The footman turned and fled. Arthur Ellis stared at Tom. Both men flushed up with guilt, opened their mouths to protest, threw each other a meaningful glance, before staring dumbly down at the engaging sight of the small ferocious kitten-like Countess with the bear-sized Earl in her silken lap. They could find nothing to say in their defense, nor was Tom prepared to elaborate on his discussion with the nobleman. He was about to follow the footman’s example and turn tail and flee to do his stepsister’s bidding when the Earl spoke.
“Jane?” he said wonderingly, as if seeing her for the first time. “Jane.” He lifted a hand to her cheek. “My Jane… Tom isn’t to blame. The fault lies with—”
“Oh, hush!” Jane pouted. Seeing a natural even color return to his clean-shaven cheeks she vented her relief as she and Tom helped him to sit up, wide back propped against the wall. “No, it is not Tom’s fault, and it is not the fault of Mr. Ellis. It is your fault, bloody obstinate man! You knew you were worn-out when you came home this morning after being with Ron all night, but you foolishly insisted on seeing the Russian Ambassador. Tony and His Excellency would have understood and come another day if they knew of your exhaustion. Better they have the hope of seeing you again than for you to-to drop—to drop dead on me! You should have gone back to bed. Instead, your stubborn idiotic pride to do your duty—No!” she said with a sniff and quickly forced the tears to the back of her eyes, “I am not crying! I am angry. So—so very, very angry with you, Magnus, I could—”
“I love you, Jane.”
It was a simple sentence, said simply. She wasn’t at all sure he was in his right mind, or that he was restful of body but it was all she had ever wanted to hear him say in the cold light of day since her eighteenth birthday. She smiled into his tired brown eyes and unconsciously sighed her contentment. Tears ran down her flushed face and she kissed his hand and pressed it to her cheek.
“I love you so very much I hate you for frightening me in this way!”
Salt pulled her onto his lap and kissed her, then could not resist rubbing the tip of his long nose against hers. It was a natural, intimate gesture he used when they were alone together and it never failed to make her heart swell with joy. Yet, Jane saw that he was still not entirely himself and his grave expression gave her pause for thought. Her smile faded.
“Are you perfectly well? Would you care for another drop of brandy?”
He shook his head, distracted, a frown between his brows as he traced her full lower lip with his thumb. “What manner of man must you think me? I’ve been so manifestly self-absorbed, and you… When I think what you…”
He swallowed hard, closed his eyes and looked away, unable to complete the sentence. Jane realized that whatever he might say to the contrary what he needed was rest. She glanced up at her stepbrother whose gaze had shot to the ceiling rafters the moment the noble couple embraced, while the secretary had turned to the sound of hurried footfall coming across the tennis court. It seemed as if a regiment had been summonsed, but in fact it was his lordship’s valet Andrews, followed by the butler, followed by the under-butler, and behind Willis, the Earl’s physician, and breathing down Dr. Barlow’s back, three burly footmen. All were brought up short by the sight of the Earl seated on the floor with the Countess on his lap. When the physician began rummaging in his doctor’s bag, Salt put up a hand to forestall him, and the portly gentleman stepped back in line to wait.
“Ron and Merry will be here on the hour,” Salt was saying to Jane, tucking a loose strand of black hair behind her ear. “I want you to keep them with you while I speak to—to their mother. On no account are Ron and Merry to leave this house.”
“You are taking the children from her?”
“Yes. It is necessary.”
Despite the decision being the right one, Jane was distressed at the thought of Ron and Merry being separated from their mother. “Will they… Will they be permitted to see her again?”
“If and when I deem the time is right. And then only under close supervision.” When Jane frowned, he added reassuringly, “It is for the best. Ron won’t pull through another episode like last night if he remains in her care.”
“Her obsession with you has unhinged her I think.”
Salt swallowed, Tom’s revelations still painfully raw. “Yes,” he said quietly. “More than I could ever possibly have imagined.” He kissed her hand and rallied himself sufficiently to force a smile. “I have so much to say to you, but I must put my affairs in order first. They will be resolved today, that I promise you.” He flicked her cheek. “Now you must leave me and see to the children.”
