Salvan came away from the looking glass and stood over the Chevalier, his eyes bright with a private humor. “You lie in that bed sweating like a pig, pouring scorn on my English cousin, when it is what he does with this,” he grabbed his own genitals, “and this,” stuck out his tongue and wiggled it, “is why your heart’s delight prefers the attentions of M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton.”
“You defend him only because his mother was a Salvan,” the Chevalier said sulkily.
“As it should be,” the Comte replied haughtily, adjusting himself. “I cannot answer for his English ancestry, except it is an ancient lineage. An English dukedom is no small thing. And his mother, my aunt, was of impeccable virtue and of a most noble character, and a Salvan by birth. Enough said! Do not try my patience to its limit, my dear Charmond.” He flicked open his gold snuffbox and took a pinch. “Your observations of Roxton amuse me because they are quite to the life, but when you dig beneath the muck you lose your footing!”
“Forgive me, my dear M’sieur le Comte,” said the Chevalier with excessive politeness. “I admit I harbored expectations that Felice would grant me certain liberties. That was until she caught the eye of your cousin at the Comédie Française. Yet I do not despair of having her, knowing Roxton tires so quickly of such easy prey. But resentment was not the only reason which prompted my outburst. Perhaps I will not voice my concerns at this time. It is late. You have a recital to attend, and I, I am tired. It is only—well, no, I shall not open my mouth—”
“Open it! Open it!” ordered the Comte. “Do not goad me, Charmond! You have wasted enough of my evening and still I am no nearer to having what I want in my hands!”
“Has not M’sieur le Comte considered the alternative?” asked the Chevalier smugly. “It would be infinitely simpler if you were to bed the beautiful mademoiselle without consideration for the formalities. Why must you wed her to your son before you take her as your mistress? Is not your son’s marriage to the beautiful mademoiselle the bone that sticks in your throat? Remove it! Touché. All is as it should be.”
The Comte de Salvan had a great desire to choke the life out of the Chevalier de Charmond yet he restrained this murderous instinct. Instead he clapped an open palm to his powdered forehead and groaned aloud. “Why do I endure this imbecile? Mon Dieu. I am surrounded by fools and scoundrels!” He stuck his face up close to the startled Chevalier. “Do you think I did not think of that? Ah! You are too stupid. I will not explain. Do you think me a man of no honor? I, a Salvan? I do not go about as M’sieur le Duc de Richelieu seducing unwed females. Preposterous! There is my unsullied reputation to think of. There is what I owe my name. That fever, it has entered what little brain you possess. I am done with you!” He turned on a heel to go to the door. “I will have the lettre de cachet by the end of this week—”
“Your so English cousin has turned his satyr’s eye on the beautiful mademoiselle.”
The Comte stood still. He did not turn or speak so the Chevalier continued after a pause and a blow of his red nose. “You think me a dolt and a scoundrel for advising you to cut through the formalities, but I tell you, my dear Salvan, if you do not, the girl will no longer be worth all the energies you expend to have her in your bed—wed or unwed. Roxton has noticed her and so it is only a matter of time before his tongue—”
“By the end of the week,” Salvan said without turning and slammed the door.
Had the Chevalier the benefit of seeing the Comte’s face he would have revelled in the effect of his words. As he did not he gave himself up to complex musings, and into the hands of his physician to be bled. He ordered his servant to scuttle across the palace to a particular suite of rooms to report all that had transpired between he and his visitor.
The Comte de Salvan repaired to the upper levels of the palace. Leaving the stench behind he forced himself to put aside the Chevalier’s warning and to wear his most gay public face. He tottered up the Grand Escalier to the first floor, crossed the Hercules drawing room, bowing and waving his handkerchief to all who acknowledged his existence. The opulence of this large ornate marbled room was a comfort to him and he breathed easier. He stopped to take snuff with two cronies who lounged by a Sarrancolin column and searched for his son amongst the crowd of powdered and beribboned nobles moving into the Appartement. Unsuccessful, he dismissed the moody boy from his thoughts hoping to catch sight of the one beautiful face amongst a hundred he desired to make his own. Alas, she had yet to appear.
