Autumn Duchess: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) Read online

  She walked out of the library, unseeing, unconsciously running her hands up and down her arms as if suddenly very cold. Feeling the bangles under her palms, she stripped off the dozen gold bracelets that dangled about her wrists, letting them drop to bounce one by one to the carpet and clatter and roll along the parquetry in all directions, to disappear under a chair or into a darkened corner. Willis and Spencer chased after them as Antonia crossed the anteroom and passed into the Gallery. Here, she unclipped the diamond and emerald earrings from her lobes and unconsciously let them drop. Up went her hands again, this time to the three diamond clasps arranged in her upswept hair. Unsnapped, they too were consigned to the thick fog that enveloped her. The dozen or so pearl-headed hairpins that held her hair in place were extracted and one by one they went the way of the rest of her jewelry, the great weight of her blonde curls free to bounce to her bare shoulders and cascade down her back in disarray.

  She had traversed half the length of the Gallery, not that she knew where she was, when the whist players seated about four tables paused in mid-hand discard and turned their powdered heads in astonished silence to watch her pass. The gentlemen in conversation about the second fireplace half-rose out of comfortable chairs to acknowledge her and stared with mouths agape as she passed them in a trance-like state. At an open French window not far from where a small knot of persons stood under a portrait of her grandmother the legendary titian-haired beauty Augusta, Countess of Strathsay Antonia kicked off her damask shoes and in stockinged feet stepped out into the cold night air, two blank-faced liveried footmen bowing to her as if nothing was amiss with the abstracted and disheveled Dowager Duchess of Roxton.

  The cold marble of the terrace under her toes did not register as she hesitated in indecision staring into the twilight out across the rolling lawns to the arched bridge over the now still and quiet lake, and beyond to the oak and beech-lined gravel drive that wound its way to her dower house. A hand to her throat, and awareness registered touching the diamond and emerald choker, Monseigneur’s first gift to her. She closed her tear-filled eyes briefly, recalling the moment he had gently placed the heavy choker about her throat on her eighteenth birthday: To match your eyes, mignonne. Without him, it was just another object like the rest of her jewelry: a trinket, worthless. Decided, she twisted open the clasp with trembling fingers, let the heavy choker slip from around her throat and dropped it into the honeysuckle thicket.

  Antonia stepped off the terrace onto the lawn and walked towards the lake.

  Jonathon Strang returned to Treat after a sennight spent in London and found an invitation awaiting him. It was from the Countess of Strathsay cordially inviting him to her Buckinghamshire estate for the fortnight to help celebrate her eldest son’s twenty-eighth birthday. There was also a letter from Sarah-Jane full of breathless excitement (evident from the ink splotches on the page) telling him what he already knew, given he had broken the seal on the Countess’s invitation, and that she had gone on ahead with Lord and Lady Cavendish. She had taken the liberty of having the portmanteaux he had left behind taken up with her, so he was to join her with all speed and because she was certain some news of great importance would be announced during the week and he just had to be there or she would never forgive her dearest Papa.

  Jonathon smiled to himself: Yes, she would forgive him. Sarah-Jane always forgave him. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter, with Emily’s sweet nature.

  There was also a letter from Tommy Cavendish but he did not break the seal because it was a rather fat packet and thus would take awhile to read and digest. So he slipped it into his frockcoat pocket to open at a later date and gave his attention back to the butler who waited in the cavernous entrance vestibule with a liveried footman carrying a silver tray which had upon it the letters Jonathon had now dealt with. One remained, it was a short missive from the Duke, informing him his lawyers in the city would contact Jonathon regarding the lease of the Hanover Square house and that he would call on him when next in London. That was it. No explanation as to why he was being turned away at the door.

