Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (8 page)

“Yes, Father,” answered d’Ambert, a shaking
hand carrying a pinch of snuff to one nostril. He inhaled
deeply.

“Why do you look down your nose at Roxton’s
games of seduction? These females want it. They enjoy it. And it is
well known that
mon cousin
is very talented in bed. He more
than satisfies them. In that we are the same, he and I,” Salvan
bragged. “If you were more my son you would understand the ways of
women better.”

The Vicomte started to laugh
hysterically.

The Comte de Salvan’s chest swelled. “I
offer you advice and you dare to laugh at me?”

“No, Father, no!” tittered the Vicomte.
“While you and I stand here he—he—Roxton wins all! From under our
very noses he wins all! You are impotent; impotent to stop
him!”

“
Taisez-vous
! Shut up I tell you!
People stare at us! You are deranged!”

“What if I am?” said d’Ambert, trying to
control himself. But his mouth twitched and he suddenly burst into
another fit of wild laughter. “The little—the little dove—she-she
has flown her cage! She has flown away with the raven!”

Salvan swung about on a heel and his little
eyes searched the dancers and onlookers. Roxton had disappeared, so
had his dance partner.

“Is that so amazing? So laughable?” he
asked. “There is something to be learned from our cousin, eh? If
you had not waylaid me, diverted me from my revels, it would have
been I, and not he, who darts off behind a curtain to taste the
little dove’s delights! Is that why you laugh like a great buffoon?
You think your father outwitted? Ha! She cannot be all that
enticing for she gave in too easily. There is no sport in that! But
when next I see
mon cousin
I will ask if she was worth his
while.”

The Vicomte wiped his moist eyes on the back
of a silk sleeve. There was something oddly mechanical about his
bow and the smile he gave his father. “Do that, Father. Roxton has
just departed with Mademoiselle Moran.”

The Duke of Roxton had decided to attend the
palace masquerade in the hopes of curing his boredom. Had Lord
Vallentine accepted his invitation to accompany him there was
little doubt that watching his friend’s gyrations amongst the
French nobility and their sycophants would have offered him some
amusement. Lord Vallentine preferred to stay at home and spend a
quiet evening with the Duke’s sister. He said he loathed Versailles
and all its excesses. Roxton had called him old. He teased him
about his declining ability at the art of seduction, to which his
lordship floundered for a reply under the penetrating gaze of Estée
de Montbrail.

The Duke was not fooled into believing his
friend had made the harrowing (for him) voyage across the Channel
for the pleasure of his company. Nor by the indifferent face his
sister presented on learning Lucian Vallentine was to visit them.
He wondered how long it would take one or the other to confide the
truth of their feelings to him. Watching them play cat and mouse
with their affections was diverting but it did nothing to cure his
ennui.

He was not at the palace over an hour before
he decided he had had enough of the crowds, the perfumed heat, and
the incessant din of high-pitched voices. He ignored several
invitations to disappear behind a curtain with a willing masked
female. The wine on offer was insipid to his sensitive palate.
Observing the frustrated gyrations of youths and their drunken
companions did not amuse him. And his latest mistress was intent on
making a spectacle of herself with the young Prince de Bouvallies.
No doubt to illicit a jealous response from him, but he hated such
banal behavior, and he did not care that much for her to exert
himself.

As he stood to one side of a mirrored
archway in the Galerie des Glaces observing the dancers through his
quizzing-glass, he wondered if he, and not his friend, was
declining into his dotage. He scanned the multitudes with a sigh,
was about to turn on a heel to depart, then spied the Comte de
Salvan and his son. What interested him was the Vicomte’s stance
and stony-faced gaze out to the dancers. A gaze he followed to the
Duc de Richelieu and his dance partner, a small female in an absurd
mask of feathers which sat crookedly on her laughing face.

He conceded that she could dance and
possessed dainty hands and feet. But she appeared awkward in a gown
that was several seasons outgrown. The bodice pulled too tightly
across her breasts, making the whole unattractive, when a different
cut would have show such a voluptuous figure off to full advantage.
The female must have the worst dresser in all France. That, or she
was a charity case on the lookout for a fat-pursed lover, possibly
a husband if she could catch one. Whomever she was, she was very
much out of her depth…

It did not take him many minutes to
disentangle Antonia from the Duc de Richelieu’s slimy clasp. In
fact she was only too willing to exchange dance partners. A
circumstance which did not please Richelieu’s fragile ego and he
went off to console himself with Thérèse Duras-Valfons. Roxton
laughed to himself at such a spiteful maneuver but thought it
typical of Armand.

He danced a quadrille with Antonia and if
she was aware that he knew her identity she was shrewd enough to
keep up the pretence of her disguise. She chatted prettily on
inconsequential topics, contrived to smile and be gay when he
returned monosyllabic answers and did not look at her, but out
across the dazzling multitudes for the closest and most convenient
exit.

With the last chord struck by the orchestra
he made as if to return her to the crowd, but once engulfed by the
masses he kept on walking. When the firm cool pressure of his hand
on her upper arm tightened she glanced up at him swiftly.

“Do not think I am amused by your antics,”
he hissed, striding through one drawing room and on through the
next and then the next. “All the paint and feathers in the world
can’t hide you from me.”

“No, Monseigneur,” she replied respectfully,
but hung her head so he would not see her spreading smile.

He said nothing further until they were
standing in the courtyard awaiting his carriage. One of his lackeys
came running through the traffic of carriages and horses with a
roquelaure and black gloves. Another darted forward between two
coaches and stood waiting instructions. A moment later an elegant
chaise and four pulled up before them and two liveried footmen
jumped off the box to let down the steps.

