★★★★★  Goodreads
As many people who will read this already know, I am a history geek with a singular fascination with the Georgian era. This also makes me a pretty harsh critic of any book set in this period. Autumn Duchess makes the fourth book I have read by author Lucinda Brant and I now declared myself a true blue fan. In her Georgian set romances Ms. Brant recreates the lives of the Georgian nobility, allowing us to venture beyond the closed doors and hear the whispers behind painted fans, to walk as equals amongst the uppermost elite. With an impeccable eye for detail she colors the aristocratic world, from their diamond shoe buckles to their white marble mausoleums, yet still manages to portray the privileged as real people. This is another highly recommended title from Lucinda Brant and an addition to my "keeper" shelf.  full review...
© Author Emery Lee

  Goodreads
I LOVED this third instalment in the Roxton series. Midnight Marriage was a hard act to follow and choosing to write about Antonia (from Noble Satyr) as a widow was a brave move indeed. After all, who can replace her beloved M'sieur le duc? No one. Or so I thought. And then along comes Jonathan, a bronzed, easy going hunk who is not much older than her son. Wow! Brant had me crying, laughing, and smiling and the HEA made me sigh. What more can you ask for? A great read.
© Leonie

Facebook (Lucinda Brant Georgian Historical Romances and Crimances Facebook page)
I have read all 3 of the Roxton books. They have all kept me mesmerized as I read them in 3 days. I just finished Autumn Duchess. I didn't realize how much I became attached to the love affair between Monseigneur and Antonia. I couldn't imagine them not being together but Jonathan was the only person that could have brought back Antonia's happiness. Thank you and I cannot wait for book 4. Hopefully that one is as amazing as the first 3.
© Ruddie Bitting

  Amazon
For those who have been waiting, holding out for Autumn Duchess book three of the Roxton Series to be published, what are you waiting for? Download now, it won't disappoint. This book is not only outstanding, exceptional, unique and spectacular it holds a special place in my heart and on my bookshelf. Just as Autumn Duchess should for you. Lucinda has written yet another brilliant Georgian Historical Romance involving Antonia, Duchess of Roxton the incredible sweet-natured beauty that mourns the passing of her husband. Antonia has to find herself again, lost in sorrow over the only man she has ever loved. Even though three years past she still wears black, so as a last resort her son Julian now the Duke gives her an ultimatum or she is forbidden to see her grandchildren, the only people that brighten up her lonely sad days. But that was before she meets Jonathan. And wow, you want to read about Jonathan, he is a breath of fresh air and doesn't conform to social expectations. If you want to see someone in a frockcoat or without one it's him, hello...ah yummy. Antonia has aroused a lust within him and the way that Lucinda writes about Antonia from Jonathan's point of view is spot on as I wanted Antonia. It really felt like I was actually Jonathon, yearning for one little touch or smile from her, I was getting flushed cheeks, my blood was pumping hard and fast through my veins and I even had clammy hands. It was like I was watching it happen before my very eyes. The detail that Lucinda adds to each and every page is everything you should be experiencing from a tremendous, magnificent and superb book. Wow Lucinda Brant has exceeded my expectations again, I fell in love with this courageous, bold, brave, robust, ruggedly tall handsome, brown eyed man. Moreover, those hot steamy scenes you need to read, I am serious, hot. Start downloading. This Georgian Historical Romance is one you just have to read. You will cry, laugh, smile and feel everything the characters are going through. Lucinda has a way of tugging at your heart before you know it is starting to happen. Let your worries of the world subside while you escape to the world of Autumn Duchess.
© Melissa Haffner

  iBooks (Australian Store)
Another 5 Star Brant Classic: I've waited forever for this new Lucinda Brant book (well, OK 8 months) but it was worth it! I am very attached to the heroine Antonia and the thought of her losing her cherished husband was frightening. How on Earth was Lucinda Brant going to make that work? Well I cried (I get so emotional reading a Brant book) and I miss the Duke. All I can say is I love Antonia even more now and her new hero is wonderful (he needs to be!). Ms Brant has yet again surpassed all my expectations. I cherish the Roxton books (of which this is #3) and cannot wait for the next one. My recommendation? Just buy it!!
© GaleForce5

     He saw her from across the ballroom.
    A striking beauty was staring straight at him.
    Jonathon brought himself up short and stared back.
    He couldn’t help himself.
    He could count on three fingers the occasions he had crossed paths with exquisite feminine beauty that it stopped the breath in his throat; twice on the Indian subcontinent, once in the East Indies, and now here, this very minute, in this ballroom, on this green wet island. So it was only natural he should give himself the leisure to drink her in. His admiring gaze wandered from her honey-blonde hair that fell in heavy ringlets over one bare shoulder, to the porcelain skin of her décolletage glowing flawless against the bottomless black of her gown. He would not have been male had his gaze not lingered on her ample breasts, barely contained in a square cut bodice. He tried to find fault with her heart-shaped face, with the small straight nose and determined chin, and with her unusually oblique eyes, but what was there to fault?
