The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) (11 page)

There was a man who she imagined was the Referee and another holding a black bag, who she guessed with a sinking of her heart was a doctor.

Dawn had broken and now it was easy to see every detail, the diamond tie-pin glittering in the Comte’s cravat, the Duke’s signet ring on his little finger.

‘I cannot bear it!’ Antonia thought.

She wondered if she should run forward and beg them not to fight each other, but she knew she would only embarrass the Duke and that she would be sent away.

If the duel did not take place this morning, it would take place to-morrow.

She fastened her teeth onto her lower lip so that she would not cry out.

Now the Referee was ready and he called the two contestants to him and they stood back to back.

“Ten paces,” Antonia heard him say and began to count.

“
Un, deux, trois
...
”

The Duke was taller than the Comte and he moved slowly and with a dignity which made Antonia feel very proud.

There was something magnificent about him, she thought. Something which seemed to raise him above everything that was squalid and vulgar and made him a man of honour and a sportsman in every fibre of his being.

“
Huit, neuf, dix
!”

Antonia held her breath.

The Duke and the Comte stood sideways to each other and brought their pistols, French fashion, down upon their left arms, which were raised shoulder high, and took aim.

“Fire!”

The Referee gave the word and the Duke with superb marksmanship just grazed the outside of the Comte’s arm. A crimson patch appeared on his coat.

The Duke’s seconds moved forward.

“Honour is satisfied!” they declared.

The Duke dropped his arms.

“Not as far as I am concerned!” the Comte replied savagely.

Then he fired!

There was the reverberation of his pistol, and Antonia realised that when the Duke had lowered both his arms, he had been off guard and at his ease. He had also turned his body fully towards the Comte.

Just for a moment she thought the bullet had missed, then as the Duke fell she gave a cry that was strangled in her throat and ran towards him.

She was certain as she reached him that he was dead!

CHAPTER
FIVE

S
omeone ... a man
...
was screaming
...
crying out
...
making a noise
...

The Duke wondered how anyone could be so tiresome when he felt so ill. He had heard this man before and resented the commotion which he made.

He could still hear him but he was further away
...
in the distance
...
gradually fading
...
until there was silence
...

He felt a relief that the noise was no longer there and then a soft voice which he also seemed to have heard many times said:

“Go to sleep. You are safe
...
quite safe. No-one shall hurt you.”

He wanted to say that he was not afraid, but it was too much effort to try to speak or to open his eyes.

“Go to sleep, my darling,” the voice said tenderly. “But perhaps you are thirsty?”

There was an arm lifting his head very carefully so that
he could drink from a glass which contained something cool and rather sweet.

He was not certain what it was—it was too much of an effort to try and think.

It was strangely comforting to be held closely and his cheek was against something very soft.

There was a sweet fragrance of flowers and now there was a cool hand on his forehead, soothing him, mesmerising him and he knew he was slipping away into oblivion
...

The Duke came back to consciousness to hear two voices speaking.

“How is he, Tour?”

It was the voice of a woman and vaguely he wondered who she was. Tour he recognised as his valet.

“Much quieter, Your Grace. I have washed His Grace, shaved him and he hardly moved.”

“Did the doctor come while I was asleep?”

“He did, Your Grace, and he is very pleased indeed with the wound. He said His Grace must have been in the pink of condition to be healing so quickly.”

“You should have awoken me, Tour, I would have liked to talk to the doctor.”

“You must sleep sometimes, Your Grace. You cannot be up all night and all day.”

“I am all right. There are many more important things to worry about rather than my health.”

“You have to think of yourself, Your Grace. Remember I cannot cope without you, especially when His Grace is in one of his restless moods.”

“No, that is true. Will you sit with him a little longer, Tour? I am expecting Mr. Labouchere.”

“Yes, of course, Your Grace, and afterwards I think you should take a little fresh air.”

“I will go into the garden. You will call me if His Grace wakes or is restless?”

“I will do that, Your Grace, I have given my promise and I won’t break it.”

“Thank you, Tour.”

The Duke wondered what it was all about but he was too tired to make the effort of trying to find out. He fell asleep.

Antonia waited in the Salon for Henry Labouchere.

She was sure that when the Duke regained consciousness he would think it strange that the only friend she had in Paris was a journalist.

