Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Page 20

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. Yes, it matters! Of course it matters! Charlotte, she says you sold it to a Farmer-General. Is that so? Julian? Attend me! Is it?”

  “M’sieur Lavoisier is a member of the Farmers-General. Yes. My agent in Paris sold the house to him.”

  “You have sold your noble French heritage and all that it means to a French merchant?” she asked with deliberate slowness. Numbness and sorrow gave way to incredulous anger. “And of course to show how much he cares for your noble French ancestors M’sieur Farmer-General he has turned three hundred and fifty years of nobility into apartments for rent!” She snapped her fingers. “So that is what you care for your birthright, for your mother’s and father’s French blood? You besmirch us by allowing tax collectors who care for nothing but profit to make a mockery of your lineage!”

  “That is a ridiculous accusation to make. I have done nothing of the sort.”

  “Have you told your brother? Have you told Henri-Antoine?” Antonia demanded, willing the tears not to flow. “Have you told Henri-Antoine about this wicked thing you have done? That you have sold his childhood home without consultation or a thought for him? That the house his father and his father’s ancestors once occupied is now overrun with care-for-nothing tenants beholden to a greedy merchant and who have as much honor and grace about their persons as your father he had in his little pinkie? Well, have you, M’sieur le Duc?”

  Roxton baulked at her tone and the use of his title and his voice lost its gentleness. “I answer to no one, Madam. The decision was mine to make and I have made it. It is done. Fin.”

  Antonia made a noise that was half sob, half laugh. “That is true, mon-fils. You answer to no one and thus who is there to tell you it was wicked and criminal of you to sell my memories and your brother’s memories in such a heartless fashion?” She glanced over her shoulder at her daughter-in-law, who stood as stone behind her, and behind the Duchess her ladies-in-waiting hovered, and then looked up at her son, a jerk of her fair head in direction of the Duchess. “I would hazard a guess that not even your English wife she offered her whole hearted support for this horrid decision of yours. That—”

  “Leave Deborah out of this!”

  “—you stubbornly went ahead with the sale despite her objections.”

  “Enough!”

  Roxton took a step forward.

  Antonia stood her ground; chin up. “I am not one of your lackeys, Julian, that one harsh word it will silence me!”

  Roxton lifted a hand in a gesture of frustrated hopelessness and let it fall heavily on a sigh of exasperation.

  “I am not going to argue with you. What is done is done and this is not the time or the place for you to voice your melodramatic outrage.”

  “Melodramatic? Time and place?” she wondered, voice faltering, tears now on her flushed cheeks. “Does your mother she need to make an appointment with your secretary to do so? Mon Dieu. It is you who have reduced me to this: barging in on your meetings with Government functionaries to discover for myself what everyone else already knows; what my own son could not bring himself to tell me to my face!”

  “I will not discuss this matter further before others. This conversation is at an end for today,” he said very quietly, mustering all his self-control and not daring to glance down at her again; hearing the bewildered desolation in her voice was almost too much. And so he stepped past her, exchanged a look of understanding with his wife, whose steady gaze had not left his face for a moment, and then looked across at the two gentlemen still hovering ill at ease by the wingchairs, thankful their French tongue was rudimentary at best. A nod to each and they responded in kind and quietly took their leave. To the two ladies-in-waiting he said, “Her Grace is tired and will be returning to Crecy Hall at once.”

  “No! Her Grace will not be returning to Crecy Hall at once!” Antonia mimicked him in English, swirling about, fingers convulsing in the folds of her silk gown, and quickly reverting to her native French, “Julian! We will discuss this here and now, as is my right as your mother! You dare to turn my memories into a great pile of ashes and then dismiss me as if I should see the loss of our Parisian home and all that it means to me as you see it: a financial transaction and nothing more? I do not and never will! How did you expect me to react to such news?”

  “With the decorum befitting your rank!” the Duke blurted out and bit down on his tongue to stop himself saying anything further.

  Antonia stood very still. No one had ever questioned her ability to carry herself as a duchess, least of all a member of her family. That her eldest son saw fit to criticize her made her suddenly very sad. She wasn’t quite sure what was meant by the remark but she understood the underlying premise.

