Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (50 page)

“Yes, your Grace, but I…”

The Duke waited. His valet swallowed.

“I think you should know that the Vicomte
has no idea of the present situation; that you are married and that
her Grace is with—” He swallowed again. “I only know about the
child because when she came round after her faint she feared the
blood on her petticoats meant she had miscarried. But I assured her
that everything was as it should be. That her child was safe. Your
Grace, the Vicomte is insane—”

“I am well aware of that, Martin,” the Duke
said quietly.

Ellicott looked his master full in the face.
“So insane that he will not hesitate to kill her should you
interfere.”

Antonia huddled in the window seat with the
tan and white whippet curled up in her lap. Somehow having him to
protect made her feel less fearful. She must keep calm for Tan’s
sake. She must continue to be pleasant and agreeable for as long as
it took the Duke to find her. She prayed that Ellicott had found
him by now because the Vicomte was becoming increasingly
agitated.

But this creature was not the Vicomte
d’Ambert she had known. He could not be called anything else in his
present state, what with a full beard disguising his face and his
natural hair grown back to stubble on his head. Dressed in the
leather pants and woolen shirt of a shepherd he could easily be
mistaken for the most ill-kept peasant. A peasant who snorted such
quantities of opium that his nostrils had festered and openly wept
and his hands shook so violently that he was incapable of picking
up any object without dropping it, except when enraged, then he
seemed to have the strength of a regiment.

Antonia watched him now, through a tangle of
hair that hid her face, and prayed that he had forgotten her
presence. He was pacing the space between the bed and the window
seat, arguing with himself and gesticulating into thin air. His
movements frightened the whippet and it attempted to stand up in
Antonia’s lap. She quickly coaxed Tan down again and stroked his
muzzle. But the Vicomte had heard her soothing words and turned on
her with violence.

“You laugh at me!” he spat out, sticking his
face close up to hers. The smell of him was enough to make her
stifle a heave. He grabbed her hair and jerked it back off her
face. “I should cut this all off! Then you could not laugh at me!
Shall I cut it off? Shall I cut it all off?” He pulled out a
bloodied knife from inside his boot and with his other hand twisted
a handful of her long hair about his wrist. Then he hesitated.
Antonia dared not move or speak. She kept her eyes lowered and
prayed that some other flight of fancy would divert him. “If I cut
it off I could make a rope,” he said to himself and nodded with
satisfaction. “A rope to hang you with if you dare disobey me.” But
as soon as this idea took root he just as suddenly put the knife
away and sat down beside her, pushing her round so that her back
was to him. He began to braid her hair. “Such beautiful curls. I
think I will not cut them off after all.” He caressed her neck.
“Remember when you would let me braid it for you in the Casparti’s
apartments?”

Antonia tried not to shiver with repulsion
at his touch. “Y-yes, Étienne. I do. We had such good times then,
did we not?”

He continued to braid and unbraid her hair,
his shaking fingers in her curls. “Yes. Such good times,” he
murmured. Then, just as quickly, his fingers convulsed violently
and became tangled in her hair, as if caught in a web. Her cry of
pain as he tried to disentangle himself only made him shout. “Stop
it! Stop it! I am not hurting you! You do not know what you have
done! You do not know! Come here!” He pulled her up off the window
seat with a jerk, which sent Tan sprawling to the floor with a
yelp, and dragged her toward the bed. “I have waited long enough. I
have been patient long enough.”

“No, Étienne! No!
Please
.”

When she tried to pull free he slapped her
across the face. Instantly a red welt appeared on her cheek.

“Do you know what hell I have endured since
you left Paris? Eh? Do you?” he demanded, dragging her across the
room. “Poor Grandma Salvan died of a broken heart all because of
you, you selfish little bitch! And I barely escaped Salvan’s thugs
to come back and fetch you!” He kneed her in the small of the back,
pushing her against the bed, tearing the back of her bodice as he
did so. Her sobs fell on deaf ears. “Do you know how long I have
been skulking about this place waiting to find you alone? Two
weeks! Two weeks of eating the scraps from the kitchen and the
bones left out for his hounds.” He hoisted her effortlessly up onto
the bed and then climbed up beside her. “M’sieur le Duc is in for a
surprise—

“Étienne, no!”

He slapped her across the face again, and
this time so hard that the blow split the corner of her mouth. “How
dare you interrupt me! Do you know who I am?” He sniggered in her
face, but seeing blood at the corner of her mouth he put out a
finger to tenderly wipe it away. Antonia recoiled and wished she
had not because it sent him into a frenzy. He began to pull up the
bed clothes, and to tear the stuffing out of the pillows. As
quickly as it had begun his fit ceased and he fell back amongst the
feathers and ripped cloth to regain his breath. When Antonia dared
to shift he caught her wrist and squeezed it painfully, pulling her
down beside him. “Do you know who I am?” he enunciated in a
whisper.

Antonia shook her head.

“Look at me!” he snarled. “Whom do you
see?”

She stared at him and felt nothing but fear
and loathing. “Who are you, Étienne?” she asked politely.

He put his hands behind his stubbled head
and smiled. “I am M’sieur le Duc de Roxton’s
bastard
son.”

Antonia covered her face with her hands and
began to cry. It was not the response he wanted and he sat up,
confused and a little stunned. “You do not believe me?”

“Yes, I believe you, Étienne.”

