Salt Bride (20 page)

“Your faith in my abilities overwhelms me,” Sir Antony commented dryly. “Though I’m not sure your speech was entirely complimentary.”

“My dear Tony, my ancient pedigree entitles me a seat atop the political poop where I am best able to put your abilities to good use,” Salt drawled with exaggerated emphasis. “To state the obvious: an earldom and more wealth than I know what to do with gives me unlimited influence. I was being complimentary. You under value yourself.”

“But what of Diana?”

“If she were a man…” Salt replied, an edge to his voice and with the slightest of pauses before he continued in a more conversational tone. “She’s very good at organizing my social calendar, something that, quite frankly, bores me beyond belief. But you know as well as I that social calendars are a necessary evil for a man in my position. I will be forever grateful to her for taking on the task, though I did not ask it of her. But I’m not blind to her motivation. That she has over-stepped the mark by taking on the role of procuress, I will stop—Oh? So you knew? God! Is nothing sacred?”

“For Diana? About you? Afraid not,” Sir Antony apologized.

Jane heard Salt huff his annoyance and watched him take a step closer to the table so that the toe of his shoe tickled the hem of her petticoats. She quickly gathered the silk layers closer, and in the process knocked a chair leg. The two children drew in quick breaths and Jane held hers, but when the Earl and Sir Antony continued talking, those under the table silently breathed easier.

“I’ve tolerated your sister’s interference in my life since the death of St. John because it has given her widowhood occupation and meaning,” Salt said flatly. “I had hoped that in time she would remarry. The fact that she has, as you so bluntly informed me at White’s, held out in the expectation that I would ask her to marry me, has made me realize that allowing her to organize my social engagements and play hostess at my party political dinners was an error of judgment. To be blunt,” he added on a sigh of admission, “I permitted your sister such license because it stopped her interfering in matters that are far more important in my life.”

“Such as your marriage?” Sir Antony asked too quickly and could’ve bitten off his own tongue. Why was it that he could be the consummate diplomat with others but with Salt he just blathered like schoolboy? He tried to make a recover. “If it’s any consolation, Diana’s taken the news better than I expected. Of course she pretended she already knew you were married and practically spat in my face for daring to tell her to be on her best behavior. I dare say having guests here today has helped temper her mood. That was a good tactical move on your part.”

Salt let out a long breath. He sounded tired. “Putting off the inevitable is what it was. I don’t want your sister to suffer any undue embarrassment or distress from my marriage. That I am married is enough of a shock for her to bear right now. When she learns how far I’ve sunk into the mire, she’ll be mortified.”

“Mire?”

“That Jane married me
for Tom’s sake
.”

Sir Antony blustered. “So her brother could inherit what was rightfully his and finally put food on the table of his loyal factory workers who had gone without wages for three months? Do you believe that pap?”

Jane held her breath in the silence until the Earl said simply, “Yes. Yes, I do. It’s just too pathetic a circumstance to be invented. I’ll have a copy of Jacob Allenby’s will tomorrow, so I’ll find out exactly what hoops that lunatic merchant made his nephew and my wife jump through.”

“Makes her less the mercenary bride, then,” Sir Antony commented lightly. “She certainly doesn’t come across as the type, far from it.”

“Tony, whatever way you flavor it, the dose is still hard to swallow. And now I have a wife Diana can no longer act as my hostess. I am counting on your support to make your sister see reason. She must be eased out of her social commitments on my behalf and it must be done as gently and as expeditiously as possible, so that she doesn’t make a fool of herself and me in front of our friends and family. As it is, she’s in there dishing out the tea as if it’s her place to do so, and it’s not, it’s my wife’s.”

“So you’ve no intention of sending Lady Salt into the country?” Sir Antony asked, looking hard at his cousin. “You’re going to make your wife your wife?” and could have stood on his own foot for again allowing words to flow out without due thought. “What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean,” Salt answered wryly and picked up his wine glass. “Lady Salt will remain here until such time as I can take her to Salt Hall,” he stated and added, as if needing to justify himself because Sir Antony was looking at him curiously, “Parliament doesn’t rise until Easter so I have no choice but to stay in London until then. Particularly with rumblings that Bute may resign any day; though I don’t see that happening for some time to come. He’ll hold out as long as he can. His Majesty will convince him to stay on. And because Lady Salt remains in London, my dear Tony, I will expect her to do her wifely duty.”

