Salt Redux

by Lucinda Brant

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Accolades

  License

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Beginning

  Chapter Links

  Behind-The-Scenes

  Dramatis Personæ

  Family Tree

  Bonus Preview

  About Lucinda Brant

  Lucinda Brant Books

  Lucinda Brant Audiobooks

  Jewels Anthology

  CHAPTER LINKS

  Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

  Salt Redux

  SEQUEL TO SALT BRIDE

  Salt Hendon Series—Book 2

  LUCINDA BRANT

  ACCOLADES

  FOR SALT REDUX

  2013 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards Medal Winner

  “Lucinda Brant never fails to please readers of historical romance with her lavish portrayal of the Georgian era. The richness of prose and the attention to all that drives the story make this a wonderful read. Highly recommended.” —5 STARS— Fiona Ingram, Readers’ Favorite

  “Lucinda Brant weaves a rather terrifying tale of the darkest deception planned to the most minor detail and brilliantly has us uncovering the plot right along with the characters. And then just when you feel it’s safe to resurface Brant gives you this chilling story that mixes insanity with brilliance, a deadly combination. Extraordinary historical romance at its very best.” —5 STARS— SWurman, Night Owl Reviews

  SMASHWORDS LICENSE

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should obtain your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  COPYRIGHT

  A Sprigleaf ebook

  Published by Sprigleaf Pty Ltd at Smashwords

  www.sprigleaf.com

  This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Resemblance to persons, businesses, companies, events, or locales, past or present, is entirely coincidental.

  Salt Bride: A Georgian Historical Romance

  Copyright © 2013, 2014 Lucinda Brant

  Editing: Martha Stites & Lisa Smith

  Cover art and photography: Larry Rostant

  Cover model: Aitor Manuel Alonso

  Design, and formatting: Sprigleaf

  All rights reserved.

  Please purchase only authorized editions; do not encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of an author’s rights.

  Except for brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, no part of this ebook may be reproduced in any printed or electronic form without prior permission from the publisher.

  Sprigleaf triple-leaf design is a trademark belonging to Sprigleaf

  Georgian couple silhouette is a trademark belonging to Lucinda Brant

  Second edition

  eISBN 9780980801361

  DEDICATION

  for

  Mirella

  Many thanks to my wonderful beta readers: Céline, Courtney, Crystal, Lauren, Mirella, Suzan, and Wanda. This novel is all the better for their valuable input.

  PROLOGUE

  EVERY MONTH the guardian of the unnamed person of interest detained at Castle Harlech in remote north Wales sent a report to the Earl of Salt Hendon. A messenger delivered the report, always at night, into the hands of Mr. Rufus Willis, steward of the Earl’s estate in Wiltshire. Mr. Willis then gave the report to his lordship when his employer was alone in the vastness of his library, and when there was no expectation of the Countess being present.

  Mr. Willis caught the anguish on his lordship’s face every time he handed over these reports. Upon one occasion, Mr. Willis offered to read the report to spare the Earl, but his noble employer declined saying it was his duty, however distasteful and difficult the task. Mr. Willis knew the Earl was punishing himself. The Earl believed the punishment justified. The monthly reports were a painful reminder that the unnamed person of interest had brought untold suffering on her own children and was a murderer of innocents. She had also caused the death of the Earl and Countess of Salt Hendon’s first child while still in the womb. However, some comfort came from the reports. While his prisoner remained locked up, her children were safe, and so, too, were his. Although he did not need reminding of his good fortune, the Earl knew he was the luckiest of men and that nothing and no one was more important to him than his wife and family.

  The guardian of the unnamed person of interest wrote much the same report every month. His “guest” was the model prisoner, afforded every comfort such a remote location could provide. The prisoner had maids to help her into velvet and satin petticoats and bodices, who dressed her waist-length auburn hair in the latest styles as remembered from her life in London, and who helped her choose what pieces of her jewelry went best with each outfit. As befitting her exalted rank, she insisted on changing her gown three times a day. Servants waited on her at table as if she were queen of her own dominion and came swiftly in answer to the constant tinkling of her little hand bell. Her guardian accompanied her on walks about the parapets and courtyards of the castle, dined with her when invited, and over coffee and cake listened to her witty recollections about politicians and the esteemed persons of Polite Society, all known to her personally.

  The unnamed person of interest spent most days reading the latest issues of The Gentleman’s Magazine, particularly the reports of Parliamentary sittings, and wrote at her escritoire in her prettily-furnished drawing room, with its view of the sea. Her letters were sent but never delivered, and thus she never received a reply. These letters were sometimes ten pages in length and most were addressed to the Earl of Salt Hendon. Her guardian read these letters as part of his duties and found them full of advice for his lordship on all manner of topics political and domestic. The letters were then burned. While the guardian informed the Earl in general terms about these letters, he did not report what was most vital, though such information surely confirmed that the woman was indeed insane. Every letter was signed Diana, Countess of Salt Hendon.

