Deadly Affair: A Georgian Historical Mystery (Alec Halsey Crimance) (50 page)

Coming face to face with the Earl of Salt Hendon, Jane lost the facility of speech.

Magnus Vernon Templestowe Sinclair, ninth Baron Trevelyan, eighth Viscount Lacey and fifth Earl of Salt Hendon, strode into the drawing room on the butler’s announcement and immediately filled the space with his presence. The papered walls and ornate plastered ceiling shrunk inwards, or so it seemed to Jane who had grown accustomed to the Allenbys, who were all short and narrow-shouldered. The Earl was neither. He was dressed in what Jane presumed to be the height of London elegance: A Venetian blue frockcoat with elaborate Chinoiserie embroidery on tight cuffs and short skirts; an oyster silk waistcoat that cut away to a pair of thigh-tight black silk breeches rolled over the knees and secured with diamond knee buckles; white clocked stockings encased muscular calves and enormous diamond encrusted buckles in the tongues of a pair of low heeled black leather shoes. Lace at wrists and throat completed this magnificent toilette. Yet, neither ruffled lace or expertly cut cloth could hide the well-exercised muscle in the strong legs or the depth of chest and width of shoulder. But he did not dominate by size alone. There was purpose in his stride, and when he took a quick commanding glance about the room the intensity in his brown eyes demanded that those who fell under his gaze pay attention or suffer the consequences of his displeasure.

Lady Despard, standing near the fireplace, brought him up short. She dropped into a low curtsey, giving his lordship a spectacular view of her deep cleavage. When the Earl tore his gaze from her over-ripe bosom, it was to turn and regard Jane with a disdainful glare. A look, hard to read, passed across the nobleman’s square face and then it was if he suddenly realized he was being less than polite. He bowed slightly as Lady Despard rose up and with her son crossed the carpet to greet him.

Formal introductions gave Jane time to find her composure. She stood frozen, awed by the sheer physicality of the man, unable to bend her stiff knees into the desired respectful curtsey. She appeared calm enough but inwardly she felt sick to her stomach and relieved at the same time. She was glad that he barely looked at her. When he did, it was with tacit disapproval and as if to make certain she was paying attention. This expression stayed with him when he spoke a few words with Tom. Jane saw it in the clench of his strong jaw and the way in which his lips pressed together in a thin line, giving his classical features a hard, uncompromising edge. Yet, no amount of cold disdain could diminish the fact he was a ruggedly handsome man.

Tom managed only a few words with the Earl before his mother interrupted. She looked up expectantly at the nobleman from under her darkened lashes and endeavored to engage his interest with a run of small talk; her inanities about the inclement weather, particularly the unusual severity of the frosts for the start to the new year, receiving polite but monosyllabic replies. Jane frowned and was embarrassed by her stepmother’s blatant flirting with this jaded nobleman who was obviously accustomed and thoroughly bored by the wiles of women who constantly threw themselves at him.

When he turned his powdered head and stared straight at her, as if he was well aware she was taking full measure of his person, Jane was so startled to be caught out that she felt the heat rush up into her white throat. The fire burned more brightly in her cheeks when he had the bad manners to look her over, starting at her thick black braids caught up in a silver net at her shoulders, lingering on her breasts covered by a plain muslin bodice before traveling down the length of her petticoats to her matching silk slippers. When he frowned, as if she did not meet his expectations, Jane dared to put up her chin and stare back at him before turning to the window in dismissal.

Her gaze remained steadfastly to the driving rain, despite being aware that her stepmother was now droning on at the freckle-faced secretary, Mr. Ellis, whom Jane had failed to notice standing a few steps behind his noble employer, and who was now doing his best to be polite and interested in Lady Despard’s London sightseeing forays. Then, close at her back, she heard Tom’s eager response to the Earl’s invitation to take part in a game of Royal Tennis being held at his lordship’s private court at his Grosvenor Square mansion the day after next. Tom said he would be honored to be included in his lordship’s tournament.

His lordship’s tournament indeed
, thought Jane, when only ten minutes earlier Tom had been poking fun of his lordship’s noble nostrils!

The Earl drawled something banal about hoping this Arlington Street address, usually occupied by his lordship when Parliamentary sittings continued on through the night, was proving satisfactory accommodation for Tom and his mother. Tom thanked his lordship for the use of his townhouse, saying that as soon as it could be arranged he and his mother would let a suitable residence of their own for a month or two to enjoy what London had to offer before returning to Bristol. The Earl told him to take his time. There was no immediate rush for them to vacate. And then the room fell silent.

The silence went on for so long that curiosity made Jane turn away from the window. Had there been a chair close by she would have sat down upon it from shock. Tom had deserted her, settling with his mother and the secretary, his friend from Oxford days, in the far corner of the drawing room to take tea and talk over old times. They had left Jane to face Lord Salt alone.

His lordship stared over her head and out the window.

“Miss Despard, it is customary to permit me to bow over your hand,” he drawled with just that touch of insolence required to bring immediate obedience.

But Jane was too much affected by his closeness and his earlier unfavorable appraisal to be bothered with the niceties of a formal introduction and her hands remained firmly clasped in front of her. She told herself she was being obstinately bad mannered, but for the first time in years she allowed emotion to rule her tongue and spoke her thoughts.

“I am fully sensible to the honor you do me, my lord,” she answered in a clear voice, gaze riveted to the engraved silver buttons of his waistcoat. “But I am not ignorant of the fact it was forced upon you in a most ungentlemanly manner. It is a circumstance I bitterly regret and wish I could alter.”