Wifely duty in the bedchamber was what he was thinking. Up until last night as he lay beside her in that ridiculous nightshirt, he had had every intention of bedding and then banishing Jane to Salt Hall as soon as he could make arrangements to have her and her new wardrobe packed up and bundled into his traveling coach. Then they had made love and now he didn’t know what he wanted to do with her, apart from get her into his bed again at the earliest opportunity.

“Do you think her capable of carry it off, being Countess of Salt Hendon, playing hostess at your dinners, accompanying you to balls and routs and the like?” Sir Antony asked, peering intently at the Earl who was sipping from his glass and seemingly miles away with his thoughts. “From what I gleaned from her brother, your wife hasn’t stepped outside the confines of her little garden in Wiltshire in nigh on four years.” He coughed into his hand, embarrassed. “Jacob Allenby was very possessive. Kept her locked up. Feared attracting stray dogs. Not an unreasonable assumption. You must admit, she does have an unworldly quality about her, and that coupled with her undeniable beauty and gentleness, well that’s—”

“—an irresistible combination for stray dogs! I appreciate the warning.”

“Listen, Salt. I didn’t mean anything by it. To tell you a truth, I find her and her brother delightfully frank and unpretentious, which is a refreshing change when you and I breathe air thick with cynicism and flattery. Just think you should keep a wary eye on her, that’s all. Though how you are to do so when you have all those Parliamentary obligations…”

“Or appoint a guard dog to do it for me. Perhaps I’ll appoint you. In fact, consider it done.”

“Salt, be reasonable! You can’t make me.”

“Yes, I can. As you say, I have far too much to do, and you’ve nothing better to do while you’re in London. Bedford won’t send for you until I say so.” He put a hand on Sir Antony’s shoulder. “Besides, you’re the only man I can entrust to help Jane through the emotional wasteland that is Polite Society. Ah! Here’s Willis now. Have you seen Lady Salt? Lady St. John mentioned that my wife had wandered in here some time ago?”

“Lady Salt was here, my lord,” the under-butler said truthfully. “And it was some time ago…”

“And Master Ron and Miss Magna? Have you seen them?”

Merry’s burst of the giggles and Ron’s furious whispered hush saved the under-butler from any further distress. Salt dismissed him with a jerk of his head and turned to Sir Antony with a finger to his lips before saying casually,

“Not only has Lady Salt vanished but so too have those wretched brats, Ron and Merry. I ask you, Tony, were there two more annoying children in all of London?”

“Oh surely not only London?” suggested Sir Antony, playing right along and nodding when the Earl signaled at the table. “I’d go so far as to say that they would put the French to shame. I’ve seen French children. Mere harmless gnats by comparison to our Ron and Merry.”

There was another stifled giggle and another hush and scrape of a chair as Merry pushed her brother sideways for pulling a face at her. Jane tried to calm them both and they settled again. But Salt had heard them and seen the chair move near where Jane sat hunched so thought he knew the children’s exact location.

“Gnats, you say, Tony?” Salt answered, shifting to the left and ready to pounce. “If French children are gnats,” he announced loudly as he ducked, lowered a shoulder and thrust a hand under the table and made a grab for a child, “then Ron and Merry St. John must be rats for taking up residence under my table. And lousy rats at that for being so easily caught! Come on out and receive justifiable punishment, rats!”

This pronouncement was accompanied by loud squeals of delight and much thrashing about and movement of furniture as Ron and Merry watched with delight as Jane was caught about the ankle. They were well out of Salt’s reach but still they scampered away to the other side of the table with shouts that no rats by the names of Merry and Ron were to be had in this particular dining room.

Sir Antony joined in the fray, running around to the other side of the table to head off an escape, much to the fascination of the liveried servants and those curious guests who had spilled in from the Yellow Saloon at the sounds of chairs being knocked over and much squealing and shouting.