  Under the vestibule’s domed ceiling painted with clouds atop which sat various Gods and Goddesses surrounded by fat little cherubs, the nose-in-the-air butler took great delight in telling Jonathon the Duke had been called away to Bath unexpectedly, leaving instructions that his young family, who were still in residence in this monolith of a house, were not to be disturbed under any circumstances, Mr. Strang would be supplied with a fresh horse and liquid refreshment, if so desired, to send him on his way.

  The butler was certain Mr. Strang would understand.

  Jonathon did not understand and he was not about to turn heel and jump on a fresh horse without taking his leave of the Dowager Duchess of Roxton, not when he had spent every night away from her thinking of nothing and no one else but her. He downed the tumbler of ale supplied on another silver tray by a second blank-faced footman, picked up his small brown leather travelling portmanteau and was escorted by a third footman via a series of secondary rooms and narrow passages until he was outside in a wide cobbled courtyard where to the right was the extensive stables and the fresh horse saddled as promised.

  Jonathon did not turn right as was expected, and with a wave to the stable hands that awaited him, he went left. He slung the travelling bag over his shoulder and strode off across the lawn to the graveled path that led to a picturesque walk through the Ornamental Gardens being well tended and prepared for summer flowering by a team of gardeners. He nodded to any man who looked up but did not notice the tilled flowerbeds or the sparkling fountains, well-clipped hedgerows or the newly raked walks. At the garden’s south stonewall he pushed through the small wooden door cut into the stone work and strode out into the expanse of meadow where sheep, some with newborn lambs, grazed on the other side of a ha-ha.

  Here there was a path leading to a stand of willows beside which was an elaborate boathouse that any tenant farmer would be proud to call home, and a long jetty where several skiffs bobbed on the gently rippling surface of the lake. The breeze had picked up, and a glance straight up at the watery blue sky and out across to the eastern horizon where the skies were darker and ominous clouds had gathered, told Jonathon a storm was on its way. If he did not row steadily and fast, there was a good chance the heavens would open up and he would be drenched before he made it to the pretty pavilion on the far side of the lake.

  He was determined to spend one last night at Treat before he took himself into Buckinghamshire for more agonizingly dull social engagements on behalf of his daughter’s quest to bag a baronet at the very least. And he knew of no better place to spend the night than at the pavilion and with no better person than the Dowager Duchess of Roxton.

  He was under the pavilion’s domed roof before the first large drops of rain splattered the marble steps. He dropped his portmanteau and shrugged his frockcoat over his waistcoat and white shirt, and was up at the Dower House searching for a way in, travelling cloak over a shoulder, when the Heavens opened to deliver a hard, heavy rain.

  The house was in darkness. No candlelight or firelight flickered through a crack in any of the downstairs windows, which were all heavily draped. All doors and windows were bolted, so, too, the outbuildings. It was as if the house had been locked up and its occupants gone away. Jonathon wondered if the Duchess was indeed in residence and he had made a wasted journey, until he finally found signs of life at the front of the house.

  He went round to the main entrance, with its circular gravel drive and decorative portico, and ran back to the garden bed, with its central fountain, to better view the entire Elizabethan frontage with its multitude of mullioned windows. A roll of thunder and a flash of lightning and the whole house illuminated, affording Jonathon a spectacular view of the eerily beautiful building with its stacks of decoratively turned brick chimneys. Here he saw smoke curling from two of the chimneys, one in the eastern wing and another, much deeper in the roof line, possibly coming from the kitchen at
the very south end of the house where attached was a walled herb and vegetable garden that also contained a spherical icehouse built in Stuart times.

  He ran around to the east wing first, and there, in an inner courtyard way up high was the turned red brick chimney with its curls of smoke, and along the row of lower windows being hit hard with rain, light winked from between drapes unevenly pulled across the view.

  He stood in the shallow portico of a heavy door that gave servant access to and from the house, the travelling cloak now held up over his head to shelter from the pelting rain, wondering how best to get the attention of the occupants of the only room that had life. And if in answer to his mental ruminations, the door at his back creaked open. From the darkness within a bleak face appeared in the glow of a taper. Wary eyes went wide with recognition. A nod from Jonathon in response and the door opened wider.