  “Whatever my rank, whatever you and others believe I should be, I have always been just myself...”

  She glanced around the room, at the downcast eyes of her daughter-in-law and her ladies-in-waiting, and at the elderly nobleman who had quietly left the window embrasure to come stand by a wingchair close to the Duke. Her arched eyebrows contracted in recognition.

  “Edward?” she said in bemusement.

  Lord Shrewsbury bowed to her with great courteousness. “Mme la duchesse.”

  Antonia was momentarily diverted, wondering what England’s premier spymaster was doing ensconced in her son’s library. She knew all about Shrewsbury’s covert activities for the English government because Monseigneur had kept nothing from her, not even the fact he was one of the first to be inducted into King Louis of France’s personal network of spies, the Secret du Roi, undoubtedly a treasonous offence for an English Duke, but Monseigneur had answered to no one, not to his sovereign King George or to his mother’s monarch Louis XV. A contemporary of the father and not the son, Antonia wondered at Shrewsbury’s business, but then she saw the pile of opened correspondence on the low table and, as always, she was astute and direct.

  “You think there is a spy at Treat, Lord Shrewsbury? Comment ainsi?”

  “As to that, Mme la duchesse, I am not at liberty to say.”

  “But you are at liberty to confiscate and read my cousin’s personal correspondence? Vous me stupefiez? Charles Fitzstuart he is a very earnest and idealistic young man.”

  “Earnest and idealistic young men make the best traitors, Mme la duchesse,” Lord Shrewsbury replied with extreme politeness.

  “Traitor? Charles? For whom is he a spy?” She looked at her son and back at Shrewsbury. Both men were tight-lipped. “The French? You think Charles he is a spy for Louis? Mon Dieu. Toupet inconcevable.” She threw up a hand, the half-dozen gold bangles jingling about her wrist. “Me I do not believe it! I cannot conceive you are party to this nonsense, Julian?”

  “It does not matter what you believe, Madam. Nor will I discuss this with you.”

  “I see. We are not talking as mother and son about our cousin. Me I am but a dependent widow on the Scion of the House of Roxton. Should I curtsey to rank, or are we done with that formality given we are in the middle not the beginning of the argument, M’sieur le Duc?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Maman!”

  “Oh, so I am again your mother? What? When it suits? Make up your mind, Julian, as you have surely made up your mind to divorce yourself from your French heritage,” she retorted, a significant glance at Shrewsbury. “Perhaps you think me a spy for King Louis? After all, I am French. Have you read my correspondence too?”

  “That is a ridiculous notion! And so I told Shrewsbury.”

  Antonia baulked. She had been in jest, but her son’s retort and ready blush startled her. Her laugh was incredulous. “If it was not so incroyable me I would be offended! It is no wonder then why you sold the Hôtel. But do not assume Henri-Antoine he will follow your lead! Though where we are to stay in Paris without a roof over our heads, I know not. As a widow I suppose I should be grateful for any roof, and can always go cap in hand to a French relative.”

  Roxton sighed his exasperation. “You hav
en’t been to Paris in six years; nor has Henri.”

  “And now it seems we can never go because there is no house to go to and thus our family we can no longer hold up our heads in French Society.”

  “Good God, do you not understand? I have no wish to hold up my head in French society!” Roxton threw at her, stating in English, “I am an Englishman with an English wife and an English dukedom that descends five centuries through the English line! I would sell a hundred such houses if it would increase the distance between me and a society that is fast falling into the abyss! The French nobility still uphold feudalism where peasants starve on their farms, not because the land is barren but because of indifferent absentee masters who spend their days fornicating behind firescreens in gilded palace rooms while awaiting the opportunity to grovel with abject bows and scrapes to a buffoon of a king! A king who spends more time ruminating about locks and keys than he does good government and who is married to a silly twit of a woman who is running up the French national debt to astronomical levels while people literally starve outside her window! There is no freedom of speech. There is no freedom of the press. It is an absolute monarchy. The French idea of diplomacy is to go sneaking behind our backs like naughty school boys offering support to the American rebels in their war against their English cousins, and the absurdity is that the American rebels are fighting for liberty while the French have none! Is it any wonder I wish to disassociate myself from our French connections?”

