Midnight Marriage: A Georgian Historical Romance (Roxton Series) by Lucinda Brant

with relief, the tension easing in the dueling scar that indented his left cheek. “Thank you, Miss Cavendish. I always knew you for a female of independent mind. Thus I will continue to hope.”
    “I have already told you…” Deb began and faulted, angry for becoming flustered in a public place and before this gentleman who had never been anything but open and patient about his intentions. “Please, you must excuse me. I need refreshment.”
    “Allow me to accompany you—”
    “No! No, there really is no need, thank you,” said Deb and picking up her satin petticoats made a hasty exit for the refreshments, shouldering her way through the laughing groups forming for the country-dances, neither looking left or right. She was about to follow two couples through to the Octagon room when the lace flounce at her elbow was ruthlessly tugged and a voice from behind a column whispered near her ear,
    “Come outside.”
    She stood quite still, a shiver passing across her bare neck and the oddest sensation knotting inside her chest. She wondered if the voice had been conjured up in her mind, but she did not hesitate to hurry out of doors.
    With an indulgent eye, Lady Cleveland watched Deb Cavendish and Robert Thesiger part and go their separate ways at the end of the minuet, her gaze following Deb as she crossed the room. She stopped briefly near a column and then disappeared, not into the refreshment rooms, but out the entrance doors and into the night. A gentleman who had been lingering on the fringes of the dance floor, seemingly content to hover by a pillar and scan the room with his gold quizzing glass, lifted his shoulder off the marble support and sauntered out into the night air not two steps behind Miss Cavendish.
    He was tall, broad shouldered and it was his patrician profile that alerted Lady Cleveland as to his identity.
    “Waverley! Look!” she breathed, sitting forward on the settee, a hand hard gripping the General’s large silken knee. “I’d know that nose anywhere. There’s no mistaking it. He’s more handsome than his father, though Roxton has more presence. Ah, but the son, he has so much charm. I wonder…”
    General Waverley put up his quizzing glass but missed his chance at a view of Lord Alston. “Who’s that you say, Harriet?” he asked, a magnified eye turned on her ladyship. “Not the satyr’s son? Here? No doubt you’ve heard ’bout the latest mischief he’s caught up in?”
    “Mischief?”
    “Rumor has it he was run out of Paris by a M’sieur Farmer-General for seducing his unmarried daughter.”
    Lady Cleveland gaped at him.
    The General nodded. “M’sieur Farmer-General followed him across the Channel with two of his cronies and demanded satisfaction.” He shook his head at the thought. “Imagine! A common little Frenchy demanding satisfaction of an English duke’s son. It don’t bear thinking about. Trumped-up little peasant.” He lowered his voice. “Just between you and me, Harriet: Do you think there’s any truth to the rumor the boy’s touched in the belfry?”
    Lady Cleveland’s bosom swelled. “Touched? Roxton’s son, touched ? For shame, Henry! And the Duke one of your Newmarket cronies.”
    General Waverley shrugged, embarrassed at having voiced the doubt that he knew many privately held about the Marquis of Alston. “You can’t deny, Harriet, that Alston’s had a dark cloud hanging over him since that disgraceful episode in his Eton days. Why, it stands to reason we are left to wonder at the strength of his brain when one considers his unforgiveable behavior toward his dear mamma. Such a divine beauty…”
    “He was a mere boy, Henry.”
    “A boy mayhap, but that don’t excuse such insane behavior, does it?” continued the General, made confident by Lady Cleveland’s slump of the shoulders. “He and that cousin of his, Ffolkes, were hell-raisers at school. Expelled on two occasions and only taken back because old Roxton is a Duke.”
    “My dear