Salt Bride

by Lucinda Brant

  “You fainted,” said Tom, stating the obvious as he eased her into a sitting position. He handed her a tumbler of punch. “Drink. You’ll feel better.”

  Jane took the tumbler, suddenly very thirsty. She thrust the empty tumbler back at a footman. “Please, Tom. Help me up before Salt finds out I’ve made a spectacle of myself.”

  Tom smiled apologetically. “Too late.”

  The nobleman in question, a head taller than the crowd of onlookers surrounding them, pushed through the contingent of liveried footmen, Jane’s fur-lined cloak draped over an arm and went down on bended knee to throw the cloak over her bare shoulders.

  “Jane? Are you all right?” Salt asked anxiously, concern overriding formality. He deftly buttoned the cloak before lifting her chin to look in her eyes. “What happened?”

  “I fainted. Silly me. I’m feeling much better now.”

  “Fainted? How? I mean, what happened to make you faint?”

  “One minute Jane was talking with Lady St. John by the railings and the next she fainted dead away,” Tom said with a shrug, trying to make light of it for Jane’s sake. “She don’t eat much, y’know, and what with all the excitement tonight, she had a dizzy spell.”

  “Diana mentioned you and she had an unpleasant conversation. What did you say to upset her?”

  “Upset her?” Jane could hardly believe her ears.

  “Not everyone appreciates your frank approach,” he scolded her gently as he helped her to stand. “Best to stay out of her way.”

  Jane pulled the fur-lined cloak more tightly about her. “I am only too happy to do so. If she would only stay out mine!”

  Salt scowled, Jane’s retort confirming what he had first thought when from the top terrace he had spied his wife and his cousin having a very public tête-à-tête on the lower terrace: that Diana had sought her out. He was momentarily embarrassed. “My marriage was a huge shock … She hasn’t yet come to terms with my changed circumstances… Given time, she will accept you as my wife. She has no choice.”

  “Lady St. John’s feelings toward me are unimportant,” Jane confessed. “My only concern is how you feel…” She couldn’t bring herself to continue when Salt swallowed, dropped his gaze and turned his head ever so slightly away from her. Her frankness would not be rewarded this time. She would have to content herself with the return of the Sinclair locket for now. She glanced at Tom, who still hovered in the background, and said with deep mortification, “I’m sorry. I had no right to embarrass you and in such a public place. I really must learn to curb my tongue. Perhaps I should’ve stayed home as you suggested.”

  “Yes, perhaps you should have,” Salt responded gruffly, taking hold of her hands, which were as cold as blocks of ice. “I warned you about the unseasonable weather and still you came out of doors without the proper covering. You’re half-frozen. Idiotic not to have had your cloak fetched.”

  “Yes. Idiotic,” Jane repeated forlornly.

  “And Tom’s right. You don’t eat enough. No wonder you fainted. Half-starved and under-dressed. It was as well Tom was keeping an eye on you,” Salt continued and pulled her closer to put an arm about her slumped shoulders. “I turn my back for five minutes’ conversation with Waldegrave and Selwyn and you wander off to disappear out of doors without a thought for the night air and without telling me where you were going.”

  “How unthinking of me,” Jane responded bleakly.

  Salt saw Tom about to rush to his stepsister’s defence but with a wink and smile over his wife’s bowed head the young man shut his mouth. He walked her to the steps that led up to the main terrace where the guests had assembled awaiting the start of the fireworks, and said with a feigned mocking sigh, “Not only do you wander off but you have the temerity to faint in full view of the world. How I am going to keep my noble head up for the rest of the evening, I know not, madam wife. And you ask me whether you should’ve stayed home tonight? You tell me!”

  By now Tom was smiling along with the Earl, but when he caught the look of shame on his stepsister’s face he knew with a shake of his head that Jane had not fallen in with her husband’s gruff cajolery and thought him in earnest. This soon became evident to Salt when Jane turned in the circle of his arm and buried her face in his silver threaded waistcoat, ignoring the numerous orders and decorations pinned to his chest that chaffed her delicate skin.