“Two rats here, my lord!” Sir Antony shouted out, thrusting aside two chairs and going down on his haunches to peer under the table. “Egad! Two very big rats in residence indeed, and only a cat the size of a Tower Zoo lion would be able to catch ’em. Come out, rats! Come out before the lion of Grosvenor Square makes a meal of you both!”

There were more squeals of delight when Sir Antony made a lunge for Merry, who shrieked so loud Ron clapped his hands over his ears. Shielding his ears made him slow to escape and he managed to get himself caught by his Uncle Tony, who grabbed him by the sleeve of his velvet frockcoat, only to have Merry pulling Ron by his right upturned cuff to try and break their uncle’s grip. But Sir Antony tugged harder and suddenly there was the ominous sound of ripping cloth as he tore a rent in the stitching at the shoulder of Ron’s frockcoat. With nothing to hold onto, Sir Antony shot backwards and skidded on his backside across the polished wood floor, Ron freed and Merry laughing to see her uncle in such an undignified pose with his stockinged legs in the air and sprawled out in the middle of the floor at the feet of the startled under-butler.

“Aha! Caught!” Salt announced with satisfaction and firmed his grip on his rat’s ankle, while looking over the top of the table between two elaborately decorated epergnes to see what all the fuss was about and where stood more than a dozen guests and as many servants gawking on the high jinks in his lordship’s Dining Room. “Tony? Tony, do you have the other rat?” he called out with a laugh as his rat kept wriggling and wasn’t about to give up the fight. “I hope so! Or my rat gets tickled to death until his fellow capitulates! Tony? Where are you? It may be a very long torture indeed,” he said with mock menace to his rat as he tightened his hold on a slim ankle, “if you, my dear rat, don’t let go of that chair leg and come quietly!”

He pulled his prisoner by the stockinged ankle swiftly toward him, caught up a bunch of her petticoats and hauled her out from under the table and up over his shoulder in a smooth and easy operation. Shoeless and kicking, her stockinged feet and slim ankles on display to the world, he demanded she stop struggling, and to keep her legs from kicking and her silk petticoats from billowing out, he placed an arm under her bottom and held her to his shoulder. This also stopped her from slipping completely over his shoulder and onto her head.

There wasn’t much fight in his rat now because she was laughing and protesting at one and the same time. She beat at his back with her fists and told him, while upside down and voice muffled into his velvet frockcoat, that he was a brute and a fiend and she wouldn’t give in, whatever tortures he inflicted. Rats stuck together! All this did was make him laugh harder and he so far forgot himself that he smacked his rat’s bottom in mock anger and said he would go on meting out due punishment until she gave up the whereabouts of her fellow rats.

“Salt, put me down!” Jane pleaded, though she was enjoying herself hugely. “My head is spinning and I feel faint!”

There was more squealing and laughter from the other side of the table when two heads appeared and they saw the Earl with his Countess up over his shoulder giving her a mock thrashing. They jumped up and ran round the table, ignoring their governess, their tutor and even their mother, who broke from the crowd of stunned onlookers to go after her children, demanding that they stop all this nonsense at once and act the well-bred gentleman and young lady they had been brought up to be. But Merry and Ron were too caught up in the moment and were intent on freeing their fellow rat from the Earl’s imprisonment. Sir Antony, too, who was now on his feet and recovered his dignity, brushed down his silk breeches and adjusted his lace cravat, then came across to join his niece and nephew, his sister ignored.

By the time they reached the Earl, Salt had slid Jane to her stockinged feet and let her go, once he was certain she had regained her balance. As for her dignity, seeing the mute faces of their audience, she wasn’t at all certain that would make a recover any time soon, and she turned away to pin up her mussed hair. Her fichu needed adjusting again, her petticoats were crumpled, she had no idea where her satin slippers were, and she couldn’t hold her head up because her face was flushed with embarrassment.

What Jane was doing under the table, Salt could hazard a guess looking at his mischievous niece and nephew. He knew the moment he had a good grip on her ankle and pulled her towards him out from under the table that it was his wife in his arms, but he was too caught up in the moment to give two testers who saw them.

“You didn’t catch us at all, Uncle Salt!” Merry announced proudly, coming to stand before the Earl and staring up into his flushed face. “Ron and I were too quick for you and Uncle Tony, weren’t we?”