Salt Redux

by Lucinda Brant

  It was as if Diana St. John had vanished from the face of the earth…

  Now, here she was! Such a healthy and lively Diana, Lady St. John, and such an implacable force that Sir Antony went cold and felt faint. His former self, the one who had found solace and oblivion in a bottle of good claret—the habitual drunkard—would have bowed to his sister’s force majeure. The habitual drunkard could easily convince himself that such a vastly superior intellect, with all the cunning of a Machiavelli and the doggedness of a beagle with his snout in a rabbit hole, was beyond his derisory capabilities. Constant inebriation permitted him to absolve himself from care and responsibility. Others, meaning his cousin the Earl, more capable and determined than he, could better deal with the problem of his sister. This former self, this habitual drunkard, was a self-centered coward.

  No more.

  He had returned to London no longer a drunkard, determined to face up to his responsibilities. And his immediate responsibility was his sister Diana—discovering her evil intent and seeing her locked up more securely than before. To that end, he would play her at her own game. And so he did the most natural thing in the world, praying he was capable of matching her for deceit, and that her ego would blind her to his stratagem.

  He greeted her as she did him, with a smile of warm welcome, bowing over her outstretched hand before drawing her close to lightly brush her rouged cheek with a kiss, careful not to crush the layers of her soft yellow taffeta petticoats. He caught the scent of her distinctive Floris perfume, and it brought with it a flood of unpleasant memories. Clamping his jaw shut and fixing his smile, he allowed her to return the kiss.

  “Did I not tell you Antony was but a week or two behind me?” Diana announced triumphantly, hooking her arm over his velvet sleeve, keeping him at her side. She looked up the stairs at the knot of females four steps above her. “Was it not you, dear Lady Dalrymple, who predicted my brother’s return would be today?”

  “Did I? Huzzah! Lady Porter, you owe me a guinea!” Lady Dalrymple exclaimed, tapping Lady Porter on the upper arm with the closed sticks of her fan before sweeping down the stairs to drop a curtsy before Sir Antony. “Then I am doubly pleased to see you home this day, Sir Antony!”

  “Lady Dalrymple, you know; Lady Porter, too. And this is Mrs. Smith, who is my most stalwart companion,” Diana St. John remarked, introducing the three women. She glanced at Sir Antony before saying to the tallest female in the group, “This, Mrs. Smith, is my dear brother, whom you have heard me speak so much about.”

  Mrs. Smith curtsied again and rose to fix her gaze upon Sir Antony. Unlike Lady Dalrymple and Lady Porter, she was not smiling, and there was nothing playful in her air. She disconcerted Sir Antony by staring him between the eyes. She was surprisingly tall for a female, and there was width in her shoulders and neck that he had only ever seen on the strongest of female farm workers. Instinctively, his gaze flickered to her wrists, but as she was wearing blue knitted mittens that covered the backs of her folded hands, he had no idea if she had the fingers of a farm laborer to match. He wondered where his sister had come by such a minder, for that was what she was, he had no doubt, and when she spoke, his acute linguistic ear was alerted to the soft burr of an unfamiliar county dialect.

  “The pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Sir Antony, is mine,” Mrs. Smith said levelly, gaze never wavering. “Lady St. John has told me so much about you; I feel I know you. What her ladyship failed to tell me is how alike you are in form, if you’ll pardon my forwardness.”

  “Alike? Are we?” Diana St. John showed surprise, a quick look up at her mute brother, before giving a tight smile. “Yes! I suppose we must, being brother and sister, although…” Again she looked at Sir Antony, but this time she let go of his arm and stepped back to stand by the three women to appraise him from forehead to foot. “There is something about you, dearest brother, that has changed since you left for ’Petersburg. Do you not agree, Lady Dalrymple? Lady Porter?”

  “Most assuredly, my lady,” Lady Dalrymple breathed, regarding Sir Antony over the top of her pleated fan.

  “He’s lost his fat,” Lady Porter announced flatly. “It suits you. You’ll have a dozen woolly-headed wenches clinging to both arms at your first soirée. What did it? The Russian winters? The Russian food? I hear they eat a lot of cabbage…”

  “The Russian tea,” Sir Antony murmured.