  Again Antonia stood very still because again her son had shocked her with his vitriolic attack. She was beginning to wonder if she knew him at all.

  “Then it must indeed be a great trial to you having a French maman,” she said quietly. “It all becomes clear to me. I do not wonder now why your children they are not to speak French as naturally as they do the English tongue. Why you have decided not to allow them to visit me. Why I am kept ignorant of your decisions. Me I am an embarrassment to you and your fam—”

  “That’s not what I meant at all, and you know it!”

  “Then say what you mean!”

  “If you would only allow yourself to see past your own self—”

  “Julian, no.”

  The outburst came from the Duchess as she squeezed the Duke’s upturned silk cuff in warning, but he was too caught up in the moment to stop himself saying the rest.

  “—self-centered misery you would see that it’s not about you at all!”

  Antonia echoed his words in a whisper.

  “Self-centered misery?”

  “Well, isn’t it?” Roxton stated. “Why should bricks and mortar matter when it is not objects but people that are important in this life? Dear Christ, Maman, you throw Henri-Antoine in my face when you have not given my little brother two beans-worth of attention since our father died! And Augustus – Gus—my son almost drowned this afternoon and here you are agonizing over what happened to a well-worn backgammon board and a few trifles and trinkets, bemoaning the sale of a house whose threshold you’ve not crossed in six years? What is a house, what is anything, when compared to the life of a child?”

  Antonia swayed on her two-inch heels. He could have struck her hard about the face such was the deep blush of mortification to her cheeks. He was right of course. Her son was right. What was the sale of a house when weighed against the lives of her children and grandchildren? It was true. In her abstraction she had neglected her youngest son, Henri-Antoine. What sort of mother was she? She should have been thinking of his welfare. She should have been thinking of little Augustus, of his near brush with death and how this had affected his parents, his brothers and sister. Poor Deborah, she looked so tired and distraught and Julian, he had enough worries and here she was making a nuisance of herself over a trifle of a thing. She was being incredibly self-centered. She saw that now. She was thinking only of herself. She had forgotten what truly mattered. What must they think of her? What must everyone think of her selfishness? She was surely an embarrassment to her family. Had she been so selfish, so self-absorbed when Monseigneur had been alive? Surely not... But perhaps, when he finally lay dying...

  “You would have been better off with two aging parents, mon fils,” she said with a sad, shuddering breath, shaking hands to her wet cheeks to wipe away tears. “In that way you would not now have to deal with the one who is left and who walks about as one dead. If I had died with your father...”

  “Yes! Perhaps that would’ve been for the best! At least then he would’ve had a dignified end!” Roxton snapped before he could stop himself, because only she had the power to make him feel completely helpless, hating to see her so distressed and so unlike herself and loathing himself for having had the thought she had just voiced out loud, and more than once, on occasions such as this when he did not know what to say or do to make her happy. And once he had opened the floodgates on such painful thoughts, there was no stopping. It was as if he needed to say the words out loud to make himself feel better, to make the thoughts finally go away. He not only appalled Antonia but everyone in the room.

  “He lingered in this life for three years longer than was necessary all because of you. He knew what his death would do to you and so he hung on, in pain and distress, for you. Not once did he complain or make it known how agonizingly difficult it was for him just to breathe; how much the cancer had taken hold. And you had the selfishness to let him linger because you could not bear to be parted from him! Well, Madam, you can be proud that you-you added to his-his suffering. He should have been allowed to die with dignity. He didn’t want you or me or others to see him in such a wasted state. He was so proud, a prince amongst his peers, who’d never had an illness in his life. To see him thus reduced, a shadow of a man, wasted and unable to get about his own bedchamber without the aid of a cane and, in the last weeks of his life, unable to leave his bed! What a sad indictment—on you.