She nodded, though she was reluctant to leave him. He appeared recovered from his faint, but there was a hardness to his face that still lacked color, and a look in his eye, something akin to sadness, that she could not fathom. He was certainly preoccupied with something or someone. Perhaps it was with Lady St. John and the task of separating her from Ron and Merry. She so wanted to tell him about their baby but again sensed this was not the moment. She would wait until the evening. Such momentous news deserved to be announced when all other considerations had been dealt with, and it would surely give the children and the family a happier focus.
“What is it, Jane?”
“Nothing that won’t keep until this evening.”
He helped her to stand.
“Keep? A secret, Jane?”
She shook out her petticoats and smoothed down the sit of her bodice. “Not a secret, a surprise.”
He frowned. “I do not like surprises.”
She went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Then you had best be sitting down with a good cup of tea when I tell you.”
“Tea, Jane? If I need to be seated, perhaps cognac would better suit the occasion?”
“Yes. Cognac or Champagne. Either would be perfect. Now I will go and make ready for Ron and Merry.” She glanced over at the huddle of men who were pretending an interest in their shoe buckles, then looked back at her husband. “You must allow Dr. Barlow to examine you. Play nice. Promise.”
At that he laughed and pinched her chin. “Promise.”
At the Gallery door she blew him a kiss.
The Countess was barely gone from the tennis court when the Earl turned on Tom.
“I need those documents at once. Don’t send a servant. Fetch them yourself. Show no one. Tell no one. Arthur! After you have dealt with the correspondence left on my desk, make yourself useful to her ladyship. On no account is Lady St. John to be admitted to the Countess’s sitting room.” He waved a finger at the three burly footmen. “Take those three with you. Andrews! Why are you here and not readying my bath? No! Don’t speak. Go. Jenkins! Show Dr. Barlow the street.
“My lord! I protest! I must examine you!”
“Don’t be absurd. Jenkins?”
The butler had the physician by the elbow.
“But her ladyship entreated that you play ni—”
The Earl took his shoulders off the wall to stand tall. His nostrils quivered. “This is playing nice, Barlow. Good day. Why are you smiling?” he demanded of the under-butler whose gaze immediately dropped to his shoe leather. Salt glanced over the servant’s bowed head. Satisfied the dismissed servants were out of hearing range he returned his attention to Willis. “I have a commission for you. It must be carried out at once and in the utmost secrecy.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The Earl held the younger man’s gaze. Although Willis showed a perfectly neutral expression, his clasped hands would not be still. Salt’s lips twitched. “I have not forgotten you are itching to speak with me in confidence. It will have to wait until I have had my bath and you have returned from your errand. Don’t go to the bookroom. Come up to my private apartments. Andrews will admit you.” He had a sudden thought and climbed down off his pedestal. “It can wait, what it is you want to discuss with me, can it, Rufus?”
Willis was so astounded that the Earl knew his Christian name that he nodded dumbly, never min
d that what he needed to tell the Earl was a matter of life and death. He reasoned that he had the blue bottle securely locked away in a cabinet and three burly footmen had been sent to guard the Countess’s sitting room, and as she would be surrounded by family, her ladyship and her unborn child were safe from any immediate malevolence from the Lady St. John.
“Yes, my lord. Yes, it can wait.”
Salt squeezed the under-butler’s shoulder. “Good. This is what I want you to do…”
Tom had not needed a second prompting to do the Earl’s bidding. He was off across the tennis court at a run and disappeared through the door at the far end of the Royal Tennis Court into the corridor that connected up the Gallery boxes and there collided with Diana St. John.