  “Oh, Jane! No. I didn’t mean it,” Salt quickly reassured her. “I was funning with you, you silly girl! I wouldn’t have let you miss this ball for anything,” he added soothingly, cradling her in his arms.

  He looked about and saw a vacant bench in a shadowy spot beside the base of the broad stairs. “You go on up,” he said to Tom. “We’ll watch the fireworks from down here. And Tom, I look forward to a continuance of your views tomorrow evening. Good night.”

  Noise and light made Jane jump and turn her head in her husband’s embrace to the wondrous view of skyrockets and Catherine wheels lit from barges anchored on the river lighting up the black sky like a thousand of the brightest chandeliers. She watched the display snuggled in her warm cloak beside her husband. His strong arms about her were the greatest source of comfort and warmth, and her embarrassment at having fainted in full view of Polite Society completely forgotten as she ooed and aahed with the rest of the crowd at such a wondrous display of brilliant lights. It was so entertaining that for a few moments at least she was able to put to the back of her mind her confrontation with Diana St. John.

  Yet her mind would not be quiet. She could not put off for much longer telling Salt about the baby. With her light frame she would soon begin to show. What she did not know, could not predict, and what made her ill with anxiousness, was what would be his response. As to her husband’s whereabouts the two nights he had spent apart from her, her heart told her not to believe a woman who was intent on destroying any vestige of happiness in the Earl’s life; but her head reasoned that as the Earl had made her no promises of filial devotion and his past was littered with mistresses, what made her believe that she was the object of a singular devotion as Diana St. John rightly pointed out. He may have professed to loving her four years ago, but not once had he uttered those magic words since their marriage.

  “Do you know, I have never sat still and silent at a ball before,” Salt announced with something akin to awe. “It is rather enlivening.” He beamed down at his wife, as if given a new toy. “I will lay the responsibility for this novel diversion at your feet, my lady.”

  His handsome smile stopped Jane’s breath; it was so genuine and heartfelt that she impulsively touched his cheek.

  “Magnus, kiss me.”

  He brought his mouth down to hers, saying on a murmur, “It would be my very great pleasure, Lady Salt.”

  Before the sparks from the last skyrocket had showered the night sky and fallen extinguished into the icy Thames, the Earl and Countess of Salt Hendon had slipped away to their waiting carriage, where Jane surprised her husband by putting her arms about his neck and saying,

  “Tell John to take the long way back.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Jane gently kissed his mouth. “Quite sure.”

  “But… your fainting spell… It might be wiser if we just returned home as quickly as possible.”

  Home. Jane mentally smiled at the word but pretended to be disconsolate. She removed her arms from around his neck and sat back on the velvet-upholstered bench with her hands in her lap to gaze at her fingers. “I understand,” she said with a practiced sigh. “You’re tired. It’s been a long evening. For a man of your age I suppose tiredness is to be expected.”

  “I—beg—your—pardon? Man of my age? I’m only four and thirty!”

  Jane kept her chin down because she was on the verge of a fit of the giggles. He was aghast, as she knew he would be. She never failed to unbalance him. Served him to rights for playing the same trick on her on the terrace and pretending to be angry. “You needn’t concern yourself I’m-I’m disappo
inted,” she continued, barely able to contain her mirth. “We-we can always take the long way home some-some other time, when you’re feeling more up to it.”

  “Disappointed?” Salt growled. “Up to it? You little wretch!” he added in an altogether different voice and grabbed her to him. “Don’t ever think I’ll be taken in by your tricks again! Two can play at your game! On the terrace, I did a splendid job of bamboozling you, if I do say so myself. Admit it, you thought I was truly angry with you.”

  Jane snuggled into his embrace. “I admit to nothing, my lord.”

  “What? Must needs I spank an admittance out of you?”

  Jane kissed his cheek. “If that is your whim, my lord.”

  Salt shook his head with mock displeasure then took her breath away by crushing her mouth under his.

  With the steps gone and the carriage door finally closed it only remained for the Earl to give his driver the appropriate signal. Still kissing his wife, he lifted his arm to rap twice on the wall behind his head that separated the occupants from the driver up on his box then made two more raps in rapid succession.

