Salt Hendon Omnibus 01 to 03

by Lucinda Brant

  “And what if these whispers reached the ears of some important men in the government, men of influence that make the decisions on who will be elevated to Ambassador and who won’t? Having a wife who is whispered about—who has a-a past—could affect your chances of being an Ambassador one day, could it not?”

  “Caro, darling, most ministers within the Foreign Department begin to worry for their careers if they are not whispered about.”

  Caroline did not see the humor in this quip. His good-natured responses, far from making her at ease, only served to increase her anxiety and the belief she was unworthy to be his wife. She let go of his hand and clasped hers together, fingers tightly entwined.

  “But not whispers about their wives… No man wants his wife spoken about, for others to believe him a-a cuckold, even if it is in word only. Rumors don’t have to be true for some of the-the muck to stick, do they?”

  Sir Antony lost his smile. He could see she was on the verge of tears, and all that his easygoing reassurances had achieved was to increase her apprehension. There was some monumental struggle going on inside her beautiful head, and he felt an ass for making light of her anxiety. There was only one way to alleviate her doubts and help her over the abyss of indecision, so he said gently,

  “What is it you would have me do, Caro? Just ask it of me and I will do it, whatever it is. But there is one thing I will not do, and that is falter in my determination to marry you.”

  “Don’t tell Salt you proposed. Don’t ask him. Not today. Please.”

  He was surprised by her quick bluntness, and by the request. Still, he remained calm and inclined his head.

  “Very well, I will delay the formality of seeking Salt’s permission to marry you, if that is your wish.”

  When she visibly sighed her relief, he was hurt. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to delay for her own reasons or if she lacked the confidence in his ability to convince Salt to give his permission. He pretended an interest in his quizzing glass, polishing the lens with the folds of intricate lace at his wrist, though his attention did not waver from her for a moment.

  “Do you have any notion when would be an appropriate time for me to broach the subject of our betrothal with your brother?” he asked calmly. “Or is something required of me before I may do so?”

  “Oh, I knew you would understand!” Caroline declared with a smile of relief, the dark cloud lifting from her brow.

  He returned her smile, no clearer idea what she was talking about, but thankful for small mercies because it was the first time she had smiled at him since they came face-to-face the previous evening at Diana’s soirée. He let the quizzing glass suspend on its riband against the embroidered front of his waistcoat and swept her a majestic bow, lace at his wrist trailing the floor.

  “Make your request of me, my lady,” he said with playful grandiloquence, “and I will do my utmost to please you. Walk backwards to Bristol; storm the doors of some mismanaged menagerie; take up Peter’s cause against Salt’s displeasure; you name it. All I ask is that you are there beside me.”

  What she proposed startled him, and while Caroline had always been forthright and frank in her opinions with him, he would never have imagined the Caroline he knew before his exile to Russia ever offering up such an outrageous suggestion. Ultimately, it was her emotional speech of halting, half-finished sentences leading up to her request, a speech full of raw honesty and filled with self-doubt, coupled with what she required of him before she would be willing to marry him, that had him reeling and reaching for the back of the nearest chair.

  THIRTEEN

  IT WAS IN THAT SMALL hesitant moment before making her request that Caroline truly saw him for the first time since finding him in easy conversation with Kitty and Mr. Ellis. She hardly noticed his suit, that he was wearing her favorite color; or anything else about his person. She was too annoyed with Kitty for having her hand on Antony’s close cuff. It was enough to blind her to all other considerations, which was a childish reaction. If she were honest with herself, it had little to do with her harmless sister-in-law and everything to do with her feelings for Sir Antony.

  With her request on the tip of her tongue, and clasped hands pressed to her mouth in anticipation of his response, she allowed her green eyes to flicker across the lean contours of his handsome face to his square heavy chin, and all the way down to the hardened muscle of his large calves encased in white silk stockings. And for the umpteenth time since spying him outside his townhouse, she wondered what such well-exercised masculinity must look like stripped of all those exquisitely embroidered silk layers.