She gave a little start and pulled her petticoats to her to allow Tom to pass. But she did not move aside and blocked his exit. Flustered, she dropped her fan, which Tom retrieved, then made a show of brushing down her petticoats before asking if Tom knew the whereabouts of Lord Salt. She had a most urgent need to see him. It was about her son Ron, and so it was very important his lordship be told at once. Did Mr. Allenby know his direction? None of the servants seemed to have any idea, and as the butler and the under-butler were both missing from their posts, there was not one servant who could oblige her; such a disorderly household. No doubt the young Countess would, in time, fathom the simple intricacies of household management, but it must be such a disruption for Lord Salt, not to mention a nuisance, when his lordship had so much more important matters to occupy his time, running the country for one.
Tom was about to protest and defend his stepsister but decided he did not have the time to waste on this woman and so his response was blunt and he did not linger. On his return on horseback to Grosvenor Square with the documents safely sequestered in a deep pocket of his frockcoat, Tom came to the uneasy realization that Diana St. John had been heading away from the Gallery, not going to the Royal Tennis Court as she had intimated. She must have been secreted in one of the Gallery boxes eavesdropping on the Earl’s conversation. Waylaying Tom was a ploy to fluster him from knowing the truth and to gain her time. Once he put the documents safely in the Earl’s hands, he resolved to go immediately to Jane’s apartments.
Diana St. John got to the Countess first.
When Willis was silently ushered into the warmth and opulent splendor of his master’s private apartments the Earl had discarded his tennis shirt and breeches for clothes more befitting his rank and his surroundings. If this noble colossus dressed in velvet and silver lacings magnificence didn’t put the tremble into Willis’s knees, then the rigidity in the Earl’s handsome features certainly had the ability to turn the under-butler’s limbs to frumenty. He also had the distinct impression that whatever the physical malaise his master had suffered on the tennis court, it was now well and truly vanquished. The Earl was again totally in command of his physical and mental faculties. This only increased the under-butler’s discomfort. Face-to-face alone with his lordship was a world away from waiting on the young Countess who not only made him feel at his ease and was open to taking his advice but also valued his opinion. He felt anything but easy and inclined to confidences with an implacable human edifice that had five hundred years of blue blood pumping through its veins.
His master was preoccupied with reading a document by the light streaming in through an undraped window. So he patiently waited at the edge of the deep carpet and took an interest beyond the cavernous sitting room to the dressing room where the valet was fossiking about an enormous hipbath. Andrews stopped and stared the under-butler up and down with a you’re-not-wanted-here nose in the air raise of his eyebrows that only increased Willis’s discomfort. Downstairs, Aloysius Andrews was a force to be reckoned with, and the only servant permitted to do and come and go as he pleased. Still, he had no place overhearing what Willis had to say, and his frowning disapproval was noted by the Earl who let it be known by a look over his gold-rimmed spectacles that Andrews was to take himself off.
Finally beckoned forward, Willis wondered if his legs would carry him across the room, particularly when at that moment the nobleman tossed the folded document onto a walnut side table with a sharp expletive that made the under-butler wince. His hands were shaking when he placed a leather pouch and a small, fine-necked blue glass bottle on the walnut side table. And when the Earl slipped the pouch into his frockcoat pocket without checking its contents, then stared at the blue glass bottle with a significant questioning raise of his eyebrows, Willis audibly gulped.
An hour and a half later, the under-butler emerged from his lordship’s private apartments on the brink of nervous collapse. Jenkins, with Andrews at his back, bailed him up in the servant passageway leading to the Countess’s apartments, demanding to know by what right Willis had gone behind his back in seeking an audience with their noble employer without his permission. Willis stared at the butler blankly, white-faced, and thin-lipped. He wiped the beading of sweat from his upper lip but said nothing. When he proceeded to walk off, Jenkins demanded he remain where he was or face instant dismissal for insubordination. Rufus Willis turned and with a slight bow quietly informed the astonished Mr. Jenkins and the jaw-slackened Andrews that it was quite unnecessary for him to go to so much trouble. He, Willis, no longer held the position of under-butler in this Grosvenor Square mansion; he would be gone by the end of the week. He then turned on a low heel and walked away with as much dignity as he could muster.
