Dair Devil

by Lucinda Brant

  “Sweetheart, we have a late arrival to our nuptials…”

  DAIR WAITED until his first cousin, Antonia, Duchess of Kinross was returned to solid ground, and had slipped her stockinged feet into her satin mules, before going forward to greet and congratulate the newlyweds. He heartily shook Jonathon’s hand and bowed formally over Antonia’s outstretched fingers. And when she pulled him closer and presented her cheek, he kissed her diffidently, surprising Jonathon that he would be awkwardly shy in the presence of his cousin, a family member he had known all his life. If Antonia noticed, she did not react, nor did she acknowledge the grazes to Dair’s knuckles, the healing cut to his lip or the dark bruising to his left eye.

  Dair further surprised Jonathon by conversing with them in fluent French. He should have realized the lad could speak the language, like the rest of the Roxton family group. After all, Antonia spoke almost exclusively in French, though she could speak in English if necessity called for her to do so. An Englishman coming upon their conversation would surely have thought he had stumbled into a Parisian salon.

  A short exchange of platitudes and it was obvious Dair wished to have a private word with Antonia. So Jonathon invited him to join the family for nuncheon, which was politely declined, as Jonathon knew it would, then made his excuses and returned to the drawing room, leaving the cousins alone at the bottom of the staircase. Antonia spread out her petticoats and sat on the stairs. Invited, Dair did likewise.

  “I like your new duke,” Dair stated, once again stretching out his long legs across several steps. “He’s a good man.” He smiled. “You wouldn’t have married him otherwise. And he has made you happy.”

  “Yes. I am very happy—again.”

  “Not many are blessed with one good marriage, but to have two…”

  “One day I hope you will be as happy as I am, Alisdair.”

  “But—Cousin Duchess—you don’t even like me.”

  Antonia lost her smile. “That is a great piece of nonsense and it offends me!”

  Dair politely inclined his head in acknowledgment of her status to say and do as she pleased, but as her first cousin he rudely shrugged a shoulder and inhaled on his cheroot. “You would be the first to chide me if I were not truthful with you.”

  “But you are not being truthful, you are making an ill-informed judgment about my feelings.”

  “Then forgive me. I am neither good with words, or with feelings…” He returned his gaze to the full-length portrait of Augusta, Countess of Strathsay. “I can’t blame anyone for my lack of brains. Charles inherited whatever there was to dish out to the family. But I hold responsible that woman’s son, my father, for my lack of feeling.”

  “If you wish to cast blame, then blame her our grandmother,” Antonia stated, gaze also on the portrait. “She turned your mother against your father. She turned your father against Monseigneur. Your father he took a ship across the sea to be rid of her. But you cannot run away from yourself. Augusta she was a beautiful heartless woman, as cold as a serpent.” Antonia gave a little shiver of revulsion. “Please. Let us not talk of her on this of all days.”

  “Why, if she was such a serpent, do you keep our grandmother’s portrait on your wall? If I owned her, she’d be wrapped in a sheet and stuck in an attic, or consigned to a dusty corner of some picture gallery. Perhaps Roxton would like to have her?”

  Antonia smiled but shook her head. “He cannot, even if he would be kind enough to take her off my hands. Monseigneur he has forbidden her at Treat. Her remains, they are not buried in the family mausoleum, but at Ely, beside her lover.”

  “But she doesn’t have to be on your wall, surely?”

  “That is true. But I keep her there… She is a reminder—a reminder that a beautiful façade does not always bring with it a beautiful heart.”

  “Strange… I mean, strange for you, considered the most beautiful woman of the age, in temperament and visage…”

  “C’est ce que vous pensez? You think I do not have my bad days?”

  They both laughed at this, Antonia adding seriously,

  “Beauty is a gift from God and should not be abused or taken for granted. Those blessed with physical beauty cannot assume the appearance of goodness, they must be good and that requires doing good.”

  “On second thought, don’t ship her off. What you need are some candles, incense and an altar. A papist shrine, if you will, to your archangel of beauty. Which, when you think on it, is fitting, given our grandfather was a papist general for the Old Pretender.”

