Salt Bride

by Lucinda Brant

  “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.

  “There are factors—circumstances—Yes, my lord, we will go before parson tomorrow.”

  “You surprise me,” he said with an ugly pull to his mouth. “But what female could resist the lure of a coronet? Be good enough to hold out your left hand.”

  Listlessly, Jane did as she was told and was rewarded by having an old gold filigreed band set with sapphires and diamonds slipped over her ring finger. She did not look at it nor was she aware the band was too large for her slender finger until the Earl mentioned he would have the ring resized once they were married. She thought her mortification complete until she was ordered to sit on a ribbon-back chair placed in the center of the Turkey rug by the fire. It was only then that she realized she was alone in the drawing room with the Earl and his unobtrusive secretary.

  Tom and his mother had abandoned her.

  “You will sit, Miss Despard.”

  It was a command Jane ignored.

  “Very well. Let that be your last act of defiance,” Salt replied coldly, taking a turn about the room, circling her as a lion did its prey.

  Tomorrow, once you and I have been up before parson, spiritually and legally we become one. Make no mistake, Miss Despard, I am that one. As that one, you, as my wife, will act in accordance with what is in my best interests. Never forget: wherever you go, whomever you see, however you conduct yourself, it is me that society sees, not you.

  You will not do or say anything that I do not want you to do or say. You will not go anywhere that I do not want you to go. You will do precisely as you are bid. Do I make myself perfectly understandable?”

  Jane understood. He was intent on making her realize how thoroughly undeserving she was of the social position to which he was reluctantly elevating her. And yet, what she was thinking was how much he had altered since they had danced at the Salt Hunt Ball four years ago. It had been her eighteenth birthday that day and her first proper social engagement, her coming out as a young lady.

  During the hunting season and later the Salt Hunt Ball, indeed during the whole of that wonderful autumn month preceding her eighteenth birthday, he had been an entirely different being from the one standing before her now. She remembered that behind those thin uncompromising lips there were beautiful white teeth, and that he possessed an infectious, good-humored laugh that made his brown eyes crinkle at the corners. And then there was the summerhouse…

  Instantly, she mentally pulled herself up.

  It didn’t do to let her thoughts wander to the summerhouse by the lake and what had occurred there. The summerhouse made her acutely aware of the consequences of her impulsive actions and that only brought forth darker, more unspeakable memories, memories she tried desperately to suppress. Nurse had told her not to dwell, she must go forward, not look back. That was the last piece of advice Nurse had given her before her death. She missed her nurse terribly. She wished with all her heart she was with her today. She needed her strength and her no-nonsense approach to life. Go forward, don’t look back, child! Looking forward meant accepting the Earl of Salt Hendon as he was now, not as he had been during that fateful autumn.

  “I will take your silence as assent and not stubborn disobedience,” he stated, circling her once more. “You are not unintelligent and thus you will see that if you play your part in public, if you adhere to the strict upbringing you had as the daughter of a county squire, society will, given time, come to accept you not only as my wife but as the new Countess of Salt Hendon. As Lady Salt, you will soon be invited everywhere. As for Polite Society’s private opinion of you, that is of supreme indifference to me.” He signaled impatiently for his secretary to step forward. “But how you conduct yourself as my wife is very important to me and to my family. To this end, I have had a document drawn up which sets out the rules that will govern how you will live as Lady Salt. Ellis will read it aloud and you, Miss Despard, will sign it as evidence of your understanding of how your life will be conducted from this day forward.”

  “This document, my lord,” asked Jane with studious enquiry, but unable to hide a sardonic dimple in her left cheek, “does it state terms by which you will conduct yourself as my husband?”

  The choking sound came from Mr. Arthur Ellis.

  Salt’s lip curled. “Don’t take me for a fool, Miss Despard. You will listen to Ellis and when he’s done put your signature—”

  “Oh, this is all very unnecessary!” Jane complained with an impatient sigh, annoyed beyond endurance by such insufferable arrogance. She sat down upon the chair. “You said yourself, my lord, that once we are married we become one and that you are that one. Then what is the purpose of my signature to a document that you could very well sign in my stead? You have made it perfectly clear that I cannot do or say anything without your permission. Is there not some word
ing in the marriage vows about obeying? That should suffice, surely? Besides, if you’ve no thought for me, then spare one for your secretary, who, anyone with eyes can see, is as uncomfortable with this wretched business as I am!”

