Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (33 page)

Julian mentally winced at the use of a long discarded boyhood name but said in a perfectly controlled voice, “Can’t bruise what is already rotten to the core—Steady!” he mimicked and grinned as he ducked a wild swing then caught Robert Thesiger’s closed fist in his hand and held it in a vice like grip. “Mustn’t be impolite in the house of our father, Bob.”

Robert Thesiger tried to pull his hand free and his inability to break Julian’s iron grip melted his cool façade and he swore under his breath before saying through gritted teeth, “And if it is rotten, whose fault is that? Not my mother’s, to be sure!”

The Marquis gave a bark of harsh laughter as he opened his hand and let go of Robert Thesiger with a contemptuous little push. “Are you still using that pathetic twaddle to gain
entrée
to society’s salons? For shame! Isn’t it about time you freshened your calling card?”

Robert Thesiger seethed at his inability to match the Marquis in strength and agility, nursing bruised knuckles as he waited for Deb and Joseph to come within earshot. “And what pathetic twaddle did you use to get mademoiselle Lefebvre’s petticoats up over her knees? The same line of seduction the Duke used on my mother: the false promise of marriage?”

“Lord, no! That technique is as stale as last week’s bread,” Julian said with disdain. “Oh? Did
you
offer
her
that inducement? Dear me, I presumed you better practiced at the art of seduction than that.”

“You sneer, but my pursuit of mademoiselle Lefebvre was wholly honorable,” Robert Thesiger replied stiffly, a glance at Deb who was now at her husband’s elbow.

Julian was genuinely surprised. “And she refused you? Why?”

“You know perfectly why she refused me!” Robert Thesiger said savagely. “You dangled a dukedom on the end of your
telum
and she obliged because she thought you meant marriage!”

“If she told you so then she is not only a whore but a liar.”

“If mademoiselle Lefebvre is either it is your doing!”

Julian threw up a hand. “Robert, show some wit. Whether I was the girl’s lover or not is quite inconsequential to the fact she rejected your suit. So if you’re done, leave via the tradesmen’s entrance from whence you came.”

Robert Thesiger could hardly contain his anger and frustration at the Marquis’s cavalier dismissal of his predicament and it made him say recklessly, knowing he had an audience in the Marchioness, “This is not over! I will have my revenge, for the wrongs done my mother and for your cold-blooded seduction of the woman I hoped to marry! Even if it takes five, ten, twenty years—”

“Yes. Yes. I’ve heard all your melodramatic nonsense before,” Julian said with a languid wave of one hand. But the light in his green eyes was hard. “Or perhaps you’ve forgotten how you came by that scar; that you would not now be alive if it wasn’t for your sordid claim to the dregs of my father’s blood.”

Robert Thesiger pretended offense. “Is it my fault I am your father’s son?”

To everyone’s surprise and bemusement the Marquis gave a bark of unrestrained laughter as if told a good joke. “Now
that
is a winning performance and a much better calling card!” And almost in the same breath the laughter died. “You are a thorn in my side, to be sure, Robert, but I shall live. Your bitter, petty attempts to disrupt my life are merely that, and are not worthy of my thought or time. But harm any member of my family, and I won’t show you the same courtesy I did in Athens.”

He then dismissed Robert Thesiger with a contemptuous wave as he turned his back to enter the tent to see how his brother was faring. That he had no idea he had an audience was evident by his startled expression when he came face to face with Deb. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Robert Thesiger and Joseph had a hand on her upper arm, as if to restrain her.

“Beggin’ your ladyship’s pardon, but his lordship wouldn’t want you to—”

“Damn you, I must know!” Deb muttered under her breath and pushed his hand off as she stepped past the Marquis to extend her hand to her husband’s mortal enemy.

“Mr. Thesiger? Oh, how remiss of me!
Lord
Thesiger,” she said with a smile, as if it was only yesterday they had parted in the Assembly Rooms in Bath, and was relieved when he bowed over her hand. “So much has happened these past few months,” she said conversationally. “To both of us…”

“Just so, my lady,” Robert Thesiger replied, a triumphant glance at the mute Marquis who, unable to hide his bitter disapproval of his wife’s actions, walked away and disappeared inside the tent. He smiled crookedly and tugged at the white ruffles covering his hands, a sweeping look at the mansard roofed palace that dominated the skyline. “I have acquired a title and wealth while you, my lady, have sacrificed your independence of spirit to live in a gilded cage.”