“My mother became M’sieur le Duc’s whore
just after her marriage to Salvan. Grandma Salvan told me that my
mother knew from the first that the child she carried was not her
husband’s but belonged to M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton. She told me this
just before she died. She said my mother confided the truth to
M’sieur le Duc in a letter and then took her own life,” he said in
a conversational, almost rational, tone. “Salvan thinks it was my
mother’s madness which made her name M’sieur le Duc as my father.
But M’sieur le Duc knows my mother spoke the truth because my
mother she told him as soon as she knew she was with child that she
carried his child and that is when he cast her off like some used
broken thing! M’sieur le Duc he laughs at Salvan and at me his
son—”

“No! He—”

“Do not interrupt! Do not ever interrupt
me,” the Vicomte said through gritted teeth. “Or I shall be forced
to punish you.” He smiled and patted her hand and stared up at the
silk pleated canopy. “Is this not the bed in which he made you his
whore too?”

Antonia bit her lip. How she wanted to
scream for help. Instead she kept her silence. The Vicomte
scrambled up and shook her.

“Well? Is it? Is this the bed or is it
not?”

“No! No! It is not! Please, Étienne, you are
hurting me.”

“Liar! Whore!” he screamed in her face. “You
are his whore, are you not? Just as my mother was his whore. Well,
we shall see what tricks he has taught you!” he snarled, and
started to bunch her petticoats up over her stockinged knees. “I
want you to—”

“No! I beg of you! Please! Étienne, for
God’s sake, have pity on
my
child!”

The Vicomte stared at her, puzzled, and
dropped her petticoats. “What? Child? What are you talking about,
eh?” He seemed unable to grasp her news. It was as if she had
spoken to him in a foreign tongue. It gave her a moment to scramble
off the bed.

She made a dash for the door that led into
the private dining room.

The Vicomte was mesmerized. He was staring
at the gold threaded coverlet as it slithered off the bed along
with Antonia and his lip curled with distaste.

“His child? Another
bastard
for
M’sieur le Duc? I think not!”

He looked up, saw what she meant to do, and
let out a great guttural cry as he sprung down off the bed with all
the energy of an animal pursuing its prey.

Antonia saw the knife flash before her eyes
as her knees buckled under her. She slid down the wall, certain
that he meant to slit her throat.

Something tickled her face and made her open
her eyes. She smiled and said the Duke’s name. But it was not the
Duke who bent over her but the Vicomte, and catching the stench of
his breath she knew the nightmare was not over. She wanted to cry
out but was too exhausted to do even that. She was still lying on
the floor where she had collapsed, while her captor knelt over her,
tracing patterns on her bodice with the point of a knife that shook
so violently in his hand that it was only a matter of time before
he put a rent in the fabric.

“I wonder where it is in there?” the Vicomte
murmured, his free hand carefully smoothing out the many layers of
Antonia’s disheveled striped petticoats. “Do you hope for a son,
little Antonia?” Then he laughed gleefully and shook his head. “We
will never know now, will we?” and he stopped tracing imaginary
patterns to press the point of the knife into the velvet. “You know
you cannot have this child. You do know that?” he said seriously,
looking down into her face, his smile almost serene. “It would not
be kind of me to let it live. Not another bastard to suffer the
hell I have suffered.”

“Étienne, listen to me,” she pleaded,
fingers inching across her body, hoping to distract him so she
could knock the knife out of his trembling grasp. “I love this baby
as your maman loved you.”

“Maman? Yes, Maman loved me,” he said as if
this fact had just dawned on him.

“Yes, she loved you and cared for you
and—”

“Why are you talking about her?” he growled.
“I do not want to talk about her.”

“She would not want you to do this terrible
thing.”

“Terrible? It is not terrible to put a
bastard out of its misery!” he argued. “She would see that. She
must!” he muttered to himself. “It cannot live.”

Suddenly he lashed out and grabbed Antonia’s
wrist just as her fingers had managed to brush the ornate hilt of
the dagger. He twisted and squeezed her flesh, burning it, causing
her to cry out with the pain, and then slammed her hand back
against the floorboards. “You scheming little bitch! I was going to
spare you! I was going to be quick. Now I shall take my time to be
rid of it! Oh! Oh! Tears! Crying will not help you now!”

Instinctively, Antonia tried to roll on her
side to shield her belly but he threw her shoulder back and
pinioned her arm with his knee. Her tears turned to aching sobs as
he started to rent the many layers of her petticoats, laughing down
at her like some grotesque gargoyle.

“For pity’s sake, Étienne!” she screamed.
“Think what you are doing!
Please
!”

Then, through a haze of tears, she saw him,
standing over them, just a little to the left, his whole being
tensed and focused on the Vicomte. And as she closed her eyes with
the sheer relief of his presence he raised his right arm and
struck.

The Vicomte was hit so hard on the side of
the head that his body pitched sideways. Instantly he lay
completely still, the knife falling with a clatter beside his
paralyzed form.

The Duke had come into the room without his
sword and hoping to reason it out with the mad Vicomte. Reason with
him enough to get Antonia to safety. Now it did not matter. He had
struck him with a force fuelled by such rage that he did not know
if he had killed him or not; and now he did not care.

Certain that the Vicomte would be
unconscious for many hours he finally turned his attention to
Antonia. Entering the bedchamber he had forced himself to ignore
her until such time as she was out of danger. He had put out of his
mind that a madman stood over her, knife poised, in what looked
like a ritualistic ceremony of death. He knew that if he had not
acted at once the Vicomte would have plunged that knife into her;
and he guessed why. Now it did not bear thinking about.

He saw the blood on her apple green-striped
petticoats, the great rents in the delicate fabric from her
struggles, and when she looked up at him, he saw the blood at the
corner of her mouth and the beginnings of an ugly bruise to her
cheek. Yet he shut his eyes and thanked God she was very much
alive. For what seemed an eternity of minutes he could do nothing
but stare at her as if she was an apparition. Yet when she smiled
and Tan nuzzled his hand in greeting he was down beside her in an
instant.