Salt Hendon Omnibus 01 to 03

by Lucinda Brant

  Everyone agreed the handsome colossus that was the Earl of Salt Hendon and his exceptionally beautiful and very graceful bride made the perfect couple. Everyone, that is, except the Lady St. John.

  ~

  DIANA ST. JOHN kept her distance from her noble cousin for most of the Richmond Ball while he remained by his wife’s side. She flitted from group to group, seemingly oblivious to the Earl’s existence, which, friend and foe alike agreed, was most uncharacteristic. It was universally expected that at Society functions Lady St. John remained only one person removed from the Earl of Salt Hendon at all times. No one knew if he noticed her always in his orbit, or not. For the most part he seemed to treat her as if she were part of his shadow, and got on with his life. Everyone wondered if she would remain part of his shadow now that he had a bride, more beautiful and much younger than the handsome statuesque Lady St. John.

  Resplendent in a Venetian red and gold sack-back gown with three tiers of lace cascading from elbows to plump wrists, Diana St. John spent the entire time the Earl and Countess of Salt Hendon danced the minuet with her back to the dancers. She engaged the Florentine ambassador in conversation, who kept his gaze leveled at her breasts, magnificently displayed in a low square-cut bodice, a string of rubies and diamonds nestled in her cleavage. A confection of powdered curls, a gouache painted fan, and her distinct perfume were the finishing touches to her resplendent ensemble. She laughed, she chatted, and she was witty and full of life, so much so that more than a few guests commented on her high spirits. The only person to see through the façade was her brother.

  Sir Antony was confronted by his sister in an anteroom off the main vestibule as soon as his well-shod foot touched the marble parquetry inside Richmond House. She demanded to know why she had not been invited to share the carriage ride with him and Lord Salt. Sir Antony suffered in silence her barrage of verbal abuse. She was furious to be informed that the Earl had brought his wife to the Richmond Ball. To argue that their noble cousin had every right to bring his wife was pointless, so Sir Antony kept his opinions and his arguments to himself.

  He never won with Diana, and he had long since given up trying. He wasn’t by nature a coward, nor was he lazy, but he had learned from an early age that his elder sister had the ability to take a point of view and twist it to suit her own ends. It didn’t matter if her opponent had right on his side—by the time Diana had finished arguing, her opponent came round to her way of thinking, even if it was through sheer exhaustion and a need to escape her constant onslaught. Ethical considerations of right and wrong never entered her mind. It only mattered that she got her way. The only time Sir Antony ever saw her back down from a stubborn belief, indeed concede defeat in an argument, was with the Earl; and that was only because she had been besotted with their cousin since the schoolroom and would do anything to win his approval.

  Many of their friends and family wondered why such a strong-willed, handsome creature had settled on marriage with the mild-mannered Aubrey St. John. Sir Antony knew. St. John was Salt’s closest paternal cousin and best friend, and the pair were as inseparable as close-knit brothers. When it became clear to Diana that Salt would never offer for her, she chose the next best thing, or so she thought, in marrying Aubrey St. John. Lord St. John was not Salt, but he had been very much in love with Diana. The marriage was a disaster from the beginning, not least because, for all her outwardly overt sexual playfulness Sir Antony suspected his sister was frigid.

  The marriage quickly soured, even before the birth of the twins. Sir Antony was in no doubts that it was Diana who had pushed a wedge of mistrust between her husband and the Earl, and so firmly that it was not until St. John was dying that the two men were reconciled. St. John had not said much about the rift at the time but once, when in his cups, he had confided to Sir Antony that Salt had counseled him against marrying Diana, but he would not listen. Salt had been right all along.

  Sir Antony hoped that the Earl’s marriage would, at long last, throw the cold water of truth in his sister’s face, and awaken her to the indisputable fact that the Earl of Salt Hendon was forever beyond her reach. However, Diana’s response to the marriage not only surprised but also shocked Sir Antony to such a degree that he feared for her sanity. She conducted herself as if the Salt Hendon marriage was a small, not insurmountable, problem that could be overcome if she just put her mind to finding a solution. At her very worst, particularly in the company of their mutual friends, she put on a very public façade of careless indifference, acting as if Salt’s marriage had never taken place. She was acting that way tonight at the ball and he had to stop her before she made a fool of herself before three hundred people.

