Salt Bride (9 page)

“If a fire was kept in here his lordship would have twice the number of petitioners waiting to see him.”

“Yes, but as Lord Salt has only so many hours in the day, I doubt denying his petitioners some warmth is enough of a disincentive to keep people away, do you?” Jane replied mildly. “Providing a little comfort goes a long way in making people more agreeable, don’t you think?”

The gentleman was momentarily taken aback by such a forthright speech from a wisp of a female, but his wife embraced Jane’s maxim wholeheartedly.

“How right you are, my dear!” she agreed with a smile of approval. “This is our third and last Tuesday waiting to see his lordship and every one has been as cold as the last.” She glanced around the imposing room, with its high ornate ceiling, wood paneling and marble floor, at the long, tired faces and added loudly, “I know his lordship can’t make allowances for the frosts, and he labors long and hard on behalf of those who owe him their allegiance, but it wouldn’t hurt to put a fire in the grate, and perhaps offer one or two more seats, or a bench.”

“Hear! Hear, Madam!” agreed an elderly man in an old-fashioned full bottom wig.

Several other gentlemen nodded their powdered heads and there was a general low rumble of assent. Even the attending liveried footmen, who were chilled to the bone, cast the woman a look of approval.

“Now, good wife, there ain’t reason for us to complain about his lordship,” the old gentleman reproved. “Not after all he’s done for our boy.”

The woman was immediately repentant and said confidentially to Jane as if she was a friend of long-standing, “We have a great deal to be thankful for in his lordship’s good offices. What with everything that’s usually heaped on his lordship’s plate, it was such a good kind act for Lord Salt to take Billy under his wing.”

“Our son Billy is a very bright lad and was up at Oxford with his lordship’s secretary Mr. Ellis,” the husband added proudly. “He was determined to come to London to seek his fortune, little realizing the great hardship involved in securing gainful employment without the necessary good word of people of influence. We are well-connected people in our little corner of Wiltshire, make no mistake about that, miss, but the metropolis is cut from an altogether different cloth.”

“And with five more children to launch into the world, it’s not as if we could help Billy as much as we would’ve liked to,” apologized the wife, an understanding smile up at her husband, who leaned in towards them with the aid of his Malacca cane to take the weight off his gouty toe, and to affectionately squeeze his wife’s shoulder.

“But his lordship found a place for our Billy in the Foreign Department under the guidance of Sir Antony Templestowe,” continued the husband, adding proudly for Jane’s benefit, “Sir Antony is a most distinguished diplomatist, and Billy has every expectation of accompanying Sir Antony when next he embarks for foreign climes.”

“Your son could do no better than have Lord Salt as his mentor,” commented Jane, feeling that the couple was seeking her endorsement of their son’s success. “And under Sir Antony’s wing, I know Lord Salt’s faith in him will be justly proved.”

“Thank you, my dear,” said the wife, taking her warm hand from her muff and placing it on Jane’s cold fingers. “Goodness Gracious! Your hands are as cold as the blocks of ice floating in the Thames! Should you like to borrow my muff for a few moments, child?”

Jane shook her head and thanked the woman, more than ever self-conscious in her worn cloak, a gift from her father at Christmastime when she was seventeen that she hadn’t the heart to give up, not even when Mr. Allenby had presented her with a lovely new fur-lined velvet cloak with shiny silver buttons. She hid her cold hands in her lap under the cloak, the bitter cold from the marble floor seeping into her stockinged toes and up her thin ankles, and shivered, not from the cold but with apprehension of what was to come; the first time she had allowed herself to think about the consequences of going through with marriage to Lord Salt. The fact Tom was not with her increased her dread. He had gone to fetch his lawyer as witness, a stipulation of Jacob Allenby’s will, and promised to be at Grosvenor Square not an hour after she was set down at the Earl’s residence. The hour was almost up.

“What a pity his lordship can’t find himself a wife as easily as he found our Billy employment,” the husband announced good-naturedly, which brought Jane out of her abstraction to ask curiously,

“Why do you say so, sir?”

“What, miss? A nobleman with his wealth and looks and an ancient coronet to pass on to his descendants, why wouldn’t Lord Salt want to marry? Stands to reason he’s in need of a Countess by his side, wouldn’t you say so, wife?”

