Dair Devil (18 page)

Antonia giggled. “Truly? But poor Reverend Jenkins, he would not know where to put his eyes!”

“—but for the sake of our family, most particularly your upright son, I thought it best to get the ceremony over with as quickly as possible. And in surroundings in which he would feel most comfortable.”

“Julian? Comfortable? Did you not see his expression? He looks as comfortable as a cabbage about to be chopped!”

Jonathon gave a crack of laughter.

“Cabbage? Yes. Yes, he does look a bit sour. But don’t take it to heart. He’s an over-ruminator. Think how he must feel. Last night he goes to the theater to see a new play and what happens? The audience is less interested in what’s going on up on stage than they are in the box in which sits his mother. Who, by the way, hasn’t been to the theater in six years, and when she does, she turns up with a brown-skinned giant as her shadow. Worse, she kisses this unknown fellow in full view of the world, setting off a near riot into the bargain. And we know how much Roxton hates public attention of any kind. So the poor man is mortified when all eyes turn on him to see what he thinks of his mother’s outrageous conduct. And first thing this morning, he has to front up to witness his mother marrying her kissing giant, who just happens to be not much older than himself. But with our signatures on that marriage document we are now legally and spiritually bound as one, and there ain’t a thing he can do about it. Which means his mother is no longer a dowager duchess but Duchess of Kinross, and her husband is his new papa.”

Antonia gasped.

“New papa?! That is amusing in the extreme! But not to Julian. Yes. When you say it like that, me I understand a little of his anxiousness. So,” she added with a cheeky smile, “would it be rude of us to leave our guests and disappear to the book room?”

“Our guests, sweetheart, being your sons, your daughter-in-law, Roxton’s chaplain and his godfather? I have invited them to stay to nuncheon.” When Antonia scowled, he laughed and kissed her heartily. “As much as I would love to skulk off to the book room, our absence on this of all days would be noted.”

Antonia dimpled and teased him. “But… Our marriage it must be consummated to be binding, yes?”

“And you think, with a houseful of people, the book room the wisest choice?”

“I did not say anything about being wise—or comfortable.”

“Just outrageous?” Jonathon grinned. “You’re so adorably wicked!”

“But that is why you love me, yes?”

“That and much more…” He went to pick her up off the chair only to place her stockinged toes back on the tapestry cushion. “Damn these hoops! How am I supposed to give you a proper embrace with that wretched device under your petticoats hindering my every move? You’ll go in undress when we are at home.”

“Married less than an hour and already his Grace of Kinross he is making demands of his wife’s clothing!” When Jonathon frowned, Antonia pinched his square chin. “But of course. For you, and for my own comfort, I will wear as little as possible.” She put a hand to his cheek. “But not today… Or tomorrow…”

“Perhaps we could scurry away, if only for half an hour…”

“Half an hour? I will not be cheated!”

This made Jonathon laugh heartily, the corners of his eyes crinkling. When he could master himself, he said seriously, “We only have today and tonight before I leave. Tomorrow your family may have you back until my return.”

“Today you have made me the happiest of women, but tomorrow I will be desolate.” She kissed his forehead softly, then set hers against his and looked into his dark eyes. “How will I bear it?”

“How will
I
?” he murmured, gaze never wavering from her.

Jonathon dared to wonder if it was not all a wonderful dream from which he would awake. But he had woken early that morning with this delectable creature, whom he loved beyond reason, snuggled into his arms. They had made love, as they always did, passionately and without restraint, knowing there were not many hours left to them before it would be months before they shared a bed again. He was off to Scotland to bury his ancient relative and take his rightful place as head of the Strang-Leven family and laird of Kinross Castle on the shores of Loch Leven. His bride would return to the Roxton family estate, to her dower house, to tell her dearly departed Monseigneur news of her remarriage, to arrange her possessions for her new life, and to await his return.

They had been husband and wife for only a handful of hours and it still had to sink in that Antonia, Dowager Duchess of Roxton was now
his
wife, and she was
his
duchess. He was the happiest man alive and he wanted nothing more than to scoop her up and take his wife back up to bed.

