Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (21 page)

~   ~   ~

When Deb opened her eyes and tried to sit up a wave of nausea forced her to lay still a little longer amongst the cushions. She was on the sofa by the fireplace, the lawyers were gone from the book room and Martin Ellicott was peering down at her with concern. She turned her head away, a sob catching in her aching throat, and there staring into the fire with his hands in his breeches pockets was the tall brooding figure of the Marquis of Alston: her husband.

The Marquis of Alston was
her husband
. Part of her still did not believe that the gentleman she had married, with whom she had shared the most intimate of moments, was the notorious heir to the Roxton dukedom. How could she have been so stupidly naive and trusting? How could she have followed her heart? Had her wits been sleeping? Why had her head not cautioned her heart? What madness had possessed her to marry him out of hand? Was it the same impetuousness that had seen her run off to care for Otto? But Otto was her brother and their love for one another was unquestioning. She had thought her love for this man and his love for her was of the same unquestioning kind. Love must truly be blind. Not only blind, she thought, but completely witless!

She despised herself for fainting dead away. She had no idea what had come over her to react in such an absurdly weak-willed way. She had not been herself lately and although she had her suspicions she had not voiced them because she wanted to be absolutely certain before giving her husband the wonderful news. Now, her news was not so wonderful: it terrified her. And she would not faint again. She must be strong. She needed to make sense of this shocking situation in which she now found herself. Not since she had boarded the ship for the Channel crossing to France to be with Otto had she felt so alone in the world.

“I’ve never fainted before in my life,” she said aloud in disbelief as she slowly righted herself and put her feet to the carpet.

“Not surprising,” Julian said dully, addressing the flames. “You haven’t eaten a proper meal in three days.”

Deb stared at his wide back, illness giving way to a heaviness of heart and mind. She addressed herself to Martin. “I would be grateful for a glass of water.”

The old man brought her the water with a stricken look. “I meant what I said to you this morning, my lady,” he murmured in a rush. “Had I realized the shock would… I—I am so very sorry.”

The Marquis looked over his shoulder. “Martin, leave us.”

“No!” Deb stood up and swayed. In one stride Julian had her by the upper arm but she shrugged him off, not wanting the touch of him, and steadied herself with a hand to the back of the sofa. “I need someone here other than you to help me make sense of this—this
nightmare
in which I find myself. Please, M’sieur Ellicott, tell me: Is this man in truth the Marquis of Alston?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“And are we truly man and wife?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Deb took a few moments to collect herself, breathing deeply as she fought off panic. It did not help that Martin’s short answers were followed by a heavy silence. Neither man spoke and she knew they were watching her and waiting. She let out a small hysterical sob but stifled the urge to burst into tears, a shaking hand to her trembling mouth.

“How ironic! It wouldn’t have mattered in the least had my husband been the bastard son of some illustrious nobleman,” she confessed. “Yet finding myself married to the heir to the premier dukedom in the kingdom fills me with sickening dread. London must be overflowing with bird-witted heiresses willing to marry you despite your sordid reputation. Why me?”

“Dozens,” Julian answered bitterly. “But none so bird-witted as to dare insult my lineage!”

“What was I to think when you never once spoke of your family, in fact you were at pains not to divulge their identity,” Deb argued. “Yet M’sieur Ellicott is your godfather, a man who had been valet to an old aristocrat, whom I now realize is the Duke of Roxton. How many noblemen of your acquaintance have made godfathers of their valets to their legitimate children?”

“My lady, that great honor was bestowed upon me because—”

“Martin! You need not justify yourself!” Julian cut in angrily.

“Yet, her ladyship has a point,” the old man answered calmly, adding with a smile at his godson, “Your wife was left to draw her own conclusions about your parentage, and still she married you.”

Julian threw up a hand, a dull red glow of embarrassment to his lean cheeks. “And that is supposed to appease me; that my wife thought me of bastard blood: the debased product of a lustful mount?”

