“I understand you don’t want to upset her so I suggest you just come out and say it.”
“All right. I will!” Tom announced and swallowed because the Earl’s quiet voice was much more menacing than if he had shouted at him. He took a deep breath and launched into his speech.
“It may come as a complete surprise to you, living as you do surrounded by sycophants and toadies and painted females, who have the appearance of beauty but scratch the surface and they’re rotten, rotten to the core, but Jane is as good-hearted as she is beautiful and nothing my uncle or her father or you can make me see her differently!”
“I agree, and if you would allow me to tell you how much she—”
“And if she’s forgiven you for breaking off the engagement—”
“Stop there, Tom Allenby!” the Earl growled and sat up. “I am utterly sick of being accused of breach of promise. I will say to you what I have said to your sister many times over: I did not break off our engagement, nor did I write a letter to that effect. A letter that now mysteriously no longer exists because it did not exist in the first place!”
Tom stuck out his chin. “Yes it does, my lord!
“It’s Salt, Tom. Call me Salt. You are Jane’s brother and thus my brother-in-law.”
This somewhat deflated Tom’s belligerency yet he managed to put enough firmness in his voice to say flatly, “It does exist because I have it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“With your seal upon it too!”
Salt was incredulous. “In my fist?”
“I don’t know what your fist looks like, but Uncle Jacob assured me the letter was genuine. He gave it into my safekeeping on his deathbed.”
Salt was skeptical. “And you have this infamous letter here?”
“Not on me,” Tom said defensively. “But I can have it fetched from Upper Brooke Street.”
“If you would.”
“Consider it fetched! In fact, I’ve been wondering what to do with it ever since Uncle Jacob left it to me. You’re welcome to it!” Tom threw at him, unsure what made his blood boil more, the Earl’s raised eyebrows of incredulity, or the fact the nobleman’s noble nostrils quivered with distaste that Tom had had the bad manners to contradict him. It gave him the impetus he needed to vent his feelings on the subject of his stepsister’s happiness.
“I’d prefer the wretched piece of paper be turned to ash, for all the grief it’s caused Jane. I’m certain she would like nothing better than to forget the existence of that letter and its consequences. In fact, I’ll lay you odds she forgave you years ago, because that’s the sort of girl she is. But it stands to reason you should be just as fair and not hold one tiny mistake against her. Mistakes happen and no one can foresee at the time that an error of judgment will have such far-reaching consequences. She certainly didn’t. How could she?
“It was her eighteenth birthday and she was an innocent. God knows why it’s up to the weaker sex to protect their virtue and fend off the unwanted attentions of a pack of lecherous dogs. Jane never asked or sought out such attention! She wasn’t old enough or wise enough to know any better. Her father sent her off to your Hunt Ball without a chaperone and without any cautionary warnings about the roués on the prowl for a bit of vulgar velvet at such functions. And I wasn’t there to protect her. I should have been there to protect her!”
“It’s all right, Tom,” Salt said, a gentle squeeze of the young man’s shoulder when he bowed his head and turned away to dash a sleeve across his flushed face. “No one can blame you for what occurred. You’re absolutely right. Errors of judgment do happen. I asked your sister to marry me at that Hunt Ball and she accepted and that should’ve been enough. But I lost my head in the moment and…” He frowned selfconsciously, murmuring, “Well, it seems the rest you know…”
Tom gave a huff of impatience.
“Jane doesn’t know that I know and she’d be mortified if she ever found out I did. She likes to think of me as her little brother, and that’s fine with me if it gives her peace of mind. My mother told me what happened to Jane. I guess she felt I was owed the true explanation for why Jane ended up under my uncle’s protection after Sir Felix disowned her. But she only discovered the extent of Jane’s fall from grace after Uncle Jacob’s death. Under the terms of his will he charged my mother with a commission to Lady St. John—”
Salt was incredulous. “Diana St. John? What possible commission could your mother have for Lady St. John from Jacob Allenby?”
“I don’t rightly know. All I do know is that it has everything to do with Jane…”
The Earl’s look of utter confusion and frowning silence convinced Tom that his noble brother-in-law was not being duplicitous and so he continued.