    Smiling to himself, he fancied everything he saw, and everything he could not he was sure was just as alluring.
    He wondered at her age. Not that it mattered. It was a game he played to pass the time at social functions such as this. Dressed all in black and wearing no jewelry about her slender throat or wrists he supposed she was a widow, and thus not in the first flush of youth.
    What was a widow doing here?
    His fascination increased tenfold.
    For all his limited experience of the London social scene, Jonathon knew well enough that widows did not attend social gatherings of this sort, particularly not such a renowned event at the height of the Season. Perhaps her mourning was almost at an end and she was chaperoning one of the young things here tonight? Surely, she was not old enough to have a daughter of marriageable age? Jonathon pulled a face. For some unfathomable reason he did not like the idea that she may have been a child-bride.
    Why was she staring at him?
    She stood so still, with her hands clasped in front of her, as if she was a statue carved of alabaster draped in black cloth; as much a fixture of the ballroom as a blazing chandelier or the enormous, richly woven tapestry hanging behind her. And so it seemed when dancers began pairing up and passed her as if she was indeed no more than part of the furniture. Why? Perhaps she was so well known in Society that her incredible beauty was taken for granted? In a ballroom awash with beautiful young things draped in silks of soft creams, pinks, and blues, she was a real head turner.
    Jonathon found it impossible not to stare.
    He watched as some of the guests even went so far as to go out of their way not to look at her, passing in a wide arc, eyes fixed forward or down to the polished floorboards. The one or two young ladies who did cast a curious, furtive glance in the beauty’s direction were instantly reprimanded in furious undertones by parents and guardians alike and quickly cast their gaze away, heads hung, as if in shame at having committed a grave transgression.
    Why was she being deliberately avoided?
    Why did no one acknowledge her?
    Why did no one stop and talk to her?
    Why was she being neglected?
    It burned him up to see her alone and forsaken.
    It was unlikely the beauty had a sordid past or lived openly as some lucky nobleman’s mistress for she wouldn’t have been invited amongst this august company. The Duke of Roxton was an incorruptible prude and devoted family man, a rare bird amongst his preening peers. The King couldn’t praise the Duke’s example highly enough; a compliment that was so much sniggered about in Society drawing rooms that even Jonathon, just six months in the capital, had heard it repeated often enough. Whatever the reason for her social ostracism, it was of supreme indifference to him. He was determined to make her acquaintance, curiosity and allure compelled him.
    A burst of wild laughter close by brought him out of his reverie. Tommy would know the beauty’s identity and her story. He always had the latest gossip. Collecting social minutiae about Society that families desperately tried to suppress was Tommy Cavendish’s favorite pastime, second only to eating. And so with no regard for the two turbaned dowagers who were filling Lord Cavendish’s insatiable appetite for scandal with the latest wicked crumbs, Jonathon caught at the stiff skirts of the nobleman’s frockcoat and unceremoniously pulled him backwards to stand at his side.
    “Tommy! Tommy, attend me!” he demanded without taking his gaze from the beauty. “She’s in widow’s drapery and she’s being ignored. Why? What is she doing here?”
    “Good Lord, don’t tell me one of the fairer sex has finally piqued your interest? Bravo! Who, old dear?” asked his lordship, a wave of his lace handkerchief to the departing dowagers who flounced off in disgust at being so rudely interrupted by a tanned colossus of undetermined social consequence. He hurriedly plastered his quizzing glass to a watery eye and swept an eager roving stare out across the ballroom, the first minuet of the evening underway, before running his eye down to Jonathon’s large feet, then up to his head of thick, shoulder-length hair. “Are you truly six feet four inches?”
    Jonathon pulled the quizzing glass out of Lord Cavendish’s chubby fingers and let it drop loose on its riband. “Have done with that silly affectation, Tommy. And that hideous black patch, if that’s what it is, is also beyond enough. A wart at best.”
    “Brute,” Lord Cavendish responded without offence as he touched the corner of his mouth with a fat pinkie to reassure himself the heart-shaped mouche remained in place. “Those of us who can’t be Samsons must attract Delilahs in other ways.”
    “Patch and paint doesn’t do it for you, Tommy. Trust me. What would Kitty say?”
    Lord Cavendish shrugged and patted his portly belly, very snug in its tight-fitting Chinoiserie silk waistcoat. “M’wife? Told me to wear a half-moon rather than a heart, and at the temple not the mouth. But what would dearest Kitty know about patches and paint? And, I’m not the one who needs a wife—”
    “Tommy, don’t start.”
    Lord Cavendish pretended ignorance and swept a silken arm out towards the crowd gathered on the edge of the dance floor. “Start? My dear friend, the bridal campaign started in earnest months back, if you hadn’t noticed. And where better to find a nice little wife than at this esteemed gathering. Pick of the grapes, this bunch. No one with a relative below the rank of Viscount and it’s not as if you have to marry money. There’s a few dainty dishes with a pedigree as long as your arm and no funds to match. Kitty thinks—”
    “No, Tommy! No.”