  The thought of him naked was not new. As a maiden, she had often speculated what it would be like to share the bed of Sir Antony Templestowe. What was new was the uncertainty and dread that accompanied this speculation, because at two-and-twenty, she was now well aware of what it was like to be desired and ignored in equal measure.

  She wondered if Antony would still desire her without her feminine protective outer shell of layered petticoats, whalebone hoops, buckram stays and shapeless chemise. Would he find her rounded breasts and silken thighs to his liking, or would her female curves in all their naked glory fail to arouse him, as had happened with her unresponsive husband? She was no svelte nymph, no sylph beauty like Jane—Jane, whom Antony had held up—thrown in her face more belike—in a drunken stupor at the disastrous recital, as the epitome of feminine beauty.

  It was this need to know and a determination that Antony should have his eyes wide-open to her shame that made her hesitate to accept his offer of marriage. Dacre Wraxton was right. Antony was a man of scruples, and she admired him all the more for it, but it also meant that he was unlikely to accept anything less than a virtuous widow for a bride. Despite what Jane had counseled, she believed she must air her past history. Only then could there be no surprises or disappointment and she could marry Antony with a clear conscience…

  With this in mind, she took a deep breath and let the fears and doubts swirling about her subconscious spill forth with little regard of their effect on her receptive audience of one.

  “I hardly recognized you in the street yesterday. You are quite transformed. Oh, I very much like the way you are now, but you must know it would not have mattered a jot to me had you returned unchanged. And there is something—something about you that has changed in here,” she added, placing her flattened palm to the front of his silken waistcoat where his heart beat. “But when I look in your eyes, it is you I see—the friend of my girlhood, and it is such a relief to know you are still you. I just wish…” She became misty-eyed and put her hands behind her back. “When I think of all that has happened to me since you went away… I dreaded you finding out about my marriage… That I was no longer a—”

  She baulked at the word virgin, saying it in her head. It made her anxious every time she ruminated on what would be his reaction when he discovered just how she had lost her virginity. Yet, it wasn’t just him finding out the circumstances of that fateful night, it was what he would think of her, and if he would still want her.

  “Of course I realize you are aware I am no longer an innocent. I was married for two years.” She met Sir Antony’s unwavering blue eyes with a wan smile. “I am certain you have been told, or you may have guessed, that it was not a happy marriage by any means. In truth, we were both wretched. He-he did not care for me in that way,” she confessed. “I thought there was something wrong with me. But I was shown differently, so I do know how it is meant to be when a couple are-are—physically intimate—” She pulled herself up when he grabbed for the back of the nearest chair, as if needing to steady himself, reasoning she had made enough of a startling admission for now. She took a deep breath. “Which brings me to my request… I think it prudent—in fact, it is most important to me—that we share a bed before we are married. It is all very well that you say you love me, but if we don’t share a bed before we are married we won’t-won’t—know if we are-are—right for each other in that
way. If we are to spend the rest of our lives together, we need to be physically compatible, don’t you agree?”

  There was a moment of complete silence between them, the only sound in the room being the tinkling of Peter the Macaw’s chain. It rattled against the carved pedestal as the bird climbed from one rung to the next in the warmth of the sun.

  Sir Antony attempted to clear his throat, fist up to his closed mouth, though he did not let go of the chair back.

  “I cannot fault your reasoning, Caro,” he managed to say in a tone he hoped was neutral.

  Mentally, he was frantically wondering what she had endured in the bed shared with her husband that she required physical confirmation he was able to perform in the bedchamber before she was prepared to accept his offer of marriage. And what did she mean when she said she was shown differently, and by whom? He stored that startling disclosure away for another day, and continued in a voice that was at odds with his frenetic thoughts.