“After my mother discharged her commission to Lady St. John she gave into my safe keeping a document that Jacob Allenby instructed I pass on to you, if and when the need arose.”
“And has that need arisen, Tom?”
Tom eyed the Earl with mild hostility. “Yes, my lo—er— Salt, I believe it has. I mean to have that document fetched along with the breach of promise letter. You can do with them as you see fit. My only concern is for Jane and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like your word the conversation we are about to have remains between us. Will you give me your hand on it, Salt?”
“Willingly.”
The two men shook hands.
Tom’s face reddened and he said in a rush to hide his unease, “There was never any likelihood of Jane’s fall from grace being linked back to your Hunt Ball. Sir Felix was just as determined as you to keep a lid on any potential scandal. So it was—it was—cowardly of you to send Lady St. John along to be satisfied on your behalf that the Sinclair name remained unsullied. That woman should never have been involved in Jane’s misery and shame!”
The nobleman baulked at the accusation of cowardice, and was instantly furious that this young man had the impudence to level such a serious charge at him. No one had ever spoken to him with such disrespect. But just as quickly, he quelled his temper remembering the pedestal Jane told him he inhabited. With great self-control he climbed down from his nobility and ignored the sneering insolence in Tom’s voice to say evenly,
“I wholeheartedly agree with you. I am at a loss to understand Lady St. John’s involvement in my engagement to your sister. As to being a coward… I would never send another on my behalf; and certainly never entrust Lady St. John with any task that involved your sister’s welfare. No. Just hear me out and then you can go for my throat if need be.
“The morning after I proposed to your sister I was urgently called away to London. Lord St. John had contracted the smallpox and after a short illness died. I had a widow and two small fatherless children thrust upon me, not to mention his affairs to get in order. I’m sure you’d appreciate that what was happening back in Wiltshire was a thousand miles from my thoughts at the time. That’s not to say I’d forgotten my obligation to your sister. I had to temper my happiness and put my future plans on hold until I’d sorted through the grief caused by St. John’s death.
“I wrote to Jane explaining my situation but never received a reply to my correspondence. The next I knew your sister was living under Allenby’s roof because her father had disowned her. It still puzzles me to this day why your sister chose Allenby’s protection to mine.”
“Does it?” Tom gave a dismissive snort. “Does it truly puzzle you? Do you honestly believe Jane had a choice? Your letter breaking off the engagement left her with none.”
“Don’t you see that whoever wrote that despicable breach of promise letter did so to make certain Jane did not seek me out?” Salt replied with great patience. “Believe me, Tom, had I been made aware of her predicament I would have done everything in my power to save her from such ignominy.”
Tom eyed him with resentment. His voice was very flat. “You should have thought about the potential for a-a predicament before you-you deflowered her, my lord.” When the nobleman
blushed scarlet Tom had his answer. “No one told me. I worked it out for myself. It wasn’t difficult, because I know Jane. And Jane being Jane, she would never have surrendered her virtue to just any man, only to the man she loved above all others.”
“Listen, Tom… What happened in the summerhouse—It may present to you, to-to others, to most people, as a lascivious nobleman’s calculated seduction of an innocent girl; a quick tawdry rut by the lake. But it wasn’t like that… Nothing could be further from the truth. When—when two people are in love—when they are caught up in the moment, it’s as if… They forget everything else; they forget there may be consequences to their actions… They… They—God, this is difficult to explain!”
He scowled selfconsciously and covered his face with his hands before drawing his fingers up through his damp tussled hair. Despite the searing burn of shame to his ears, the dry throat and the abject chagrin of trying to explain himself to a skeptical audience of one, he met Tom’s steady gaze openly and continued,
“You sitting there looking like a stunned trout, worse, like a son being delivered a lecture on the birds and the bees, when you know full well how honey is made, doesn’t help one’s heartfelt confession. I have nothing to say in my defence that won’t make you think me the veriest cad. But I ask you, no, I implore you to believe me when I say that I have castigated myself a thousand times over for not having the willpower to wait until we had been up before a parson. All I can offer in my defence is that I was so in love with your sister that I did not think; I allowed my heart to rule my head. I do not ask your forgiveness, just your understanding… Tom? Tom, what is it?”