But catching a few moments alone just outside the drawing room would have to satisfy them both. Family awaited them. He was about to suggest they return there when into his subconscious trailed tobacco smoke, pungently earthy, and with a hint of cherry. He instantly craved a cheroot. He did not need to turn to know who was nearby, nor did he take his eyes from his duchess, saying softly to Antonia,

“Sweetheart, we have a late arrival to our nuptials…”

D
AIR
WAITED
until his first cousin, Antonia, Duchess of Kinross was returned to solid ground, and had slipped her stockinged feet into her satin mules, before going forward to greet and congratulate the newlyweds. He heartily shook Jonathon’s hand and bowed formally over Antonia’s outstretched fingers. And when she pulled him closer and presented her cheek, he kissed her diffidently, surprising Jonathon that he would be awkwardly shy in the presence of his cousin, a family member he had known all his life. If Antonia noticed, she did not react, nor did she acknowledge the grazes to Dair’s knuckles, the healing cut to his lip or the dark bruising to his left eye.

Dair further surprised Jonathon by conversing with them in fluent French. He should have realized the lad could speak the language, like the rest of the Roxton family group. After all, Antonia spoke almost exclusively in French, though she could speak in English if necessity called for her to do so. An Englishman coming upon their conversation would surely have thought he had stumbled into a Parisian salon.

A short exchange of platitudes and it was obvious Dair wished to have a private word with Antonia. So Jonathon invited him to join the family for nuncheon, which was politely declined, as Jonathon knew it would, then made his excuses and returned to the drawing room, leaving the cousins alone at the bottom of the staircase. Antonia spread out her petticoats and sat on the stairs. Invited, Dair did likewise.

“I like your new duke,” Dair stated, once again stretching out his long legs across several steps. “He’s a good man.” He smiled. “You wouldn’t have married him otherwise. And he has made you happy.”

“Yes. I am very happy—again.”

“Not many are blessed with one good marriage, but to have two…”

“One day I hope you will be as happy as I am, Alisdair.”

“But—Cousin Duchess—you don’t even like me.”

Antonia lost her smile. “That is a great piece of nonsense and it offends me!”

Dair politely inclined his head in acknowledgment of her status to say and do as she pleased, but as her first cousin he rudely shrugged a shoulder and inhaled on his cheroot. “You would be the first to chide me if I were not truthful with you.”

“But you are
not
being truthful, you are making an ill-informed judgment about my feelings.”

“Then forgive me. I am neither good with words, or with feelings…” He returned his gaze to the full-length portrait of Augusta, Countess of Strathsay. “I can’t blame anyone for my lack of brains. Charles inherited whatever there was to dish out to the family. But I hold responsible that woman’s son, my father, for my lack of feeling.”

“If you wish to cast blame, then blame her our grandmother,” Antonia stated, gaze also on the portrait. “She turned your mother against your father. She turned your father against Monseigneur. Your father he took a ship across the sea to be rid of her. But you cannot run away from yourself. Augusta she was a beautiful heartless woman, as cold as a serpent.” Antonia gave a little shiver of revulsion. “Please. Let us not talk of her on this of all days.”

“Why, if she was such a serpent, do you keep our grandmother’s portrait on your wall? If I owned her, she’d be wrapped in a sheet and stuck in an attic, or consigned to a dusty corner of some picture gallery. Perhaps Roxton would like to have her?”

Antonia smiled but shook her head. “He cannot, even if he would be kind enough to take her off my hands. Monseigneur he has forbidden her at Treat. Her remains, they are not buried in the family mausoleum, but at Ely, beside her lover.”

“But she doesn’t have to be on your wall, surely?”

“That is true. But I keep her there… She is a reminder—a reminder that a beautiful façade does not always bring with it a beautiful heart.”

“Strange… I mean, strange for you, considered the most beautiful woman of the age, in temperament and visage…”

“
C’est ce que vous pensez
? You think I do not have my bad days?”

They both laughed at this, Antonia adding seriously,

“Beauty is a gift from God and should not be abused or taken for granted. Those blessed with physical beauty cannot assume the appearance of goodness, they must
be
good and that requires
doing
good.”

“On second thought, don’t ship her off. What you need are some candles, incense and an altar. A papist shrine, if you will, to your archangel of beauty. Which, when you think on it, is fitting, given our grandfather was a papist general for the Old Pretender.”

“It is important, is it not, that those blessed with great physical beauty have a duty not to abuse their gift?” Antonia continued, ignoring his quip. “To be a self-destructive care-for-nobody intent on self-harm is a great waste; it is also arrogant in the extreme.”