  “It is important, is it not, that those blessed with great physical beauty have a duty not to abuse their gift?” Antonia continued, ignoring his quip. “To be a self-destructive care-for-nobody intent on self-harm is a great waste; it is also arrogant in the extreme.”

  Dair removed his gaze from their grandmother’s portrait and slowly turned to meet Antonia’s gaze, face devoid of his thoughts. He took the cheroot from his mouth.

  “Thus lectured Duchess Beauty, whose first husband was in his day, and will always be remembered as, the most arrogant nobleman on both sides of the Channel.”

  Antonia smiled kindly. “Yes, he was. But Monseigneur he wore his arrogance with sublime confidence and force of personality, as one who owns the most exquisitely tailored frock coat in the room. He also had a high opinion of himself. He knew his self-worth and let others know it too. Which, for a nobleman in his position, was as it should be.”

  “And how do I wear my coat, Cousin? A little loose in the shoulders for your liking? A bit worn at the cuffs, perhaps? I dare say the cloth is not up to snuff either. Don’t spare my feelings now. If I am to be served up a lecture for dinner, I want all twelve courses with lashings of humiliation!”

  Antonia was silent a moment, and then she told him her thoughts, honestly and without artifice.

  “This man you pretend to be, this conceited Adonis who abuses his body in fights and scraps with lesser beings, he is not a gentleman. He pretends not to care for anyone or anything. He whores and drinks to excess. He never refuses a wager and so carries out ridiculous dares for his friends to make them laugh, or rich, or for no good purpose at all. This man, I do not know him in the least. And I do not care to know him. But that does not stop me caring about him and worrying. Me I worry he will start believing in the façade he hides behind so that one day these two beings, they will merge, and then he will be lost to us, and to himself.”

  “I am what I am.”

  “No! You pretend. You act. But you have inhabited the role for so many years now, you cannot tell the difference between the two. But sometimes the real Alisdair Fitzstuart he emerges, and I think then that there is hope for you yet.”

  When Dair huffed and slowly shook his head in polite disagreement, Antonia put up her brows and said dryly, “So your marriage proposal to Sarah-Jane Strang, it was sincere and you are all desolation that she chose your brother—”

  “Of course it wasn’t sincere!” Dair growled angrily, finally taking the bait. “I didn’t so much as put the question to the girl. All I had to do was seed the intent that I was about to ask her. All that required was confiding in my mother I was thinking of getting married. Quite frankly, if she knew me at all, she would know that thought has never entered my head! I knew she wouldn’t approve of a merchant’s daughter as the next Countess of Strathsay, whatever her dowry. And of course she ran crying to Charlie that I was about to ruin the family name! Charlie assumed the worst and when he saw Miss Strang and me walking alone on the terrace he decided to finally act. It was all the push he needed to get up the courage to reveal his true feelings to Miss Strang.” He glanced at Antonia, still smoldering. “Staggers me my little brother had the nutmegs to be a traitor to his country, and yet, when it comes to asking the girl he loves to marry him, he acts the neutered tom! What else could I do but step in and hurry matters along?”

  “Being in love can be terrifying—more terrifying than anything else, particularly if there is a doub
t that love will not be reciprocated, or an impediment stands in the way of a happy outcome.” Antonia rallied and smiled. “But my point, it is made. Enfin. So what is to be done with you, Alisdair? You who will be the Earl of Strathsay and head of your family one day. With your brother Charles branded a traitor for following his beliefs, he can never set foot on English soil and is excluded from his family’s inheritance. You are the earldom’s only hope of its continuance. So you will please promise me to stop trying to kill yourself in as many interesting ways as possible. This last, in a painter’s studio, of all places.”

  “Cousin Duchess, I can promise you that if I do get killed it will not be because I wished to die.”