  The horses were given their heads and the carriage lurched forward.

  Jane came up for air and asked curiously, “What signal was that?”

  “Too tired indeed,” Salt murmured and kissed her again, fingers tugging at the lacings of her silk corset, his other hand outstretched to draw the heavy curtain on the window and the world.

  When the Earl’s carriage finally pulled up outside his Grosvenor Square mansion, it was mud spattered, the horses were spent and his driver John was in need of a well-earned jug of ale beside the kitchen fire. The under-butler, the porter and two drowsy footmen came out of the house to welcome the Earl and Countess home. Willis waited under the portico with the porter, who held up a flambeau, while the footmen stepped forward, one to set the steps in place while the other went to open the carriage door.

  A short, sharp sentence and a solemn shake of the head from the driver and the two footmen stepped away to stand beside the porter to await the Earl’s pleasure. Willis took one look at the driver, who dared to wink and grin lewdly at him, and he frowningly turned on a heel and disappeared back indoors out of the cold to have words with the butler.

  In Willis’s opinion, it was beyond everything decent that the Earl should bring a whore he had pleasured in his carriage to the front door of the house he now shared with his young Countess. It stretched Willis’s patience and moral fiber to breaking. If it wasn’t for his deep regard and respect for Lady Salt, so he told Mr. Jenkins, who stood sleepy-eyed but listening blank-faced in the marble-floored entrance vestibule, he would give notice forthwith.

  And what, pray tell was Mr. Jenkins’ opinion, given his lordship’s younger sister the Lady Caroline Sinclair had arrived from Wiltshire not five hours ago and was now resident in this house? And if the unexpected arrival of the Earl’s sister wasn’t enough to try the patience of a martyr how did Mr. Jenkins intend to handle the delicate matter of Lady St. John’s urgent missive that her son was on his death bed and that the Earl present himself in Audley Street at once.

  The butler shrugged his narrow shoulders and kept his thoughts to himself.

  When the porter opened wide the front door and in stepped the Earl, Rufus Willis had to swallow his words.

  Outside in the carriage, the carnage of various articles of clothing strewn about the padded velvet interior, from discarded panniers to a gentleman’s silver waistcoat pinned with decorations of the highest order flung in a corner, suggested a frenzied urgency to the occupants’ lovemaking. Nothing was further from the truth. Everything had occurred with a deliberate slowness, as if the cogs of a clock moved at half speed. From undressing each other in the darkness, to making love, each action and reaction was savored. Every exquisite sensation; sight, touch, smell and taste, was enjoyed for its own sake while the carriage bumped and rattled across the uneven cobblestones of the deserted city then out along the muddied roads of the newer squares and streets of the wealthier occupants of the parish of Westminster.

  Stripped of his finery, gloriously naked and deep inside her, there was so much tenderness in his hands and in his mouth as he caressed and pleasured her, and in his words when he confessed his overwhelming need of her that Jane was able to delude herself that he would be forever hers and hers alone. And when she finally tumbled off into oblivion with him, somewhere in the fog of satiated desire she heard her name, and the one tiny but oh so precious sentence he had not uttered to her since he had asked her to marry him all those years ago.

  His declaration, which should have made her supremely happy, only served to stir her doubts because he had declared himself not in the coolness of daylight but in the darkness of a moving carriage in the heat of passionate climax, his mind and body in turmoil. Although she had no experience of other men, she instinctively knew that what was said in the intense heat of lust could not be believed until repeated in the stillness of a clear head and restful body.

  Staring unseeing at the ceiling as the carriage turned into Grosvenor Square, Jane was oblivious to the fact that while she mentally ruminated in the darkness, Salt was propped on an elbow watching her intently. He wondered for the umpteenth time why he could make this utterly beautiful and thoroughly beguiling creature respond to his every intimate caress, yet she continued to keep him locked out of her thoughts. It was no surprise then that when the carriage finally came to a halt under the portico and he lightly touched the locket about her throat, she gave a start and brought her blue-eyed gaze down from the carriage’s padded ceiling to his face, her smile enigmatic.

