Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (23 page)

“The Duke.” Sir Gerald nodded and swallowed. “Yes, a very sad business indeed. If the rumors be true it was also a very shocking business.”

Deb regarded her brother’s look of contrition with the suspicion it deserved. “Gerry, why are you so eager to have my marriage annulled when it will surely mean disfavor with the Roxtons?”

“Isn’t it enough that I want to see my sister parted from a man who is of unsound mind?”

“No. I don’t believe you. But tell me why you believe Lord Alston of unsound mind the night we were wed.”

“You had best sit down, my dear, for it is a most appalling business.”

Deb bit her lip and stared out at the deserted courtyard, the flambeaux flickering in the breeze of a balmy evening. “No. I will stand. Tell me.”

“On his sixteenth birthday, Alston attacked his mother.”

“When you say attacked, what do you mean?”

Sir Gerald threw up a hand and blustered. Where were his sister’s feminine sensibilities? If he had been telling Mary she would have been satisfied with the word, no details necessary. Why did his sister always have to be so annoyingly quick witted?

“Well, Gerry? Please don’t feel you need to go all big brotherish on me now and shield me from any unpleasantness. That ended the night you married me off.”

He let out a sigh of defeat.

“Attacked as in he dragged the Duchess out into the middle of Hanover Square in full view of the world and denounced her as a whore and a slut and a witch.”

Deb decided she did need to sit down after all and sank onto a nearby spindle legged chair, a hand hard about the ornately curved arm. She took a deep breath and nodded for her brother to continue.

“That in itself is shocking enough but the Duchess at the time was heavy with child. She and the unborn babe came close to death. Alston’s insane actions brought on his brother’s premature birth. It is the opinion of learned medical men that Lord Henri suffers to this day with the falling sickness because his mother went into an early labor.”

Deb looked up at Sir Gerald, a sickening tightness in her chest, realizing he lacked the imagination to invent such a tale. “Does Harry suffer badly with the falling sickness?”

“Yes. A physician is his shadow.”

“Poor little fellow.”

She recalled what Jack had said that day in the forest and Alston’s anger, incomprehensible at the time, at Jack’s confidences about his best friend Harry. No wonder the Marquis had been uncomfortable at the mention of his brother’s affliction. She took a few moments to collect herself then asked, “How did you come by such information? Surely Mary didn’t—”

“Good God, no!”

“If not Mary, then who?”

“Does it matter where I heard—”

“It matters a great deal! A very great deal, especially if I hope to convince a judge as to Alston’s state of mind at the time of our marriage.”

“I am certain you will take the tale as fact when I tell you it was confided in me by someone who was witness to the whole sordid episode and who cares deeply for your welfare. In fact, he has asked for your hand in marriage.”

“Hand in marriage? But I am already married.”

“Can you have forgotten in what deep regard Robert Thesiger holds you?”

“Robert Thesiger?” Deb was not only surprised but again her suspicions were aroused. “You put store in the word of Robert Thesiger, a gentleman you have long held in aversion because of his shoddy parentage, at the expense of your illustrious connections by marriage? Gerry, for shame on you! When have you not condescended to birth over all other considerations?”

“I should wash my hands of you! Stay married to a lunatic!” Sir Gerald growled in frustration, all semblance of understanding and patience evaporating. “I’ve done everything in my power to assist you, and you repay my loyalty and duty with sarcasm and ungratefulness. And there is Robert Thesiger, a gentleman of wealth and polished address who still wishes to have you as his wife, would elope with you now, before the annulment came through, if you let him.”

Deborah stood up slowly and stared at her brother through narrowed brown eyes. “Let me understand you: You are in favor of Robert Thesiger eloping with me
before
my marriage is annulled?”

Sir Gerald’s quickly averted gaze was evidence enough for Deb that there was an ulterior motive lurking somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Under her silent penetrating stare he finally blurted out in annoyance, “If you had any common decency left you would do the noble thing!”

“The
noble
thing? I beg your pardon? What are you driveling on about?”

“You must see that any judge in his right mind would grant you the annulment you seek given the evil Alston perpetrated against his own mother. But do you truly want such scandalous and shameful revelations to be aired in a court of law for all the world to hear? Do you sincerely wish to break the health of the old Duke, see the Duchess heartbroken, her youngest son wise to his brother’s mad folly? Can you truly be so cold hearted and calculating?”

