The Incredible Honeymoon (Bantam Series No. 46) (12 page)

“Athol, can you hear me?”

He found it impossible to speak but he turned his eyes to look at her.

She made a little sound that was a cry of delight.

“You are awake!” she exclaimed, “and I think you can understand.”

She knelt down beside him taking his hand in hers and said softly:

“Everything is all right. You are going to get well and there is nothing to make you afraid.”

Henry Labouchere, looking rather raffish, Antonia thought, came to call at four o’clock in the afternoon.

Tour had let him in and Antonia came into the Salon wearing one of her elegant Worth gowns which revealed her exquisite figure.

“You look happy,” he said and raised her hand to his lips.

“I am,” she replied. “My invalid has eaten a proper meal today for the first time. He is sitting up in bed and being rather irritable, which Tour tells me is a good sign.”

Labby laughed.

“Well, that is a relief at any rate! Perhaps now you will be able to give me more attention.”

Antonia looked at him in surprise as he went on:

“I do not think I have ever spent so much time with a woman who would not even know I existed, had the news I brought her not in some way concerned her husband.”

Labby spoke resentfully and Antonia laughed. Then she said seriously:

“You know how grateful I am. I should have known nothing of what is happening and been very much more afraid if you had not proved such a very kind friend.”

“Friend!” Labby ejaculated. “That is not what I wish to be, as you must be well aware! This friendship, as you call it, will ruin my reputation as a lady-killer!”

“It is a
...
friendship I value very much,” Antonia said softly.

She was used by this time to Labby’s protestations of love to her, even while he realised better than she did how hopeless it was.

He had never met a woman who concentrated so fiercely on a man who could neither see nor hear her and who from all accounts was not particularly interested anyway.

Labby knew of the Duke’s liaison with the Marchioness and his reputation with beautiful women. It did not need Antonia to tell him—which she would not have thought of doing—why the Duke had married.

Labby had at first been touched by Antonia’s youth and inexperience.

Then as he saw her day after day, calling at first because he told himself she was a countrywoman whom he must help and if possible protect, he found himself falling in love.

He could hardly believe it possible that at the age of thirty-nine he should find himself as idealistically enamoured as he had been when in his youth he had once joined a Mexican Circus in pursuit of a lady acrobat.

Yet there was something about Antonia which told him she was different from any of the women he had pursued so ardently in his varied career.

At one time Queen Victoria had referred to him as ‘that viper, Labouchere!’ She would have been surprised how controlled, gentle and considerate he was to Antonia.

Labby did not only bring Antonia the news, he also made her laugh, something she had almost forgotten to do in her anxiety over the Duke.

Because the eyes of the world were focused on France, inquisitive British and Americans were flooding into the city. Labby had related that enterprising Estate Agents were circulating advertisements which read:

Notice for the benefit of English gentlemen wishing to attend the Siege of Paris: comfortable apartments, completely shell-proof, rooms in the basement for impressionable personages.

“The Siege of Paris!” Antonia had repeated apprehensively. “Can it possibly come to that?”

“No, of course not,” Labby had said confidently. “The Germans will be driven back long before they reach Paris. But there is no doubt that the Army is somewhat disorganised and has retired to the small citadel town of Sedan.”

He paused before he added:

“Things cannot be too bad. I hear the French Cavalry blades gave a ball at Douzy last night. It was attended by all the ladies from Sedan who are to watch a triumphant victory tomorrow.”

There was no triumph! Two days later Labby had to tell Antonia that the army was trapped, with two powerful Prussian armies moving in.

There was only enough food in Sedan for a few days.
What Labby did not relate to Antonia, even if he was aware of it, was that there was chaos inside Sedan reaching catastrophic proportions. Cannons were jammed wheel to wheel with refugee wagons, while shells from 400 Prussian guns burst in their midst.

Then on September 1st came the bombshell. After Louis Napoleon had ridden amongst his wavering troops outside the walls of Sedan, his face roughed in order to hide how ill he was, he finally had to order a white flag to be hoisted over the citadel.

It was two days later before the contradictory rumours, and there were many of them, reached Paris.

Labby told Antonia that the Empress had flown into a terrible Spanish rage and then retired to her room to weep.

In the streets now there was no doubt of the menacing roar of the crowd or the cry that was heard everywhere:

“
Decheance! De-che-ance!
De-che-ance
!”

“What is the news today?” Antonia asked nervously on September 4th.

It was difficult, because she was so pleased about the improvement in the Duke’s health, to force herself to attend to the troubles which were happening outside the house.

She felt sometimes as if they were alone on an island, surrounded by a hostile sea and yet somehow protected from it.

“Paris has learnt that the Emperor has offered up his sword,” Labby replied. “And the Empress at last has consented to leave.”

Antonia started. She had felt that as long as the Empress stayed in Paris, things could not be too bad.

“Her Majesty has stayed on at the Tuileries until the servants began to desert her, flinging off their livery and pilfering as they went. It was nearly too late,” Labby told Antonia. “The mob were accumulating outside and she must have heard the clatter of their muskets in the courtyard and their voices on the main staircase.”

“Did she get away?” Antonia asked quickly.

“She left by a side door accompanied by her Lady-in-Waiting. She was heavily veiled and I have learnt that the two ladies went first to the house of the State Chancellor in the Boulevard Haussmann, but he had already gone. Eventually, after finding the same thing at the house of her Chamberlain, Her Majesty found shelter with her American dentist, a Doctor Evans.”