“Your pride is insufferable!” Deb exclaimed angrily. “It’s a wonder it permitted you to lower yourself to take to wife a female who puts more store in a man’s character than she does his impeccable pedigree. A noble title does not make a gentleman; nor does it give a nobleman the right to look down his aristocratic nose at those who shouldn’t be blamed for the sins of their fathers!”

“My bride was chosen for me when I was
sixteen
years old,” Julian stated without preamble, taking out his snuffbox, her blink of incomprehension making him add coldly, “The last thing I wanted to do on this earth was go through a wedding ceremony in the middle of the night with a skinny chit still in the nursery. But my father, in his infinite wisdom, considered it the wisest course for a wayward heir about to venture off on the Grand Tour, and who would reach his majority on foreign shores. Who knows what might have happened in those years in exile? I may have returned home with a wholly unsuitable bride.”

Deb blinked at him, a crease between her brows. “In the middle of the night? Sixteen?” She swallowed, mind turning over his words, and then her eyes opened wide with dawning realization and she swiftly looked across at Martin. Julian smiled crookedly.

“You were quite a drab brown thing when you were twelve years old,” he drawled. “Luckily for me you blossomed into a rose of rare sensual beauty. It makes our marriage that much more palatable.”

“But—how? No.
No
. That was a dream. A vivid opium induced dream. Nurse had given me a dose before bedtime. I don’t remember what for. She said it would help me sleep. And when next day I told her about my dream she told me to forget all about it,” Deb argued, fingers clenched in the folds of cream silk. “She said it was the laudanum. I was on a swing and Otto was playing his viola and we were in the forest and the very next moment I was standing before a-a fat bishop and there were these two old men and a sad boy with green eyes. Indeed everyone seemed sad and it made me sad. It was all too fantastical to be real. It had to be a dream. It made perfect sense to me that it was a dream.” She shook her head, trying to shake off the memory. But one look up at the Marquis, at his emerald green eyes, and she knew he was telling her the truth.

She put a cold hand to her constricted throat and slowly sank onto the edge of a wingback chair. “I was half-asleep… It was midnight. I—I don’t remember the half of what was said to me. To be married off in the middle of the night in such a barbaric way… It’s positively
feudal
.” She turned to Martin. “You were there,” she stated in wonderment. “You and the—Duke? Yes, the Duke
his
father and Gerry and the bishop. Otto wasn’t there at all was he? That part was a dream…” She shut her eyes to blink away tears. “Gerry never said a word. He must’ve ordered Nurse to give me the opium to guarantee my complicity. Much easier to marry me off drugged! And then to tell me it was all a dream? My God, what a despicable
coward
. How-how could he do this to me?” she asked herself in a tiny voice. Disbelief gave way to anger and her fingers dug in again and crushed the silk of her petticoats as large tears fell into her lap and stained the fabric. “How
dare
he marry me off in such a deceitful, underhanded way. I was a mere child, his
sister
. Not a farm animal to be blindly taken to market and auctioned off to the highest bidder!”

“My dear girl, you know as well as I that in our circle females aren’t entitled to decide for themselves,” Julian interrupted matter-of-factly. “It matters not if you be twelve or twenty.” He gave a lopsided grin. “Yet, my insufferable pride aside, given the choice, you married me anyway. You certainly didn’t think twice about eloping with a stranger you found bleeding from a sword wound in the forest. What’s the difference? Best make the most of it.”

Deb gaped at such sublime arrogance. “You deceived me into thinking I had a choice because you allowed me to fall in love with a false being: a gentleman of fine feelings and elevated thought who loved me for myself; all the things you are not! All you truly cared about was getting me into your bed!”

The Marquis took snuff, a sidelong glance at his godfather who had politely retreated to the far corner of the room. “Of course I needed to get you into bed, you foolish girl. You are my wife. I couldn’t have you seduced into a bigamous union with the likes of Robert Thesiger. You belong to me, body and soul, and to no one else.”

“So you think?” she threw at him, up on her feet again. “I may be female but I have a mind and a will. I won’t be party to a cold-blooded marriage contracted for your dynastic self-preservation! And I won’t be paraded about society as your wife, an attachment to your consequence. That is a hollow, shallow existence. You may legally own me for the present but you will never have me.”