  It was Michelle, the Dowager Duchess’s personal maid.

  “M’sieur! You are the one at the pavilion, yes?” she asked loudly in halting English to be heard over the rain, a wary look over her shoulder. “You are a friend to Mme la duchesse, yes?”

  “Yes. And I speak French very well.”

  The woman nodded, opened wide the door to admit him, but was not inclined to say anything further in any language. She merely motioned for Jonathon to follow her down the dark servant passage, and then along another, and finally they traversed a third corridor, having avoided altogether the public and private rooms not frequented by servants unless called upon. Michelle had led him to the kitchen, which was full of light and activity, the enormous deep fireplace filled with an assortment of cooking pots on the boil, trussed fowls being turned on a spit and enough radiant heat to warm the entire room and take the chill from Jonathon’s hands.

  The chef and two cooks were busy preparing a feast, which was odd given the house was shrouded in darkness, and paused in their preparations when Jonathon entered the room behind Michelle. A nod from Jonathon and the chef, with one well-chosen Gallic expletive to his cooks, who hovered in inactivity staring at the tall, well-built stranger, said nothing further and continued on with his tasks, leaving Michelle to fetch Jonathon a tumbler of warm ale. She took his travelling cloak and placed it over a chair back to dry before the fire and fussed unnecessarily with it, as if by doing the mundane she could steal herself to remain calm, or so it seemed to Jonathon who watched her closely. A puzzled glance at the chef, who was fiddling with the fit of a pie crust, in much in the same manner that Michelle was fussing with his coat, and Jonathon decided that something was not quite right within this household. Before he could beg the question, Michelle turned to him, wringing her hands.

  “M’sieur! That monster he is in there waiting his dinner and I say to Pierre to poison him with the pie or the wine! I do not care which but it must be done and if me I am hanged so be it to see him dead!”

  The chef grunted. “Michelle! Do not be a little idiot. The fat physician he needs to be kept alive. And you forget, there are the two brutes he has with him, always.”

  “Poison them all! Me I do not care. Nor should you.”

  The chef grunted again but said to Jonathon, holding up a finger in a floured fist, “I will gladly poison the fat physician and his attendants, M’sieur, but the time it is not right. First Michelle she must discover the whereabouts of Mme la duchesse; what that fiend he has done with her.”

  “Mme la duchesse?” Jonathon gave a start. He felt his heart beat quicken. “A physician you say? Is—is she unwell? I do not understand.”

  The chef started to repeat what he had said in heavily accented English, but then Michelle came to life, flapping her hands at the chef to be quiet.

  “This gentleman he understands what you said well enough, Pierre! He is not asking you to say it again. M’sieur,” she said to Jonathon, and took the empty tumbler from him and set it aside on the table, “Mme la duchesse she was indeed unwell. It was the night of the regatta... They found her—They found her—” She broke off and took a great shuddering breath. “I do not think I can tell you...”

  “Then tell me about this physician,” Jonathon said in a measured tone, which calmed the maid.

  “He came with Mme la duchesse home from the regatta, he and his two brutes he calls attendants, and now he acts as if this house it is his!”

  “That is because he has M’sieur le Duc’s authority to do so, Michelle,” Pierre the chef stated, a pointed stare at Jonathon. “That is why me I feed him.”

  “He is still here attending on Her Grace?” Jonathon was surprised. When the maid nodded vigorously, lips pressed together, he added, “Is your mistress that unwell?”

  Michelle threw him a cautious glance. “Mme la duchesse she is never ill in body...”

  “M’sieur,” said Pierre, filling the pie crust with a mixture of vegetables, garlic and cream before adding a generous pinch of nutmeg, “with all due respect to M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton, the fat man sitting in the dining room awaiting his supper, if he is a physician then me I am Louis King of France!”

