“How is that possible?”
Salt glanced up from drawing on his fine kid gloves and saw it was an earnest enquiry and not one designed to unsettle him. He had to grudgingly admit he preferred her direct approach to the timid dissimulation used by most females.
“Years ago I fell off a horse in full flight over a fence. I landed very hard and awkwardly on a particularly cherished part of my anatomy. It was excruciating. My—er—ballocks swelled to the size of apples, turned black and went hard. To say I was extremely worried for my manhood would be a gross understatement. I was advised by the learned physicians who attended on me that although the swelling and bruising would subside I had in all likelihood suffered some internal injury that would leave me barren. Since my recovery, I have had the hollow satisfaction of rutting with impunity. Not one of a string of mistresses has presented me with a bastard which would seem to confirm the physicians’ learned opinion.”
“Years ago? How many years ago?”
“Ten.”
“Ten years ago?” Jane blanched. She reached out for the ladder back of the chair to steady herself. If he believed himself infertile then… He did not know he had impregnated her that night in the summerhouse… Her note had never reached him… He had not chosen to ignore her… He remained ignorant after all these years… But surely… So many questions and possibilities swirled about her mind that she felt herself sway and thought it prudent to sink back onto the chair. She looked up at him. “My lord, what you say is not possible.”
Embarrassed by her acute disappointment to this news and annoyed that he should feel a stab of inadequacy at not being able to provide this heartless jezebel with a brood of brats, he snapped back impatiently, “Miss Despard, it is not only very possible, it is fact. Now you will excuse me. My carriage will collect you tomorrow at eleven and convey you to my house in Grosvenor Square where a private ceremony will be conducted without pomp and circumstance. And, God willing,” he muttered to himself as he crossed the Turkey rug, “with very few persons in attendance to witness my humiliation.”
A blank-faced footman opened the door for the Earl.
The sheaf of parchment on the little escritoire awaiting Jane’s signature fluttered but was ignored.
Jane forced herself up off the chair and scurried after him, determined to say something but her thoughts were such a jumble of mixed emotions that she had no idea where to begin or what to tell him. She certainly couldn’t bring herself to inform him there and then that the physicians who had advised him he was barren had got it wrong. He would not believe her without proof. Jacob Allenby’s constant sermons about the wanton wicked ways of the nobility had her convinced that the Earl was not the sort of nobleman to concern himself with the fruits of his couplings and she had been given no reason to disbelieve him. But here was the Earl telling her that he was infertile and had believed himself to be so for the past ten years! Why then had Jacob Allenby lied to her? How then was she to disabuse the Earl of his conviction? And when?
Jane did not know what to say, or how to tell the Earl that he was as fertile as the next man, without breaking down into a flood of tears for the loss she had suffered. So she kept her mouth shut. When the right time presented itself she would confess all to him, but that time was not now.
At the door, the Earl hesitated, turned on a low heel, and almost collided with Jane who was close at his back. She managed to pull herself up only inches from falling into his arms, which he had instinctively thrust out to stop her falling forward. They were so close that her hooped petticoats crumpled against his long muscular legs and she caught a hint of his masculine cologne. It was such an evocative scent that she was gripped with a sudden frisson of desire and was so shocked by it that she quickly stepped away and hung her head.
Salt gently tilted up her chin with one gloved finger, forcing her to look him in the eyes. Wordlessly, he searched her beautiful face, a knot between his brows. Her liquid blue eyes stared back at him with such frankness that he could almost deceive himself she was without guile. The pouty curve to her lovely lips was so rosebud red and made for kissing that he wanted to crush her mouth under his until they were bruised and numb.
Bruised and numb…
That’s how he felt, had been feeling for so many years now that he was drained of hope. He wanted to blame her and the false promises of love and devotion he had tasted in her kisses. Beauty such as she possessed was utterly beguiling and yet so wretchedly deceptive. He reviled everything about this young woman who was to become his wife and countess and yet there was no mistaking her inherent allure. She had captivated him four years ago, trapped him, made him lose his head, forget all that he had been taught about being a gentleman and what he owed his name, and made him cast caution to the four winds.