  For the second time that morning, Salt goggled at her. Not only that but he could not speak.

  Mr. Ellis, despite Jane’s accurate observation and wishes, thought it best to begin reading aloud before his lordship burst a blood vessel. He had seen his employer angry, he had seen him furious, but never had he seen him so angry that he was lost for words. In the three years he had been employed in the Earl’s household no one, not servant, retainer, friend or family member, had ever spoken so frankly to his lordship.

  Looking at Jane over the parchment that shook in his trembling hands, it was as if it was only yesterday that he had first gazed upon his friend’s beautiful stepsister and fallen under the spell of her loveliness on the spot. And so it was with the hint of a smile that Arthur began to read, though the smile soon disappeared when his concentration returned to the written word. He had not given much thought to the Earl’s strictures at the time of their dictation, except that they seemed just and necessary for the self-preservation of a great and wealthy nobleman about to marry a young woman who had lived unmarried with an old Bristol Blue Glass manufacturer. Yet, taking another glance over the sheaf of papers at the girl who sat ram-rod straight, hands clasped lightly in her lap, he felt acute discomfort to be reading out what was nothing less than a sentence of life imprisonment; albeit in a prison that was a magnificent sprawling Jacobean mansion in the heart of Wiltshire, but a prison nonetheless.

  “…As to the dowry Miss Jane Katherine Despard brings to the marriage, a dowry bequeathed to her by Jacob Allenby of Allenby Park, Wiltshire and Bristol, Lord Salt refuses to accept a guinea of the ten thousand pounds,” Arthur Ellis continued after a short pause to clear his throat of nervousness. “Further, Lord Salt instructs Miss Despard to bring to the marriage only those possessions that were hers at the time she was denied the protection of the house of her father, Sir Felix Despard, Squire of Despard Park, Wiltshire. Thus, everything that was gifted to her by Jacob Allenby: clothes, jewelry, money, writing instruments, china, linen, furniture, servants, horses, equipage, in fact anything at all that was purchased with Jacob Allenby’s coin, will not form any part of her dower. The said articles are to be discarded and disposed of before marriage.

  “Upon marriage, Lord Salt forbids Lady Salt to live in London, to visit Bath or its environs or to visit Bristol and its environs. Lord Salt directs Lady Salt to live year-round at his seat in Wiltshire: Salt Hall. Lady Salt will be confined to Salt Hall and may take exercise only in the immediate parkland surrounding the Hall’s main buildings. Lady Salt is not to venture beyond the lake or the gardens without the express written permission of her husband. Lady Salt is not to take it upon herself to visit any of Lord Salt’s tenants, the vicar and his good wife, or visit the local village of Salt Hendon.

  “Lady Salt has her husband’s permission to do with her apartments at the Hall as she so pleases. Her apartments will consist of bedchamber and six adjoining rooms plus a room and closet for her personal maid, but the remainder of the one hundred and sixty-seven rooms are to be left as she finds them; so too the grounds; so too the summerhouse by the lake, a place within the parkland expressly forbidden her ladyship. Once a year, when his lordship opens his house for the Salt Hunt, Lady Salt will confine herself to her apartments and the small rose garden and courtyard thereto attached. From time to time, Lady Salt may have visitors to Salt Hall, but Lord Salt must approve them in writing before their intended stay. None by the name of Allenby may trespass on Lord Salt’s lands. Furthermore and finally—”

  “No!” Jane interrupted, up off the chair. “I will endure much, my lord, but that I will not tolerate! You may strip me of every material possession given to me by Mr. Allenby, though that is no great loss, but you cannot strip me of my memories. You can lock me away in your hideous house and dictate my movements, but as I am quite used to my own company, that will be no great deprivation. But you will not take from me the only family I have.” She sniffed back tears; it was a prosaic action, yet it caused the secretary to drop his gaze from her lovely face. “Tom is my brother,” she continued in a calmer voice, turning her head to look at the Earl who had not moved from his position by the window. “You may argue that he is my brother in law only, but he is the only brother, the only close relative, who has cared anything for me since the death of my mother when I was not quite a year old. And he was the only relative to continue to own me after I left my father’s house. I love him dearly. I will not allow you to banish him. He may visit me whenever he chooses or-or-or—”

  “—or what, Miss Despard?” Salt drawled to the rain-spattered window. “You will stamp your pretty foot and refuse to go through with the wedding? Please, say the word…”

  Jane stared at the broad back for a good ten seconds and then sat down again, in defeat. She shut her eyes hard to stop the tears and dropped her head, hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  The secretary felt his stomach turn over.

