Jane drew breath now as she took in the sprawling vista of river, city and darkening sky. She carefully descended the steps that led down to the next section of terrace closer to the water’s edge, a clutch of petticoats in her hand, and glad she had come outside before nightfall shrouded the view in a dark blanket, and the cold air finally penetrated her bones. Strategically placed tapers lined the terrace walks, ready to be lit the moment the signal was given, to ward off darkness and cold. And out in the water bobbed a flotilla of barges, packed with fire rockets and Catherine wheels, all intended to light up the night sky, however briefly, and shower the guests in flecks of tiny lights: The much anticipated finale to the Richmond Ball.
Music drifted out from the ballroom. Laughter and conversation in the open air competed with the noise of water traffic and sounds of a city that never slept. Jane had at first thought she would never be able to sleep at night with the constant and varied noises around her, everything from carriage wheels rumbling along the cobbles, cattle being herded to market, sellers advertising their wares in their sing-song voices, to the pitter-pat of pattens that kept a lady’s silk shoes from town filth. But since her marriage, she had slept very well indeed, in no small part due to her husband’s warm embrace.
Instinctively, she lightly fingered the sapphire locket about her throat and wistfully thought about the baby she was carrying.
“You think that trinket holds any meaning for him?” a voice purred in her ear.
Jane spun about, saw a flash of red and gold silk and was suddenly nauseous. Dizzy and disorientated, she stuck out a hand to hard grip the iron railing that was the only barrier between her and the plunge to the embankment below. It was the overpowering scent of the woman’s perfume, not the words hissed in her ear that had her flustered.
Diana St. John had cornered her where two iron railings met at right angles. She stood behind Jane, her wide petticoats penning her in and blocking her escape. To the casual observer it appeared as if the two women were admiring the view from opposite compass points while in conversation.
“That trinket has no more meaning for Salt than that garish wedding band he was forced to slip on your finger,” Diana St. John continued flatly, hazel-eyed gaze riveted to Jane’s face. “His mother wore the Sinclair locket on State occasions and to significant balls such as this because it was expected of her; another social trapping of her position in society. But she considered it an ugly heirloom. It suits you perfectly.”
“Is there anything I may do for you, my lady?” Jane asked quietly, blue eyes holding the woman’s gaze, while she stirred fresh air onto her face with her fan in an attempt to ward off the waves of nausea that came and went with Diana St. John’s strong scent carried on the river breeze. Perhaps if she let the woman say her piece she would then leave her alone?
Diana St. John’s painted mouth thinned and she cast a significant look over Jane’s shoulder at the flowing river. “Aside from drowning yourself? No.”
Jane swallowed. “If I have offended you in any way…”
“Offended me? Your existence offends me!”
“Why?”
“Why?” Diana St. John repeated, disconcerted. How dare this wisp of a woman, who had the bad manners to put up her chin, ask such a blunt question? Who did she think she was? “Surely you know the answer. Or are you as wafer-brained as you are scrawny? He deserves better than you. He deserves someone befitting his noble blood and rank, someone of whom he can be proud, who holds to the same convictions and ambitions. He deserves—”
“—you?” Jane interrupted simply. “I am sorry he did not marry you years ago, my lady. Then perhaps you would not hate him.”
“Hate him?” Diana St. John jabbed Jane’s beribboned stomacher with the closed sticks of her fan. “What do you mean, hate him? I love him. I’ve always loved him!”
“For a woman who professes love, you spend a great deal of your time needlessly interfering in his life—”
“How dare—”
“—and finding ways to punish him for not loving you in return.”
Diana St. John was rendered speechless. She itched to slap the Countess of Salt Hendon’s beautiful face. A terrace crowded with the crème de la crème of Polite Society forestalled her.
“Clever,” she finally managed to say in a low voice and held firm her fan to Jane’s belly. “Got a dirty little secret to tell me, my lady?” she taunted, again jabbing the fan into her. Jane opened wide her eyes and instinctively tried to move away but was trapped by the iron railing in the small of her back. Diana St. John’s smug smile reappeared. “I’ll lay good odds he’s blissfully ignorant of the brat you’re carrying, just as he was four years ago.”
“Yes, I am pregnant with Lord Salt’s child, my lady,” Jane replied with a calmness that belied her anxiety. “You can be the first to congratulate us.”
“Congratulate you? Dear God, I’ll see you and the bastard burn in hell first!”
“How is that you know I conceived Salt’s child four years ago?” Jane asked in her blunt way, though it took all her self-control to remain calm, stunned as she was by the ferocity of the woman’s vitriol. “I told no one Magnus was the father of my child.”
“That was a dim-wit’s mistake, but one I applaud wholeheartedly. Had you sense, you would’ve confessed all to Sir Felix, and your father would have run hotfoot to London, and forced Salt to marry you. By protecting Magnus you caused the death of his child. Good Lord! You didn’t even possess the guile to keep your legs closed to him until he had you up before parson. More fool you.”