Arthur Ellis found the Countess of Salt Hendon in her pretty sitting room curled up with her needlework amongst the cushions in the window seat. The St. John children were playing with Viscount Fourpaws in front of the marble fireplace where radiated the warmth of a roaring fire. The children were laughing and happy, teasing the kitten with a length of ribbon, and the Countess was utterly captivating in a froth of sky-blue satin petticoats that flowed onto the floor, her shiny black hair piled atop her head and threaded with matching sky-blue satin ribbons that were the same color as her lovely eyes.
It was a thoroughly delightful and calm domestic scene and a welcome change for the secretary after the earlier drama down on the tennis court with his noble master suffering a seizure of some kind followed by his friend Tom Allenby charging into the bookroom unannounced brandishing parchment. When told the Earl was in his private apartments taking a bath and could not be disturbed Tom winked at him and said his noble brother-in-law would certainly see him, in his bath or no, and dashed off, the secretary’s protests falling on deaf ears. And on the way to the Countess’s rooms via the servant passage, because it was quicker than taking the main stair and meant there was no likelihood of coming face to face with a lingering petitioner or unwanted afternoon guest, he had come upon Rufus Willis being harassed by Mr. Jenkins and Aloysius Andrews, and looking as if he had just been delivered news of his own execution.
What Arthur wanted more than anything was a cup of Bohea tea, a slice of seedy cake and the Countess to smile upon him reassuringly. She seemed to read his mind because she was regarding him with an understanding smile as he straightened from a weary bow and offered him a seat on the striped sofa.
“Mr. Ellis! You’ve come to join us for tea,” Jane said with a bright smile, setting aside her needlework but remaining in the window seat. “But I’m afraid you are a little early, or are we late?”
“Ellis is early,” Ron announced, flinging the ribbon at his sister because he didn’t want to be seen playing with a kitten by one of his uncle’s male functionaries, after all he was almost nine years of age, and because it was Merry’s turn to amuse Viscount Fourpaws. “Besides, we’re waiting for Tom Allenby to join us.”
“He’s promised to tell us all about the manufacture of blue glass,” Merry volunteered, scooping the kitten into her arms “so we’ll know all about it when he takes us on a visit of his factories. Have you been to Tom Allenby’s factories, Aunt Jane?”
“No, but I should like to. Perhaps we can all go together?” Jane sugg
ested. “Shall you come with us, Mr. Ellis? Or has Tom already taken you to his Bristol manufactories?”
Arthur was slow to respond. In fact, he had not heard a word Jane said. He was staring openly at her. There was something about her today, something he could not quite put his finger on. She was radiant. Yes, that was it. Radiant. She had had that same radiance four autumns ago when he had visited Tom at Despard Park, around the time of the Salt Hunt Ball.
“It’s bad mannered to stare, Ellis,” Ron stated flatly, leaning against the window seat close to Jane.
“Everyone stares at Aunt Jane, Ron,” Merry responded matter-of-factly. “She doesn’t mind. Do you, Aunt Jane?”
“A-apologies, my lady,” Arthur stammered. “Tea-tea and c-cake would be most welcome, thank you.”
“It’s perfectly all right for the unwashed to stare, because they know no better,” Ron lectured his sister. “And they aren’t ever likely to come across a fairy because they don’t own gardens. But it’s wrong for servants to stare. Uncle Salt would not like that at all.”
“Mr. Ellis is not a servant. He’s a secretary,” Merry corrected her brother.
“Fairy?” Arthur Ellis enquired diffidently, an eye on the Countess. “Whoever said such a thing, Master Ron?”
Ron shrugged a thin shoulder. “Lady Caroline said—”
“—Uncle Salt found Aunt Jane at the bottom of his garden,” Merry interrupted, “amongst the flowers. Cousin Caroline said that’s where fairies take their tea, made from crushed dandelions, and that Uncle Salt picked Aunt Jane because she was by far the prettiest and nicest fairy he—”
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