    “—that there are at least five delicious puddings for you to choose from; all in their early twenties and in their second Season. Although, I wouldn’t discount the Porter-Lewisham pikelet, even if she is eighteen.”
    “Eighteen?” Jonathon was revolted. His daughter was just nineteen years old. He turned his portly friend’s shoulder towards the dance floor. “Attend, Tommy! The beauty over there. Who is she?”
    Lord Cavendish fumbled for his quizzing glass.
    “Where is this vision of loveliness, this delectable éclair that has whet your manly appetite?”
    “Not over there. Over here,” Jonathon said impatiently. “To my left. The tapestry. She’s staring straight at me.”
    Lord Cavendish made another sweep of the ballroom with his magnified eye, careful not to linger on any particular pretty face for more than a few seconds, but if there was an eligible beauty amongst the press of silk petticoats and fluttering fans, he could not discover her; pretty, yes, but no female so striking as to cause his tall friend to get steamed up under his cravat, unless... No! His smile remained fixed but his brow furrowed. He glanced up at Jonathon and followed his unblinking gaze... Oh God. No. He mentally gulped and let drop the quizzing glass, mouth at half cock, and mumbled something unintelligible. It was a few moments before he found his voice, long enough for Jonathon to witness two dour faced creatures, both dressed in dove-grey silk and with all the charisma of strong-armed jailers, approach the beauty from behind to stand two paces back on either side of her. They reminded him of a couple of gargoyles. The almost imperceptible way in which the beauty squared her snowy white shoulders told him she was aware of their presence and that they were an unwarranted intrusion. But she did not speak, nor did she look at them.
    His assessment of these women was justified when a gentleman carrying two glasses of champagne staggered out of the refreshment room, skirted the dance floor ringed with onlookers, and headed straight for the beauty. He lifted both glasses in the air as he twirled this way and that to avoid spilling a precious drop of bubbly, and came face to face with one of the humorless gargoyles who stepped forward and waylaid him before he could get within ten feet of their mistress. He was quietly taken in hand by two liveried footmen, who appeared from the crowd as if from thin air, and was marched away, the champagne soaking the front of his canary-yellow frockcoat.
    “Well?” he demanded of Lord Cavendish as the Countess of Strathsay curtsied low before the beauty and then rose up to speak a few words. “Who is she that such a sanctimonious stickler for breeding and rank as the Lady Strathsay curtseys until her long nose scrapes the floorboards?”
    Tommy Cavendish’s mouth was still forming words but then it fixed itself in a tight smile and he tapped Jonathon’s arm with the edge of his quizzing glass. “Strang! You cunning steak and kidney pie. For a moment you had me believing you. You can’t bamboozle me that easily.”
    “I’m not. I’ve never seen her before tonight and I want to know who she is so I don’t make a fool of myself upon first introduction. Your contribution would be much appreciated but I will do without it if I must.”
    Lord Cavendish’s usual bonhomie evaporated. He wished Kitty with him. His wife would know how to explain matters much better than he.
    “Ah… Yes… Should’ve realized. She doesn’t go out in society any more. Damn shame, if you ask me. Damn waste of a beautiful woman.”
    “Well?” Jonathon repeated rudely. He watched Lady Strathsay take her leave, shuffling backwards a few feet before turning and abandoning the beauty to the watchful eye of the two gargoyles. “Come on, Tommy. If she’s a recluse she could up and leave this claustrophobic social get-together at any moment. So out with it before I lose patience and take the plunge and ask her to dance without the benefit of your assistance.”
    Lord Cavendish shook his powdered head.
    “No, Strang. You do not want to go over there. It will be very bad for you if you do. Believe me, by going over there you’ll certainly make a fool of yourself. You’ll be boiled mutton for broth before you can be minced for steak tartar.” When Jonathon gave a huff of disbelief, his lordship sighed and dropped his quizzing glass to say without artifice, “Strang. Trust me in this. Deb Roxton has favored your dearest Sarah-Jane with her patronage. The Duchess doesn’t favor all her Cavendish relatives. Such noble benefaction is not to be scorned. If your daughter is to bag a baronet at the very least, you want to avoid incurring the Duke’s displeasure at all costs. Believe me, you, like the rest of us red-blooded males, must admire that divine beauty from afar.”
    Jonathon was unimpressed. He stared out across the noble bewigged and powdered heads gathering in the vast ballroom and caught sight of the very nobleman whom they were discussing. He watched the Duke make his way through the crowd to come stand beside the beauty. She reached no higher than His Grace’s shoulder and, Jonathon suspected, this in heels. The Duke inclined his head, took out his snuffbox and said a few words to which the beauty did not respond. Finally, she turned and tilted her chin up at him, gave a response, and flicked open her fan of black feathers with a quick agitated movement. After an exchange that lasted a few minutes she dared to turn her bare shoulder on the Duke to look the other way. His Grace remained at her side, watching the dancers with an enigmatic smile, and by the inclination of his head he was continuing to talk to her under his breath despite being deliberately ignored. It was Jonathon’s opinion that one would have to be blind not to see the impenetrable wall of ice bricks that separated these two.