  “Diana was just telling us all about their wretched winters,” Lady Dalrymple added, eyes widening. “Shocking. Simply shocking. I have no idea how you both managed to keep yourselves warm. I dare say the bear skins helped.”

  “Of course they would help keep out the cold, Jenny, but bear skins hardly account for his loss of fat!” Lady Porter pointed out. “Besides, if that were the case, then dear Diana would not only have lost her fat but her looks. Gaunt men are still handsome; gaunt females are never beautiful. Scrawny chickens at best.”

  “Winters? Bear skins? Scrawny chickens?” Sir Antony forced himself to laugh and smile vacantly at his sister. He itched to hold aloft his quizzing glass but refrained from underscoring her lie. “What have you been telling dear Lady Porter and Lady Dalrymple, my dear?”

  “All about ’Petersburg,” Lady Dalrymple offered. “I can’t wait to hear more about the Palace and the—”

  “And so you shall, but not now,” Diana St. John interrupted dismissively, signaling the butler, who was hovering dutifully in the background. “Boyle: Our cloaks. Is the carriage…?”

  “Just pulled up at the door, my lady,” the butler replied with a bow, and ushered forward two footmen holding various female outdoor attire, cloaks, muffs and shawls.

  “Antony, you must be exhausted,” Diana St. John continued, turning to her female companions as she slipped on yellow kid gloves before lightly placing a gloved hand on her brother’s sleeve.

  Sir Antony did not move a muscle.

  “I’m sure he will be only too pleased to tell you all about ’Petersburg tomorrow. Won’t you, Antony? Now we must be off to secure the best seats for Polly Young’s performance. She has the most divine voice and is just seventeen years of age. Imagine!”

  “Shall I see you all later this evening?” Sir Antony asked blandly. “Or at breakfast?”

  “Not tonight; not me,” Lady Porter volunteered. “But you will tomorrow, at the welcome-home afternoon tea.”

  “A welcome-home afternoon tea?” Sir Antony repeated, hoping his voice held the right note of joyful surprise. “How delightful! Will you be there, too, my lady? Mrs. Smith? Ah! I forget. Must be the exhaustion. Boyle tells me you are both residing under my roof…?”

  “I cannot thank you enough for your generosity,” Lady Dalrymple said as a footman placed a pink satin-lined velvet cloak about her shoulders. She looked up at Sir Antony with soulful brown eyes and said with a catch to her voice, “When Diana told me of your offer, I was so touched. I said to her at the time, did I not, Diana, how like you not to care a jot for the scandal of having a discarded wretch under your roof. And I repeat it here, now, before witnesses. If it were not for your kindness, and the kindness of Lady St. John—such a shoulder to cry on—I do believe I would have ended my days alone in a ditch!”

  “Not a ditch, my dear,” Diana St. John replied flatly and turned to the butler. “Boyle? I hope you sent word to Sir Antony’s valet that his master is home, and that while we have been standing here, a bath is being drawn for his lordship?”

  “Yes, my lady. And in the new Russian bathtub, too, my lady.”

  “A Russian bathtub?” Lady Dalrymple forgot her speech about her former lover’s cruelty and her eyes widened with keen interest. “I don’t believe I have ever seen a Russian bathtub. Are they any different from—”

  “A bathtub is a bathtub, my dear. Now away you go with Mrs. Smith, who has been patiently waiting to take your arm,” Lady Porter replied, a roll of her eyes at Sir Antony whose gaze had not left his sister. “Sad business,” she told him quietly. “Dacre Wraxton.
Philandering fiend. No better or worse than his kind, but Jenny Dalrymple made a fool of herself over the dratted man by being public about their affair. She hoped to force his hand to marriage. Of course, he immediately cast her off. We all told her what would happen. She did not listen. A man of his means and prospects isn’t about to marry a widow toppled off the fence of thirty. He’ll want something fresh and young. They all do.” She smiled up at Sir Antony. “But how like you to care.”