“Am I to understand that you want me to run off with Robert Thesiger in preference to going through the proper legal channels and seeking an annulment to a marriage that was forced, yes
forced
, upon me?” When hope sparked in her brother’s eyes, Deb looked away, sickened. “How much better that would look for you, that a sister’s scandalous actions cause her own downfall, than the truth cause yours.” She looked at him hard. “And that is what you consider is the noble thing? For me? Your sister?”

Sir Gerald took a step toward her, hopeful. “Then you will consider Thesiger’s offer?”

Get away from me, you sniveling coward!

He struck her, an instinctive swipe across the left cheek with the back of his hand. She was so stunned that she dropped back onto the spindle-legged chair, a hand to her smarting flesh. He immediately repented and fell to his knees to clutch at her hands but she pushed him off.

“You made me strike you! You did!” he blubbered in a gasping voice. “You shouldn’t have called me a-a coward! Don’t you see that if you go ahead with this annulment, if you air the Roxtons’ dirty laundry in public, I will be utterly,
utterly
ruined. I will be struck off the register at White’s. I will never again be able to set foot in this house. Alston will turn his back on—If not for me, then for my wife! Think of Mary!”

“You’re pathetic, Gerry! Get up before Mary comes in and sees you for what you truly are! Mary? Mary! How lovely to see you again!”

Mention of his wife sent Sir Gerald diving in the pocket of his frock coat to find a kerchief to wipe dry his florid face. He dropped his snuffbox close by his silken knee, as if he was down on the floor to retrieve it, scooped it up and scrambled to his feet, all the while keeping his back to his wife. But Lady Mary had eyes only for her sister-in-law who, despite being travel-weary, looked in glowing good health, so much so that she appeared radiant.

Instead of returning Deb’s warm embrace she sank down into a respectful curtsey, acutely aware that Deb was now Marchioness of Alston and as such outranked her.

Deb frowned and pulled her up.

“I was so certain you would be pleased to see me, Mary,” Deb said with a nervous smile, the mantle of hard indifference she had cultivated since discovering she was married to the Marquis of Alston slipping ever so slightly. Mary’s cool reception hurt her more than she cared to acknowledge. God help her to keep herself in check when she was reunited with Jack! “Forgive me for disturbing your little gathering,” she apologized. “Perhaps you will come and see me tomorrow when I am well rested from my journey. I do believe I need to eat something soon or I shall be ill again, and that would never do. Dr. Medlow insists I take nourishment every few hours for the sake of the baby. Excuse me. Mr. Ffolkes is expecting me.”

Without waiting a response to her momentous news, Deb left her mouth-gaping brother and his equally speechless wife and had herself and her portmanteaux shown upstairs to the spacious apartment occupied by the Honorable Evelyn Gaius Ffolkes, musician and composer, nephew of the Duke of Roxton and closest friend and cousin of the Marquis of Alston.

~   ~   ~

The composer sat at his gilded clavichord with a viola balanced on his silken knees, and a parchment spread across the ivory keys. He was busily making notations, the music running on in his head faster than he could scrawl it down; the fine white lace ruffles at his wrist trailing across the parchment as he wrote. At his back, through the open double doors of his grace and favor apartment, a rowdy dinner continued unabated in the dining room.

There was laughter and belching and the three musicians at his table continued to eat and drink as if they had no idea where they would find their next meal. Between mouthfuls of roasted pheasant, pâté  stuffed fowl, seasonal vegetables swimming in creamy sauces and all washed down with the best wines the Duke’s cellar had to offer, they shouted out for their host and fellow musician to join them.

It was the very early hours of the morning and a cursory glance at the ornate mantle clock told Evelyn what his drooping eyelids already knew: The sun would soon be up and he and his musicians had worked through the night. He picked up his wine glass and returned to his seat at the dining table.