He was one of the last to enter the Appartement. It was crowded and he could hear the orchestra but had no chance of seeing its members from the back of the room. He spied the Duc de Richelieu, newly returned from exile in Languedoc, and close by his side, languidly fanning herself, was Madame de La Tournelle. She was resplendent in petticoats of blue damask, embroidered with large sprays of flowers, and showed a pretty wrist covered with milky strands of pearls. For a long time he did not notice the Duke of Roxton standing by his side.
“You will not find what you are looking for,” drawled the Duke of Roxton, quizzing-glass fixed on Madame de La Tournelle. “That which you desire is not here.”
Salvan spun about and stared up at the impassive aquiline profile.
“Continue to gawp and I will go elsewhere,” murmured the Duke. “Mademoiselle Claude has been beckoning with her fan this past half hour. Sitting next to that frost-piece is preferable to being scrutinised by you, dearest cousin.”
Salvan snapped open a fan of painted chicken-skin and fluttered it like a woman, searching gaze returning to the sea of silk and lace. “To be abandoned for that hag would be an insult I could not endure, mon cousin. You merely startled me.”
“I repeat, your search is fruitless.”
“Ah! You see me scanning faces. I always do so. It is nothing,” Salvan said lightly. “Did you think me looking for someone in particular? No! Who—Who did you think I was looking for?”
“My dear Salvan,” drawled the Duke, “your son, your most obedient son.”
“D’Ambert? Yes-yes of course my son!” Salvan said with relief. He turned back to the performance in time for the final round of polite applause. When the King had taken his leave Salvan drew his arm through that of his cousin. They walked a little way off to a corner of the room that was less crowded to better observe the audience disperse. “That ghastly noise is at an end, thank God. Were you as bored as I? Don’t answer. I know it! Where have you been, mon cousin? I have missed you in the corridors of the palace this past week. Do not tell me you are fatigued with us and stay in Paris? Or are you weary with what is on offer?”
They bowed to a passing beauty, her hair dressed in an eye-catching creation of plumes and pearls and her lips painted a delicious red.
“She tries to catch your attention, Roxton. Now there is one who could cure your ennui.”
“Madame is not worth the effort.”
“Parbleu! How fortunate are those who can afford to choose.”
Roxton took snuff and flicked a speck of the fine mixture from a wide velvet cuff. He shrugged. “It is obvious M’sieur le Comte has not had the—er—privilege of madame without her skilful paint and uplifting bodice. You are welcome to her if that is to your taste.”
“No. Not I!”
“No. Your tastes lean toward the—er—uninitiated, do they not, my dear cousin?”
There was the slightest pause before the Comte let out a forced brittle laugh. He tapped the Duke’s velvet sleeve with the silver sticks of his fan. “That is as well or our paths would cross, and that would not amuse me at all!”
“You may rest easy, my dear,” said the Duke smoothly, quizzing-glass allowed to dangle on its silk riband. “I have never yet had the urge to play nursery maid.”
Salvan flushed in spite of himself. He changed the topic immediately. “You saw Richelieu? He has been back at court this past week. They say he and the Tournelle plan to oust the dull sister as soon as it can be contrived. De Mailly is ignorant of the whole! She wi
ll see herself banished before she knows what she is about and—”
“My dear, this is old news,” interrupted the Duke. “But perhaps it is new to you? You need to spend less time lurking in corridors and a good deal more between the sheets—”
“As you do?” Salvan snapped before he could help himself.
Roxton swept him a magnificent bow. “As I do,” he confirmed.
“Ha! A novel approach. Do not tell me you expend any energy in conversation.”
