Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) (18 page)

The Marquis and his bride had taken a basket nuncheon down to the lake, where they spent the afternoon swimming and fishing. They came back up to the house, dripping wet and in such animated conversation about the merits of the pistol over the sword as a preferred dueling weapon that the housekeeper and Frew were left to stare at one another openmouthed as they were passed on the stair. Water had pooled at the doorway and the carpet made wet on the stair. And as if this wasn’t enough to make Frew’s jaw swing, Deb was wearing a shirt that belonged to his master. This blatant disrespect for his master’s wardrobe scandalized the valet more than anything and he was in such a state of shock to think she had dared to don male attire that the subsequent noises above his head, of unrestrained laughter, of running about and of the slamming of doors went entirely unheard. The loud, almost deafening report of a pistol did not.

Frew had burst into the paneled bedchamber unannounced. What he saw horrified him. He thought he would faint. He wanted to lean up against something to steady his legs but his feet would not move. His hands were shaking so much that he drove them deep into his coat pockets, and clenched hard his fists. His eyes would not blink.

The Marchioness was standing in the middle of the room, side-on to the window, her bare feet slightly apart, the weight of her long wet curls clinging to the wet shirt, making the whole transparent. Her right arm was outstretched, pointing toward the open doorway that led into the dressing room and beyond that to the closet. In her hand was a smoking pistol. Frew recognized the pistol by its silver handle inlaid with pearl. It belonged to his master.

“Damn!” she said with a frown. “I didn’t do that at all well,” and dropped her pistol arm.

She’s found him out! Had he finally told her the truth? Or had one of the servants… But no, none of the household servants knew the Marquis’s true identity, that’s why they’d come north. To them, as to his bride, he was simply Julian Hesham Esq. But she must have found out somehow and she’d taken her revenge for being duped. And now, she’s shot him! screamed in Frew’s brain. But he could not work his mouth to say it out loud.

Then the mundane intruded into his disordered thoughts and he felt uncannily calm. By the large carved mantle of the fireplace a pile of discarded clothes lay sodden on the hearth; they would need laundering. He glanced quickly about the room, carefully avoiding the tumble of bed linen occupying the massive four-poster bed. Nothing was amiss with the heavy Elizabethan furniture. No signs of a scuffle. In the next breath he was suffering from an acute attack of embarrassment, far worse than any feelings of faintness or panic.

The Marquis bounded barefoot into the bedchamber from the dressing room, clad only in his breeches, damp hair pulled off his face and left to fall about his bare shoulders. Laughingly, he grabbed his wife’s hand and dragged her after him, through the dressing room into the closet. Without realizing it, Frew followed them.

“Not at all well?” the Marquis declared. “You’re much too harsh on yourself, darling! I told you it would pull to the right and you compensated for that splendidly. Look! Not a mark on the canvas and only the slightest of shaves to the frame. No one would be the wiser save for the dent in the paneling.”

There was a small hole in the closet wall; it had split the heavy walnut paneling. The gilt wood picture frame had fared less well, the bullet shearing off a long sliver of wood before impacting the wall. The painting of the Elizabethan manor house’s topiary garden was unharmed. The damage to the wall was forgotten in Frew’s admiration for the Marchioness’s accuracy of eye with a pistol. She’d be deadly in a duel.

But Deb continued to frown. “I meant to miss the canvas and I certainly didn’t intend to hit the frame.” Then she smiled saucily, saying from under her lashes as she inspected the pistol, “Perhaps if I was to have a second try…?”

“No you don’t, vixen!” The Marquis grinned and took the pistol from her. “A dent in the paneling can be patched up. A second shot would require an explanation to the Dunnes I don’t care to give.” He then swept his wife off to the bed.

Frew stood in the doorway until it was almost too late for him to depart with his self-respect in tact. Finally, he closed the door behind him, and slowly went downstairs shaking his head, a spreading smirk still in evidence when the cook handed him a mug of ale.

And now he was back in Bath, sent on ahead with the luggage to ready the Queen Anne House for the couple’s arrival. The valet waited and so did the pile of correspondence, one letter in particular. It was from the Duke and had come by liveried courier three days earlier. Martin Ellicott had sent a response without knowing the letter’s contents. Also awaiting the Marquis were two lawyers who had landed on the doorstep and also sent by the Duke.