    “If the man who offers for Sarah-Jane is spineless enough to put his Grace of Roxton’s good opinion of him before his love for my daughter, then I do not wish Sarah-Jane to be so favored.”
    Lord Cavendish threw up a lace-ruffled hand in defeat.
    “You always were an unashamed romantic.” He sighed. “And the family had to wonder why Emily ran off with a penniless second son of a second son who worked for the India Company. Ha!”
    “The name of the beauty at Roxton’s elbow, Tommy.”
    “What about your quest to have the Strang-Leven inheritance returned? Put the Duke offside and you can throw the ancient ancestral pile and Sarah-Jane’s marriage prospects out with the bathwater!”
    Jonathon gave a grunt, annoyed. He hadn’t spent twenty years sweating it out on the subcontinent making a fortune for his plans to slip out of from under him now before he’d had a chance to fully persuade the Duke of his moral obligations to return what rightfully belonged to the Strang-Levens. So he wasn’t about to tread lightly on the off chance he might offend the Duke and thus ruin his daughter’s chances of marrying into the nobility.
    “Sarah-Jane can find herself a titled husband in Edinburgh just as easily as she can scuffing her silk mules on these noble floorboards.”
    Lord Cavendish was shocked. “Strang! A Scottish lord? One might as well say Macbeth to an actor!”
    “Do stop the French cook theatrics, Tommy, and tell me the beauty’s name.”
    Lord Cavendish avoided the question. “Kitty is a remarkable woman,” he said and touched his eyeglass to his nose knowingly. “Has the ear of the Duchess. But that’s between you, me and the saucepan, old dear.”
    Jonathon cocked an eyebrow. “Well, old dear, the saucepan knows more than I, so out with it!”
    “It should please you to know that Roxton is rather ambivalent about your long-lost inheritance, particularly the Hanover Square residence. He’s bought a larger, more palatial house on the edge of Hyde Park which better suits his growing brood and, so say the cynics, puts more distance between his dukedom and the nefarious past of previous title-holders. As for Crecy Hall... It’s said he’s in a dilemma about the Elizabethan turreted terror; his words not mine. As you know, the house was let go to ruin and unfit for habitation, that is until five years ago, when the old Duke, breathing his last, decided to restore Crecy to its former glory.”
    Jonathon was surprised enough to take his gaze from the beauty to look down at Tommy Cavendish. “For God’s sake, why?”
    “Hold on to the cream in your éclair,” Lord Cavendish ordered and continued sotto voce. “This Duke of Roxton sees himself as a morally upright nobleman and thus once the true nature of the acquisition of the Strang-Leven inheritance was made known to him by your lawyers, holding on to Hanover Square and the Elizabethan manor does not sit well with our Duke’s high principles.”
    Jonathan was surprised. “Is that so? The clouds part yet again and the sun shines through. And? There’s more to tell. Your painted lips are twitching.”
    Lord Cavendish rocked on his heels. “But what the Duke feels and thinks is here nor there to your cause, I’m afraid. It is the Duke’s French mamma who will be your undoing because it was for her the old Duke restored Crecy, as a dower house in her widowhood. And that is where she took up residence on his death three years ago. And so it is Antonia, Duchess of Roxton you must not only persuade Crecy should be returned to the Strang-Levens but also whom you must evict.”
    “Roxton’s mother?” Jonathon rolled his eyes to the ornate ceiling, muttering, “A cantankerous old widow to contend with, and French into the bargain! Fabuleux. Un malheur n'arrive jamais seul! The weather is ever cold in this country and now it turns frigid.” He let out a sigh and squared his shoulders, giving Tommy Cavendish a nudge as he returned his gaze to the beauty, who said something to the Duke over a bare shoulder that made the nobleman clench his snuffbox and shut his mouth hard. That they were arguing couldn’t be more obvious had they been shouting insults at each other from opposite sides of the ballroom. “So who is she, Tommy, that Roxton dares let off steam in public?”
    Lord Cavendish made a noise in his throat that greatly resembled the sound of a startled pheasant. He coughed into his fist politely to find his voice.
    “The—um—beauty who has aroused your lust is the Duke’s—Lord! I can’t believe the first female to heat your blood since your return to England is the Duke’s—”
    “—cousin? Sister, distant third cousin, poor relation—”
    “Antonia, Duchess of Roxton. The cantankerous old widow as you so amusingly put it.”
    Jonathon swallowed hard.
    “I’ll be damned,” he muttered in utter disbelief.
    “And so you will be if you go near her.”
    Jonathon cleared his raw throat.
    “She’s not old enough, Tommy. Roxton must be my vintage if he’s a day.”