“I was not about to tell you anything of the sort, my dear,” came the insolent reply. The Duke’s black eyes watched a storm cross his cousin’s ravaged face and he laughed softly and changed the subject. “Madame sends her regards,” he said politely. “She asks when next you intend to visit Paris. She longs to hear the latest gossip of court which I cannot bring myself to repeat. I said I would petition you on her behalf and beg you go to her. I beg and have done my duty. I leave it in your hands. Sisters weary me.”
The mention of the Duke’s lovely sister instantly transformed the Comte de Salvan, as Roxton knew it would. He clapped his hands in delight. “Estée has asked to see me? You do not jest?” he said expectantly, and fell in beside the Duke as he walked out of the Appartement and crossed the Hercules Room and went down the staircase. “Is she in good health? Does she pine away in that dreary hôtel of yours? You are most cruel to her, Roxton! Such beauty deserves to be admired, to be fawned over, and cherished. She has not been to court now in seven years or more. She the widow of Jean-Claude de Montbrail, the most decorated of Louis’s Generals. If he had not been cut down in his prime Estée would now be at court.”
“Yes, I forbid her the court. That is my right.”
“Even in the face of Louis’s displeasure?” whispered the Comte de Salvan, taking a quick, nervous look over his padded shoulder. “I cannot forget your private audience,” he continued with a shudder. “Me, I fainted. I expected a lettre de cachet at the very least. I praise God it did not happen so. You are still barely tolerated by l’Majesty. He never forgives or forgets such slights, mon cousin. He might relent a little if you were to allow your sister to return to court—”
“I have not the least interest in Louis’ opinion of me.”
“M’sieur le Duc! Please!” Salvan gasped in a broken voice. “Not so loud. I beg you!”
The Duke paused in the vestibule that led out into the Marble courtyard to permit a lackey to assist him into his many-capped roquelaure. “I repeat, what your king thinks of me or my actions is of supreme indifference. You forget I am of mixed blood. Only half is French, and that my mother’s. My allegiance is to a German-born King who sits on the English throne. Regrettable as that circumstance may be to many, it serves a purpose. And as I am a peer of that realm, and not this, I need not hold my actions accountable to your liege lord and master. If my presence at this court unnerves you, my dear cousin, I am happy for you to disassociate yourself with my family.” He bowed politely. “Versailles is no place for those of noble character, such as my sister.”
The Comte de Salvan tottered outside after him, a servant with a flambeau quick to follow on his heels. “And what of the rest of us?”
“Those of us of noble birth and no character amuse ourselves as best we can. I bid you a good night.”
Halfway across the courtyard two figures moving in shadow caught Salvan’s eye and he drew in a quick breath. Instantly, he tried to divert the Duke with some inconsequential tale about a notorious female and her present lover, all the while conscious of the raised voices travelling across the expanse of open air from the dark recesses of the Royal courtyard. But the Duke of Roxton was not diverted. He listened to his cousin’s chatterings as he slipped on a pair of black kid gloves then abruptly changed direction and sauntered toward the voices. His cousin made a protesting sound in the back of his throat and followed as best he could in red high heels.
A slim youth, richly clad in puce satin under a heavy coat thrown carelessly about his shoulders, and a girl, her gown concealed under a shabby wool cloak too large for her small frame and allowed to trail in the mud, were huddled under a red brick archway. In the light cast by a flickering flambeau, they were in heated discussion, the youth with an arm outstretched to the opposite wall to block the girl’s exit.
The Duke did not go so near as to disturb them, yet he showed enough interest to put up his quizzing-glass. He was soon joined by the Comte de Salvan, who had hobbled across the pebbles in his high red heels, was chilled to the bone for having left his cloak indoors, and was mentally heaping curses upon his father’s memory for having permitted his name to be forever allied with a family of heretical Englishmen whom he blamed for all his past and present misfortunes.
“Permit me to explain,” Salvan rasped, catching his breath.
“Explain?” purred the Duke. “There is no need. Your so devoted son is of an age to defend his own actions.”
The Vicomte d’Ambert despaired of making Antonia see reason. He gave an impatient grunt and looked away into the black night. “I tell you it is impossible!” he declared. “What do you not understand? The moment you leave the palace I cannot protect you. You have managed to avoid him until now. I say we wait for word from St. Germain. When we know how your Grandfather fairs something will be contrived. I promise you.”
“It is you who do not understand, Étienne!”
“Antonia, I—”
“My grandfather is dying,” Antonia announced flatly. “He has gone to St. Germain to die, not to hunt or debauch but to die. He is old and infirm and his time has come. So be it. You think me unfeeling to speak the truth? Well, it is best I understand how it is and not allow silly expectations to fill my head. And do not tell me otherwise! Do not say I must hope because I know you only say so because I am a female and think to shield me from the truth. Such gallantry is wasted on me, Étienne.” When he kept his silence and refused to look at her she tried to rally him. “Do not sulk. You know what I say is the tr—”
“—the truth?” he repeated angrily. “Yes, it is the truth. I wish it was not so!”
“If you would convey me to Paris then I know I could make my own way to London. Your father will not find me in Paris, it is too big a city, and I have the money Grandfather gave me—”
“—to what?” The Vicomte threw up a hand in a gesture of hopelessness. “It is madness, Antonia. You, a pretty girl alone in Paris with not even a maid as chaperone? God grant me patience! You would not survive a day.”
“So you think? I am not afraid of a big city. Father and I lived in many strange cities and we enjoyed ourselves hugely.”
D’Ambert laughed. “Only an ignorant child would give me such an answer.”
“You are eighteen years old, does that not make you a child?” retorted Antonia.
He ignored the truth of this. “Have you been to Paris?”
“What does that signify?”
“Have you ever taken a diligence on your own?”
“No. But I am not so spiritless as to shy away from using public conveyances.”
“And once you took the diligence to Calais and by some miracle boarded a packet for Dover, what then? Assuming none of these journeys put you in the slightest danger—another miracle—what then? You have never visited England. I doubt you can speak the barbaric English tongue.”
“Wrong! I can,” Antonia announced proudly. The Vicomte’s sneer made her blush. “It is a very long time since I used the English tongue with Maman, but—but—I can read Grandfather’s English newssheets. And it is not as if I do not understand what is being said. That is the least little problem.”
“That is very true for no sooner set down in a Parisian street than one of a thousand scoundrels would abduct you. Before nightfall you would be clapped up in a brothel and your favors sold to the highest bidder by a fat bawd. Is that what you want?”
“No worse a fate than what will befall me should I remain here.”
The Vicomte’s mouth dropped
open at this statement, but there was nothing he could say in answer to it. He knew very well his father’s scheme and it sickened him. He blamed the Earl of Strathsay for all his present troubles. The old man should have left Antonia in Rome with a strict governess until his return. A convent better befitted girls of her breeding, where they were safe from lechers such as his father. But what convent school would take her when she stubbornly refused, in the face of her grandfather’s wrath, to embrace the one true faith?
He wished his hands would stop shaking. He felt hot and damp in his coat despite a bitter cold wind whistling through the archway. His manservant held a taper closer to cast light on his pockets whilst he rummaged for a snuffbox. Two pinches of the mixture and in a short while the shaking would cease and he would feel calmer, better able to think what to do next. But what could he do? What was he to do? Never mind Antonia was beautiful and young; there were many such girls at court. Why couldn’t his father find another diversion to occupy his time? But the Vicomte knew the answer. Antonia’s great beauty was equalled by a strong will and a naïve exuberance for life. And she was a virgin. A rare commodity in a place like Versailles. Strong attractions indeed for such a jaded roué as his father. And his was not the only jaundice eye that had been cast in Antonia’s direction, thought d’Ambert with a growing depression.
Antonia touched his arm. “So you will take me to Paris?”
Salt Bride: A Georgian Historical Romance Page 37
