
realize that just as she had been regarding him, openly and
carnally, he had been involved in doing the same to her, and a
frisson of desire coursed through her at the thought of him
visually stripping her bare.

Antonia had to move. Her knees were about to
buckle. She took a step forward.

Then he spoke, and in such an altered voice
that again she froze.

“Get out! Damn you! Get out!” the Duke
snarled, his whole body tensing. Yet he did not move and his eyes
only left her for the briefest of moments to glance to his
right.

Had Antonia not noticed that glance she
would have turned and fled. A sob caught in her throat, but that
glance and the astonishing realization he had spoken in English
made her hesitate. He had never spoken his native tongue to her
before. She quickly looked to her left, and there, scrambling
across the floor wrestling to hold to his chest the Duke’s
discarded riding clothes and smalls as he propelled himself out of
the room at full speed, was the valet Ellicott.

The servant’s antics of abject capitulation
had Antonia smiling and brought comic relief to a situation that
had reached an intensity that was now beyond hers to control. Yet
her smile died watching the Duke turn away and shrug his nakedness
into a silk banyan the valet had earlier placed over an upholstered
chair back.

“Did mademoiselle like what was on offer?”
he asked bluntly, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of the
banyan.

“Yes, Monseigneur,” she answered
truthfully.

“You find this body to your liking
then?”

“Yes.”

He began to stroll toward her.

“You do not have a virgin’s disgust of
seeing a man’s—er—equipage for the first time?”

Unconsciously Antonia began to back away
from him.

“Not at all, Monseigneur. Should I? It is
very—fascinating.”

“Fascinating? A novel description. Most
women admire my size, but for a virgin who would not know one man’s
packet from another’s, I will take fascinating as a
compliment.”

“It-it is not only
that
,” she
stammered, confused by his flat voice and unblinking gaze. They
were now standing in his bedchamber. “To look on all of you is-is
fascinating. You have a beautiful body.”

He grinned, showing even white teeth.

Did he think she was being insincere?
Surely, with all his years of experience, he wasn’t embarrassed by
such honest praise?

“As a rule, women enjoy looking over the
stallion before a mount, to satisfy themselves he is worthy of the
ride. Do you think me worthy of the ride, mademoiselle?”

Ride? What was he talking about? And if he
wasn’t embarrassed was he angry with her or was there some other
emotion in his voice?

“I did not mean to offend you.”

“Offend me...?”

Christ! He had just done his best to offend
her so that she might have a disgust of him and choose to flee
before it was too late to alter the unalterable, and here she was
apologizing to him! What was he to do? He knew precisely what he
wanted to do, but taking that final stride to close the space
between them was not unlike leaping a ravine. Once the leap was
taken, there was no turning back in mid-flight of the attempt, one
had to jump to the other side.

He had convinced himself that helping her
flee Versailles had protected her from his cousin Salvan. He told
himself that she did not interest him physically, that she was not
ripe enough for his tastes. She had relieved his usual state of
ennui and he had grown to have affection for her but that was the
extent of it. Or so he had tried to convince himself. But then he
had caught the Vicomte kissing her…

Unspeakable anger had welled up within him
and he had come within a flea’s breath of turning on the boy with
violence. But there was more to it than being angry at the boy for
taking liberties. Finding Antonia in the arms of another had given
him a severe jolt. Then last night she had offered herself to him,
and to his shameful surprise he realized he wanted her very much.
He hungered to be inside her. He wanted to make love to her more
desperately than he had ever wanted to make love to any female. Yet
it was not conquest he craved. He wanted to
make love to
her
, not simply bed her. Paramount was a fundamental yearning
to initiate her into the pleasures of making love, of wanting to
see her joy and satisfaction when he brought her to climax.

And he wanted to be the first and only one
to take her to paradise.

But he had always been with experienced
women, women who knew what they wanted and how to get it.
Pleasuring women for mutual satisfaction, and not merely as a
self-congratulatory affirmation of his considerable sexual talents,
was what made him a much sought after lover in the salons of Paris
and the drawing rooms of London, but guiding inexperience through
the same sexual maze was a completely new and daunting phenomenon,
and one he was not sure he could perform with the same bravado.

“You do not enjoy being admired?” Antonia
asked curiously, at a loss to know why he continued to stand just a
few feet away, yet with his thoughts seemingly miles away.