    “We were at Eton together. He’s turned thirty. His grizzled locks and the fact his mother is cursed with being absurdly youthful for her years don’t help.”
    Jonathon frowned his distaste. “Child-bride?”
    “Do you doubt it? She was snatched from the schoolroom. The fifth Duke was a notorious rake who reformed for her. They were devoted to one another until his death. Enough said.” Lord Cavendish waved to a gentleman across the room who was making exaggerated head movements in direction of the refreshment room. “Time to move on, Strang. Cards, conversation and comfits await us through those archways, and I for one intend to enjoy what’s on offer.”
    Jonathon stayed him; gaze still very much riveted to the Duchess. “Tell me you’re hoodwinking me, Tommy. Tell me the truth. Tell me that such an extraordinarily beautiful woman has no blood connection to Roxton. Tell me, Tommy.”
    Lord Cavendish let out a heavy sigh. “I wish I could. I cannot.”
    “Then tell me what you do know.”
    “Will you have done staring openly at her,” Lord Cavendish hissed, pulling at Jonathon’s velvet cuff. “Roxton’s glanced at us twice already, and no wonder with your eyes glued covetously to his mother. He’s damned protective of her, and who can blame him? The old Duke’s death signaled open season on his much younger wife. Her incredible beauty is matched only by her personal wealth, an inheritance left her by the old Duke to do with as she sees fit; the Strang-Leven inheritance amongst those riches, old dear. Roxton’s hands are tied while she is alive. So you see why he keeps her in a gilded cage. Well, that’s the line…”
    “And the unauthorized version?” When this was met with silence, Jonathon forced himself to look away from the Duchess, down at Lord Cavendish’s frowning countenance. “Oh, come on, Tommy! Tell me and then you’re free to stuff yourself from the buffet tables with abandon.”
    His lordship sighed. “You’re doggedly persistent.”
    He again took up his quizzing glass to pretend an interest in the dancing, for not only was the Duke regarding them under heavy brows but those who milled about on the edge of the dance floor were beginning to turn heads in their direction and whisper behind fluttering fans and perfumed lace handkerchiefs.
    “The old Duke died almost three years ago. He was three score years and eight and had been ill for a number of years, so his death was not unexpected. Except, that is, by his Duchess, who still mourns his passing as if it was yesterday. She is a divinely beautiful, sweet-natured creature who is to be pitied. Rumor has it sorrow has unhinged her. Sir Titus Foley, a dandified physician who’s made a name for himself in the study and treatment of female melancholia, has been summonsed to Treat by the Duke, and for the second time in as many years. It begs the question about the balance of Her Grace’s mind, does it not? And you didn’t hear this from me, old dear, for Kitty would surely have me trussed and spit-roasted.”
    Jonathon pulled a face of disgust.
    “The poor woman has lost her husband, who was the love of her life, her home and her exalted position in society, and her son keeps her under lock and key? Is it any wonder she’s suffering from melancholia? She has no life at all; bullied and badgered and totally misunderstood is my guess. She don’t need the peculiar attentions of a supercilious quack. What she needs is someone to talk to and a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.”
    Lord Cavendish’s burst of high-pitched incredulous laughter was heard across the ballroom.
    “T-T-Talk to? Oh, S-S-Strang! You are my bowl of chicken broth; so necessary to my comfort. Your remedy? So appealingly uncomplicated that you have me almost convinced. I take it you’re going to do the manly thing and offer Antonia Roxton your own broad shoulder to cry on?” He wiped his watery eye on the lace ruffles covering the back of a shaking hand. “And for your efforts she’ll be eternally grateful and not only sign over the Strang-Leven inheritance to you, but vacate Crecy Hall forthwith, for you to do with as you wish?” He shook his powdered head in disbelief. “May I live to see the day!”
    Jonathon grinned. “Just watch me.”

    The Duke stood beside Antonia, Duchess of Roxton, and drew out his gold snuffbox. He tapped the enameled lid but did not flick it open. It was a deliberate gesture, aimed at giving him a moment to master his frustration and annoyance. He managed to keep his handsome face relaxed and to smile, as if he was enjoying the evening. His guests would never suspect that he had wished the ball over before it had begun when his mother arrived dressed all in black; even her fan and high-heeled shoes were black. Her hair was arranged without adornments, not even a riband; she wore no cosmetics and her wrists and throat were devoid of jewelry. Her stark display not only made her the most arresting woman in the room it proclaimed a willful disregard for her son and daughter-in-law’s efforts to host a social occasion at Treat that did not generate unwanted gossip.
    He should not have hoped that this time she would heed his advice and leave off her mourning. He wished he knew what he was supposed to do with her. With other members of his immediate and extended family, retainers, tenants and his servants, his word was law and rarely questioned. He liked to believe that he was a benevolent, and rarely dictatorial Head of the Family. But he felt completely ham-fisted when dealing with his mother. He was at a loss to know what else he could possibly do or say that he had not already done or said that would drag her out of the vat of grief and self-pity in which she was slowly drowning.