He had allowed his heart to rule his head.
In a single night of passion he had ruined a gently bred girl of good family, destroyed his honor and given Jacob Allenby the means by which to have his revenge on him. He hated himself for what he had done to Jane, but he reviled her for not having the strength of character to believe in him; to wait for him; to be constant and true. She had not waited. Worse, she had not kept secret their night of passion as she had promised and was rightly disowned by her humiliated father. Even more appalling, she had run to the protection of Jacob Allenby, a man he loathed and despised, a reprobate who masqueraded as a moralizing windbag.
The passage of time and countless lovers and he convinced himself he was cured of Miss Jane Despard. And then, two years ago while on the hunt, he had come across her gathering mushrooms in a field scattered with awakening wildflowers. With a sickening thud of realization he knew he had been fooling himself. He was not cured. He festered with guilt for ruining her and for still wanting her. He sunk lower still by giving his word to her dying father that he would indeed honor the pledge made to her in the summerhouse on her eighteenth birthday and marry her.
Marriage, if it did nothing else but expunge the burden of guilt and restore his sense of honor, was worth the humiliation of friends and family. He could at least get on with his life with a clear conscience of righting a serious wrong. That he still wanted her, desperately, he could easily cure. He would make her his wife, bed her, and then banish her to his estate, lust and honor both satisfied. Yet, the gentleman in him made one last futile attempt to force her to realize what sort of union she was entering into.
“Miss Despard, you are a young woman with many child-bearing years ahead of you. With your face and figure, you could easily ensnare yourself a wealthy husband capable of giving you children. Release this barren earl from his obligation.”
Jane curtsied but kept her gaze lowered because her eyes were brimming with hot tears of shame. Real regret sounded in her voice. “I am sorry to disoblige you, my lord, but I must marry you.”
There was the briefest of silences and then the Earl was gone, the door slammed so hard that Jane jumped and took an involuntary step back fearing it had come off its hinges. Alone, she crumpled to the floor in a billowing balloon of petticoats and gave in to her disordered emotions.
“Must?” Salt repeated at the end of the landing, still frowning.
“I beg your pardon, my lord?”
Startled to receive a response, the Earl brought his gaze down from the far wall of the stairwell void to find his secretary squashed up against the mahogany balustrade trying to be inconspicuous. Poor Arthur, reading that document aloud had taken it out of him. Still, Salt couldn’t help teasing his secretary.
“Well, Ellis, what do you make of the lovely Miss Despard?”
But Arthur Ellis had been long enough in the Earl’s employ not to be surprised by anything that was asked of him. “I have no thoughts about Miss Despard, my lord,” he said blandly as he followed his noble employer down the stairs to the entrance foyer.
Salt put out a hand to the butler for his sword and sash, gaze firmly fixed on his secretary. “Very good, Arthur. Now tell me what you think
.”
“Miss Despard is little altered since last we met.”
“Meaning?”
“She presents to the world the same well-bred young lady now as four years ago, my lord.”
The Earl was shrugged into his heavy greatcoat by the butler.
“You ignore her intervening history perhaps?”
“No, my lord. But you asked for my thoughts.”
“What else?”
“My lord?” said the secretary, stepping out of the way as the Earl adjusted his ornately sheathed sword before buttoning his greatcoat.
“Don’t be obtuse. You have eyes. You’re still smitten by her beauty. Admit to it!”
The secretary’s mouth slackened and he felt the heat in his face, not only at the bald statement put to him but also because he happened to glance at Springer just then, who was standing at the Earl’s shoulder and thus out of his master’s line of sight, to find the butler smirking from ear to ear. Still, the secretary managed to bravely meet his noble employer’s unblinking stare. “To be completely truthful, my lord, Miss Despard remains the most beautiful young woman I have ever had the privilege to gaze upon.”