  Just before the commencement of the country-dances, standing in the refreshment room by a Corinthian pillar and pretending an interest in the crowd through his quizzing glass, Sir Antony tried to reason with his sister. She was talking with Pascoe Church, amongst others, and Sir Antony deliberately bumped her elbow so that she swirled about to see whom it was. He nodded at Pascoe Church, smiled at his sister, and took her firmly by the elbow, and led her to a quiet corner by a French window. Here he let her go and again took up his quizzing glass.

  “How very sporting of you to allow Salt breathing room tonight,” he said chirpily.

  Diana bristled. “Heard the expression “give enough rope”, brother dear?”

  “Salt’s never danced at the end of any ropes.”

  “Fool! Her. The moment he steps away, she’s bound to hang herself.”

  Sir Antony turned his quizzing glass from the glittering crowd to his sister. “It doesn’t look as if he wants to leave her side, does it?”

  “He can’t afford to, more’s the pity. An organ grinder has more confidence in his monkey!”

  Sir Antony couldn’t help a laugh of disbelief and he shook his powdered head. “You go on convincing yourself of that, Di. I suppose he isn’t by her side because that’s where he wants to be?”

  “Don’t be a dullard, Tony. Wants to be? You never were quick on the uptake, were you? If Salt hadn’t got you that sinecure in the Foreign Department I despair of where you would’ve ended up.”

  With a sigh, Sir Antony let the quizzing glass drop on its riband and picked up two glasses of champagne from a passing footman’s silver tray. He gave one to his sister, and raised his to her. “Comfortably ensconced at White’s behind the pages of a newssheet minding my own business, I suspect.”

  Diana St. John’s painted mouth twisted with disdain. “You were such a disappointment to Papa.”

  “We all can’t be Queen of the Amazons, my dear,” he replied mildly. “Oh, you could. No doubt about that, Di. But there’s one thing you’ll never be, and that’s Countess of Salt Hendon. The post’s been filled—for life.”

  “I so hate you, I’d like to throw this champagne in your inept face.”

  “Go ahead,” he stated and indicated the crowd breaking up into groups for the country-dances beyond the pillars in the ballroom. “At least then this lot would see your soft center and know that underneath your sparkling display of indifference you have a heart. Di, please, before you douse me in French vinegar, listen,” he added, all pretense dropped. “You must leave Salt alone, for your own sake as much as his. You need to make something of your life. You could marry any grand nobleman in this room in need of a wife and be a great political hostess; what a formidable pair you’d make! But there’s one nobleman you will never have, under any circumstances.”

  Diana St. John stared at her younger brother a full five seconds before she replied. Sir Antony thought he detected a whisper of emotion in her face, until she opened her mouth, and then his shoulders slumped at the futility of trying to make her see reason.

  “I settled for second best once before. Never again.”

  “St. John loved you to distraction, Di, and you know it! Poor chap. He knew your heart belonged to Salt, that you foolishly married him hoping to make Salt jealous. Didn’t work, did it?”

/>   “He deserves better than that skinny county chit who’s now on his arm,” Diana St. John ruminated, ignoring her brother’s pointed comments. “He was almost trapped by her four years ago, until I intervened to save his career and his name. And I won’t sit by and allow her to ruin his political ambitions now, not after all my hard work to see him rise to greatness.”

  “Your hard work?” Sir Antony was laughingly incredulous. He threw back the last drops of champagne and deftly offloaded his glass on a passing footman. “I suppose Salt had nothing to do with his own success?”

  “He needs a female who can help him achieve even greater political success. Someone just as adept at playing the political game. A hostess who isn’t afraid to be ruthless and cunning if required to further his career.”