    What had happened to the once animated, happy creature who travelled through life like a brightly-colored spinning-top; a beautiful tiny whirlwind in pretty silk petticoats and soft perfume, with gold and diamond bracelets adorning her wrists, and enough precious stones showered upon her by his father that he hardly ever saw her in the same piece of jewelry twice? She had been the vital ingredient that had kept the family happy, warm and loving. Not even his father’s illness had flagged her spirits. She had been brave and good and so strong he had convinced himself that she had come to terms with the inevitability of his father’s passing. She would mourn for a time but then, being so much younger than her husband, would get on with her life, accepting of the fact that the old Duke had had a long and eventful life and his time had come.
    But when his father died so too it seemed had she.
    It was as if he had lost both parents on the same day and it saddened him beyond measure. The resulting fragile mental health of his mother was an unrelenting worry. He wished he could make her happy. He wished he could make her see that life was still worth living. Three years of gentle persuasion had failed. Thus the time had come to try a different approach, one he was loath to employ but one the eminent physician Sir Titus Foley had assured him was the only way to shake his mother to her senses.
    He took a deep breath and pretended an interest in the couples assembling for the first of the country dances.
    “I thought we had agreed that come Easter you would give up your black?”
    He spoke in French; his mother’s native tongue.
    “No. That is what you wanted, Julian.”
    “Three years have come and gone, ma mere. Isn’t it time?”
    Antonia shrugged a bare shoulder, gaze remaining fixed on the entrance doors. “Time? What is time? Without Monseigneur time it is unimportant.”
    The Duke pursed his lips and mentally counted to five.
    “Putting off your black won’t diminish your grief but it will—”
    “—make my son and his wife more comfortable having a maman who does not grieve in public, hein?”
    “You know that’s not what I meant!” he said through his teeth, the gold snuffbox clenched in his fist.
    “But it is how you feel, is it not? You would prefer that your maman she keep her grief private. It would be more—seemly, yes?”
    “I would prefer that you not grieve at all!”
    Antonia looked up at the Duke, a flash of anger in her emerald-green eyes.
    “Comment osez-vous suggèrent une telle chose! Perhaps my son he would prefer that Monseigneur and I had never been in love? You would prefer your maman she rips out her heart so you need not endure the indignity of her grief?”
    At that the Duke turned and looked down at her with a mixture of angry embarrassment and indignation. It caused a momentary forgetfulness, that under the blaze of a thousand candles two hundred pairs of eyes watched and waited from behind fluttering fans and quizzing glasses and over the rims of champagne glasses to view the outcome of this frigid conversation between mother and son.
    “It offends me, Madam, that you dare suggest such a preposterous notion,” he enunciated coldly. “Particularly when you are well-aware that Deborah and I strive to emulate in every way the married life you and Father shared. Such outlandish comments offer further proof that you are in no fit state to make rational decisions.” He stretched his neck, as if the elaborately tied cravat of snow-white lace was suddenly uncomfortably bound about his throat, and returned to gazing out across the ballroom. “I have decided to recall Sir Titus—”
    “What?” she responded, a quick agitated movement of a slender wrist flicking open her fan. She suppressed a shiver of loathing. “You wish to force me into the care of a-a disgusting, fat-fingered quack? Incroyable.”
    “Then you have ceased spending endless hours up on the hill talking to yourself?”
    “I do not talk to myself,” Antonia said matter-of-factly, though color flooded her porcelain cheeks at being caught out. “I talk to your father.”
    The Duke rolled his green eyes to the ornate gilt ceiling and then down to the diamond buckle in the tongue of his left shoe. “I see… You think it quite acceptable behavior for a duchess to spend her idle hours in the family mausoleum—”
    “As acceptable as a duke permitting his servants to spy on his maman!”
    “—in conversation with a marble likeness?” the Duke finished flatly.
    Antonia turned wide innocent eyes up at the Duke. “Julian, it is absurd of you to believe your maman she talks to statues.”
    Again, the Duke mentally counted to five but his sigh of impatience was audible. He tried one last time to be reasonable. “Madam, if you agree to put off your black and accept life as it is now and not as you would like it to be again, I will gladly dispense with the services of Sir Titus Foley, despite his assurances that he can cure you of this excessive and unreasonable melancholy.”
    The Duke’s words sent a chill down Antonia’s spine and she visibly stiffened. Cure her? What was Julian talking about? As if grief at losing the love of one’s life was a dose of influenza that merely required plenty of bed rest and a physician’s foul-tasting tonic. She stared out across the ballroom, movement and color, laughter and light, all an inconsequential blur. She couldn’t stomach another minute in this house that had once been her home.
    “Call my carriage, Julian. Immédiatement!”
    “Put off your black, Maman, and the children may continue to visit you at Crecy.”
    Antonia caught her breath. “You would stop the children visiting me?”