There was the smallest of pauses before Salt said in his insolent way, “You’ve had ample opportunity to release me from such a damnable circumstance. You merely had to refuse the honor. Still, there are some eighteen hours before the ceremony…”

This blunt speech did tilt Jane’s chin to his face, blue eyes wide with astonishment. He was offering her the opportunity to give him an eleventh hour reprieve; indeed his very manner suggested he expected her to do so there and then. That she wanted to release him from his forced obligation with all her heart was momentarily forgotten with the wound to her feminine pride. That he did not even have the good manners to disguise his abhorrence for a match that was of her father’s making, not hers, angered her into giving an impudent reply.

“You cannot imagine, my lord, that I leapt at your backhanded offer of marriage,” she stated with as much coldness in her voice as she could muster. “Doubtless there are dozens of females eager to take their place at your side as Countess of Salt Hendon. I wholeheartedly wish you’d offered for one these ladies, then this horrid situation would never have presented itself.”

“I am not in the habit of making life-altering decisions merely to oblige others,” he replied coldly, gaze remaining fixed to the wet windowpane. “Yet… knowing you for a fickle female with no heart and even less brain, who has the bare-faced cheek to accept a
backhanded
offer of marriage, I should indeed have married the next fresh-faced virgin who presented herself for mounting.”

Jane staggered back a pace, mind reeling and hand out to the heavy brocade curtains for support at such crude speech. “How… How
dare
you speak to me in such a repulsive manner!” she whispered indignantly, a fervent glance at her tea-drinking relatives at the far end of the room. “I am not one of your whores who you can—”

This brought his hard gaze down to her beautiful face. “Come now, Miss Despard,” he said with bored indifference. “Your show of offended sensibilities insults my intelligence. It is a bit late in the day to exhibit virginal outrage.” He watched her throat constrict and when she turned her fine nose to the window, giving him a view of her lovely profile, he smiled crookedly. How well she played the part of indignant female! As if she was the injured party. “By the way, I don’t waste conversation on whores.”

“If you hope to unsettle me with your-your—by
that
then you are vastly mistaken in my—in my—” She stopped herself and bit her full lower lip, for how could she say the word
character
when she had none?

He seemed to read her mind for he said so softly that she could only just hear him, “You were wise not to say it. You lost what little character you possessed when you thumbed your nose at constancy and decency to take up with a conscienceless old merchant. But as you are your father’s daughter I am inclined to believe Sir Felix never taught you the meaning of such words. Thus I will own that the fault lies with me for being taken in by your beautiful face.”

Jane bravely met his gaze, and seeing the loathing in his eyes, a painful knot formed in her chest, making it difficult for her to breath. She did not understand what she had done to deserve such hatred. He spoke of her not being constant or decent and yet if there was one thing she had been in those days, weeks, and months after the night in the summerhouse, it was constant. Nor did she understand why he had such an intense dislike for Jacob Allenby the only person to offer her sanctuary. She knew there was no point defending her own character with this male colossus of unreasonableness, but there was no reason for him to besmirch her protector. She forced herself to remain outwardly calm, saying levelly,

“Your vast experience of the type may give you some latitude to speak to me as you would any whore of your acquaintance,” she said in a steady voice, “but it does not give you leave to besmirch Mr. Allenby’s unblemished character. I have never heard an unkind word spoken about him. And despite the difficult circumstances in which I lived under his roof, I never had cause to—”

Salt goggled at her, appalled. “I won’t stand here and listen to you praise—”

“—
slap
his face!”

There was a moment’s heavy silence and then the Earl let out such a bark of genuine laughter that he startled those taking tea to momentary silence. “My dear Miss Despard, pride still smarting?”

“I have no idea to what you are referring, my lord.”

“Don’t you?” he asked curiously, the anger gone from his deep voice. “I’d wager my best Hunter you were sorely disappointed when your merchant protector intervened that day on the Hunt. Truth be told, you had no need to lash out as you did. I wasn’t about to offer you a second helping of my vast experience.”

“What a
dull, hollow existence
you must lead to hold to the memory of such a trifling incident. I assure you I had not recalled it until now.”

His smile was sardonic. “It was to your dull, hollow existence I was referring, Madam. Your hand hasn’t been the only one to have slapped this noble cheek.”

“What a comfort to know there are females who have spurned Wiltshire’s libertine lord!”

“No. I never said that. Every other slap invited pursuit; yours I’d no desire to satisfy. Easy game doesn’t interest me. No, don’t turn your face away,” he commanded in a low voice, pinching her small chin between thumb and forefinger and forcing her to look up at him. “Do we go before parson tomorrow or not?”

To her shame and embarrassment, Jane felt hot tears sting her eyelids and she swallowed hard, unable to give him an immediate response. He had exposed the raw nerve of her life under Jacob Allenby’s protection by stating the painfully obvious. The old Bristol merchant had kept her fed and clothed and in return whenever he visited the little thatched cottage that nestled in a grove between the Sinclair lands and the Allenby estate she was at his beck and call. If it hadn’t been for Tom’s supervised quarterly visits, her life would’ve been unbearable. And now this arrogant nobleman dared to sneer at her and expect release from an obligation he had given in good faith.

It humiliated her to think that on his deathbed her estranged father had forced Lord Salt to honor a promise made to her years earlier. Her father had fulfilled his life’s ambition in bringing about her marriage to this arrogant nobleman by means of blackmail, with no thought to her feelings in the matter or the mortification she would endure as wife of a reluctant husband. It humiliated her further that Jacob Allenby had written up a despicable will leaving her no choice but to accept the Earl’s offer of marriage or watch her stepbrother face financial ruin. And as much as she wanted to release Lord Salt from his forced obligation, as much as she wanted to tell him why she must accept his backhanded offer of marriage, she could not; it was with an aching heart and a halting voice that she gave the Earl the answer she knew he did not in the least want to hear.