  Finally, the Earl turned his wide back on the clearing sky and propped himself on the sill.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Despard,” he said quietly. “At the time the document was drawn up I was unaware that Mr. Thomas Wilson had been required to take the name of Allenby under the terms of his uncle’s will. Ellis will correct the document to read ‘no Allenby but Mr. Thomas Wilson Allenby, her ladyship’s brother etc and so forth’.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Jane replied, unconsciously twisting the unfamiliar oversized betrothal ring and audibly sighing with relief.

  The Earl inclined his powdered head and turned again to the window, but not before his secretary saw the crooked smile that twisted his mouth. “Ellis? Have you lost the facility of speech? Pray continue. You’re forgetting I have a prior engagement that requires I be elsewhere within the half hour.”

  “Yes, my lord, of course,” the secretary mumbled and coughed, for he had been glancing at the next and final paragraph to be read aloud and wished himself anywhere but in this drawing room standing before this lovely young woman. Jane’s impassioned interruption had broken his flow of words and as such would only highlight this next stipulation all the more. “Furthermore, when his lordship is in residence at Salt Hall, Lady Salt will not seek to question, interfere or acknowledge her husband’s domestic arrangements—”

  “You mean to bring your lovers to Salt Hall.”

  The secretary paused, but as the sentence was a statement and not a question he continued, though he couldn’t stop the flush to his freckled cheeks.

  “—This in no way negates Lady Salt from her responsibilities as a dutiful and obedient wife. Should his lordship desire to avail himself of his—of his conjugal rights, his wife will oblige with mute servility. This document dated this day and so forth etc, etc.”

  Mr. Ellis noisily reshuffled the pages to hide his embarrassment, not a glance at either party, and quickly crossed to the small walnut escritoire in the far corner of the room where it had been placed by the undraped window to catch the muted rays of sunlight of a cold January day. He picked up the inkpot but had not flicked open the silver lid when he was directly addressed by Jane. Such was his surprise that he jumped and would have spilled ink down the front of his fine linen waistcoat with its polished horn buttons but for the fact his thumb remained poised over the lip of the closed lid.

  “Mr. Ellis?” Jane enquired with a frown of puzzlement as she slowly rose to her feet but did not move away from the chair. “This document makes no mention of any children of the marriage.”

  “Children?” the secretary repeated thinly, voice breaking on the word, a swift telling glance at his employer who remained inert. Slowly, he replaced the inkpot on the desk and picked up the quill. “My lady, I-I—Ma’am—um—Miss Despard, there is—there is no-no such paragraph dealing with such
an-an eventuality. No provision has been made for children of the marriage.”

  Jane’s frown deepened, more so because of the note of nervous apology in the young man’s voice. “Mr. Ellis, that document is most frank and therefore so must I be when I tell you that it stands to reason that if a husband exercises his conjugal—”

  “Ellis, be so good as to wait a moment in the passage,” Salt ordered, a rough jerk of his head at the door. He watched his secretary hastily rearrange the sheets of parchment and quill and ink before scurrying from the room with a short bow. “Poor Arthur. You have disconcerted him, Miss Despard.”

  Jane was frowning at the closed door but she turned at this and regarded the Earl openly. “Yes, I must have. I am sorry for he is a nice young man. But I don’t see why he should be so coy when one must assume that if a husband and wife share a bed—”

  “Miss Despard, I am unable to father a child.”

  This statement was greeted with such an expression of horrified disbelief that the Earl let out a deep laugh of genuine good humor, finally allowing Jane to see his lovely white smile.

  “My dear Miss Despard! Priceless! The look on your lovely face is—priceless. Dear me! I must own I’m glad you’re not a virgin. Only a woman familiar with the carnal delights of the bedchamber could so misinterpret such a statement. Accept my apologies for disconcerting you.” He made her a bow, smile vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “I am still very much a man, Miss Despard. What I should have said, to make myself perfectly plain, is while I am more than capable of the act, the physicians tell me I am unable to beget a woman with child.”