Dair removed his gaze from their grandmother’s portrait and slowly turned to meet Antonia’s gaze, face devoid of his thoughts. He took the cheroot from his mouth.

“Thus lectured Duchess Beauty, whose first husband was in his day, and will always be remembered as, the most arrogant nobleman on both sides of the Channel.”

Antonia smiled kindly. “Yes, he was. But Monseigneur he wore his arrogance with sublime confidence and force of personality, as one who owns the most exquisitely tailored frock coat in the room. He also had a high opinion of himself. He knew his self-worth and let others know it too. Which, for a nobleman in his position, was as it should be.”

“And how do I wear my coat, Cousin? A little loose in the shoulders for your liking? A bit worn at the cuffs, perhaps? I dare say the cloth is not up to snuff either. Don’t spare my feelings now. If I am to be served up a lecture for dinner, I want all twelve courses with lashings of humiliation!”

Antonia was silent a moment, and then she told him her thoughts, honestly and without artifice.

“This man you pretend to be, this conceited Adonis who abuses his body in fights and scraps with lesser beings, he is not a gentleman. He pretends not to care for anyone or anything. He whores and drinks to excess. He never refuses a wager and so carries out ridiculous dares for his friends to make them laugh, or rich, or for no good purpose at all. This man, I do not know him in the least. And I do not care to know him. But that does not stop me caring about him and worrying. Me I worry he will start believing in the façade he hides behind so that one day these two beings, they will merge, and then he will be lost to us, and to himself.”

“I am what I am.”

“No! You pretend. You act. But you have inhabited the role for so many years now, you cannot tell the difference between the two. But sometimes the real Alisdair Fitzstuart he emerges, and I think then that there is hope for you yet.”

When Dair huffed and slowly shook his head in polite disagreement, Antonia put up her brows and said dryly, “So your marriage proposal to Sarah-Jane Strang, it was sincere and you are all desolation that she chose your brother—”

“Of course it wasn’t sincere!” Dair growled angrily, finally taking the bait. “I didn’t so much as put the question to the girl. All I had to do was seed the intent that I was about to ask her. All that required was confiding in my mother I was thinking of getting married. Quite frankly, if she knew me at all, she would know that thought has never entered my head! I knew she wouldn’t approve of a merchant’s daughter as the next Countess of Strathsay, whatever her dowry. And of course she ran crying to Charlie that I was about to ruin the family name! Charlie assumed the worst and when he saw Miss Strang and me walking alone on the terrace he decided to finally act. It was all the push he needed to get up the courage to reveal his true feelings to Miss Strang.” He glanced at Antonia, still smoldering. “Staggers me my little brother had the nutmegs to be a traitor to his country, and yet, when it comes to asking the girl he loves to marry him, he acts the neutered tom! What else could I do but step in and hurry matters along?”

“Being in love can be terrifying—more terrifying than anything else, particularly if there is a doubt that love will not be reciprocated, or an impediment stands in the way of a happy outcome.” Antonia rallied and smiled. “But my point, it is made.
Enfin
. So what is to be done with you, Alisdair? You who will be the Earl of Strathsay and head of your family one day. With your brother Charles branded a traitor for following his beliefs, he can never set foot on English soil and is excluded from his family’s inheritance. You are the earldom’s only hope of its continuance. So you will please promise me to stop trying to kill yourself in as many interesting ways as possible. This last, in a painter’s studio, of all places.”

“Cousin Duchess, I can promise you that if I do get killed it will not be because I wished to die.”

He had been keen to make this interview with his cousin as short as possible. The parental lecture he could well do without, but he could see there was no stopping her once she was animated. Like a ferocious feline, she paced the black and white marble tiles at the base of the staircase, ivory petticoats swishing this way and that, and he had to concede that he was flattered she cared so much for his welfare. Indeed, that she cared about him at all. And on this of all days, her wedding day, which should have been joyous and carefree, not spent being concerned about him. He was astounded to realize that this was the first maternal lecture he had received in his eight-and-twenty years (his mother did not lecture, she merely suggested in a vapid irritating way or fell into a flood of tears). Rather bizarrely, he derived a certain satisfaction from Antonia’s castigation.