Royal Regard

Chapter Nine

"Why are you here, Michelle?" Malbourne asked, displeasure oozing from his voice as he entered his study. He had travelled from London for his brief monthly sojourn in the country, expecting no distraction from his estate business, since he had sent his needy mistress back to France the third time she mentioned marriage. Aside from meeting with his steward to collect the quarterly rents, he wanted only to blow off the stink of bowing and scraping to people less noble than he, not to entertain uninvited, unwanted guests waiting at his gate. He would have to leave on the morrow to return to the rank, dirty city, and he wanted nothing but quiet and the view of France from his cliffs between now and then.

Instead, he was forced to attend to this unwelcome female.

Having been ushered into his study and made to wait two hours without refreshment, the obsequious woman rose from the Bergère chair upon his entry into the room, curtseying deeply. Taking a seat at the gilded Riesener desk, he ran his eyes up and down his visitor, but did not invite her to sit. Her cheap, grimy, green cotton dress had no place in this elegant room, nor did the smell of weeks traveling by public coach and steerage. The aroma nearly made his eyes water, but he would never rise to open another window. It would only serve to emphasize how few servants he could now afford.

The sound of the waves crashing against his Dover cliffs flowed in through the open casement, not quite obscuring his profound irritation.

"It has been more than thirty years. I had hoped never to see you again."

"And still you look as handsome as I remember."

"Spare me the toadying. State your business."

The woman bowed her head, staring at the wall to her left. Her thinning red hair was matted and disheveled, falling from pins where it wasn't sticking out in tufts, above a sharp face set with deep lines, dark eyes flashing with fear—and something else familiar he was loath to define.

"Forgive me, Monsieur le Duc. I do not mean to disturb."

She nearly whispered, twisting her dress in her hands, as though she would wring out the filth onto his carpet. Finding himself disgusted by her state of disrepair, he turned toward the roughened, dented, patched suit of armor in the corner, worn by the first Duc de Malbourne in the seventeenth-century. The plated iron was one of the few items of family significance his retainer had found after the peasants overran the property. Like the stone walls, it had been impervious to fire and too unwieldy to carry off.

Preoccupied by the weight of his own history, he managed to sit comfortably in the fauteuil chair behind the desk, one ankle crossed over his knee. His riding attire was immaculate, not a stitch out of place, from the Trone d'Amour knot in his black silk cravat to the shine on his Hoby boots.

Were this unpleasant business complete, he could take one of his two remaining riding horses to the hidden cave in the cliffs at the back of his lifeless formal garden, the spot with the best view of Calais. He had sat there so many times that he could see and hear the docks in his mind, even if the city were obscured by fog, as it would be today.

He tapped his riding crop on the heel of his boot as he observed, "You look shabby, Michelle. Did you leave your bourgeois husband and the money he stole by guillotine?"

She flinched as if slapped. "Non, Monseigneur, he died many years ago and his money with him. I am untidy because it has been a long journey, and I came directly from the harbor." She glanced at the bag just inside the door. "I did not even stop to arrange lodging, for I knew you would want to hear my news without delay."