“I have no idea where my dearest sister is hiding, but hiding from me she must be, because the idea of giving me a harem was hers, was it not, my lady?”
“I shall own to it for Caroline,” Jane admitted, dimpling, once again at ease, particularly with her hand in her husband’s warm comforting clasp. “And I am not breaking any confidences, Antony, when I tell you it was Caroline who suggested the females of the Salt Hendon household all dress in Ottoman attire and present as Salt’s harem, which we did, without Salt’s knowledge. You can guess the face Salt presented to us when we descended upon him in the Yellow Saloon before making our entrance into the ballroom.”
Sir Antony laughed. “I have a good mental picture of his scowl!”
“You truly should feel for my position,” Salt grumbled. “I am vastly outnumbered and could do with all the male support I can get!”
“And yet it was Ron who gave Caroline the idea…”
“What?” This was news to the Earl. “An act of treason by my second in command cannot be tolerated. When he returns home from Eton—”
“You heard him say it at the breakfast table one morning,” Jane interrupted. “That the Salt Hendon household was overrun by females, and that he was pleased not to be the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire with his harem, because nothing could be worse than being surrounded by a hundred gabbing women! You almost choked on your egg when Ron said the word harem, as if a twelve-year-old boy should not know the meaning of the word!”
“He shouldn’t,” Salt stated at his most stiff-necked.
“I am very sure you did,” Jane said bluntly. “And that you held vastly different feelings on the matter to Ron!”
Salt’s brown eyes crinkled at the corners. “You are an incorrigible wretch, my lady,” he whispered at his wife’s ear, “and I will have my way with you later. For now this Turkish Terror must behave himself.”
Sir Antony, who had dropped his quizzing glass on its silk riband, after a quick survey of the ballroom to see if he could find Caroline, was about to again ask her whereabouts when at the Countess’s shoulder who should appear but her stepbrother Mr. Tom Allenby, and beside him the steward to the Salt Hendon estate, Mr. Rufus Willis.
“Tony! Tony! Egad! You’re a sight for sore eyes, my dear fellow!” Tom Allenby exclaimed and not only took the hand Sir Antony held out to him in a warm clasp but embraced him as a long-lost brother. He stepped back and surveyed Sir Antony from muscled calf to broad chest and grinned. “Lady Caroline said I wouldn’t recognize you, and I didn’t! I’ll wager you’d give Salt and me a run for our money on the tennis court!”
“And soundly beat you both!” Sir Antony smiled. He squeezed Tom’s shoulder. “It is such a delight to see you again, I cannot tell you… Your letters to ’Petersburg… Such a comfort…” He quickly turned to politely acknowledge Mr. Willis with a nod, fearing sentimentality would be his undoing. He suggested to the Earl, “If Mr. Willis is up for a game, what say he and I soundly beat you and Tom in the best of three, tomorrow?”
“Three?” Tom snorted. “Salt and I will take you on in the best of five!”
“Steady on, brother!” the Earl quipped. “Under all that red sash and gold braid I’ll wager Antony has more muscle and sinew than you and I combined.”
“I would be honored to be your partner, Sir Antony,” Rufus Willis said with a bow. “Racquets at forty paces it is, my lord.”
It was then that the Earl noticed the costumes worn by his brother-in-law and his steward. Both young men were dressed in pantaloons, billowing silk shirts and wore small turbans; and upon their feet were curled toed slippers.
“I will beg no one’s pardon and change the topic of conversation from tennis to enquire as to why the two of you are also dressed in Turkish attire?” When Tom Allenby and Rufus Willis shared a look full of humor, lips firmly pressed together to stop from bursting into laughter, Salt rolled his eyes. “Don’t say it; another of Caro’s ideas. What are you? The chief eunuchs of my harem?”
Everyone in the small party laughed, and loud enough that those around them immediately halted their own conversations to turn and listen in on what had amused the family members surrounding the Head of the House of Salt Hendon, the only family member who seemed not have got the joke.
“What did I tell you, Jane? I knew Salt would discover our costumes without either of us having to say a word!”
Sir Antony was about to add fuel to the harem fire when out of the corner of his eye he spied the gentleman who was the subject of the anonymous missive he had sent to the newssheets. He excused himself and looking neither left nor right, shouldered his way to the alcove where the gentleman had cornered a pretty young thing. He could only guess from her white feathered mask and accompanying feathered wings attached to the back of her white silk bodice, that she was dressed as a swan.