Henry Labouchere, as it happened, owned a quarter share in the
London Daily News,
and had appointed himself to the Paris office.

An Englishman with Huguenot ancestry,
‘L
abby’ as all his friends called him, was a character. While many people hated him for his sharp and caustic articles, he was many other things as well.

A wit, cynic, stage manager and diplomat, he had filled all these roles and had been elected to Parliament as a Radical and a Republican in 1865.

He had however lost his seat at the same time as he had inherited £250,000 and he now devoted himself to increasing the circulation of the
Daily News.

Henry Labouchere had come to interview the Duke, having heard rumours of the duel which had taken place in the Bois.

He had found instead a white-faced and very frightened Duchess who told him quite frankly that the Duke’s life was in danger and pleaded with him not to write about it in his newspaper.

Henry Labouchere, who had been the lover of a great many attractive women, found Antonia’s pleading, worried eyes irresistible.

He not only promised to keep the duel a secret, but as the days passed he became her friend, confidant and adviser when she had no-one else to turn to.

It was Henry Labouchere who kept her up to date with the fantastic events which were happening in Paris.

At first, when everyone expected the war to be over almost immediately, the French went on enjoying themselves without a thought that there might be anything to disturb their pleasure but a celebration of French victories.

On July 28th, the Emperor had taken command of his armies with the Empress’s words “Louis, do your duty well,” ringing in his ears.

But as he passed through Metz he was in constant pain from the stone in his bladder and to many of his Generals he gave the impression of a man who was utterly worn out.

The Germans had 400,000 men in supreme fighting trim and 1,440 guns concentrated on the far side of the Rhine, while Louis Napoleon had only been able to muster 250,000 soldiers.

His strategic plan was to advance rapidly eastwards into Germany in the hope of swinging the South German States and eventually the reluctant Austrians into war against Prussia.

The gay uniforms of the French army, the joyous fanfares, the confident and dashing officers with their smart ‘imperials’ worn as a compliment to their Emperor, all made a striking contrast to the Prussian disdain for any kind of ostentation.

On August 2nd, the French captured Saarbriicken from the weak German advance forces and all Paris revelled in the triumph.

A telegram was read out on the Bourse reporting the capture of the Prussian Crown Prince. This caused a famous tenor to sing the Marseillaise from the top of a horse-drawn bus!

Henry Labouchere had related to Antonia the wild scenes that took place in the streets.

She had heard and seen nothing as she nursed a delirious and restless Duke who was running a high fever after the bullet had been extracted from his wound.

At first she was not particularly interested in the news and, although she thanked Mr. Labouchere for coming to see her, she made it obvious that she could only spend a few minutes with him.

All her thoughts were concentrated on the sick-bed.

However, as the week went by and the Duke, though his wound was improving day by day, did not regain consciousness, she found it was impossible to shut her mind to the events occurring outside.

She therefore found herself looking forward to Mr. Labouchere’s visits even though he brought her little but bad news.

Stories of terrible inefficiency drifted back to Paris; of weary troops reaching their destination to find their tents had been mislaid; of gunmen separated from their guns; of magazines discovered to be empty.

After two defeats at Spicheren and Woerth, a long and disheartening retreat began. Orders and counter-orders were issued from a panic-stricken Paris.

A German attack at St. Privat on August 18th inflicted
20,000
casualties on the French and during the night the army fled back in disorder to Metz from where they had started.

The disastrous news had staggered Paris into a state, which was, as Mr. Labouchere put it ‘bordering upon madness’.

“I have just seen three or four Germans nearly punched to death,” he told Antonia. “Several of the larger cafes have been forced to close! Excited mobs are attacking them because their proprietors are supposed to have German sympathies.”

What seemed to Antonia to distress him even more was when he told her that the beautiful trees in the Bois were being felled.

“Is everyone leaving Paris?” she asked a few days later.

“On the contrary,” he replied. “The French authorities are insisting that it is safer to be in Paris than anywhere else, and people are flooding into the City.”

“Then things cannot be too bad,” Antonia smiled.

“I do hope you are right,” he said. “At the same time I would have liked you and your husband to go home while it is possible.”

“It is quite impossible at the moment,” Antonia replied, “and surely we are completely safe being British?”