  “He is a monster!” Michelle burst out, a shaking hand to her mouth.

  “The physician as he calls himself,” said Pierre, a smile spreading across his swarthy florid face as he splashed a dark liquid from a green bottle over the pie filling; Daffy’s elixir and the nutmeg and the physician’s bowels would surely open of their own accord; he had added a goodly quantity to the potato and cheese soup as well, “he is a canard.”

  “Pierre! How can you laugh so when—”

  “A quack? What’s this fellow’s name?” Jonathon demanded.

  “Sir Titus Foley, M’sieur.”

  “What was Roxton’s thinking?” Jonathon muttered to himself and then demanded, “Where is she? Where is Mme la duchesse?”

  “We do not know—”

  “Do not know?”

  “—because he—the physician—he will not allow me or anyone to see her. Imagine Mme la duchesse being denied her personal maid!”

  “Michelle, that is the least of Mme la duchesse worries,” Pierre murmured, trimming the excess pastry from the pie’s lid and crimping the edge between flat thumb and forefinger.

  “Surely the gargoyles—Willis and Spencer—Surely they are with her?”

  The maid shook her head vigorously.

  “Where are they?”

  “Mme la duchesse’s ladies-in-waiting they have gone away with the Comtesse Strathsay.”

  “So if they are not with her, and you are not allowed near her, who is attending on Mme la duchesse?”

  “The physician he sent all the servants away to the Gatehouse,” Michelle explained. “Only Pierre, Guy and Philip are permitted to stay here in the house because—”

  “—we fill his belly,” Pierre stuck in.

  “So she has been left entirely alone with Sir Titus and his attendants?” When the maid nodded bleakly, Jonathon swore and so viciously that even the chef jumped. “When was the last time you saw your mistress?”

  When Michelle exchanged a worried glance with Pierre, who with his two cooks had paused in their kitchen duties, floured hands suspended just above a second half-constructed pie, Jonathon’s heart missed a beat and he grew impatient.

  “Well? Have you seen her this past sennight or not?”

  “We have heard her, M’sieur... We heard her the once, shouting abuse at the physician,” offered Pierre. He could not help a smile of admiration. “Her swearing it was most excellent and straight from the Parisian gutter, but wasted on the fat canard. His French it is pointless.”

  Before Jonathon could ask, Michelle said quietly, “I have seen her, M’sieur. It was this morning. I followed an attendant—” The maid made a noise, half-sob, half deep breath and then continued under Jonathon’s unblinking stare, “I followed the attendant to the cellars.”

  “Cellars?”

  “Yes, M’sieur, that is where there is a second entrance to the icehouse, the one used by servants, and that is where the physician he
has his attendants carry Mme la duchesse for her-her treatment.”

  Jonathon was incredulous and it made his normally pleasing drawl harsh.

  “To the icehouse? She is carried to an icehouse for—for treatment? Dear God, what sort of treatment are you talking about?”

  Michelle jumped. It was not Jonathon’s angry astonishment but a great clap of thunder right above their heads that made her shoulders lift of their own accord.

  “Michelle. Show him. Take him,” the chef ordered with a jerk of his bald head at a doorway that was dark beyond. “M’sieur physician and his brutes will be in the dining room. Me I will serve the soup straight away and that will keep them occupied. N’est-ce pas?”

  Jonathon was aghast. “He leaves her down there alone?”

  The chef shook his head, a worried glance exchanged with the maid. “No, M’sieur. That is the even bigger worry. We do not know where he has her now. That is for you to discover, and you must hurry. One look in that room and you will see why I say time, it is of the very essence.”

  The icehouse was at the end of a long corridor in the subterranean depths of the Elizabethan cellars, in the coldest, darkest and dampest corner of the dower house: Ideal for the storing and preservation of ice. It was also the furthest room from habitation, with walls two feet thick and thus, with the heavy oak door closed, soundproofed.