“Yes, isn’t she,” Salt snarled with such bitterness that Arthur Ellis audibly gulped and with the butler took an involuntarily step away. “A word of warning: Never permit sublime beauty to lull you into a false judgment of character.”
“Yes, my lord.”
There followed an awkward silence as the two men awaited their noble employer’s pleasure, but as his lordship was momentarily preoccupied with some frowning thought, the secretary took the brave step of moving time on. He coughed into his fist.
“If your lordship has no need of me this afternoon I will offer my services to Miss Despard, as you requested. The transfer of Miss Despard’s belongings to Grosvenor Square and arrangements for tomorrow’s ceremony…”
“Yes. Yes,” Salt murmured, coming out of his abstraction. “Go and play lapdog to your heart’s content.” And snapped his head around at the butler. “Offer Mr. Ellis whatever he requires and ensure Miss Despard’s maid is given every assistance.”
“I am at Mr. Ellis’s service, my lord,” Springer replied, adding with a note of apology, but with eyes agog in anticipation of the Earl’s explosive response, “but unfortunately I am unable to assist with the latter part of your request as Miss Despard has come up to London, I beg your lordship’s pardon to mention it, but Mrs. Springer is most insistent that such a remission be rectified, without a maid.” When the Earl continued to stare at him as if he was talking an unknown foreign tongue, the butler continued, a little less confident than before. “Mrs. Springer being told by Lady Despard’s maid, a haughty creature with an inflated sense of self-worth, that Miss Despard has never possessed a lady’s maid, other than a nurse who, most regrettably, died some years ago of a complaint of the lung. It is a mystery to the members of this household how Miss Despard copes without the services of a lady’s maid.”
The Earl closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, as if the domestic arrangements of his household were all too much for him, then looked to the plastered ceiling before saying very quietly to his secretary, “I regret I must add to the burden of your secretarial duties, Arthur. Be good enough to put your head together with the Springers to employ a suitable lady’s maid for Miss Despard, this female personage to be installed at Grosvenor Square by tomorrow morning at the latest. And Springer—”
“Yes, my lord?” the butler said cheerfully, thinking his sensible third daughter, Anne, who was very unhappy in her present situation in the house of Lady St. John, would do very nicely as lady-in-waiting to the future Countess of Salt Hendon. He couldn’t wait to tell the good news to his wife.
“—be discreet or you’ll find yourself mucking out my stables.”
With that withering statement, Salt stepped out into the hustle and bustle of Arlington street, where carriages, sedan chairs and horse and rider competed for space with pedestrians in heavy coats, muff and hats, and the more adventurous and needy cart sellers, although there were few of the latter and even fewer pedestrians because of the intense cold. Instead of turning right to walk the short distance to St. James’s Street to spend a few hours of quiet solitude at White’s, a club that was fast becoming the most popular male bastion for noblemen, and not least because the Earl of Salt Hendon deigned to patronize it, the Earl reluctantly went left and hailed a hackney chair to take him to Half Moon Street. Here he was set down at a particular townhouse where resided Elizabeth, Lady Outram. A voluptuous blonde widow on the other side of thirty, she had buried two elderly husbands in quick succession and was in search of a third. In the meantime, she catered to the Earl of Salt Hendon’s strong carnal appetites and in return enjoyed his benefaction.
In Salt’s pocket was a short, scrawled missive from Elizabeth Outram requesting his presence in her drawing room without delay. The matter was urgent and could not wait. The note had arrived just as he and his secretary had set out for his interview with Jane Despard and thus he had had no time to write her a reply. But he was not in the habit of going at the beck and call of his mistresses, and if he had not had a prior engagement he would have made Elizabeth Outram wait his pleasure.
Still, he could not put off the inevitable. She would be offended and sulky and stamp her foot at him for being a neglectful lover, but it wouldn’t take him many minutes to bring her to heel and they would end up in bed. Bedding Lizzie would be a welcome change from the long hours spent on parliamentary business and the bitter realization that tomorrow he was to be married to a young woman with the face of an angel and the heart of a conniving whore, who didn’t have the wit or will to employ a lady’s maid!