“Give the boy direction to your rooms,”
ordered the Duke. “I presume you have—er—things?”

“Nothing of great importance,” Antonia
answered cheerfully, but obediently gave the servant directions to
Maria Casparti’s rooms and what he should collect. There was only
one small portmanteau and it was by the door, and he was not to
alarm the fat tire-woman who would answer his scratching. When he
ran off into the night she turned to the Duke expectantly.

He watched her as he stretched on his gloves
and at her shiver of excitement, thinking her feeling the cold,
handed her up into the well-sprung vehicle. “There is a wrap in the
corner. Put it across your shoulders.”

“May I take off this silly mask now?”

“By all means,” he said and snapped his
fingers for a lackey to attend him. “You are not at all
distressed?” he asked her from under hooded eyes.

“Why should I be, Monseigneur?” she said
from the window. “You are taking me to Paris!”

“Your confidence is misplaced. I do so for
my own reasons, not yours.”

“Yes, of course. But we are going to Paris,
are we not?”

“Yes,” he said with a sigh of exasperation.
“Now put that wrap about you before you catch your death and sit
still until I return.”

Antonia did as she was told but immediately
came back to the window. “You are not going to leave me?” she asked
in a small voice. “What if—What if someone comes while you are
gone?”

“I would not worry yourself unnecessarily,”
he said caustically. “Now that you are under my—er—protection your
reputation is in shreds and no gentleman would dare risk offending
me by attempting to rescue you.”

“Then I will not worry, Monseigneur,” she
said happily and disappeared inside, to snuggle up in a velvet
upholstered corner under the cashmere wrap.

Roxton expected a wholly different response
to his quip. Antonia’s unquestioning faith pushed him off-balance.
So did her use of the courtesy title
Monseigneur
rather than
the more formal
M’sieur le Duc
. It sounded intimate when
spoken by her and he did not like it; it unnerved him and put him
on edge. He wondered if she was being facetious. Thus when his
valet, who had been standing at his side listening to this odd
exchange between his master and the small painted female, asked for
direction, the Duke was slow to respond. He continued to stare
absently at the open window of his chaise, as if waiting for
Antonia to reappear, until his valet coughed into his gloved
fist.

Finally, he called for a standish and after
scrawling a note and affixing it with his seal (wax and light
provided by a link-boy’s flambeaux), he ordered his valet to take
one of the horses and ride post-haste to the Hôtel de Roxton and
deliver the missive to Madame de Montbrail. And if Madame was abed
to get her out of it. A circumstance the valet did not look forward
to because he was all too well aware of Madame’s temper. But he
showed his master a blank face and within ten minutes galloped off,
the missive tucked securely in an inner lining of his worsted wool
coat.

The Duke did not step up into the chariot
until his servant returned with Antonia’s portmanteaux, then the
order was given and the horses set to. The chaise swept out along
the tree-lined boulevard, past a line of waiting coaches and
carriages and onto the Versailles road for Paris, the Duke seated
opposite Antonia who leaned from the window, the cold night air in
her face, taking a last glimpse of the palace.

“Put up the window,” he ordered in his soft
drawl.

Antonia obeyed and sat back in her corner.
Her powdered hair was disheveled and wind-blown and fell in a
tangled mass about her bare shoulders. The carefully applied
cosmetics were smudged and her dress was so crumpled that no amount
of pressing would take out the creases. She did not care and it did
not worry her the Duke kept watchful silence. She was free of
Versailles and the Comte de Salvan, closer to London and the
grandmother she had yet to meet.

“Aren’t you curious to know where I am
taking you?” he asked.

“I know. To the Hôtel de Roxton on the Rue
St. Honoré,” she said confidently and smiled when there was a
flicker of surprise in his black eyes. “It is the largest privately
owned mansion in all Paris and you keep an army of servants and
there is a good library on the second—”

“I know my own house!” he snapped. “What if
I told you I was not taking you to that particular house?”

“Monseigneur has another?” she asked,
curiosity sparked, and pulled the wrap closer, a bump in the road
causing it to slide off one shoulder. “I would prefer the one on
the Rue St. Honoré, because I wish to see the library, but if you
want to take me to this other one—Does it have a library too?”

“You are either an exceedingly good actress
or rather dull-witted—”

“I am not dull-witted!” retorted Antonia.
“Papa gave me a very good education in classics and history and
taught me to speak—”

“He failed to teach you to be polite to your
elders,” the Duke said coldly. “If we are to go on in a tolerable
fashion know this: There are three things I abhor: lack of manners,
slovenliness, and stupidity.”

“Yes, Monseigneur,” she answered meekly but
could not hide her dimples. When she saw his jaw set hard she
lowered her gaze. “I apologize. I do try to behave as I should but
it is very difficult when one has been taught to speak one’s mind
to suddenly not do so.”

“Your father was a fool to give you a boy’s
education. Yes, I know all about that. Just as you know all about
my house and my servants, my library and, no doubt, my—er—habits.
So now we will dispense with the charade. I am going to ask you a
few questions to which I want truthful—”

“I do not lie!”

“To which I want truthful answers,” he
enunciated.

“Yes, Monseigneur,” she answered softly. She
brushed the hair off her face and shifted to be more comfortable on
the cushions, and when she was completely settled she showed him an
obedient face full of expectation. “I am ready now.”

“Thank-you,” he said patiently and took out
his snuffbox. “Why did Strathsay leave you behind at the
palace?”

“I don’t know, Monseigneur. He was very ill.
Mayhap he did not think about it? He would not let Maria go with
him either.”

“Maria?”