  “Physical compatibility is exceedingly important in a marriage based on love, I agree,” he continued levelly. “I would be telling an untruth if I said otherwise. And although I have no firsthand experience of the institution of marriage, arranged for convenience or for love, the single most important ingredient for me is love. All else can be worked through. Friendship, mutual respect and shared interests, these, too, are very important. But I would hate myself forevermore if I thought you married me with unresolved doubts of any kind. And so I am willing to accept your proposal that we share a bed before marriage. I understand it is only in this way that you can assure yourself that I measure up as a lover—that I am more than capable of pleasing you.”

  “Oh! You must not think it is you!” she blurted out, suddenly shy and awkward under his unblinking gaze. “I do not doubt you will please me—exceedingly. You have experience. All men must… But that was a naïve assumption. But I know you have had your-your—share of-of affairs. You possibly had a mistress or two in Russia—”

  “One,” he confessed, his cravat suddenly inexplicably tight. “I had one mistress while in Russia. It was not a tawdry affair, Caro. You must understand, once I discovered you were married, I lost all hope. Your husband was a very young man. There was every expectation your marriage would last for at least twenty years, perhaps thirty. I had to get on with my life or go mad. I allowed myself to care—to care very deeply—for Katya…”

  “Katya…?”

  “The Princess Ekaterina Naryshkina Knyazhevy-Yusupova.”

  “A princess?”

  “Yes.”

  “A Russian princess?”

  “Yes.” Sir Antony heard the edge to her voice and couldn’t be happier that she might be jealous. He suppressed a smile, adding seriously, “Katya is the sister of Misha, more formally Prince Mikhail Ivan Knyazhevy-Yusupov, Russian minister for trade. Both Katya and her brother Misha were—are—my very good friends. If not for them, I doubt I would be the man you see standing before you.”

  “The sister was your mistress, and the brother and his sister are your good friends?” Caroline frowned at his nod. She did not like such an arrangement at all. “Did this Prince Mikhail know you were bedding his sister?”

  “Katya and I would not have become lovers had her brother been unhappy with the arrangement.”

  “Naturally,” Caroline murmured, thinking the customs of the Russian nobility odd indeed; knowing Salt would never have countenanced such an arrangement.

  For some inexplicable reason, such a civilized understanding between brother, sister and lover only increased her jealousy for this unknown Princess, as did Sir Antony’s affront that she would dare suggest he would act less than honorably in the matter. Of course he had asked permission of the brother, Caroline thought with a mental twinge of annoyance. No doubt he and the Prince came to some sort of gentlemanly arrangement. It would not have surprised her to learn that Antony had not touched a hair on the head of the precious princess until her brother had given his consent. She knew it was not in his nature to be deceitful. What deceit and cunning there was in his family had all gone to Diana.

  Knowing all this, then why, she wondered, did it hurt her heart he had conducted his affair, as he did everything in his life, in a gentlemanly manner? Why would her feelings not have been so bruised had he cavorted in the beds of any number of Russian females with no thought to their brothers, or even their husbands?

  She did not need to look for answers. She knew. He had said it himself. He cared deeply for this Russian princess and their affair had been conducted honorably, if such unions could be called thus. Whereas, her behavior before and after her marriage had been anything but honorable. She was quite certain she knew the answer to her next question, but she asked it anyway.

  “Do you—Do you still care—deeply—for your Russian princess?”

  He could not lie to her. It was no way for them to begin again.

  “Yes. But not in the way you think,” he added in a rush watching her porcelain cheeks flood with heat. He smiled crookedly. “You said yourself love won’t be enough for me, for us, when I know everything. I believe you will be proved wrong. I, too, don’t want to hide anything from you. You need to know that the moment I found out you were a widow, my hope returned. I want us to marry and spend the rest of our lives into old age together… Do you understand, Caro? Just the two of us. I do not now have a mistress and it is my heartfelt wish that I never shall again. But that depends on you…”

  “Oh? Oh!” Caroline could not suppress her delight at his emphatic confession and she blushed, quickly lowering her lashes when he raised one eyebrow, as if to quell any doubt she might have as to his sincerity. Finally, she looked up at him again. “You must be satisfied that I please you too. It is only fair, is it not, that we please each other?”