The swan was pleased at the interruption, and when Sir Antony politely asked for a moment of the gentleman’s time, alone, the girl readily took herself off. A hovering footman enquired if either gentleman would care for a glass of champagne. Sir Antony waved the servant away. Dacre Wraxton grabbed for a second glass. Something in Sir Antony’s blue eyes told him his nerves would require alcoholic fortification.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘’TWAS NOT MY IDEA, dear fellow,” Dacre Wraxton drawled before Sir Antony had uttered a syllable.
Sir Antony wondered what the man was driveling on about. His knight costume of gray knitted chain mail tunic and bascinet without visor over which was a shiny tin heraldic breastplate, a small sword and knitted gloves, was no doubt supposed to make Dacre Wraxton appear a mighty medieval warrior. In truth, he looked more court jester than court protector. Sir Antony would not have been surprised if the man had knocked knees but did not have the bad manners or inclination to find out. Instead, he took up his quizzing glass and followed Dacre Wraxton’s hand that held the champagne flute as he raised it to his lips. It was then that he saw what was pinned to the sleeve of his tunic. A brooch. Not just any brooch. His brooch. It was the gold brooch containing the painted miniature of Caroline which Diana had taken from him while seated at the clavichord.
Sir Antony let fall his quizzing glass on its riband and stuck out his palm.
Dacre Wraxton immediately unpinned the brooch and gave it to him.
Sir Antony thrust his feathered mask at him to hold. He then carefully pinned the brooch to the front of his waistcoat, over his heart, readjusted his frock coat, stretched his neck and snatched back his feathered mask. With his back to the crowded ballroom and oblivious to the incessant chatter and laughter, he waited for Dacre Wraxton to provide an explanation as to how he had come by a brooch that did not belong to him.
“You can guess whose idea it was that I wear the thing on my sleeve! Ha! Some joke! I said I wouldn’t do it. But she can be very persuasive… Downright nasty, to point out fact—Apologies! She is your sister—”
“Not any more she isn’t.”
“I couldn’t fault her line of argument,” Dacre Wraxton continued as if Sir Antony had not spoken. “I wish I could but—Anyway, I didn’t mean anything by it, dear fellow. So no harm done and now we can carry on with our—”
“Harm?” Sir Antony growled and took a step closer. “I don’t give a damn what sordid piece of filth Diana managed to drag out of the sewer about you that had you whimpering for her to keep it to herself. And I understand perfectly she can twist and turn her knife in an old wound, and so hard that you’ll do just about anything to stop her. But what I will never understand or forgive is your pathetic need to prey on the vulnerable and the innocent. What sort of man are you that you derive pleasure from seducing drunken girls who are not much older than children? It’s not as if you have deficiencies to hide from experience; you are capable of satisfying a woman between the sheets—”
“That’s spreading the butter a bit too thick! I may own to being many things, but there is one thing I’m not and that’s deficient between the sheets!”
>
“That’s what I just said.”
“Ah! So you did! Apologies. Impossible to hear over the din. There must be two hundred or more souls trying to figure out each other’s fancy dress. Who did you come dressed as? What famous General? That Russian sash and star add a certain imperial splendor—”
“You haven’t answered my question…”
Dacre Wraxton dared to look sheepish. He shrugged. “Boredom?”
When Sir Antony’s face darkened, Dacre Wraxton realized he was not in a party-going mood but perfectly serious, and he became petulant.
“Look here, Templestowe,” he argued. “I don’t force m’self on them. I’m no rapist. They could always say no; most never do. Besides,” he added, unable to resist a smirk, “why have tomorrow’s soup when you can be first to dip your crust in fresh broth?”
“You’re a disgusting maggot, Wraxton,” Sir Antony sneered, grabbing a handful of Dacre Wraxton’s tunic and shoving him hard up against the painted paneling. He was now beyond caring who saw or heard their altercation. “You knew she was drunk. You knew she was vulnerable. You should have done the gentlemanly thing and put her in a sedan chair and sent her home! You couldn’t even step up and offer her your name after you ruined her; you allowed a silly little boy to do that for you! God, you’re a pathetic excuse for a man!”
“Pathetic? Me? I wasn’t the one staggering about from one social event to the other, a miserable drunkard! That’s what she called you. Did you know that? And that’s what you are—were—four years ago, before this miraculous transformation,” Dacre Wraxton spat back, bravely pushing Sir Antony off. With manly pride at stake, and a modicum of truth on his side, he looked Sir Antony in the eye with an arrogant upward tilt of his chin. “She wanted it, just like all the others. I didn’t raise her petticoats. She did that for me, and with a giggle and a come-hither look in her green eyes. What man with blood in his veins would refuse such an invitation from a pretty little redhead? Only a drunkard dolt such as yourself!” He came a step closer and dared to push a finger into the broad hard chest. “I’ll tell you something else… She was ripe for the picking. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been some other fellow; she was that desperate to give away her innocence, desperate for anyone to have it but you! Better it was me—someone who could show her a good time and keep his mouth shut—”
“But not his breeches up! Knowing her state of mind, what you did is doubly despicable.”