  “Remind me, my lady. Is he brother or cousin of Hilary the poet?” Sir Antony asked casually, watching Mrs. Smith take Lady Dalrymple by the elbow and usher her across the wide foyer to the open front door, where the light town chaise could be seen waiting in the street. He had caught the swift glance that passed between his sister and her minder, which instantly set Mrs. Smith in motion. He decided the woman was dangerous and that she was aware, too, that her mistress was even more so.

  “Elder brother. In expectation of inheriting his uncle’s pile in the country and the title that goes with it,” Lady Porter answered. “He’s not on speaking terms with his milksop poet brother.”

  Sir Antony bowed her ladyship away and then met Diana’s gaze, for she waited to take her leave of him. He kept his eyes focused on hers, expression suitably neutral, and waited for her to speak.

  “You look tired, Antony. Traveling can be such a bore. I was certain you would make it back to London from ’Petersburg in record time. As it is, your effects and your foreign servants arrived before you. No wind to set sail?”

  “I sent them on ahead while I delivered diplomatic correspondence to The Hague.”

  Diana St. John pouted. There was no sympathy in her voice. “Oh dear. The delay must have been fretful for you.”

  He smiled thinly. “Not at all.” It was a lie, but only a very thin lie. Travel over land had been a relief. Arriving a week later than intended in London, that had made him fret. “It allowed me to forgo the wretched sea voyage from Denmark,” he told her. “And to pick up a few gifts…”

  “What a dear brother; always thinking of others,” she remarked, a hand to the front of his velvet frock coat to feel the beat of his heart. What she felt was a small bump under the fabric. Surprise registered in the faint lift of her arched brows. “What have we here?” she purred, fingertips making out the shape of a brooch pinned out of sight to the front of his oyster silk waistcoat. Her gaze locked to her brother’s blue eyes. “Your heart beats very strong and fast, Antony. I hope it is for the person whose miniature you have hidden here, rather than on my account?”

  Sir Antony gently removed her hand and kept it in his, not a blink away from her gaze. With her yellow taffeta petticoats folded against his booted legs as she leaned in to speak softly, his nostrils filled with her pungent scent and he suddenly felt green again, but his expression did not change.

  “If it does beat faster it is at the pleasure of seeing you looking so well after such an absence,” he told her truthfully.

  She cocked her head slightly, as if questioning his sincerity. Finally, she smiled and removed her hand from his to give him a perfunctory pat on the chest.

  “Well, there’s no reason for you to fret now. As you can see, I arrived safely in town and am in perfect health.” She smiled up at him. “Don’t wait up. After a good night’s sleep, you will wake to find that our reconciliation is not a dream. I will still be here. I have no intention of ever leaving you. Your sister is here to stay. There is so much we have both missed—of London.”

  He waited by the stairwell watching through the open front door as a footman handed his sister up into the carriage with her female companions. With the carriage step folded away, the horses set to. The two footmen returned indoors and closed the front door. Hearing the latch shut fast woke Sir Antony from his trance, and before the butler could ask if his lordship required anything further of him, he fled up the curved staircase two steps at a time to his rooms.

  He was inside and had crossed the sitting room before the sound of running water brought him up short. He strode through to the warmth of the dressing room, tugging at the complicated knot in his plain linen stock as he did so, and came to a halt just inside the curtained doorway. The big copper Russian bathtub with its linen inner skin was positioned precisely where he had instructed. It was full of hot steaming water; one of two bath stools was beside it and had upon its padded seat a tray of tea things and a folded newspaper. A fire roared in the grate. Two of his Russian servants waited silently by the window.

  He wanted to shout with joy. He was so tired and so in need of a soothing bath, a cup of tea and nothing more mentally taxing than a perusal of The Gentleman’s Magazine. Instead, he turned at footfall and said to Semper, who came into the room with a third Russian carrying bath sheets,

  “Semper! Find me a thief-taker! And find me one now.”

  ~

  “YOU GAVE THIS thief-taker my instructions to the letter?”

  Semper remained silent while he carefully pinned a pearl-headed gold stickpin into the soft folds of delicate lace at Sir Antony’s throat. When he stepped back to view his handiwork, he nodded distractedly, then came forward again, not entirely happy, and fiddled with the folds of the cravat until Sir Antony had had enough preening and lightly slapped his hand away.