  He had been keen to make this interview with his cousin as short as possible. The parental lecture he could well do without, but he could see there was no stopping her once she was animated. Like a ferocious feline, she paced the black and white marble tiles at the base of the staircase, ivory petticoats swishing this way and that, and he had to concede that he was flattered she cared so much for his welfare. Indeed, that she cared about him at all. And on this of all days, her wedding day, which should have been joyous and carefree, not spent being concerned about him. He was astounded to realize that this was the first maternal lecture he had received in his eight-and-twenty years (his mother did not lecture, she merely suggested in a vapid irritating way or fell into a flood of tears). Rather bizarrely, he derived a certain satisfaction from Antonia’s castigation.

  “You think putting yourself in harm’s way it is a laughing matter? Have you not been listening? You have an obligation, if not to yourself, then to others, to live up to your potential. No! Do not speak again. I have a few more words to say to you. Do not try and feed to me that ridiculous nonsense about you being a traitor because me I do not believe it in the least! And do not tell me this treason, which you did not commit, came from a need for funds. That, also, I do not believe. You would never sell your country for pecuniary gain. So that, too, is a big fat lie, and I am guessing from the mouth of Shrewsbury, who thinks me of little brain and himself as a modern day Machiavelli…”

  This impassioned speech drew from Dair a reluctant laugh, and he found himself apologizing for his behavior rather than defending it, which had been his intention. Such an unexpected turn-around also surprised him and made it all the more difficult to put his request to her, particularly when it meant disclosing that he was again about to put his life in danger, and in a far more perilous way than a scrap at an artist’s studio. So it was with an accompanying bashful smile that he withdrew a sealed packet and a small leather purse of guineas from an inner frock coat pocket.

  “Do I have your permission to speak now, your Grace?” he asked quietly, looking down at her from the fourth step, and thus from a great height, because he had shot to his feet the moment she had. When she nodded and waved for him to sit again, she sitting on the step beside him, he placed the sealed packet and small leather purse between them and continued. “I would not have lied to you had you asked me outright about the allegations of treason. And thank you—thank you for believing in me… But it makes my request that much more difficult to ask. This,” he said holding up the sealed packet, “I want you to keep in a safe place. You may never have to break the seal, but in the event of my death—”

  Antonia sat up tall. “Your death? Alisdair, what—”

  “Please, your Grace, I need to get through this without interruption. The packet contains my last will and testament, which is self-explanatory. Once my demise is made generally known, I want you to give it to your son. Roxton will know what to do with it.” He put the packet back on the step and held up the leather purse. “For the boy’s birthday. It’s in a month, but I might not make it back—back in time. There should be sufficient guineas for a fine family feast and his gift.” He smiled self-consciously. “No idea what he wants. Last time he wrote, it was a musket or a microscope. A soldier or a physician. He can’t decide. But at ten years of age, what boy truly knows what he wants to do with his future? At that age I wanted to be a pirate. Ha! At least he doesn’t have the weight of birth on his thin shoulders, and is able to tread a path of his own choosing.” He glanced at Antonia then said, “If it were my choice, I wouldn’t have him follow in my bootsteps. His mother says he has a fine head on his shoulders, so I am hoping he chooses the microscope. But in the event you think the only place for him is the army. So be it.”

  Antonia blinked. “You are giving Jamie to me?”

  “If anything were to happen to me, yes. Guardianship until his twenty-fifth birthday, when he will get the bulk of his inheritance, such as it is at the present. Were I in my father’s shoes, and earl, I’d have considerably more say in the distribution of the largesse… If you and your new duke would keep an eye on him as he grows, I’d be eternally grateful.” Dair gave a lopsided grin. “You’re the only two people I know who won’t look down on him because of his birth.”

  “Alisdair… Julian he, too, would never look down on your child, any child, and perhaps he is a more fitting guardian, yes?”

