Salt Bride (26 page)

Her richly embroidered velvet petticoats of silver thread fell in a sweep to the floor and she had kicked off her matching mules, bare stockinged toes pointed to the flames. Her careful coiffure rested against a closed fist, a fat auburn ringlet falling across her low-cut décolletage, while she languidly fluttered a filigreed ivory fan and prattled on about the latest on-dits swirling about drawing rooms concerning the Princess Augusta’s affair with Lord Bute.

This was how Sir Antony discovered the occupants of the bookroom when he put a diamond shoe buckle across the warm threshold. That his sister was holding court did not surprise him; that his cousin continued to indulge her did. He raised an eyebrow at the low cut to her bodice that revealed the dark pink tinge of her nipples, and the manner in which she reclined on the chaise was a clear invitation to seduce. That his friend continued to write without once looking up, and was providing monosyllabic replies to her questions was evidence enough of his level of interest. It never ceased to amaze Sir Antony that for an intelligent woman his sister was a complete dunce when it came to the feelings of their cousin the Earl.

“Good God! It’s a Tuesday and you’re wearing your eyeglasses,” Sir Antony exclaimed in awe, making his presence known with an outburst that was far from the measured question he had had in mind to ask.

“Oh! So you are,” Diana commented with surprise, a glance at her brother who had sat uninvited opposite her.

Salt peered over his gold rims then returned to reading the final paragraph before putting his signature to the document. He then stood to allow his secretary to take his place to set the ink with a wash of sand, and came around to sit on a corner of his desk, eyeglasses still perched on the end of his long boney nose. “It appears that I was being stubbornly unreasonable about wearing my eyeglasses in public—”

“You were,” agreed Sir Antony.

“Thank you, Tony —and that, so I am informed, poor eyesight is nothing of which to be ashamed—”

“It isn’t. Sensible advice.”

The Earl’s lips twitched. “—when I am perfect in every other way.”

Sir Antony grinned. “Ah! Well, I’ll leave that subjective estimation to your fair and frank admirer.”

Salt gave a huff of embarrassed laughter. “Yes, she is
bruisingly
frank.”

Diana St. John glanced from one male face to the other with no idea they were referring to the Countess. She sat up with a frisson of expectation, completely misreading the mood. “How unfair of you not to tell me Salt’s latest interest!” she pouted at her brother then looked at the Earl. “So who is it? Jenny? Frances? Margaret?”

Salt removed his eyeglasses and pocketed them, a glance over his shoulder at Ellis. “Leave the rest. I believe you are wanted elsewhere. We can deal with the Rockingham papers later this afternoon.”

Sir Antony took the opportunity to glare at his sister and shake his powdered head, but Diana St. John was oblivious to the warning and leapt right in. “Oh, Salt, please don’t tell me you’ve made that Morton creature your latest interest! I couldn’t bear it. She’ll positively gloat when I next see her in the Mall.”

“I wasn’t about to tell you anything of the sort, my dear,” the Earl said flatly, all humor gone. He addressed Sir Antony. “I presumed you, also, are wanted elsewhere?”

“Oh! So you hadn’t forgotten your engagement this afternoon?”

“Not at all. Were you sent to fetch me?”

“No.”

“You perhaps presumed I had forgotten? For shame, Tony!”

Sir Antony smiled. Inwardly he was jumping for joy. It was something the Countess had let slip on one of their many excursions beyond the Grosvenor Square mansion that alerted him to the favourable turn of events within the Earl’s household. He had become very fond of Jane and he genuinely enjoyed her company for its own sake. That she loved the Earl, he was in no doubts. Being a romantically minded young man he hoped that one day her feelings for his cousin would be reciprocated.