  “Has it never occurred to you, Di, that what a nobleman of Salt’s position and abilities needs in a wife is someone who cares about him, not his political posts, or whether he’ll rise to be First Lord of the Treasury, or form government with a pack of petty corridor-whispering, backstabbing noble rabble. A wife who doesn’t meddle in politics, who, at the end of the day, makes him feel content and untroubled.” Sir Antony peered at his sister. “No? Not ringing any bells of St. Clemens in that pretty head of yours, sister of mine?”

  “Salt may have married a wide-eyed stick insect, but he need not be distracted by her,” Diana stated as if her brother hadn’t spoken, depositing her glass of champagne on a silver tray that was being offered to her. “If he wants distraction, I can provide him with any number of females chafing at the bit to fill the position of mistress.”

  “Your services in that area have never been sought or required,” Sir Antony remarked dryly. “And as he hasn’t strayed from the marital bed since the day he was married, his carnal wants are being admirably fulfilled by his wife.”

  “That just proves she’s ill-bred. Noble wives are not there to play harlot for their husbands. Husbands take their carnal appetites elsewhere. That’s what whores are for.”

  Sir Antony rolled his eyes to the ornate ceiling on a sigh.

  “Father lamented Mother had all the carnal cravings of a Scottish salmon.”

  “He’ll soon tire of her,” Diana went on, ignoring her brother’s remark, “whether she plays the whore for him or not—he always tires of his whores.”

  Finally Sir Antony’s frayed temper snapped. He gritted his teeth and turned glittering blue eyes on his sister. “For God’s sake, Diana! Stop calling her that. She’s his wife.”

  Diana teasingly tickled her brother under the chin with the pleats of her fan. “Ooh! Such emotion, Tony! Got you under her whore’s spell, too? That would explain the latest gossip circulating drawing rooms—while Lord Salt is hard at work making speeches in the House, you are hard at work between Lady Salt’s thighs.”

  Sir Antony snatched his sister’s fan and flung it to the floor in abhorrence.

  “Never. Never repeat that piece of filth again,” he growled. “Lady Salt is deeply in love with her husband. I believe her to be honest and true. And even if in your blind jealousy you have convinced yourself that she could be disloyal to Salt, you should never have believed it of me, your own brother! I could never cuckold my best friend.”

  “Sir Lancelot to Salt’s King Arthur to be sure, Tony!” Diana announced dismissively with a trill of laughter that had the few remaining guests lingering by the refreshment tables turning to stare with interest at brother and sister. “But it’s not what I believe that matters. It’s what Salt believes about his little whore-bride, isn’t it?”

  “For the last time, Diana,” Sir Antony stated, beyond patience. “Leave them alone—for your own sake. Salt has tolerated your interference in the past because it has been harmless, if annoyingly persistent. This is an entirely different game you’re playing at, and one you are destined to lose. I give you fair warning: Overstep the mark with his wife and he’ll never forgive you—ever.”

  Diana shrugged a bare shoulder and changed tack. “You think I give a groat about that insipid milkmaid being Countess of Salt Hendon? My dear Tony, what I do I do, and have always done, for Ron.”

  Sir Antony was skeptical. “It’s what you do to Ron that bothers me.”

  “I beg you pardon?” Diana St. John was uncharacteristically startled.

  For the first time in their conversation, Sir Antony sensed that his sister was paying attention. “Here’s another warning you should heed, Di. If your son continues to be ill, if you continue to have Salt called out at all hours of the night, you may find your children removed from your care.”

  “Are you drunk? I am their mother. Salt would never take them from me. Never.”

  Sir Antony held her gaze. His mouth grim. “Fair warning, Di.”

  She turned her chin, and out of the corner of her eye spied the Earl at the edge of the dance floor in relaxed conversation with that old roué Lord March, the perverse wit George Selwyn, and his mentor and good friend Lord Waldegrave. The Countess was nowhere to be seen. He was happier and more content than she had seen him in many years. In fact, since that fateful Hunt Ball at Salt Hall when he had proposed to Jane Despard. It made Diana St. John sick to her stomach.