  “He should have been permitted to leave this world as he had strutted about its stage, with arrogant self-assurance, and with majesty. You turned his last years into a-a—circus! He thought only of you, always of you. He blamed himself for marrying a much younger woman; that it was somehow his fault you remained younger than your years; that your beauty did no fade with time. He loved you to-to distraction and because of that he allowed himself an ignoble end. And how do you repay his memory? How do you behave? With histrionics and dramatic pronouncements of self-pity! He said I could not look after you, and he was bloody-well right! I cannot look after you because I do not know you as you are now!”

  There followed a deafening silence in the library. No one moved or knew what to say. Unbeknownst to him, the Duke had been shouting at his mother and with such pent-up emotional rage that everyone was stunned, not least Antonia who went into shock. But her first instinct was to put her arms about her son and cradle him, smooth back his black curls and tell him in soothing accents that nothing was as bad as he imagined because his green eyes were full of tears and his bottom lip quivered and whenever he was upset he forgot his English for the French tongue, his first spoken language; he so reminded her of the little boy he had once been. Yet she just stood there, unable to move and unable to speak.

  Finally, Roxton dashed his eyes dry and turned away, distracted by the Duchess who had picked up her petticoats to run as if her life depended upon it towards the black metal spiral staircase that gave access to the narrow walkways that wrapped around the floor to ceiling bookcases, and from where there had burst into the silence a child’s piercing fearful wailing. Instantly everyone looked that way and watched the Duke rush to join his wife who was doing her best to pacify their eldest son who was sobbing and struggling to be free of his mother’s comforting embrace.

  Frederick had snuck into the library via the secret door, as his father and uncle before him had done many times as boys, to sit on the top step of the spiral staircase in his nightshirt and silk banyan with matching nightcap and slippers, hunched over his knees, shivering with excitement to be eavesdropping undetected on the co
nversations of adults when he should have been abed. He had come to wish his beloved Mema a goodnight because he had not seen her since departing in the Oudrey carriage with his mother and siblings. He was bursting to tell her all about the boat race and how he and Mr. Strang had been winning right up until the moment Gus stood up in Papa’s boat to wave to some village playfellows, who were shouting out encouragement as they ran along the lake shore, and how Gus just toppled over out of the boat and with a big splash disappeared under the water. And in the next moment Mr. Strang had kicked off his shoes and was out of his shirt and into the water. He had so much wanted to tell Mema and tomorrow would be too late; he was sure he would not remember everything in the morning.

  But all was not right in the Library, and although he did not understand what was going on between the adults he sensed the tension and that his father was unhappy with Mema. And then his father had started yelling at his beloved Mema. He had never, ever seen Papa in such a temper. He was even angrier than the time Gus and Louis had crept away to a corner of the stables to inspect the game keeper’s loaded rifle leaning against a bale of hay while their father and the men had their backs turned examining a stallion’s injured fetlock, only to be caught out by Papa two seconds later when Gus picked up the rifle and playfully pointed the barrel at his twin.

  Mema was crying and his mother was so sad and had tears in her eyes too.

  It was too much for Frederick to endure and he finally screamed out for Papa to stop, to stop shouting at Mema! And then his mother scooped him up into her embrace with soothing words of reassurance before he could run to Mema and throw his arms around her to protect her from his father’s fury.

  Antonia saw and heard none this. Not even when the little boy screamed in fear and distress and called out for her to come back. All she heard were her son’s heated accusations reverberating in her head, over and over, and all her self-pity turned to self-loathing. Of course it was her fault. Of course he had a right to be angry with her. How could she have been so uncaring and unseeing? How could she have allowed it to happen? How had she not seen? But she knew the answer: She was self-centered. She was to blame. Not for Monseigneur’s death, lung cancer had taken his life, but for the way in which he had departed this life for the next. Yes, that was her fault entirely. She had forced him to live, in pain and indignity, because she could not bear to live without him. She had been so selfish; too selfish to let him die with majesty and in her self-absorption she had forgotten all else, particularly the effect Monseigneur’s lingering end would have on his family and friends, most importantly on their sons Julian and Henri-Antoine. She would not have been at all surprised if Monseigneur’s drawn-out illness had hastened the end of his sister and her husband who had both died within twelve months of M’sieur le Duc’s death.