  “No. We are barely on speaking terms. And who can blame him for that after what happened at the regatta? His son almost drowned and I was distracted with the finish line at any cost… Jesu! What must he—you—think of me…?” He inhaled on his cheroot and blew smoke across his shoulder, away from Antonia. When she remained silent his mouth twitched into a crooked smile. “Thank you for not asking… Perhaps I’ll tell you one day…” He rallied and added, “Even if we were on the best of terms, he and Deborah have enough of a brood, and another on the way. Besides, after all those years on the sub-continent as a merchant, your new duke is far more open-minded to possibilities and potential. I watched him around Roxton’s boys; Frederick idolizes him.” Dair frowned on a sudden thought. “But if you would prefer that I not—”

  “No! No! Of course we will do as you ask,” Antonia replied, holding back tears. She laid her fingers over her cousin’s large hand. “Jonathon, he will agree with me. It will be an honor. Truly.” She sniffed and smiled when Dair drew up her hand and kissed it. “But it will not come to that because you will return to us from wherever it is you are going, and Jamie he will be able to thank his papa for the microscope in person when next he sees you.”

  “I hope that you are proved right, Cousin Duchess. And thank you. My mind can rest easy now.”

  He stubbed the smoldering end of the cheroot on the sole of his boot, and dropped the butt onto a silver tray a quick-thinking footman held out to him. After helping Antonia to her feet, he gave her the sealed packet and the purse. She slipped these under the first layer of her satin gown, into one of two embroidered long pockets, tied about her waist between the layers of her petticoats.

  “As far as the rest of London is concerned, I’m spending the next month in the Tower. You and Kinross may know it’s Portugal for me. You’ll be pleased that it’s not a country we are presently at war with—a nice change. Shrewsbury tells me we have a trade agreement with the Portuguese and import barrels and barrels of port…”

  “But you are not going for the port.”

  “No. And that’s all I can tell you,” he apologized. “I’ll bring your new Duke and Roxton back a dozen bottles or a crate, whatever I can manage.”

  “Be safe, mon cher.”

  Dair bowed over her hand, and because she was looking up at him with such worry he impetuously kissed her cheek. “I will do my absolute best to remain alive, ma chère cousine. Promise.”

  Antonia put her arm through his and walked with him a little way up the entrance foyer, turning a shoulder at the sudden burst of noise, of conversation and laughter, coming from the drawing room when the door was flung wide. Her younger son, Lord Henri-Antoine sauntered out, saw his mother and came up and grabbed her hand, a nod to Dair, who was buckling his sword sash.

  “Fitzstuart! No one told us you were here. Zounds! But that bruise is a shiner; and your lip… Come tell us how it happened
. I’ll wager it was one heck of a mill. We’re about to start a round of charades before nuncheon and you’re just the fourth we need. Maman, you don’t mind if Fitzstuart takes your place—”

  “Henri, please to be quiet. I think you have drunk too much of the marriage punch. Attend me. Alisdair he is leaving now and you will please forget you have seen him. Not a word. Not to Jack or anyone. N’est-ce pas?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind keeping it to yourself, Harry, I’d be much obliged,” Dair said, a wink at his young cousin as he was shrugged into his greatcoat by the under butler. “His Majesty’s business. You understand…”

  Lord Henri-Antoine’s dark eyes went wide as he watched his cousin take his hat and gloves from a footman. He tapped his long nose. “Understood. Not a word.” He kissed his mother’s cheek and put an arm about her shoulders. “Then it is you, Maman, who is stuck with me, Jack, and the Reverend J—”

  “Henri? Jenkins? Incroyable! I leave the room for five minutes and me I am lumped with the chaplain?” Antonia was affronted. “Was that your brother’s doing? He is a terrible player of charades, but Jenkins he is worse…” She allowed herself to be led back to the drawing room. “I have no idea as to what it is he is pretending to be! And me I cannot stop laughing behind my fan because he looks like a gasping poisson. It is most undignified.”

  “Who looks like a fish out of water, sweetheart?” Jonathon asked, putting a champagne flute into her hand. “Roxton wants to make a toast.”

  “The Reverend Fish,” Lord Henri-Antoine whispered loudly, and skittered away before his mother could grab his arm. He blew her a kiss from the safety of the other side of the room.

  Antonia smiled and blew a kiss back. A glance over her shoulder, just as the liveried footmen were closing the drawing room doors, and she saw the under butler securing the front door. Dair Fitzstuart had left the house.