Deb continued to smile, ignored the slight and said with practiced calm, “Once we had a discussion at the Assembly Rooms about business in Paris keeping you away—”

“Business with blue eyes? Yes, intriguing that you should remember.”

“Because you were adamant the adorable Dominique was more beautiful than I.”

“Ha! You remembered her name. So you were piqued after all!”

“Is there a point to this?” Joseph muttered in Deb’s ear.

“May I know if the blue-eyed Dominique is mademoiselle Lefebvre?” Deb inquired calmly, ignoring her groom, but with the blood drumming in her ears as she anticipated Robert Thesiger’s reply

Robert Thesiger was bemused as to where the conversation was leading, but happy to oblige. He inclined his powdered head. “Just so.”

“Dominique Lefebvre.” Deb whispered the name as if it was reverential and in that same breath a thick fog of uncertainty that had enveloped her for months suddenly dissolved and everything was given clarity and meaning. Now she knew what she must do to secure her future. Decided, she flicked open her fan and held out her hand in farewell to Robert Thesiger, barely giving him a second glance, although, when he bowed over her hand she was not so distracted that she did not hear his invitation.

“At the Tuileries tomorrow,” he said in an under voice. “Mademoiselle Lefebvre arrives at noon. If you desire the truth, be there…”

Deb made no reply and watched him saunter off across the cobbled drive towards the tradesmen’s entrance gate before turning away to find her husband waiting for her by the tent. She was so caught up in her mental strategies on how best to escape the Hôtel for the Tuileries tomorrow without alerting Brigitte, the Duke’s army of servants or her husband, that she was oblivious to the Marquis’s stiff-necked silence and Joseph’s jaw swinging look as she was escorted indoors to be presented to the hundreds of guests waiting to be introduced to the Marquis of Alston’s English bride.

F
OURTEEN

I
T WAS FOUR
in the morning when the last of the guests straggled out of the Hôtel de Roxton and were helped into their carriages by liveried footmen who did their best to keep yawning to a minimum. Half an hour later, Julian padded through in his bare feet to his wife’s apartment via the secret door concealed behind an enormous floor to ceiling tapestry. Deb had been put to bed well before midnight and he wished he could have followed her, such was his aversion for large public gatherings where he and his family were the main attraction.

He really would have to tell his wife about the door, if Brigitte hadn’t already. But he suspected he was right about the very discreet Brigitte: a gem amongst paste. And how did Deb think he had arrived in her boudoir via her bedchamber earlier that day, by conjury?

He found Deb curled up amongst the pillows, an arm caught in the tumble of her long dark red hair that enveloped her like a blanket. He set aside his taper, to pull the coverlet up over her, and to draw the curtains about the bed to keep in the warmth, when she woke and blinked in the muted candlelight.

“I’m not asleep,” she said drowsily.

“No, you’re not,” he replied gently, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Deb propped herself up on an elbow and frowned under heavy lids. He was still dressed. He had removed his velvet frock coat and matching gold thread waistcoat and thrown a silk banyan loosely over his opened neck shirt and breeches. “You’re not dressed for bed.”

He laughed at her blunt disappointment.

“I didn’t come here to be a nuisance. I just wanted to see how you fared after such an exhausting evening… And I couldn’t sleep,” he confessed. “Our conversation today was interrupted by Joseph.”

Deb was suddenly wide-awake. “Would you like to tell me now?”

He glanced at her fleetingly, and pretended an interest in a pulled thread on the embroidered coverlet. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something about myself that you should’ve known from the very beginning…”

“May I ask you one question before you tell me?” she asked, filling his silence. And when he nodded, said frankly, “Do you know mademoiselle Lefebvre’s actual Christian name, Julian?” When he gave a start she grabbed at his hand and smiled. “Please. It is important.”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“And the color of her eyes?”

“That’s two questions.”

Her smile brightened. “I promise it will be the last time I mention mademoiselle Lefebvre.”