  “Home,” he said with a smile, pulling on his drawers.

  He buttoned up his breeches and helped Jane to sit up, before struggling into his crumpled shirt. But he did not bother with his stockings or his shoes, and ignored his waistcoat and frockcoat. He found Jane’s chemise flung over a cushion and helped her wriggle into it but when she put out a hand for her bodice he tossed it aside and instead placed the fur-lined cloak about her shoulders.

  She gave a start, appalled.

  “You are in jest! I cannot leave here in nothing more than my chemise and stockings!”

  “That’s why I gave you the cloak,” he responded cheerfully and opened the carriage door, letting in a great rush of chilled early morning air. “Besides, what’s important is around your neck. The rest can be replaced.”

  Jane remained seated, hugging the cloak tightly about her slender frame, despite Salt having descended the steps to stand barefoot on the cobbles. She put up her brows.

  “And what of your most noble order of the garter, my lord? Shouldn’t his lordship throw that around his neck? After all, it’s just as important and can’t be replaced.”

  “No,” he stated simply and grabbed her wrist. “I have what’s important here.”

  He yanked her through the doorway. The cloak slipped off one shoulder and Jane squealed and grabbed at the fur as if her life depended upon it. But Salt would not be deterred and in one swift and easy movement her threw her, startled and protesting, over his shoulder, an arm across the back of her bare thighs to keep her squirming legs still, a hand pressed to the cloak to ensure it slipped no further.

  “If you keep wiggling about,” he said with a laugh as he turned and strode past the two gaping footmen and a red-faced porter who silently opened the door, “I give no guarantees that we will make it upstairs with our dignity intact.”

  “Dignity?” Jane tried to rise up to stop the blood rushing into her ears, only to flop forward in defeat. “Magnus! Stop this at once!” she demanded in a strident whisper, thumping his lower back with her balled fists. “Be reasonable! Think of the example to the servants! What will they think of us? Magnus?”

  “I do so like to hear you call me by my Christian name,” he said conversationally, ignoring Jane’s ineffectual thumps and standing in the wide expanse of the marbled entrance hall as if it was the most natural thing in the world for
the fifth Earl of Salt Hendon to arrive home at three o’clock in the morning in nothing more than a crumpled white shirt hanging out of his breeches, bare legged and barefoot, with his protesting Countess slung over one shoulder, her shapely stockinged ankles and feet on display.

  The dumbstruck butler, under-butler, and porter all exchanged a swift, eyebrow raising glance that confirmed what they all privately thought: not only was the Earl in his cups, but his Countess was tantalizing naked under her cloak. It made them stay back, the butler holding Lady St. John’s unsealed note at his side and waiting the appropriate moment to interrupt the couple.

  “No one calls me Magnus,” the Earl was saying, finally sliding Jane off his shoulder and down the length of his hard frame to allow her to stand on her own two feet. Her arms remained up around his neck and her barely covered breasts were deliciously pressed to his chest. He continued to hold her tightly against him, a hand in the small of her back so the cloak, which had now slid to her waist, exposing her narrow back through the thin linen chemise, did not reveal more tantalizingly bare flesh. “Not even my mother called me Magnus, not when I was in short skirts and leading strings, not ever. I was Lacey while my father was alive, Viscount Lacey. Always Lord Lacey.”

  “How very sad. A child deserves to be called by his Christian name, especially by his parents,” Jane responded, looking up into his brown eyes. “That’s what makes him him. Not some cold and distant title that has belonged to his forebears for generations.”

  He bent to kiss her gently. “Somehow I knew you’d say that,” and in a more rallying tone, “Not a very manly name Lacey. Magnus has more presence and is much more manly, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, much more manly!” she mocked. “Just as manly as Salt. Though I prefer Magnus.”

  “Do you know,” he added with a huff of laughter, surprising himself, “I do believe my family have quite forgotten I have a Christian name.”

  “You are being absurd again!” Jane announced with a giggle. “Of course they know your Christian name, it’s just that they choose not to use it because they prefer you to remain atop your noble pedestal; it adds to their self-consequence.”