  “Yes. But I fail to understand why you would harbor doubts that you would be a disappointment to me in any way.”

  Caroline moved closer, so close that her petticoats brushed against his long legs, and he straightened and let go of the chair back.

  “It is because I do have firsthand experience of the institution of marriage, not a love match, but a marriage nonetheless,” she explained, “that I am very aware there are expectations on both sides. If the husband fails to provide… If the wife is not what the husband expects… Then there will be disappointment. I do not believe my feelings for you have changed and my skin remains the same. What you see before you is the Caroline you knew. I am no taller, no prettier, and still have the same wretched red hair and freckles I have always had. Stripped of this shell I am no different, either. But what would you know of that? But—I have changed, Antony. Under my skin, I am not the same female you knew before you went to ’Petersburg. And because I am not the same, I fear that when you know me better as I am now, you will not want me in that way as you once did…”

  When he remained silent, she gave a little sigh of defeat and fiddled with the gold chains of her equipage before looking up at him again.

  “Not that I am at all certain you ever wanted me in that way before you left for ’Petersburg! You say you love me, have always loved me, but you have never—in all the years we have known one another—ever tried to kiss me. So how do I know that you truly want me? Those pecks on the cheek at birthdays and Christmases I dismiss!”

  “Not want you?” he repeated in a whisper. “Not want to kiss you?”

  Later, he was to wonder what prompted him into action: How bravely she looked directly into his eyes as she voiced her doubts about his desire for her, or Peter the Macaw’s loud attention-seeking screech. Whatever it was, something triggered deep within him and it gave him the strength and purpose to vault the high mental wall, built many years ago to keep his desire prisoner until Caroline had grown to womanhood. One word—want—was all it took for that wall to crumble.

  One moment she was explaining her feelings to him and he was patiently listening, a hand in the pocket of his lavender silk frock coat, the other fiddling with t
he gold-rimmed quizzing glass dangling on a silken riband about his neck. In the next he shoved aside a chair, and so violently it collided with another and toppled, and pulled Caroline into his arms to press his mouth to hers, stopping her words and sweeping aside years spent in purgatorial circumspection.

  “Want you? How could you doubt it?” he asked huskily, keeping her within the circle of his embrace, face poised over hers.

  Her green eyes looked up at him without guile and there was a light there, something he had never seen, or failed to see because he had never taken the liberty of holding her in his arms before: Desire. He saw that she desired him as much as he did her, and he wanted to lift her up and twirl her about in his arms in celebration.

  “I can’t wait to show you just how much I want you, my doubting beauty. Truth be told, I have wanted to kiss you since you were fifteen years old, when you so confidently announced we would marry on your eighteenth birthday. I want to kiss you all over; every strand of your glorious golden hair, every enticing curve—everything.”

  His words were wondrously reassuring, as was his kiss. The long line of his hard body pressed against her, the masculine traces of sandalwood cologne, and the roughness of his skin as his mouth met hers were all so intoxicating. He was intoxicating. She held on tightly to the open front of his frock coat as if she feared drowning. And she was drowning, in wanting more of him. She needed more. She needed a proper kiss, a kiss that would forever remove the memories of a puerile husband and the attentions of a lover that left her feeling nothing but bitter regret. She needed a loving, giving kiss from the one man who truly loved her.

  So when he followed up his gentle kiss to her mouth with words of reassurance, then kissed her forehead and apologized for taking a liberty, unfolding his arms from about her waist as he did so, Caroline would not let go of him. She had spent too many sleepless nights to count, imagining this moment and wondering if it would ever come to pass. Now, with such doubts cast like dust to the four winds, she wasn’t about to let it end before she was satisfied. She put her arms up to his wide shoulders and held fast. On tiptoe, she kissed his mouth, and as she did so a silk-covered mule slid from her stockinged foot. The shoe clattered to the polished floor, and it was this that had Antony’s arms securely about her waist once again, thinking her about to fall.