A sennight ago she had inadvertently revealed that she and the Earl had begun spending their evenings after dinner in the bookroom, where her husband was teaching her to play at chess. A small domestic detail in itself, but knowing the Earl as he did, Sir Antony saw this gesture as a huge hurdle for the matrimonial harmony within the Salt Hendon household. Which would mean he was a step closer to fulfilling his own matrimonial plans, his motives being not entirely altruistic. And just then he heard the name of the very object of his desire and dreams and shook his mind free of romantic ruminations to hear his sister say in all seriousness as she slipped on her mules,

“But surely you cannot have any objections to George Rutherford as a suitable match for your sister? He is worth fifteen thousand a year, not a penny less, and has an estate in Ireland that’s the size of Surrey! Caroline could do worse.”

“Much worse. But she can do better.”

“Got anyone in mind?” Sir Antony asked, and inwardly cursed himself for he heard the edge to his own voice.

Salt regarded him steadily. “No. But when I do, you will be the first to know, Tony.

Diana shut her fan with a snap. “At almost eighteen, Caroline is practically on the shelf—”

“—where she will remain until her twenty-first birthday and not a day before.”

Sir Antony made his cousin a small bow of understanding. “Three years is not such a stretch when she has the rest of her life to be married.” And abruptly changed the subject. “We had best not keep her ladyship waiting. I believe the entertainments are due to begin on the hour in the nursery.”

Diana St. John could barely say the word but curiosity got the better of her. “N-Nursery? What entertainments?”

“Surely Ron and Merry told you all about it, Di?”

She shrugged a bare shoulder at her brother. “Possibly. They are always prattling on about inconsequentialities that it gives one the headache. None of it bears remembering.”

Salt paused, a liveried footman holding wide the door, and regarded her steadily. “It is the anniversary of their father’s birth. Had he lived, St. John would have turned four and thirty today.”

Such was the cacophony of noise coming from behind the double doors that led into the rooms designated as the nursery, that it brought Salt up short, Sir Antony and Diana St. John at his wide back. But it was not the noise it was this section of the house that made him hesitate. He had not set foot in the third floor since inspecting the house just before purchase some four years ago. He could not even remember the configuration of the rooms, how many there were or how they had been furnished, if indeed they contained any furniture at all. He seemed to recall the selling agent telling him that with a good coat of fresh paint, pretty wall paper with matching curtains, and a good fire in the grates, the rooms would do very well indeed for a brood of growing noble children.

He had not given the rooms another thought, until now. He had even dismissed as farcical Diana’s refusal to mention the rooms by their designation as a theatrical means of protecting any feelings of inadequacy he had at being unable to father a child. Yet, now faced with crossing the threshold he had a twinge that Diana’s affected display of refusal was not so melodramatic after all for it seemed laughable to be holding a birthday memoriam for a dead father in a nursery that would remain for him as silent as the grave.

Still, he could not disappoint Ron and Merry.

He had two fingers to the door handle when Diana pushed past him in a crush of petticoats to fling wide the doors. She misinterpreted his hesitation for embarrassment at being forced to enter a wasted nursery. Her own smoldering anger that the Countess had somehow deliberately set out to taunt her by using the very rooms she so despised was enough to make her drop her guard and speak without thought to her words or her audience.

The door banging hard against the wallpapered wall did not stop the chatter and movement. Those that heard Lady St. John’s outburst above the din dropped their jaws and a few little faces crumpled with fright at the sight of the angry lady. In one sweep Diana took in the assembled company, adults taking tea and seedy cake while children played skittles or statues under the guidance of their nannies and tutors at one end of the long room. All were happy and content and enjoying themselves. The warmth and color, the freshly painted walls and upholstered furniture, the Turkey rugs covering the floorboards where small children took their first steps and chubby babies crawled, all made her seethe with resentment. Then she recognized the young woman standing beside Jane and her hazel eyes widened with new knowledge then narrowed to slits of mischief.

She saw the Countess before Jane saw her.

“Well! How like you to unsettle his lordship’s household with a pathetic display of domestic felicity!” and with a hand to her throat and a look of shocked disbelief that would have done any actress proud, she turned to the Earl with a swish of her petticoats to say in a loud whisper, “There’s Lady Elisabeth Bute
that was
. The silly creature has invited the
Bute
sisters!”