Why had she used the word must?
It was such an inoffensive little word and yet it burned itself into his brain the moment she’d uttered it. How dare she pretend it was she who was entering into this marriage under sufferance.
His lofty parents must be turning in their graves!
Salt barely had a large well-shod foot inside the drawing room of the Half Moon Street townhouse when Elizabeth, Lady Outram flew off the silk-striped chaise longue and into his embrace. She wrapped her arms about his strong neck and pressed her voluptuous curves to his tall, hard torso and looked up at him with such a doleful expression that the Earl mentally sighed and readied himself for the inevitable feline tantrum.
But Elizabeth surprised him. She let him go and stepped back and coolly offered him a glass of burgundy; her initial over-exuberance replaced with a tightly controlled façade that had him puzzled. He took the glass and watched her pour out a burgundy for herself. She hesitated, mentally preparing herself. She had been forewarned by her good friend the Earl’s cousin, Diana, Lady St. John that the Earl intended to cast her aside.
It was Diana St. John who had first brought her to the attention of the Earl and it was Diana St. John who now informed her that her year was up and it was time for Elizabeth to find herself a new benefactor. If she had no one in mind she, Diana, could point her in the right direction. As if she needed pointing in any man’s direction! She had known from the first that the Earl of Salt Hendon never kept a mistress for more than twelve months and even then they never had his complete devotion. She had made plans for her future long ago, had several casual lovers who would drop to kiss her feet if she said the word, but it had not taken many days into her affair with the Earl to realize that none of her attentive suitors would ever measure up to the lusty nobleman now standing in the middle of her cozy drawing room.
She counted the Earl her most attractive and accomplished lover and she would sorely miss their lovemaking. It rankled that she had not managed to outlast the tenure of his previous mistresses. She had boasted to Diana and others that she would easily keep Salt’s interest for two perhaps three years at least. When Diana’s letter had arrived only last week she had suffered a great blow to her self-esteem. She couldn’t believe the Earl was finished with her and s
he aimed to prove it to Diana St. John, whatever her friend’s warning about not making a fuss.
But there was another, more disturbing piece of news that, if true, would signal the death knell to their affair: the Earl of Salt Hendon was about to marry a young beautiful girl from the counties. Elizabeth knew she could not compete with such a winning combination as youthful beauty. It would explain his neglect of her over the past couple of months and why, even when he did bed her, he was distracted and detached.
She followed him to the fireplace, where he stood warming his hands, and placed her wine glass on the mantel, allowing her dressing gown to slide off one shoulder to expose a quantity of rounded breast, as if it was the most natural accident in the world. She made no attempt to cover herself and smiled with practiced coyness when the Earl’s eyes strayed from her painted face.
She removed the half-empty glass from his hand and set it next to her own.
“You’ve neglected me these past few months, my lord,” she purred, a glance up at him under her darkened lashes as she pretended to adjust her dressing gown, but allowing it to slip further off her shoulders to the floor so that she stood before him in only corset and white stockings. “Do you not think I am owed an explanation for your blatant inattention?”
From habit he drew her to him.
“Neglect, Lizzie?” he murmured, unlacing her tight silk corset with practiced ease. “I should hate to think you’ve been neglected in my absence.”
She ignored the veiled reference to her casual lovers and made a half-hearted attempt to squirm out of his embrace. But more than anything she wanted him to make love to her. It would be a welcome change from the over-eager lovemaking of Pascoe, Lord Church, and the inexpert fondling of Pascoe’s penniless cousin Billy Church, whose worth resided in the fact he was the boon companion of the Earl’s officious secretary. Billy was only too willing to share confidences about his friend’s employer when roused to the point of no return by Elizabeth’s expert tutelage.
Salt Bride Page 4