Again he shrugged his ignorance. “Why does her Christian name and the color of her eyes interest you?”

She bit her lip to hide a grin. “Oh, they don’t interest me at all. But no more. I promised. Tomorrow. First I must speak with Eve. Now what is it you want to tell me?”

He shook his head at her mischievous twinkle and swiftly kissed her hand. “Tomorrow then.” And stopped, not knowing how to go on with his confession. Finally he took a deep breath and said softly, “Perhaps it would be for the best if I begin at the beginning… The night of our hasty midnight marriage I made a vow.”

“A vow?” Deb clutched at the word, intrigued and she scrambled to sit up amongst the feather pillows.

The action was simple enough but the arousing sight of her full breasts brushing against the silk of her nightgown in the soft light of the flickering taper was all consuming. Finally he tore his gaze away, determined to complete his confession once and for all time.

“This vow was in the form of a promise to the children that would one day eventuate from our marriage. I have always wanted a large family…” He looked into Deb’s eyes, the frown between his black brows a little deeper than before. “Very few noblemen take responsibility for the corollary of their immoral behavior. After all, it is arrogantly assumed that any children that result from such a base union are the female’s responsibility. But it was this appalling consequence, that there was a very real possibility that somewhere out there I had bastard brothers and sisters who struggled through life, forgotten and in poverty, while I was given every advantage in life, all my wants and needs,
my whims
, attended to without question, that had a profound affect on me.

“You can then well imagine my feelings when I discovered Robert was my natural brother. To come face to face with a boy who was my father’s son, who blamed my mother for his base birth, yet was proud of his ignoble connection with my father… The shock… The idea that one day a son of mine could be approached and his innocence of the world, the image he held of his loving parents and all that he held dear, could be shattered and corrupted by the existence of a bastard half-brother, so appalled me that I vowed there and then that such a hideous prospect would never befall my children.”

Deb blanched. “What I said to you that horrid day in Martin’s house—”

“—echoed the truth of my youth. But you could not have known that…” He smiled crookedly. “And yet I was delightfully surprised to discover how attune are our views on the subject of infidelity and the upbringing of children.”

The heightened color in his face was indication enough that he had made this speech with difficulty and a good deal of embarrassment, but he had yet to tell her the exact nature of his vow, although she had a fair idea by now what it was. Still, she wanted to hear him say it. But his next words caused her to blush rosily.

He pressed her hand. “In Constantinople, I had a lover—”

“I’d really rather not know.”

“—ten years my senior,” he continued in a measured tone. “She was from a minor branch of the Russian royal family and wife of the Russian Ambassador. She taught me many valuable lessons about life and love in at least four languages. More importantly, she offered me the reassurance I needed that I’d no reason to be apologetic or feel ashamed of my convictions.”

Deb kept her gaze lowered to where their intertwined fingers rested on the coverlet. “You talk of a vow to ensure your own children are never plagued by bastards fathered out of wedlock, and in the next breath you are fondly reminiscing about this older woman who was clearly your mistress.”

“Darling, listen to me. She and I—we—we were never lovers in the
strict
sense of the word. In fact, I have never—that is, I have
experience
in certain particulars of lovemaking but I—I—
Damn it
!” he growled in frustration, a hot flush burning his stubbled cheeks. He pushed a hand through his thick black curls. “Why can’t I just come out and say it?”

Deb drew herself up off the pillows to kneel before him, her nightgown so outrageously askew that Julian’s appreciative gaze fell on luscious thigh and rounded buttock and his mouth went dry. He completely lost his train of thought as he felt himself stir.

“God, Deborah, don’t do this to me, not now, not at this moment. Not when I’m trying to tell you—”

She put her arms about his neck. “I think I know what it is you want to tell me…” and leaned forward to brush her lips over his dry mouth. “Abstinence is nothing of which to be ashamed.”

He kissed her mouth, wanting to fulfill the promise in her brief alluring kiss, then pulled back saying candidly, “A bride expects her husband to be a consummate lover, to initiate her into love making… Not an overeager virgin armed with raw instinct and expert lessons in foreplay!” He frowned, cheeks burning hotter than ever. “I’m a fraud, Deborah.”