Sir Antony had seen the married daughters of the Earl’s political rival almost upon entering the room and though it raised his eyebrows in surprise he was not so dismissive or so accusatory. How was Jane to know the connection? Both young ladies were married women and thus used their husband’s moniker. Their presence in the house of their father’s political nemesis was indication enough that they looked upon Jane with great favor and were prepared to weather the displeasure of their statesmen father by visiting her home, than it did about the Countess of Salt Hendon’s lack of political acumen. Sir Antony was surprised his sister could be so blind to the gesture. Yet, he thought with a depressed sigh of resignation, where Salt was concerned it was his sister who was the simpleton.

Jane did not catch the content of Diana St. John’s outburst, only her derisory tone, because she had been in conversation with Lady Elisabeth Bute Sedley, whose much-admired newborn son she was cradling in her arms, and because Lady Elisabeth’s two-year-old daughter was intent on seeking her mother’s undivided attention with as much chattering as possible, a grubby fist clutched tight to Jane’s petticoats, while a nurse tried to untangle the chubby fingers free from the delicate silk. So when Jane swiveled on a silk-slippered foot, baby cradled in her arms, it was not in answer to Diana St. John’s spiteful remark but in expectation of seeing her husband.

Her blue eyes lit up and her smile widened, but fell away when Salt merely blinked at her as if she was a stranger. When she saw him sway, face blanched as white as the elaborately tied cravat about his throat, she carefully placed the sleeping infant into the waiting arms of its wet-nurse, scooped up the two-year-old who was taken away by her nurse, and scurried across the crowded room to his side.

Sir Antony had Salt by the elbow. “It’s all right, dear fellow. I have you.”

“It’s… I’ll be fine directly,” the Earl muttered, mortified to be so weak-minded as to be affected by such a trifle as the sight of Jane with a baby in her arms and another tugging at her skirts.

He swallowed and took a deep breath and for want of something to mask his momentary feebleness he glanced about the room, seeing people without seeing faces. But his heart would not quiet and continued to pound hard against his chest, and no wonder. He had suffered a shock. The recurring dream he had been experiencing every night for a fortnight had come to life before his very eyes. Not entirely accurate, for in his dream (or was it a nightmare?) Jane was heavily pregnant. But the infant in her arms and the child clinging to her skirts were just as he had conjured them up in his disturbed sleep. So vivid and repetitive was this dream that one night he had woken in a lather of perspiration and immediately escaped to his own rooms to douse his body with cold water.

The very next night he had stayed away from Jane’s rooms, and the night after that a late parliamentary sitting had given him a reason to dine with Sir Antony and spend the night at his Arlington Street townhouse. Alone in a cold bed, staring up through the darkness at the plastered ceiling, he had ruminated over the reasons for the recurring dream and come to the realization that it was guilt that haunted him; guilt at marrying Jane when he knew very well he could not give her children. He had denied her motherhood to serve his own selfish need. Guilt was eating away at him. He who had spent his life commanding and receiving at will felt utterly helpless for the first time in his life, and he had no idea what he could do about it and that made him utterly miserable.

“You are just in time for the puppet show, my lord,” Jane said brightly, as if nothing was amiss but a worried glance exchanged with Sir Antony, who had relinquished the Earl’s elbow to allow Jane to take his arm. “Mr. Wraxton was all for commencing the afternoon’s entertainments but Ron and Merry would not listen to his entreaties. They said we must wait for you, and so we have.”

The crowd parted to allow the Earl and Countess to pass to the far end of the room, and then closed ranks, swallowing them up in a sea of silk before Diana St. John could follow. That she was shown the backs of these perfumed and patched parents of precious brats did not greatly bother her, only that they had dared to side with the Countess against her. As it so happened, being left stranded at the back of the room gave her the perfect opportunity to slip away unseen to seek out the Countess’s maid.