    “Frederick is asking questions about—about his grandmère’s odd behavior.”
    When Antonia stared up at him in mute disbelief the Duke cleared his throat, awkward and uncomfortable under her steady gaze. This impromptu interview threatened to turn into a public scene, a circumstance he wanted to avoid at all costs. Again, he stretched his neck, the cravat tighter than ever.
    “You know as well as I servants will gossip before children, thinking them not of an age to understand. But Frederick is almost seven… He has an old head on his shoulders... He’s taken the gossip to heart. He worries about you. Frets. He’s questioned his mother. Thankfully the twins are too young, as is Juliana, but it won’t be long before… In short, Maman, if you continue to wear mourning, if you continue your daily visits to the family vault, you leave me no choice but to limit your contact with the children to public occasions.”
    Slowly, Antonia closed the sticks of her fan and picked up a handful of her diaphanous petticoats. Mustering up all her quarter of a century as a duchess in the public gaze, she mechanically held out her hand to her son in farewell. A glance over her shoulder at her ladies-in-waiting was all that was required to bring them to heel. “My carriage, Julian.”
    “Is it too much to ask,” he cajoled, raising her hand to his lips, “to put off your black and conform?”
    Antonia’s face remained a mask of indifference. Inside she was falling apart.
    Conform? The word wasn’t in her vocabulary. When had she ever been required to conform? She had always been just herself. When she had become the Duchess of Roxton two months after her eighteenth birthday, she was never compelled or felt the need to follow society’s dictates. Her husband had never expected it of her. Her spontaneity and exuberance were what Monseigneur had treasured most about her. Why did her son expect her now, as a widow, to conform? It was inconceivable. Cures and conformity. Such absurdities put her all at sea.
    She withdrew her hand.
    “Is this what Deborah wants too?”
    The Duke did not meet her eye. He looked over her fair hair. “Deb is four months with child and I will not have her upset.”
    Antonia felt tears at the back of her eyes. She must not spill them here.
    Did her son not realize her grandbabies were everything to her? Their twice-weekly visits to her dower house on the lake were the only sunshine in her otherwise grey lonely days. Without them, she would surely fade away. But perhaps that was for the best; perhaps that would solve everything. She knew she was a great burden on her son and his wife and that Julian was only doing what he considered right; what he thought his father would want him to do as Duke. Antonia could not blame him for that. She was well aware that as Duke of Roxton her son had inherited a heavy burden of responsibility and that he took his position as Head of the Family very seriously; in her opinion, rather too seriously. But that was not for her to comment. He was a loving husband and father and a benevolent master, which was all that truly mattered.
    “You have not told her.”
    The Duke did not answer. He motioned his mother’s ladies-in-waiting forward. “Her Grace is returning to Crecy.”
    Antonia turned to leave with eyes downcast. Her heart was so heavy, her mind and body so listless that it was as if she was wading through treacle. Yet, something, she wasn’t precisely sure what, perhaps the crescendo in conversations close to her or the flash of color and movement as the dancers scattered and their audience parted, made her pause and lift her gaze from the polished floorboards. Her emerald-green eyes widened in surprise, for striding purposefully towards her was a loose-limbed giant of a man with a sun-bronzed complexion.
    Dressed in an unadorned, close-cuffed, dark velvet frockcoat, low-heeled shoes with plain silver buckles and with his own thick wavy hair bouncing about his shoulders and falling into his eyes in a most untidy fashion, Antonia wondered if he was a cleric; albeit a very tall and handsome cleric. But his one concession to fashion, a brightly colored embroidered waistcoat of rich peacock blue satin with matching covered buttons, made her dismiss this supposition. Clerics did not wear such beautifully tailored and exquisite fabrics. Still, the waistcoat was so incongruous to the starkness of the rest of his attire that she blinked, as if to assure herself she was not witness to an apparition.
    Perhaps he was drunk? Excessive alcohol would explain this sinuous stranger’s air of easy-going confidence amongst this gathering of society elite. And only a drunkard would dare stare at her so fixedly. He looked neither left nor right as he skirted the dance floor, the contingent of onlookers forced to scamper backwards in his wake. Not that he seemed to care that the resulting disruption caused the orchestra to break off their music playing. In the abrupt silence, dancers and onlookers alike huddled together, all eyes on this copper-skinned stranger who dared to boldly approach Antonia, Duchess of Roxton.
    As if to assure herself of the gentleman’s destination, she glanced over her bare shoulders, left then right. Apart from her son and the two ladies-in-waiting breathing down her back as always, there was no one else standing near enough to be considered in the stranger’s line of sight.
    She continued to stare at the unknown gentleman’s progress through the crowd, two-inch heels fixed to the floor and plumed fan let drop on its silken cord around her wrist, wondering what he could possibly want. And then her son stepped in front of her and blocked her view.
    “Her Grace does not dance,” the Duke stated in a flat drawl.
    Jonathon was unperturbed by his host’s cold reception. He met the Duke’s unblinking gaze squarely and with a smile.