  She had one correspondent who wrote regularly and who did receive her letters of reply. There was a brother, a diplomat, who lived abroad. He wrote from St. Petersburg, long, detailed letters about the growing Russian capital and its environs, its people, and how he occupied his days as an assistant to the Ambassador. He often enclosed small gifts—a fan, a lace-bordered handkerchief, a pair of silk stockings, and for one of her birthdays he sent an embroidered silk shawl. His letters were also full of the latest Court gossip and palace intrigues, and sometimes he included clippings from months-old English newssheets dispatched to him in Russia.

  The guardian knew this because his prisoner took great delight in reading these letters aloud. He soon realized that this brother was an astute gentleman because he never mentioned the Earl of Salt Hendon or any member of his family. What the brother knew from his sister’s correspondence that the Earl and his family did not, and he, too, kept to himself, was that his sister signed her letters to him as if she was indeed the wife of the Earl of Salt Hendon.

  After three years of incarceration, the unnamed person of interest no longer answered to her own name. Nor did she recognize the person she had once been when this person was described to her. She was the Countess of Salt Hendon, and Magnus Sinclair, the Earl of Salt Hendon was her dear husband. There was no persuading her otherwise. The guardian saw no harm in humoring her. After all,
she was never to be released.

  And so by her fourth year of imprisonment, the unnamed person of interest was in every way treated as if she were indeed the Countess of Salt Hendon. Her guardian, her apothecary, her personal maid, and her servants all addressed her by that title. So, too, did the local townspeople.

  For her good behavior, and under strict supervision, she was eventually permitted visitors. Prominent members of the local town came to pay their respects and to see with their own eyes the beautiful noblewoman rumor said had been locked up by a brutish husband. The unnamed person of interest proved to be a gracious hostess, full of charm and grace, and possessing a noble bearing. It was an easy thing for the outsiders to believe they were indeed in the presence of English nobility. She was majestic in velvet and silks, with rubies about her throat and wrists. Her witty conversation was peppered with anecdotes of prominent politicians, exalted noblemen and their relatives, faraway marble palaces, and sleepless cities the local townspeople could only dream about. Soon her ladyship was holding court once a week to a room full of eager listeners.

  This, too, the guardian withheld from his reports to his noble employer. Again, he reasoned there was little harm in his prisoner receiving a bunch of ignorant yokels to afternoon tea, who knew no one and were going nowhere. It kept her ladyship pacified, entertained and occupied, her thoughts on trivialities—a far cry from her disposition when first brought to the castle as a venomous abhorrent monster, whose every hate-filled word dripped vengeance and who vowed escape.

  What the guardian failed to appreciate, what he could not know and never discovered, was that he was in the presence of a far superior and utterly malevolent intellect. In his confident conceit, that in four years he had tamed a monster and beaten down a beast, he remained ignorant, almost until the last breath left his body. He failed to grasp that just under the surface of her beautiful façade, the perfumed silks, the witty conversation, and the charming manners, the monster still lurked, biding its time, awaiting the perfect opportunity to escape and unleash its vengeance.

  The horror of realization came the day the guardian was racked with stomach cramp and fell into a fever. The local apothecary thought it food poisoning and prescribed an emetic. A great favorite with her ladyship, whom he had treated for megrim for some months, the apothecary left the guardian in her capable hands. He advised he would return the following day. By nightfall, the guardian was dead. In his last conscious moments, he was blind and incapable of speech, but he could still hear. Her ladyship whispered at his ear as she gently tucked up his coverlet. The servants thought it a touching scene, an indication of her ladyship’s high regard for her guardian.

  In truth, she gleefully whispered she had poisoned him. Every speck of megrim powder the apothecary had prescribed she had carefully stored up until she had harvested enough to administer a lethal dose. She loathed him and she hoped he was in agony. Her greatest hatred she kept stored for the woman she believed falsely paraded about society as the wife and Countess of the Earl of Salt Hendon. She had spent four years devising her scheme for retribution and now, with freedom, she would put her plan into effect.

  Upon the guardian’s death, the unknown person of interest did not immediately flee. She mourned his passing, wearing dove gray petticoats and inviting the local townspeople to a dinner in his honor. Then, after the guardian’s burial, a courier arrived in the dead of night. It was so late the horse’s hooves on the cobblestones did not wake the servants. However, a restless maid heard voices echoing in the courtyard and was up, pressing her nose to the windowpane in time to see her ladyship in her nightgown and slippers, taper in hand, scurry under the arch and enter by the big oak door. She held a sealed packet.

  The late-night letter was from the Earl begging her to return to him. He had been bewitched by a whore of a mistress, and with her death, so died her influence over him. To his shame, he now recognized his great wrongdoing in sending his devoted wife into exile. Could she forgive him? Would she come back to him? He could not wait to be reconciled and would ride to meet her at the Welsh border. She was to hurry with all speed.

  The servants, the apothecary and, indeed, those prominent townspeople who counted themselves friends of the Countess of Salt Hendon, all knew word for word the contents of the Earl’s letter, for she joyfully announced the news to them and showed them the letter. The apothecary did not doubt the seal and handwriting belonged to the illustrious Earl of Salt Hendon. There was much rejoicing, and the townspeople held a celebratory dinner to honor Lady Salt and wish her well, to which she wore her most magnificent gown and jewelry.