“Indeed he does, sir!” agreed the wife a look about the room to ensure their conversation was being listened to by the rest of the frozen occupants. “Why, his lordship even favors children… Well, indeed he must, for the last two Tuesdays we’ve been here, he’s always found an hour or two amongst his appointments to spend with Lady St. John’s son and daughter.”

“The young lad’s his heir, wife,” confided the husband with a knowing point to his nose. “And between you and me and those of the local gentry in our little corner of the world who regularly join the Salt Hunt, there is every reason to believe he has his eye on making the Lady St. John his Countess. And a more suited couple I ask you to name!”

At least a dozen powdered heads around the anteroom nodded in approval of this statement and there was a general rumble of consensus that the stately creature who had swept passed them with her retinue without a look or a glance had the noble bearing and condescending demeanor required in a Countess of Salt Hendon. A small number of petitioners were in silent dissent, glaring at the firmly shut double doors to the bookroom, all because they were being kept from their allotted appointment by the lady in question.

One gentleman in an absurdly tall toupee, stockinged legs that showcased padded calves and an armful of rolled parchments, and who had arrived in the ante-room only minutes before, dared to voice this silent resentment, saying in a whining voice,

“I say! But if her ladyship becomes Countess none of us will ever see the inside of that bookroom. I for one won’t. She don’t like poetry. She don’t like poetry at all.”

Jane couldn’t help a smile at this pronouncement, which was light relief amongst the general run of conversation about Lord Salt’s need for a wife that had brought the heat into her pallid cheeks. The wife saw this and before her husband could launch into an attack against the young man in the absurdly tall toupee, said in a loud whisper,

“Husband, hush now about his lordship. We have put this young woman to the blush with all our talk about wives and children for Lord Salt and we’ve no right, not if she has come to join his lordship’s household. Oh, and look, the footmen are opening the doors!” She turned to Jane with a bright smile. “Mr. Ellis will soon be out with the list, so you won’t have to suffer the cold for much longer.”

“My good woman, pray don’t raise the beauty’s expectations,” pronounced the gentleman in the absurdly tall toupee, which Jane noticed wore clothes cut from cloth befitting a gentleman. “Until Lady St. John makes her grand exit, there is little hope of a winter thaw anytime before spring.” He snorted so loud at his own wit that a fine dusting of powder from his wig settled on his upper lip, causing him to sneeze and his armful of parchments tubes to fly up in the air before descending to scatter and roll away under chairs and across the marble floor. In panic did the gentleman-poet get down on all fours to scurry across cold marble with little thought to his rich attire, to retrieve his precious collection of poems, much to the delight and amusement of the petitioners.

Jane felt sorry for the young man and immediately went to retrieve one of his cylinders that had come to rest in her corner of the anteroom behind the gentleman with the Malacca cane. She had to stoop to pick it up, had it in her hand and was about to rise when a female voice, close, clear and authoritative spoke above a general commotion of leave taking. Accompanying this voice was a heady feminine scent that, as if by sorcery, made Jane instantly nauseous and she sank down on the cold marble. It was not that the perfume itself was offensive. It was sweet smelling with hints of lavender and rose, and had it been used in moderation no one could have called it offensive. But to Jane, it conjured up echoes of the past and she was forced to put a hand over her small nose and breathe deeply through her mouth, telling herself that the wave of nausea would pass, that there was no reason to panic.

She remained sitting on the floor, waiting for the sickness to subside, the poet’s rolled parchment in her lap, feeling foolish that a particular perfume had the power to create queasiness within her. It did not take above a minute to place where she had smelled such a distinctive perfume before and the feminine voice that owned it. Recognition rode the waves of nausea that washed over her. She had not smelled it before or since the night her baby had willfully been taken from her before its time. Her father had condemned her as the most sordid and immoral creature alive and wanted nothing more to do with her for having lost her virginity so cheaply, but giving birth to the rotten bastardized fruit of her immorality, as her father had brutally branded her unborn baby, was never a choice.