Tom did not doubt the Earl’s sincerity; that he was speaking from the heart. What astounded him and drained the color from his face was the fact that the nobleman had no idea, indeed remained blissfully ignorant of Jane’s appalling predicament and the paramount reason why her father had disowned her. He was so surprised he just blurted it out with no thought to the effect such brutal honesty would have on his noble brother-in-law.
“You didn’t know Jane was pregnant with your child?”
“Pregnant? Jane?”
Tom nodded dumbly in response to the Earl’s disbelieving and explosive exclamation.
“My Jane, pregnant? Jane. Pregnant.”
Bewildered and disorientated and still muttering to himself, Salt glanced around: from high-racked ceiling to polished tiled floor, to the netting shielding the gallery boxes and out across the expanse of court to the sloping tabor wall. It was as if he had no idea where he was. He stood up; Tom did likewise. He blinked, motionless, as Jane’s accusatory words earlier that day screamed in his head… you allowed lust to rule good sense… you impregnated a gently bred girl from the counties… He now understood what she meant and the reason for her tearful distress, and such was the enormity of this new and powerful knowledge that he was seized with an overwhelming panic. He forgot how to breathe.
Tom was transfixed by the intensity in the nobleman’s handsome face. It was evident he was experiencing a range of emotions while trying to make sense of such a profound revelation. Yet, Tom was determined, he owed it to his stepsister; no matter how disordered the Earl’s state of mind, he would hear the whole sordid story of Jane’s fall from grace.
“You ruined her virtue, but to Sir Felix’s way of thinking the far greater crime was his daughter had been impregnated by an unnamed seducer. Jane would not name you. She kept quiet; has kept quiet all these years. Because of her refusal, Sir Felix said he had no use for her. He treated Jane as if she was a used, worthless thing: a-a whore. But he treated her unborn babe far, far worse.”
Tom’s voice broke on the last word and he took a deep breath before continuing, following close on the Earl’s heels when the nobleman lurched forward, as if drunk, and staggered up the court, breathing short and quick, a wide shoulder pressed to the wall to prop himself up. It was as if he was trying to escape from Tom’s revelations, but Tom would not let him go. He was far from finished with his lordship.
“Sir Felix said no daughter of his was going to give birth to a bastard. I asked my mother how Sir Felix discovered Jane was pregnant.” Tom gave a bark of incredulous laughter. “An unsigned letter! Can you believe it? I hardly credit it possible that some fiend could betray Jane in that cowardly way. It’s wicked! Sir Felix waved the letter under Jane’s nose. She did not lie to her father. Poor Jane had struggled to keep her condition a secret for as long as possible. She was waiting for you, you to come and fetch her away and you never did. Your letter breaking off the engagement had sealed her fate and the fate of her unborn child.”
“T-tom, for pity’s sake.”
But Tom was so overwrought he did not hear the Earl’s plea nor did it register that the words were rasped out between shallow breaths. He was blind to the sheen of cold sweat on the nobleman’s forehead and that he was sliding down the wall, legs buckling under him, as if they were no longer able support him. All Tom cared about was making the Earl aware of what Jane had suffered, and that he blamed him just as much as he blamed Sir Felix and Jacob Allenby for the loss of her baby.
“She was given a herbal concocted by a squalid apothecary, tricked into believing it was a medicinal that would help her morning sickness,” he continued, squatting beside the Earl, who was slumped against the wall. “Poor Jane! She was so trusting of her nurse that she drank it without complaint, unaware that the foul tasting brew would quicken her babe before its time. She was four months with your child and the next day that child was dead. She could’ve died too. God knows what agony and anguish she endured and all because you abandoned her! You promised her everything and gave her nothing. You… you…”
Tom surrendered to his emotions. Anger spent, and with nothing left to say, he dropped to the tiles beside the traumatized nobleman and hung his head in his hands, oblivious to the Earl’s distressed and deteriorated state. Salt had a fist clenched to his chest where sharp pain would not abate. His breathing was shallow and ragged; as if air had been punched from his lungs, leaving him gasping, making it impossible for him to take in air without great effort. Hot and dizzy of mind, heart pounding in his ears, and with his body shivering uncontrollably, day suddenly became night and he lost consciousness.