    “Is that so, Duke?” he said casually, and took a step to the left so that Antonia was again in his line of sight. He was delighted to discover that her slightly oblique eyes were the color of brilliantly cut emeralds. That she was even more exquisitely beautiful at close quarters strengthened his resolve to have her dance with him. “Why don’t you let your mother tell me that herself?” he said with a blunt, friendly familiarity that had the Duke been struck across the face he would not have been more shocked.
    Those in the crowd close enough to hear this crude declaration were so taken aback to have a pre-eminent member of their order addressed in such a shockingly informal manner, and by one regarded as a parvenu (an East India merchant at that!), that there was a loud hiss of horrified disbelief as everyone collectively drew in breath.
    The collective breath held awaiting the Duke’s reply.
    “Perhaps you did not hear me,” Roxton enunciated frigidly, unused to being so rudely addressed that his close-shaven cheeks diffused a dull brick red, as if he had indeed received a reproachful slap. “The Duchess does not dance. She is returning home immediately. Now you will excuse her.”
    Neither man gave way. They stared at one another in silence, eye to eye. The crowd breathed and again held its breath. Good manners and societal convention demanded that the guest submit to his host’s polite demand. But Jonathon was not a man who gave in easily, not without good reason. He certainly wasn’t going to concede just because some unwritten collective tenet demanded it. There was no reason for him to back down unless she wished it.
    Thus he did not do as Society expected. He did not apologize. He was not penitent. He did not bow and scrape and back away to be swallowed up by the crowd. Instead, he committed an unforgiveable social sin; one Society matrons agreed he would never make a recover. He might as well pack his portmanteaux and leave in the middle of the night to return to whatever social backwater from wither he had materialized.
    Jonathon ignored the Duke.
    He stepped forward, brushing past the Duke’s shoulder, as if his illustrious host was a menial not worthy of his notice and addressed Antonia directly.
    “Would your Grace do me the honor of taking a turn about the ballroom with a man who has two left feet and as much elegance as a stick insect treading water?”
    Everyone awaited the Duchess’s response to this little drama being played out above her head between two large handsome men who were at opposite ends of their social order. Everyone expected her to decline. There was the affront done her son, besides which no one had seen her upon a dance floor since the old Duke of Roxton had fallen ill with the complaint of the lung that had eventually taken his life.
    Antonia’s impulse was to decline, to give a lame excuse about having a megrim, and quickly depart to save any further embarrassment to her son. But she had never given a lame excuse in her life, nor did she suffer from megrims. And she certainly did not want to see this gentleman, who smiled down at her with all the confidence of receiving an acceptance, humiliated by her refusal. He had already incurred the silent wrath of her son whom she knew had a dread of public scenes. He would punish this stranger for his bad manners by undoubtedly snubbing him at every social gathering thereafter. Just as with a flock of sheep, the rest of society would follow the Duke’s lead and the stranger would find himself socially ostracized.
    She would not be responsible for this gentleman’s social exile.
    She met the handsome stranger’s smile openly and despite the deep lines that radiated from his dark brown eyes and etched his cheeks, and the fact he possessed a swarthy complexion, no doubt the result of years sailing on the high seas or living in sun-drenched colonial climes, she estimated he could not be more than half a dozen years older than her son. What harm could there be then in having one dance with him if it meant he would not be henceforth cast out by her peers?
    Mind made up, she stepped past the Duke and held out her small hand in greeting.
    “If you can bear with my lack of practice, M’sieur, I will bear with your two left feet.”
    Jonathon’s white smile broadened, but it was not, as the onlookers supposed, in triumph because Antonia had accepted his audacious invitation in the face of the Duke’s opposition. He was pleasantly surprised that she had replied in softly spoken French without regard to the possibility that he himself might not be articulate in the French tongue. That he had a good linguistic ear and spoke several languages fluently could wait for another day. For now, he was just delighted to have her on his arm.
    Without a second glance at the Duke, he led her into the middle of the ballroom under the full blaze of three chandeliers with all the confidence of her acceptance being a commonplace thing.
    There was universal indecision as to whether other couples should join them to make up the required number for a cotillion, but then Deborah Roxton swept up to her husband and said loudly that he had promised her this dance. The Duke made no objection, though he looked askance at his wife, and several other couples were quick to form and follow their hosts’ lead. Within minutes, word swept through to the refreshment room and the gaming tables and these were all but deserted in favor of watching Antonia, Duchess of Roxton dance for the first time in seven years.
    Lord Cavendish watched from the sidelines, all admiration for Jonathon’s impudence. And by the looks of longing cast at Strang by at least half-a-dozen eligible beauties as he led Antonia in a cotillion, it was his lordship’s considered opinion that far from tarnishing his suitability as a prospective mate, this episode had increased his straight-talking brother-in-law’s prospects of bagging a titled heiress tenfold. His lordship couldn’t wait to confer with his wife.

Return to top of page