“May the Marquis of Alston’s amorous adventures continue to provide entertainment for the Parisian masses and choke our salons with inconsequential babble!” declared Georgio, a barrel-chested baritone in a threadbare frock coat that had once belonged to the valet of the Duc d’Orleans. When his two fellow musicians glanced knowingly at Evelyn and then looked down at their dirty plates, the baritone gave a grunt of annoyance. “What? It is better I toast Evelyn’s noble cousin behind his back and not to his face? This scandal involving the Marquis, it continues to rage through Parisian salons faster than a fire through Saint-Germain, and you think I should not speak of it? I for one would like to know the truth of it from the mouth of the horse’s cousin!”

“To be honest, I’ve not picked up a newssheet in three years,” Evelyn confessed, reaching for an uncorked bottle of champagne.

“Then what do you make of this!” Georgio continued and slapped down one of a number of crumpled pamphlets scattered amongst the dinner things. “These are being distributed everywhere. Funded by the Farmer-General Lefebvre, so it is said, though he denies all knowledge of their very existence.”

Evelyn picked up the dog-eared and wine stained piece of parchment and gave it a casual glance. He didn’t bother reading the text. The cartoon was enough. The drawing depicted a nobleman, naked from the waist down with an enormous erection, his arms about the hips of an aristocratic female, her hair festooned with ribbons and bows piled outrageously high upon her head and her many layered petticoats up around her waist. He was smiling lewdly down at her while she stared up at him in abject terror. The caption under the cartoon read:
An English nobleman’s Grand Tour: pillaging foreign works of art and the maidenhead of virtuous middle class French virgins
.

Evelyn screwed up his mouth and put the pamphlet aside as if it was something unclean. He realized well enough that the cartoon depicted the Marquis of Alston and mademoiselle Lefebvre and he was shaken by the extent to which the Parisians were vilifying his cousin. “Casimir,” he said quietly to a consumptive musician with a bad complexion, “be good enough to collect up all this waste of paper and ink and put it to the flames.”

“I have heard there is a trial brief with M’sieur le Marquis’s name upon it,” offered Casimir as he put paper to flame.

Georgio turned a blood shot gaze on a man of middling years and faded good looks who wore a mouche at the corner of his painted lips. “Sasha! There! If Casimir he has heard of a trial brief then this rumor is no longer rumor it is a situation most serious for M’sieur le Marquis!”

“I’d hardly call his name on a factum serious, Georgio,” Sasha drawled. “Three-quarters of what is set in ink is inflammatory and the other quarter? It isn’t to be believed. This trial brief, it is a piece of high drama, it too is wasted paper, it is fit for the stage not a court of law.”

“And you would know this, Sasha, aye?” Georgio scoffed, sticking out his fat bottom lip and looking about at his friends to support him. No one offered it.

Before Sasha could answer, Casimir spoke.

“And so he should. Sasha he gave up the law to follow his passion: music. Is that not so, Sasha? His father and grandfather before him they were barristers and members of the prestigious
Ordre des Avocats
. Sasha—”

“Enough, Casimir,” Sasha ordered although he smiled approvingly at such praise and ignored Georgio’s gaping mouth. “I, too, was a great lawyer but…” He shrugged. “Music! Ah now that is much the purer form of entertainment, yes?”

“So pray tell us oh-great-lawyer-that-was, what is your learned legal opinion of this imbroglio in which M’sieur le Marquis finds himself?” ordered Georgio.

When Evelyn shrugged a powdered shoulder, as if to say it was Sasha’s decision whether he took up the challenge or not, the musician sat back in his chair, an arm over the padded back and took the floor.

“The lawyers engaged by either side, and who have penned these factums, naturally have their own barrows to push,” Sasha began. “M’sieur Lefebvre’s lawyers they have painted M’sieur le Marquis de Alston as typical of his kind, whose wealth, charm and polished manners are a veneer to hide a sinister nature, one of arrogance, of insufferable pride and of power through intimidation. M’sieur le Marquis he symbolizes what is most repellent with the aristocracy of this country; never mind that he is an Englishman. His noble sire the Duke of Roxton’s mamma was the daughter of the Comte de Salvan, and M’sieur le Marquis’s divinely beautiful maman is French to the ends of her delicious fingertips. Does she not speak our tongue more elegantly, more fluidly and with more prettiness than any French duchesse? Is she not the only non-royal duchesse whom Louis permits to sit on a tabouret in his presence, as if she were royal herself! Is that not truly a mark of her Frenchness?