  It was time she made her move on the Countess and stopped squandering it in vapid conversation with her brother. Still, she couldn’t resist a parting remark, to exert her superiority over him, as always, and calculated to send his mind into a spin of conjecture. She snatched her fan from an obliging footman, who had scooped it up off the polished floorboards, flicked it open, and with a bunch of her silk petticoats in one hand, said to Sir Antony with a smug smile, before she swept off to the ballroom, “Salt’s whore-bride has a dirty little secret. She’s with child. But whose brat is it?”

  SIR ANTONY’S JAW swung wide at this startling pronouncement and he watched his sister traverse the ballroom, stopping to say hello to an old Dowager Duchess with gout here, kissing the powdered and patched cheek of a dear friend in a towering toupée there, playfully rapping her fan across the knuckles of an old roué who bowed over her outstretched hand, then exchanging smiles and pleasantries with a Lord of the Admiralty before disappearing from view onto the terrace. She was the most amiable and animated beauty in the vast sea of noble silks and powder, and an altogether different being from the one Sir Antony knew as his sister, and it bothered him greatly.

  Her throwaway news that the Countess of Salt Hendon was with child made him oblivious to the footman who stood waiting at his elbow. The servant had been standing there for some time. Indeed, he had been the one to retrieve Lady St. John’s fan from the floor. The only sign that he had heard the whole of the heated discussion between brother and sister was the redness to his ears. In every other respect he remained blank-faced. Inside he was bursting with news and couldn’t wait for the ball to end, to exchange these juicy tidbits with the staff below stairs. He now stepped forward and presented the still gaping Sir Antony with a sealed letter.

  Sir Antony had the letter in his hand a full minute before he realized it was there, and when he turned to enquire of the servant who had sent it, found himself alone by the French window. He broke the seal, mind still abuzz, but when he opened out the single sheet of paper and saw the familiar handwriting, his mind cleared of all else. Reading the two sentences caused his heart to flutter, and he beamed from ear to ear. Quickly, he put the letter in an inner pocket of his frock coat.

  Five minutes later he was making his apologies to his hosts, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, and before a powdered head could turn to wonder why the diplomat was making a hasty retreat from the social event of the winter thaw, Sir Antony was out the front door and in a hackney headed for Grosvenor Square.

  THIRTEEN

  JANE LEFT the glittering ballroom for the fresh air of the expansive terrace with its breathtaking views of the Thames, mind bubbling over with so many new faces and names that she was sure she would forget them all by morning. She was in search of her stepbrother, whom she spie
d earlier in the ballroom in company with Billy Church. He had waved to her, but she had been caught up in a round of endless introductions and small talk, everyone it seemed who was anyone eager to meet the Earl of Salt Hendon’s bride. She had lost sight of Tom in the press of the crowd and it was only later, after Pascoe, Lord Church, had taken her out for a country-dance, and Salt was busily engaged in conversation with Lord Waldegrave, did she feel able to slip away.

  Tom was said to be on the terrace, but so it seemed was half the guest list. Couples had spilled out of the house to walk the gravel paths or just stand by the iron railings to admire the view, considered one of the finest in all London. Liveried footmen scurried about with trays of refreshment. Others stood to attention either side of the wide steps that took guests from one flat expanse of terrace to the next until they finally arrived at the jetty, where bobbed colorful barges and boats that had brought guests from lower down the Thames.

  The enormous shoals of floating ice that had blocked the river in January were now melted, so all manner of water craft plied the congested breadth of the Thames, from small two-man row boats, to ships under sail and covered barges festooned with colorful bunting. At the foreshore of the river to the horizon everywhere was brick and stone, the red roofs of buildings, and church spires piercing the milky blue sky. Rising majestically above this conglomeration that was the city of London stood St. Paul’s, the cathedral’s glorious dome dwarfing everything that surrounded it, the magnificence of which never failed to draw a breath of amazement from this superlative vantage point, from residents and visitors alike.