“Perhaps I was a fool. Perhaps I am in some way to blame for my baby’s death, but… I was naïve and so desperately in love, and believed myself loved in return…” When Diana St. John gave a snort of disbelief, Jane added quietly, hoping to see a spark of humanity in the beautiful painted face, “What about the birth of your twins, when you first held Ron and Merry in your arms? Did you not love your babies so much it hurt?”
“What sentimental tripe!” Diana St. John said dismissively, then smiled knowingly, prodding Jane again with her fan. “My children are worth a great deal to me, a very great deal because Salt loves them as if they were his own. My son is Salt’s heir. He would do anything for my son; leave his bride in the middle of the night to comfort me by Ron’s sickbed. Don’t think he won’t continue to do so for as along as I want him there, out of your bed and beside me. In that there is no contest. You will never win.”
Jane regarded Diana St. John with horrified fascination to think she saw her children as merely a means to an end, that end being Lord Salt’s time and attentions, that it was a contest worth winning just to have the Earl attending on her sick son in the middle of the night.
Jane voiced a disturbing notion that had been forming in the back of her mind since that day in the freezing anteroom when she was overcome with nausea at the scent of Lady St. John’s perfume. “You were there the night I miscarried. Your voice—your perfume, I remember both distinctly.”
“Drink it in, my lady,” Diana St. John purred, enjoying intimidating the Countess, whose face had lost its healthy glow. Perhaps if she tormented her a little while longer the woman might collapse from nervous exhaustion which would bring on a miscarriage. “It’s a very distinctive scent, is it not? Most men adore it. It’s blended for me by a little apothecary on the Strand; very talented German; perfumer, apothecary and supplier of all manner of substances to rid oneself of unwanted ills. Does it make you feel very, very green? For shame! Let me give you something to expel your nausea. I assure you it works every time. Sir Felix was very grateful for my guidance, and of course he couldn’t have been more pleased with the medicinal I provided.”
Jane was dismayed. “You supplied the medicinal that quickened my baby?”
“You should be obliged to me that the matter was taken care of so expeditiously.”
“Matter? Expeditiously?” Jane fought back tears hearing her dead unborn baby referred to in such a cold-hearted way. “Ha
ve you no conscience? I lost my baby that night.”
“Aren’t you listening, you stupid creature?” Diana St. John sneered. “You didn’t lose it. The bastard was quite rightly disposed of on the orders of Sir Felix.”
“Did it mean nothing to you that Magnus was the father?”
“It meant everything to me. Are you bird-witted? It was precisely because it was his child that it had to be removed.”
“And you profess to love him?”
“Yes, him, not his ill-gotten offspring. The loss of one barely-formed child is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Women miscarry every day. Babies die. It’s a fact.”
Jane shivered with a mixture of fear and revulsion. The sooner she escaped this woman’s evil aura, the better. Years of being eaten up with jealousy and bitterness had turned Diana St. John’s heart to stone. It was clear the woman had lost all sense of right from wrong, and any means—interfering in the Earl’s life, in Jane’s life, taking the life of the innocent, their baby’s life—was acceptable, if it achieved her ends.
“Remove your fan, my lady,” Jane ordered.
Instead of doing as requested Diana St. John jabbed a little harder at Jane’s stomach. “There’s no guarantee this one will be delivered full-term. No guarantee at all. Just because it was conceived in wedlock does not give it protection. Many hazards can befall mother and child before birth—”
“How dare you threaten me!”
Diana St. John prodded again, but this time had the fan knocked out of her grasp as Jane pushed past her. Instantly, Diana St. John thrust out a velvet arm to the iron railing and blocked Jane’s exit.
“I haven’t finished with you yet!” she hissed.
“But I have finished with you, Madam,” Jane replied firmly. She looked significantly at Diana St. John’s obstructing arm and then up at the woman’s painted face. “Have you forgotten where we are?”
Surprisingly, Diana St. John had done just that, but she was so intent on putting this little upstart in her place, to show her that she was worth less than nothing and that the Earl of Salt Hendon did not care a tester for his country bride, that she was beyond caring who was peering down at them from the terraces.
“You smug little slut! You think you are the object of a singular devotion? Ha! He has finally tired of you. It is a fact of life, and one you had best get used to. Noblemen of Salt’s ilk possess strong carnal appetites and thus are incapable of remaining faithful. And why should they when they can have the pick of any litter? Cast your mind back a sennight—Wednesday and Thursday nights to be exact.” When Jane gave a start and half-turned, she smiled thinly. “Ah, so you are not so stupid as I first supposed. Then you will appreciate that I have made it my business to know where Salt spends each and every night of the year, and with whom. So when I tell you what I know, I am merely stating facts.”