“My lord? Mr. Allenby?”
The shout came from the other end of the tennis court.
It was Arthur Ellis. He and a liveried footman had entered the Royal Tennis Court at the far end where abandoned on a bench were a couple of empty ale glasses, two tennis rackets, numerous leather balls and the gentlemen’s discarded frockcoats. The secretary and servant strode towards the curious sight of Tom Allenby and the Earl slumped against the wall under the high set windows that allowed sunlight to stream across the court. Their stride broke into a trot when it became apparent their master was having difficulty breathing, and then into a run when he passed out.
“Tom? My God, what’s happened to his lordship? Tom?”
The secretary fell to his stockinged knees beside the Earl and frantically tugged at his master’s cravat, unraveling the intricate folds of linen, before moving on to undoing the horned buttons of the damp linen shirtfront.
“Sweet Jesus, Tom, what did you do to him?”
Tom lifted his head, red-faced and glassy-eyed, and with a blink slowly regarded his friend as he ministered to his noble brother-in-law who was out cold next to him. He made no comment and dropped his head.
“Fetch a bottle of brandy and send for a physician!” Arthur Ellis barked out over his shoulder at the hovering footman, who was off running down the court before the secretary had turned to continue his assessment of the Earl’s condition.
He reasoned that his master had suffered some sort of paralysis of the heart and if something wasn’t done immediately to wake him up there was every chance he would not make a recover. Arthur knew his employer had had very little sleep the two preceding nights, called out to the bedside of his godson, had spent hours in conference in the F
rench tongue with the Russian Ambassador before a grueling session of Royal Tennis with a young man thirteen years his junior. In Arthur’s opinion, a recipe for a heart attack if ever there was one.
The secretary glanced at Tom as he took the nobleman’s pulse. “His heart is still working, thank God,” he said with an audible sigh. “He may well have just passed out from exhaustion. Tom, what happened, damn it!”
“He suffered a shock,” Tom muttered, “and fainted.”
“I can bloody-well see that! But how—”
“Magnus? Magnus?”
The two men turned.
It was the Countess.
She rushed across the tennis court as fast as she could manage in a confection of embroidered petticoats and satin slippers and dropped to the tiles in a billow of layered silk beside her unconscious husband. Ignoring her brother and the secretary who began to offer garbled explanations, she gathered the Earl up in her embrace, his head in her lap, a hand to his hot damp forehead, then to his flushed cheek, and finally to his cold wrist to feel his pulse, all the time speaking soothing words she hoped would see him open his eyes and look at her.
“Breathe, Magnus. Please breathe,” she whispered, smoothing the damp hair off his face and dropping a kiss on his mouth. “Slow, deep breaths. One breath at a time.” When his eyelids flickered she glanced up and stuck out a hand for the tumbler of brandy the footman was nervously pouring out under the secretary’s direction. “I have some brandy for you. Just open your eyes and look at me. Good. Keep breathing, slowly. No. Don’t try and move; a sip of brandy first. That’s good. Slowly. Sip it.” She smiled down at him and kissed him again when he smiled up at her. She was not smiling when she looked up at her brother and Arthur Ellis and thrust the tumbler back at them. “Tom? Mr. Ellis? What did you do to him? Couldn’t you see he is exhausted? He’s been up all night. Mr. Ellis! You should have sent the Ambassador away early,” she threw at Arthur, and then glared at Tom and then back at the secretary before addressing them both. “He needs rest. He needs sleep. You should not have played him at tennis, Tom! You’re not blind! You could see how he was. You should have declined the invitation. Why are you both standing there gaping at me? Mr. Ellis! Where is his lordship’s physician? Tom! Be useful and find Willis and Mr. Jenkins. You,” she said, addressing the footman, “find Andrews and have him prepare his lordship’s bath. We must get Salt to his rooms where he can be comfortable.”
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