Frew met them as he crossed from the stables, having just returned from Bath with the day’s mail. He presumed them to be travelers who had lost their way on the Bath road, but the taller and elder of the two men dismounted and divested himself of his traveling cloak, revealing a richly embroidered frock coat with a froth of fine white lace at his throat. He dumped the traveling cloak on Frew and stripped off his riding gloves to show hands that had never done a day’s manual labor and which were covered in rings studded with precious stones. He then turned to his companion and remarked in French about the quaintness of the English architecture. His companion, who had the look of a lawyer’s flunkey with his ill-fitting brown bagwig and nondescript suit of worsted wool, was preoccupied with the unpacking of the saddlebags. He replied that the English fascination for quaintness was exceeded only by their generous helpings of bland food. He prayed a good drop of wine was to be had within doors, unlike their lodgings in Marlborough, where the food had been unpalatable and the wine insipid, to which the elder man snorted his pessimism.

“M’sieur Muraire, he is here to see M’sieur le Marquis de Alston,” the soberly dressed Frenchman announced, juggling an armful of documentation tied up with ribbon. “You will tell him at once: We have arrived.”

Frew pushed the heavy cloaks onto Fibber, who had appeared at the front door, and acknowledged the two Frenchmen with a curt bow. He began to explain that his lordship was not in residence but was cut off by the lawyer, who said with a haughty sniff,

“Me he will see!” and accompanied this command with a wave of his heavily scented, lace bordered handkerchief. “It is most necessary.” After which pronouncement the two men minced past the butler to be greeted by Martin Ellicott who spoke to them in their own tongue and showed them into the book room, where they remained for the entire day, filling every space with mountains of documents, paper, quills and ink, and demanding that their nuncheon be brought to them on trays. They could not possibly interrupt their work by taking food in the dining room. Martin Ellicott took this all in his stride as he did everything else, and Frew could only marvel at the old man’s calm, putting it down to his absolute and unquestioning loyalty to the Duke of Roxton.

Martin Ellicott’s butler was clearing away the remnants of dinner from the parlor late one night when he heard carriage wheels on the crushed stone drive. Such was his haste to be the first in the tiled entrance vestibule that he collided with his master who had come downstairs in his embroidered night robe and matching night cap with tassel, taper in hand.

The old man gave the taper to his butler and unbolted the front door, sending Fibber out into the night air to greet a dusty and mud-spattered coach, the horses worn and thirsty from the speed of travel rather than the extent of their journey. The carriage door was thrown open and out jumped the Marquis of Alston dressed in a many caped greatcoat and boots. He put up a gloved hand to Martin in greeting, who waited under the lighted portico, then turned to assist his wife to firm ground.

Martin bowed to both of them, eyes keen and bright, yet features schooled to show polite interest. “I am very pleased to finally have you both here safe and well, if a little overdue…?”

“Are we overdue?” Julian asked rhetorically, gripping the old man’s hand and smiling broadly. “I hope Frew hasn’t been under your feet this past fortnight?” he asked, a glance at his sleepy-eyed valet who had just stumbled out into the night air half-dressed to see what all the commotion was about.

“Not at all,” came the bland reply as the old man bowed over Deb’s outstretched hand. “Welcome back to Moranhall, my dear. You must be tired and hungry after your journey.”

Deborah smiled shyly, feeling a little awkward at this first meeting with the old man since her marriage to his godson, but she rallied herself enough to say, “Thank you, sir. Tired, yes, but not the least hungry. I should be grateful for a warm bath; we have been on the road all day.”

“Fussy appetite,” Julian said cheerfully.

“Fussy?
Fussy
!” Deb said with a gasp and laughed. “Just because I didn’t feel like sitting down to a banquet when we stopped for dinner after bumping about for miles and miles on end.”

Julian grinned. “You did look quite green when the beef was put before me.”

Deb giggled and gripped Julian’s arm affectionately. “Did I? How awful for you.”

The Marquis linked arms with his wife and godfather and walked them into the house. “After the green episode,” he explained to Martin, “we traveled the rest of the day at a more sedate pace.”