“How extraordinary!” Antonia exclaimed.

“It was sensible, if slightly unconventional,” Labby remarked.

The following day Labby was taken by Antonia into the Duke’s bed-room. She had already related to him how kind the English journalist had been during the long, frightening weeks of his unconsciousness.

She thought the Duke was slightly sceptical—or was it suspicious—of the warm manner in which she had described Henry Labouchere.

But when she brought him into the bed-room he had held out his hand and said in his most pleasant tone:

“I hear, Labouchere, I have to be very grateful to you.”

“There is no reason for you to be grateful, Your Grace,” Henry Labouchere replied. “It has been a very great pleasure to be of service to the Duchess.”

He smiled at Antonia as he spoke and there was an expression on his raffish face which made the Duke look at him sharply.

What he had suspected was confirmed during the conversation which followed.

Even a less experienced man than the Duke would have noticed the gentleness in Henry Labouchere’s voice when he addressed Antonia, and the manner in which he found it hard to take his eyes from her.

“We must leave Paris as soon as I am well enough to travel,” the Duke remarked abruptly.

“I am afraid that will not be for some time,” Labby replied. “As Your Grace must know by now, you have been very ill indeed.”

He smiled at Antonia again as he added:

“I shall be giving away no secrets if I tell you, now the danger is over, that your doctor told me it was a ninety percent certainty that you would die.”

Antonia drew in her breath.

“I
...
did
...
not realise it was as bad ... as that,” she faltered.

“You were saved by two things,” Labby told the Duke. “The first that the bullet missed your heart and by a miracle did not shatter any bones, and secondly that you were outstandingly fit.”

“I am glad you did not tell me until now,” Antonia said.

“Do you imagine that I would have distressed you more than you were already?” he asked gently.

The Duke listened to this exchange looking first at Henry Labouchere, then at Antonia.

“I would be grateful, Labouchere,” he said after a moment, “if you would tell me exactly what the position is at the moment. As you can imagine, I have a great deal to catch up with and women are never very good at describing the horrors of war.”

“Her Grace will have told you that there is a new Government,” Henry Labouchere replied. “The Second Empire has ended ignominiously and France has been humiliated. King William has reached Rheims.”

“It is hard to believe!” the Duke exclaimed.

“But France still has an army of sorts, all of which General Trochu, our new leader, is concentrating in Paris.”

“Is that wise?” the Duke enquired.

“He has little choice,” Labby conceded, “and the enrollment of 350,000 able-bodied males in the National Guard is encouraging, while at the same time it reveals the inefficiency of France’s war mobilisation.”

“I should think that the fortifications will certainly make Paris impregnable,” the Duke remarked.

“A visit to the fortifications is rapidly replacing a drive in the Bois as the smart Parisian Sunday afternoon entertainment.”

“Good God!” the Duke exclaimed, “do they never take anything seriously?”

“What seems to me extraordinary,” Labby went on, “is that no effort is made to get the useless mouths out of the city. The Duchess will have told you of the vast concentration of animals in the Bois. But I should have thought that it
would have made more sense to move people out rather than in.”

“So should I,” the Duke agreed, “but I suppose the last people anyone is likely to listen to are the English.”

“That is certainly true,” Henry Labouchere agreed, “and it is essential that the Duchess should not attempt to walk in the streets. Spy-mania has led to situations which are far from comic.”

“I have warned Tour,” Antonia said, “and he assures me that now when he goes out he wears his oldest clothes and looks more French than the French themselves!”

“You need not worry about Tour,” the Duke replied, “’but you, Antonia, will stay here with me.”

There was an accent on the last word that Antonia did not miss.

After Henry Labouchere had gone she came back into the Duke’s bed-room. He looked at her and said:

“I gather you have a new admirer.”

“Shall we say my only
...
admirer,” Antonia replied.

The Duke’s eyes seemed to rest on her speculatively and she flushed a little under his scrutiny.

He realised that she had lost some weight these past weeks when she had been nursing him, but it had not affected the perfection of her figure.

As he looked at the exquisite line of her breasts, and at the smallness of her waist, he wondered what other young woman would have been content to be cooped up indoors, nursing an unconscious and delirious man, without finding herself restricted or apparently bored.

He raised his eyes to her face and realised she was watching him apprehensively.

Her eyes looked very green because the gown she was wearing was the green of the creeper climbing over the balcony of the bed-room.

It had taken Worth, the Duke thought, to realise that only deep vivid or clear colours could make Antonia’s skin appear dazzlingly clear and white.

They brought also, both to her eyes and to her hair, strange unpredictable lights that had a fascination all of their own.
He had learnt that Antonia had dismissed her lady’s
-
maid, but he saw that her hair was as elegant and as fashionably arranged as it had been when she had joined him at the Cafe Anglais and he had not recognised her.

“It is a very dull honeymoon for you, Antonia,” he said in his deep voice.

As if she had expected him to say something else the flush which came to her cheeks seemed to bring an expression of happiness to her face.

“It is at least
...
unusual, and if we are
...
besieged in Paris it might last for a
...
very long time!”

“We must prevent that from happening,” the Duke said.

“How can we do that?” Antonia asked.

“By getting out of the City as soon as possible and returning to our own country.”