  “I’m off downstairs to afternoon tea, not off to a coronation!” He addressed his majordomo’s reflection. “This thief-taker understands precisely what is being asked of him?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Semper replied, returning to stand by the dressing table with a pair of black leather shoes. These he placed beside the padded swivel stool. “I went over your instructions to the letter with Mr.—”

  “No! No names,” Sir Antony interrupted, turning away from the looking glass. He slipped his large stockinged feet into the low-heeled shoes. “I don’t want to know the fellow’s name and I don’t want him to know mine. This is one occasion where ignorance truly is for the best. If I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me then neither of us can be compromised.”

  “Yes, my lord. I’ve chosen the oval diamond buckles, if they meet with your approval?”

  Sir Antony stared at the shoe buckles in the palm of Semper’s hand and pondered. They did match the knee buckles, and were not as large as the diamond and sapphire buckles Misha and Katya had presented to him on his thirtieth birthday. Look, Tosha! The stones match your eyes, Katya had exclaimed playfully, the look in her own bright eyes he could only describe as one of loving friendship. He wondered if Caroline could ever look at him in that way again. But he wanted more than friendship, more than he could possibly hope for now she was married to another… He wiped a hand over his mouth, and came out of his abstraction, a nod to Semper, who silently threaded the latchets through the shoe buckles and fixed them firmly in place. When his majordomo was up off his knees, he said,

  “Nor do I need to know what this thief-taker looks like. If I don’t know him from Adam then I can’t recognize him in a crowd. If I did, I’d be forever looking over my shoulder, and then the object of their shadowing is likely to discover the truth. We are dealing with a far superior intelligence to mine, Semper, remember that.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the majordomo replied, though he was not entirely convinced. He knew Sir Antony had a remarkably keen mind. If Lady St. John possessed half his master’s acuity, she was a formidable prospect indeed. “I did stress to Mr. T that he must keep his wits about him at all times.”

  “Good. And this Mr.—T is aware he is to be her ladyship’s shadow every time she steps outside of this house?”

  “Yes, my lord. Mr. T is very aware of that. He also knows to stay out of sight. And he has two of his associates helping him so that this house is under constant watch, as is her ladyship.” Semper coughed into his fist, adding diffidently, “Begging your lordship’s pardon, but Mr. T assured me that Lady St. John won’t be able to use her bourdaloue without him knowing about it.”

  “Is that so? Then you have certainly hired the rig
ht man for the job. And he will report to you every other day?”

  “Every other day, my lord,” Semper repeated, holding wide a sky-blue silk frock coat. “Mr. T will see me in my office below stairs, where the personal maids do not trespass. Unless there is something untoward, and then he will send me word at once. I should also tell your lordship that I’ve taken the liberty of instructing the Russians that on no account is anyone in this household or out of it permitted entry to this wing without permission; that includes her ladyship.”

  Sir Antony allowed Semper to shrug him into the silk frock coat, and looked over a shoulder as the majordomo straightened the short skirts, saying quietly, “You understand I am having Lady St. John watched for her ladyship’s own good, don’t you, Semper?”

  “Yes, my lord,” the majordomo replied impassively and stepped back out of the way so his master could collect snuff box, etui and gold pocket watch from the orderly dressing table and drop them into a deep frock coat pocket. “Lady St. John appears well but her mind is unwell. You said she may do something to harm herself or others, and so we must be watchful at all times.”

  Sir Antony met his majordomo’s gaze squarely.

  “That’s right, Semper. In much the same way as you watch out for me because I am—unwell. But we must keep a closer eye on Lady St. John because she is unaware she is unwell. I have come to terms with my addiction because I know the cause and how to deal with it. She does not and never will, because it is her mind that is broken and that cannot be repaired.”

  “Yes, my lord. I understand perfectly. Shall I tie on your quizzing glass?”

  Sir Antony hesitated. He wondered if Semper did indeed understand. He had not confided the whole sordid story of his sister’s murderous crimes and hideous misdemeanors, but his majordomo now knew more than anyone outside the small circle who did. One fact he was sure of: He trusted Ralph Semper with his life. He held out the gold quizzing glass with its black riband and allowed Semper to secure it about his neck and tuck the bow neatly around the inside collar of his frock coat.