The Marquis shut his snuffbox with a snap, his smile hovering between lewdness and embarrassment. He glanced her over and put up his brows. “But I have had you, my dear. Two, often three times a day.”

“How dare you degrade our most intimate—”

“Oh, I’m not complaining. Far from it. I was delightfully surprised to discover our physical appetites are well matched. Although… such carnal enthusiasm is not what one expects from a virgin—”

She slapped his face, a hard stinging blow that made him reel back in shock.

“You
disgust
me. Did the stallion hope to put the mare in foal? Was that the purpose of-of
mounting
me three times a day for ten weeks? What a tiresome business for you! Oh? Does my base language
offend
you? Ha! Or perhaps it is the bald truth that makes you wince? I just thank God I discovered the truth before the
hideous
prospect of conceiving your child befell me. I will
never
have your children!”

He caught her wrist and yanked her up against his chest, forcing her arm into the small of her back and holding her fast so that she could not move. “For better or worse, my love, you are my wife,” he whispered viciously in her face. “Mounting you, as you so indelicately put it, is my right. And, by God, when I want to mount you, you will part those lovely long legs as wide as I please, and accommodate me. Do you understand?”

Deb stared up into his face contorted with rage and shivered with loathing. “I can readily believe a-a
monster
capable of cold-blooded deceit capable of forcing himself on his wife. I will never again come willingly to your bed. If you hope to get me with child you will have to
rape
me.”

Julian pushed her away with a huff of furious embarrassment, the sting still smarting in his reddened, close-shaven cheek. He turned to the window. “Take comfort in the fact that the sooner you give me a son the sooner our relations are at an end. You can then go your own road for all I care.”

Such a prospect froze Deb to her marrow and she sat down on the sofa with head bowed, tears of anger, frustration and disbelief now sliding freely down her hot cheeks. She mustered what reserves of dignity was left to her and took a deep breath. She had to make him see reason for both their sakes.

“If you have no thought for me then spare a thought for a child of such a hateful union,” she said quietly. “Surely you would not want your son to grow up to one day discover that his father is a libertine who begets bastards by French whores and then abandons them to their fate? You would not want your son to go through life knowing his is one of privilege while his bastard brothers and sisters are forever marked as social outcasts, unable to marry well, unable to enter this society to which your son belongs, facing God knows what adversities all because of their noble father’s uncontrolled lust? What if one day a half brother or sister confronted your heir with the truth about his libertine father’s whoring ways? What would your son think of you, the father he was taught to look up to, to emulate one day, how you treated with contempt and disrespect the marriage bed shared with his long-suffering mother? Whatever your feelings for me, could you in good conscience be such a monster to your son and heir?”

The audible intake of breath came from the old man and he crossed the room in a few quick steps and put a hand on Deb’s shoulder, his eyes wide in warning, a finger to his lips, and a worried, nervous glance at his godson. But Deb would not be silenced.

“Never mind that as your wife I am supposed to hold my head high and ignore your whores and your ill-gotten off-spring because as Marchioness of Alston they are but dirt beneath my feet.” She put up her chin. “You are grossly mistaken if you think I will meekly submit to a cold-blooded marriage of the sort entered into by your parents—”

“
Enough
. I’ve heard
enough
,” Julian growled, suddenly coming to life and turning on Deb with a face flushed with absolute fury. “Ten.
Ten
weeks in my company and you’ve learned nothing—
nothing
—about
me
?” he spat out incredulously and took a few moments to master his emotions, bright green eyes fixed on Deb’s flushed face. “You have insulted my esteemed parents more than is humanly possible to forgive,” he continued with icy formality. “Know this madam: You are my wife for better or worse and as my wife you are also the Marchioness of Alston. You will learn restraint and the manners befitting your elevation. You have a month to have your belongings in order before I send for you to join me in Paris. And you will come to Paris when I bid, even if I have to return to carry you across the Channel myself. Is that understood?”