Jane peered through a break in the row of ribbon-back chairs that faced into the anteroom, to put face to the owner of the offending perfume. The lady was standing so close that had Jane stretched out an arm between two chairs she could have laid a fingertip on the lady’s wide-hooped petticoats of rich velvet. Two liveried footmen and a black pageboy in a bright green silk turban stood to one side of this magnificently dressed creature, who had to be none other than the Earl’s majestic cousin, the Lady St. John.

Her ladyship fluttered a fan of delicate silk against her white bosom, upswept powdered hair draped with pearls, ribbons and feathers, and her beautiful face carefully made up with cosmetics, a mouche at the corner of hazel eyes, completing her toilette. She neither looked left or right at the crowd of petitioners but straight down at the gentleman-poet groveling at the toes of her silk covered mules.

Directly behind the dazzling Lady St. John was a tired-looking woman whose plain but well-made attire and small lace cap proclaimed the lady’s maid. And behind her, two children in rich silk costume, the girl dressed in a replica of her mother’s attire, the boy younger and sickly but quite the little gentleman in his matching silk breeches and waistcoat. Jane recognized them as the niece and nephew of the soft-spoken stranger she and Tom had met in front of the lion enclosure. Neither resembled the happy, laughing children at the Tower Zoo.

“My dear Mr. Wraxton! Why ever are you scuttling about on Lord Salt’s floor?” Lady St. John wondered with a mischievous smile. She waved her bejeweled hand out in front of her. “No! Do not get up on my account. You look very well indeed down there. In fact, I do believe I have never seen a gentleman more fitted to playing the part of devoted beagle hound. But with that interesting hairstyle you could be mistaken for a flamingo! Or perhaps it is as a pig snuffling for truffles that you snort about the floor thus?” She turned her beautifully coiffured head left and right, as if it was a matter of course that the assembled company would find her wit diverting. “Yes, I do believe it is truffles you are after. Truffles of approval from Lord Salt for your little creative endeavors.” When the gentleman-poet in the absurd toupee managed to scamper to his feet, clasping to his chest the salvaged bundle of rolled parchments with one hand, while the other kept his tall toupee from slipping into his eyes, she poked tentatively at the parchments with a long fingernail. “Why! Are these
more
poems for Lord Salt’s amusement?”

“A final selection of poems, dear Lady St. John,” Hilary Wraxton announced proudly.

“If they’re as absurd as the last lot, then they are bound to provide his lordship with an amusing diversion, however fleeting.”

Hilary Wraxton beamed, Lady St. John’s sarcasm completely passing him by, despite several bewigged heads in the anteroom openly sniggering at his expense. “Thank you, my lady. I am in expectation of Lord Salt’s patronage with a view to their publication.”

Lady St. John lifted her arched brows and turned down her painted mouth in complete surprise. “So you think, Mr. Wraxton? Far be it for me to disillusion you, but if they are as ludicrously inane as your previous efforts then you have wasted Lord Salt’s time. I know just what view his lordship has in mind for them… up in flames in his fireplace.” And with this cruel pronouncement and the appreciative laughs of several bored gentlemen sitting about the ante-room, Lady St. John swept out of the Grosvenor Square mansion with her retinue, leaving Mr. Hilary Wraxton to nurse his wounded pride and rolled parchments to his bosom as if they were under imminent threat of being turned to cinders.

“I do believe Lady St. John was in jest, sir,” Jane told him kindly, handing the gentleman-poet the parchment she had retrieved. “But you need not take my word for it. Ask Mr. Ellis, who surely will confirm that your poems in Lord Salt’s possession are unharmed.”

“Miss Despard!” exclaimed the secretary, thick leather bound appointment book hugged to his chest as he scurried down the long anteroom to Jane’s side. He bowed to her. “Have you been kept waiting long? I had supposed Mr. Jenkins would’ve informed me of your arrival. I apologize for the delay. His lordship had some uninvited visitors…”

“Lady St. John and her two children?” asked Jane with an understanding smile at his look of exasperation.

“Indeed,” replied the secretary, unable to hide his displeasure. He quickly regained his smile and ushered Jane forward, “Please, come into the bookroom where there is a fire.”

“I say, Ellis! Wait up!” Hilary Wraxton interrupted anxiously, wedging himself between Jane and the secretary. “Are my parchments safe, man? Has Lord Salt seen ’em yet? What does he think of ’em? He hasn’t turned ’em to ash, has he?”