“I expect so,” he answered. “But I do advise you against going outside the house except into your own garden. People are arrested on the most trivial suspicions of being a German and there has been a certain amount of dissension on the Boulevards.”

“In what way?” Antonia asked.

“When the despatches arrive and they are not favourable, the crowds start shouting: ‘Down with the Emperor!’ and ‘
Decheance
!’ ”

“Abdication!” Antonia exclaimed. “Can they really be asking that?”

“The French are very intolerant of failure,” Henry Labouchere replied.

Because she felt that it might be a long time before they could return to England and therefore they must not be extravagant with what money they had, Antonia, after consultation with Tour, dismissed the majority of the servants in the house.

She kept two who had been there with its owners, a middle-aged couple who were quite content, as there was no entertaining, to do everything that was required.

Antonia found that Tour was a tower of strength. Not only could he speak French fluently, but he knew exactly how to handle the Duke and was, in his own way, she thought, an even better nurse than she was.

It was Tour who told her of the animals massed in the Bois and for the first time Antonia faced the suggestion that the Germans might reach Paris.

“So much food will not be necessary?” she asked Tour in surprise.

“One never knows, Your Grace,” he replied in a tone which told her he did not wish to make her nervous. “They say it would be impossible for anyone to take Paris, it is so heavily fortified.”

“That is true,” Antonia agreed. “I was reading in the Guide Book how the whole City is surrounded by an
enceinte
wall, 30 foot high and divided into 93 bastions. Besides, there is a moat and at varying distances a chain of powerful forts.”

She thought of the animals again and said:

“But of course all the trains will be needed to convey food to the troops at the front and I quite understand that in the City we should be self-sufficient.”

She asked Henry Labouchere for further news when he next came to see her and in reply he handed her an article he had written for the
Daily News
in England.

She read it, her eyes widening with surprise at the incredible story.

“As far as the eye can reach over every open space, down the long, long Avenue all the way to Longchamps itself, there is nothing but sheep, sheep, sheep! In the Bois alone there must be
as well as 4,000 oxen.”

“Can this really be true?” she enquired.

“We are getting ourselves prepared,” Henry Labouchere had laughed, “so you need not be afraid that when the Duke gets better he will not be able to build up his strength with plenty of good meat.”

Tour however was not prepared to rely entirely on the Bois. He brought into the house quite a lot of food which would not deteriorate, telling Antonia gloomily that it was getting more expensive every day.

The Duke stirred and instantly Antonia rose from a chair at the open window and came to the side of the bed.

She knelt down beside him and said in the soft voice which he had grown used to hearing these past weeks:

“Are you hot? Would you like a drink, my darling?”

She spoke, he thought, as a woman would speak to a child she loved.

He remembered that when he had been delirious he had thought that his mother had her arms around him and that she was telling him to be good and go to sleep.

He felt very weak and yet for the first time his brain was clear. He knew who he was and remembered that he was in Paris.

Then, as he tried to move he felt a sudden pain in his chest. He recalled the duel and that it would account for what he now knew had been a long illness.

Antonia had lifted him very gently; now she was feeding him with a soup that he thought must be extremely nourishing as it tasted of beef, or was it perhaps venison? He could not be certain.

She placed it against his lips, giving him small spoonfuls, waiting between each one so that he had time to swallow.

There was again the fragrance of flowers coming from her, and when he had taken quite a considerable amount of the soup, she held him close for a moment.

He found that the softness he had felt beneath his cheek so many times before had been the softness of her breast.

“You are better,” she said and there was a note of elation in her voice. “The doctor will be very pleased with you tomorrow and now my dearest one, you must go back to sleep again.”

He felt her hand cool against his forehead.

“No fever,” she said as if she spoke to herself. “How wonderful it will be when it is all gone and you are yourself again.”

She laid him down against the pillows, moving them comfortably behind his head. Then she moved away and after a little while he opened his eyes.

He had not realised before that it was night time. There was a candle lit beside his bed, the curtains were drawn back and the windows were open. He thought he could see the sky and the stars.

He lay trying to focus his eyes, and then, as if she knew instinctively that he was awake, Antonia came back to the bed.

She looked down at him and said in a voice that was a little above a whisper: