Noble Satyr by Lucinda Brant

Author:Lucinda Brant [Brant, Lucinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: classic, regency, hundreds, georgian, eighteen, romp, winner, georgianregency, roxton, heyer, georgette, brandt, seventeen, seventeenth, century, eighteenth, 18th, georgianromance
Publisher: Lucinda Brant
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Theo Fitzstuart watched Antonia flee outside, Charlotte close on her petticoats, then turned to the Duke who leaned against the balustrade frowning down at the crop in his gloved hands. “That was ill-timed of me. I should have heeded Charlotte’s warning.”

“Yes,” the Duke said curtly without looking at him and went up the stairs two at a time.

“I apologize, your Grace, but had I known…” Theo Fitzstuart tried to explain, following up behind the Duke.

“Where is your mother?”

“My mother?”

Roxton strode down a passageway and invited himself into the Lady Strathsay’s salon, waving aside an agitated footman and causing her ladyship’s chambermaid, who stood with an ear to the bedchamber door, to shriek and burst into guilty tears.

“Get your mistress out of bed,” he ordered and threw back the damask curtains to look out the window into the square below. “And tell Hawthorne to send up the breakfast I ordered to this room. Fitzstuart, are you joining us?”

“Breakfast, your Grace?”

“Oh, do stop being obtuse! Well, girl, must I break in the door for you?”

“Surely, whatever you have to say to Mamma can wait?” Theo Fitzstuart suggested, as horrified as the maid at disturbing his mother at such an hour.

“No. I have waited long enough,” Roxton said bitterly. “However, by all means do not stay if the thought of wrenching your dear maman from the arms of her lover disturbs you. Which Dick is it today? Or did she forget to send this week’s list to the Court-Calendar?”

“That was uncalled for!”

“Yet, very true. I make no apology.”

“I did not ask for one. I know my mother’s habits well enough,” said Mr. Fitzstuart stiffly. “But for you to condemn such behavior when your own has entertained tea-table gossips for almost two decades—”

“Unlike Augusta, I had the decency to conduct my—er—liaisons under someone else’s roof,” the Duke sneered. “Your mother has the bad manners to flaunt her depravity one floor above her own granddaughter!”

Mr. Fitzstuart could offer no argument. He sat down on an arm of a Chinese carved chair and swung a leg in moody silence. The Duke took snuff and continued to look out the window until the chambermaid reappeared from the bedchamber. She was quaking and had acquired a red welt across her left cheek. Theo grimaced at his mother’s handiwork. The Duke merely put up his quizzing-glass.

“How medieval,” he drawled. He waved the cowering maid away. “See to your face.”

The maid curtseyed and was gone.

“Ah, here is breakfast,” said the Duke as the butler and a wide-eyed footman deposited a coffee pot and a heavy tray on a side bureau. “Hawthorne, pour out for Mr. Fitzstuart. I will be but a moment, Theophilus.”

“What do you intend to do?” asked Mr. Fitzstuart in alarm. “My God! You’re-you’re not seriously going in there?”

“My dear boy, I am at my best in a bedchamber. Any tea-table gossip will tell you so.”

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