“So that’s why we are here in the moonlight,” Deb added, “for which I apologize.” She glanced at the bowing valet, who had stepped out of the way to allow the three persons to enter the house, “Poor Frew. Has he been twiddling his thumbs in our absence? We sent him on ahead with most of the luggage, expecting to be only a day or two behind him.” She looked up at her husband with a shy smile, “But the day stretched into a fortnight…”

“He has been kept busy, my la—”

“Come to think on it, I am quite ravenous,” Julian interrupted, cutting the old man off as he thrust his traveling cloak and gloves on his sleepy valet. “You must eat something,” he said in an under voice to Deb, but with a quick look at Martin who had turned to give Fibber directions for the disposal of the bags and trunks and to see that a bath was drawn for the Marchioness. “You’ve not eaten all day,” he added, looking down at her with concern.

“I did. A piece of bread at the Duckpond Inn,” she whispered back with a smile. She stripped off her gloves and put a hand to her disheveled hair. “I really do want a bath, so you go ahead and I shall say good night to M’sieur Ellicott.”

He kissed her hand and left her to Martin, while Fibber followed him to the dining room, Martin taking the Marchioness up to the suite of rooms she had occupied the first night of her marriage, and with apologies for not being able to provide her with a female attendant; but as Deb pointed out, she had not had the benefit of her maid for over two months now, save for a girl from the local village coming each day to help her with her hair and her dress, that she was quite used to doing most things for herself.

When Martin entered the dining room he found his godson staring out of the window into the shadows of a moonlit night, a deep scowl of preoccupation on his handsome face and the food on the table of no interest. Fibber came and went with covered dishes and wine glasses and a bottle of burgundy, and still Julian remained at the window, oblivious to the activity at his back and the fact his godfather stood watching him intently.

Martin closed over the door. “You haven’t told her, have you, Julian?”

The Marquis took a few moments to answer him. He did not turn around. “No.”

“Do you think she has any idea?” When his godson merely shrugged the old man sat down with a sigh and poured wine into two crystal glasses. “My boy, was there not a single moment in the time you were away to confide the truth of your consequence?”

“Have you been to the estate in Cumbria?” Julian asked the windowpane, as if Martin had not spoken. “The house is an Elizabethan monolith that needs modernizing; but the Dunnes, they’re the present tenants, have made a reasonable job of maintaining the rooms and grounds. In fact, the topiary garden is coming along splendidly, given it was planted by James the Second’s gardener. I’ve given the Dunne’s permission to restore the south wing. And I want a jetty built. Harry and Jack will enjoy the fishing.”

“Prolonging the revelation has only made it that much more difficult for you. Especially,” Martin added with a kind smile, “when your wife is so very much in love with you.”

At that, Julian turned and stared at the old man, face white and throat tinder dry. He felt ill. “Christ, Martin, I didn’t need you to tell me that!” and returned to the night sky, dropping his forehead on the silken arm that rested against the window frame. “It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. I never anticipated I would—she would… I imagined how it would be hundreds of times, but it—
she
is unlike any female—Oh, God…” He swallowed hard and said impatiently, “It’s impossible for me to explain!”

Martin came over to stand beside him, a frown between his white brows. “The time away did not go at all—well?” he asked gently, handing over a wine glass.

To Martin Ellicott’s amazement Julian gave a ghost of a laugh. “Are you inquiring if I enjoyed the shooting, the fishing and the wilds of the Cumbrian landscape, or if I was able to perform my conjugal duty with mutual and satisfactory regularity? To which I must answer yes to both. If she’s not with child by now, the Duke had best look to Harry to supply an heir!” The startled expression of embarrassment on his godfather’s face that accompanied this blunt speech made him immediately recant. “
Excusez-moi
,
mon parrain
. That was uncalled for,” he murmured in French. “You, more than any other, understand my morbid morality. Why I forced myself to-to—
wait
. Why I am so eager that she now give me a son and soon.”

“Yes,
mon filleul
,” the old man muttered, face still flushed with heat from his godson’s frank confession.

The Marquis nodded self-consciously and for want of something to cover an awkward embarrassment at voicing what his godfather had always privately known about him, he pretended to notice for the first time the neat stack of correspondence on the sideboard and asked, “Any letters needing my immediate attention?” and picked up the top packet and broke the seal. “When did this arrive from his Grace?”