When Jane stared at her mutely, she smiled her satisfaction.
“Good. We understand one another. Then know this: On Wednesday and Thursday night last week, when he did not return to Grosvenor Square and to your bed, and you spent the entire night alone, possibly and stupidly waiting up for him, he was with his latest mistress. She has been very patient and he has shown great forbearance over the past three months. You should count yourself fortunate to have received that much of his undivided attention. But now the honeymoon period is over and he has done his duty by you as a bride. Now he will return to his usual way of life, the way of life Society expects of a nobleman in his position.”
“Jane? Jane! There you are!”
“Tom?”
Jane saw her stepbrother coming lightly down the wide terrace steps through a blindness of tears. She was so eager to get to him and away from this evil woman that she pushed with two hands on Diana St. John’s arm, as if it were a gate that could be swung wide on its hinges. But before she could go to him, before she had taken more than two steps in his direction, Diana St. John had caught the lace flounce at her elbow.
“You’re being sent to rot in the country. It’s just as well, isn’t it? Because he’ll never believe the brat you’re carrying is his,” she announced gleefully in Jane’s ear. “Not in a thousand nights, not after all the barren lovers he’s had over the years. It’s so much easier to farm out a bastard in the wilds of Wiltshire. You’ll never see it again and he’ll never want you back in London after—”
“What are you doing down here in the shadows?” Tom scolded his stepsister good-naturedly, reaching her just as Lady St. John let go of Jane’s arm. She brushed passed him in a billow of red and gold silk, a lovely smile directed his way. He nodded to her ladyship and took Jane’s hand, and turned to lead her back up the terrace steps. “You’re half-frozen! Salt’s been looking for you everywhere. The fireworks are about to commence and the best views are to be had from up there on the top terrace. And we’d best fetch your cloak. We’ll miss the rockets if you don’t hurry—Jane?”
He turned when Jane stopped at the foot of the steps. He peered at her more closely. It was only then that he saw that she was deathly white and that her cheeks were stained with tears.
“Jane? What’s wrong? What did that woman say to upset you?” he asked, a swift look up at Lady St. John who was sweeping up the stairs just as the Earl of Salt Hendon was descending them.
She waylaid him, a hand possessively on his upturned velvet cuff, her petticoats pressed against his silken leg. She was talking to him in a rush, and he looked over her carefully constructed coiffure to Tom and Jane huddled together on the lower terrace. Tom frowned. Tomorrow could not come soon enough. He turned back to his stepsister, to confide in her he had just told the Earl a few home truths, but not to worry, his lordship seemed to take it in his stride.
Although, being rather foxed, Tom was not absolutely sure the Earl’s silence was thunderous fury or dignified acceptance. Whatever, tomorrow he would set matters straight. He had documents to wave under his lordship’s fine nose. His uncle’s lawyers had presented them to him with the understanding that Jacob Allenby intended them for the Earl, but only if Tom thought it in the best interests of his stepsister to do so. Tom had every intention of presenting them to the Earl in his bookroom tomorrow, and that would settle the matter and it need never be discussed again. His lips, and everyone else’s would be sealed. Jane’s happiness depended upon it.
Jane did not understand a word of Tom’s garbled speech, not least because her encounter with Diana St. John had left her nauseous and emotionally drained. What she did understand was that her stepbrother had accosted Salt on a public terrace and had left that impromptu interview with no idea if the Earl was angry or not, which told Jane her husband was very angry indeed with Tom. She wished she felt better able to quiz Tom but the relief of being out from under Diana St. John’s sinister orbit was enough to make her light-headed. Tom’s voice became very far away as she tried to stay upright. She was certain if he fetched a glass of lemon water she would feel much better. But before she could ask him her eyelids fluttered, her knees buckled and she crumpled into Tom’s arms in a dead faint.
~
AN ACRID SMELL opened Jane’s eyes. She screwed up her mouth and pushed away the hand that held the burnt feather under her nose and tried to focus and get her bearings. The last thing she remembered was Tom telling her he had approached Salt on the terrace to tell him a thing or two, and then everything went black. Now there were voices and light, and what seemed to be a hundred faces peering down at her from way up in the stars of a night sky. She was lying on the small patch of lawn to the side of the terrace steps, cradled in Tom’s lap. Several liveried servants were peering down at her, under the light cast by a flambeau held by a footman, as was every man and woman leaning over the iron railings of the terrace to better view the theatrics of the Countess of Salt Hendon’s faint at her first public engagement.
“Help me up, Tom,” Jane murmured, cheeks now aglow with embarrassment at being the main attraction at the Richmond Ball.
“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 gently as he helped her to stand. “Best to stay out of her way.”
Jane pulled the fur-lined cloak tightly about her. “I am only too happy to do so. If she would only stay out of 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: 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.”
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