  Holland covers draped furniture, and trunks and portmanteaux were packed to bursting. A splendid carriage pulled by four high-spirited grays took up Lady Salt and her personal maid, and her ladyship was farewelled with much fanfare. She was never seen again.

  Two days following her departure a letter arrived. It was from Sir Antony Templestowe, and it had traveled all the way from St. Petersburg.

  The apothecary, who had stayed on at the castle to settle her ladyship’s small pile of accounts with money the dead guardian had for that purpose, did not know what was to be done with the letter. It was addressed to a Diana, Lady St. John, a person unknown to the apothecary, and yet the direction was correct.

  Perhaps the correspondent did not personally know Lady Salt.

  He had correctly identified her Christian name, but then become confused when writing her title. It was a mystery to the apothecary. Still, he would do his duty by her ladyship, and so he redirected the unopened letter to the Earl of Salt Hendon’s estate, Salt Hall in Wiltshire, which he had heard Lady Salt talk of so many times he felt he had visited the grand Jacobean mansion and its spacious parkland.

  As Sir Antony had provided his direction in St. Petersburg, the apothecary wrote him a civil letter. He explained what he had done with his letter and, presuming he knew Lady Salt because he had used her Christian name, he took the liberty of giving Sir Antony the good news: Her ladyship had departed Harlech Castle and was on her way to be reunited with her noble lord the Earl of Salt Hendon.

  A month later, Sir Antony received the apothecary’s letter. Upon reading it, he promptly threw up.

  ONE

  ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA, 1767

  ‘COME BACK TO BED, Tosha,” a drowsy female voice coaxed from deep within the tumble of warm bedclothes.

  Sir Antony Templestowe remained at the open bedchamber window, bare back to the darkened room. He was shaking, hard-gripping the painted sill, trying to bring the tremors under control. He leaned out the window to allow the icy breeze off the Neva River to flow across his colorless face. He had just thrown up onto the hewn granite pavement of the embankment below, and then promptly apologized to two Imperial palace guards who walked under the window minutes later. Singing a bawdy tavern song about a girl named Nina and her plump buttocks while propping each other up, the drunken guards failed to hear the apology. They staggered onwards into the fog as Sir Antony pulled the sash and sat on the sill with eyes closed.

  “Tosha?”

  The woman was now propped on an elbow to see over the rumple of silken sheet, feather pillows and damask coverlet. Eyes adjusting to the dim light, she smiled, gaze raking the length of her English lover’s splendid physique silhouetted in the early morning glow filtering through the window at his back. From close-cropped auburn hair to hardened thigh muscles and down to his large bare feet, he was all male and all hers. She gave a little shudder of pleasure and was about to make a bawdy remark when she sensed all was not right. She sat up, brushed the mass of long honey curls from her face and slid the delicate silk nightgown up over her round shoulders to cover her breasts from the cold morning air.

  “Tosha? Antony? Wh-what is it? What has happened?”

  “Forgive me for waking you, your Highness,” Sir Antony replied placidly, a slight bow in direction of the undraped alcove that housed his canopied bed and in it his lovely mistress, the Princess Ekate
rina Knyazhevy-Yusupova. “I need—I need a moment alone…”

  He scooped up the single-page parchment flung to the carpet in his haste to get to the window, and with another small bow strode through to his closet to swill ginger and cinnamon mouthwash. He dashed icy water over his face and hovered over the large patterned porcelain washbasin, gasping from the sudden cold, taking deep breaths, wishing the letter a bad dream. It was not. From the corner of his eye he saw the single sheet of parchment on the dressing table. Snatching up the matching porcelain jug, he poured the remaining icy water over his scalp until the jug ran dry.

  He wrapped his nakedness in a green and gold silk damask banyan draped over the padded stool, slipped his bare feet into a pair of red Moroccan leather mules and sat before the spindle-legged dressing table towel-drying his hair. He then reread the letter from the unknown apothecary. Its contents filled him with overwhelming dread, and another wave of nausea fuelled by crippling anxiety flushed over him. He closed his eyes, willing the sickness away. Thankfully, the need to purge his stomach did not follow. He had not felt this ill since that fateful day in London, four years ago, when his beautiful only sister, one of Polite Society’s bright shining lights, had been discovered as a terminating midwife; a murderer of innocents. Insane—there was no doubt. She had almost succeeded in killing her little son in her obsession to be the singular object of the Earl of Salt Hendon’s affection. Delusional—most assuredly. Never to be released—without question.

  Spirited away to a remote and undisclosed location before a whisper of scandal reached Polite Society, he knew this outcome for his sister was the right one. It spared the family, most importantly her son and daughter, and him, eternal ignominy. Family and friends believed Diana St. John had gone traveling on the Continent for her health; so, too, did Polite Society. As far as his cousin the Earl was concerned, Diana could have swung from a rope and suffered a slow death for her unspeakable crimes. He damned her to hell and Sir Antony could not blame him. His sister was a conscienceless monster. It was this realization and the knowledge of all she had done that had sent him spiraling into mindless oblivion the moment she was spirited out of London and his life forever—or so he thought.