“You’re just peeved you weren’t first. I can understand that,” Dacre Wraxton conceded magnanimously. “But I didn’t disappoint her. Far from it! She came back for more. Did she tell you? While married to that milksop Aldershot she committed adultery with Yours Truly. Not once but on two separate occasions. I didn’t force her into my bed. I didn’t force her to enjoy making love. She did that on her own initiative, and a damn good time we had between the sheets, too!”
“And that is the only reason I won’t kill you…”
Dacre Wraxton misinterpreted Sir Antony’s flat statement for a sardonic quip and with a grin raised his glass of champagne in a toast. “Happy to be of service. Should make your bridal night all the more enjoyable, her knowing a thing or two about connubial pleasure. And I wouldn’t be breaking a confidence if I told you you’re in for a treat. She’s damnably responsive. Has the most voluptuous little body, and when it wriggles—”
Sir Antony pinched Dacre Wraxton’s mouth hard between his fingers; the man’s eyes bulged.
“Listen very carefully, if you want to live. You have a choice. I have a great desire to run you through here, but I have enough manners left in my pinkie to offer you one of two options. I will remove my hand before I crack your jaw, and you will listen without comment. Understood?”
Dacre Wraxton nodded, eyes wide with fright, not only because of the searing pain in his jaw, but because he had never heard the large gentleman speak with such suppressed rage.
“This is what you will do to ensure I don’t stick your worthless carcass: When you leave this alcove, you will go to Lord Salt and immediately resign as MP for Hendon. You will not say why or give a paltry excuse. You will just do it. You will then take your leave and go directly to your place of residence. Once there you will write out a formal letter of resignation of your parliamentary position and offer the name of a suitable candidate for your replacement: Mr. Thomas Allenby of Allenby Park, Wiltshire—”
“Isn’t he—”
“—Lady Salt’s brother? Yes. You will then have your man pack a portmanteau for France—”
“France? France? I’m not going to France!”
Sir Antony took a step closer and Dacre Wraxton backed further into the alcove, if that was possible, his shoulder blades through his knitted tunic scraping up against the paint.
“Listen without comment, Wraxton, or meet me tomorrow morning in the mist of Green Park, sword in hand. I guarantee you’ll be shivering, and not from cold…”
Dacre Wraxton opened his mouth to make further protest, but when Sir Antony showed him he was deadly serious, left hand dropping to the ornate hilt of his dress sword, just visible under the skirts of his frock coat, Wraxton’s eyes went wide and he shut his mouth tight.
Just as Sir Antony suspected, Wraxton was an inveterate coward. His instincts as to why the man’s younger brother Hilary kept a chamber pot with the family crest painted in the bowl proved right. Hilary might be a foppish poet with a penchant for wigs made from the most outrageous materials, but one thing he was not was a coward. No wonder then why he had no respect for his elder brother.
“You are going to France, and for an extended period,” Sir Antony continued. “I don’t have a preference where you take yourself after that. You may wander the Continent from Paris to Athens for all I care, but one thing you will not do is set foot on English soil again until such time as my firstborn is two years old.” Sir Antony’s mouth twitched into a smile. “You had best keep abreast of the births, deaths and marriages column in the English newssheets. By my reckoning, your sojourn away could be for as little as three years. Unfortunately I cannot offer you a finite number. No matter. Once you leave here I don’t care what happens to you, only that it happens abroad.” He smiled thinly. “And don’t try and creep back across the Channel when my back is turned. I have people employed to keep an eye on you, and they report to my majordomo. Oh, one last detail—”
Dacre Wraxton regarded Sir Antony under hooded lids with shoulders slumped. He knew there was no point trying to wheedle his way out of such an arrangement. He carried a sword but he had no skill with a blade, and as the only exercise he took was frolicking in a bed with a willing nubile female, he knew he would be cut down within minutes of any encounter with Sir Antony’s weapon of choice.
“There is no need to threaten me,” he interrupted. “I will avert mine eyes from your intended and will have no further contact with her, verbal or written.”
Sir Antony grinned. “That is a most excellent idea and is to be immediately executed. But it was not what I needed to tell you. The reason for your immediate departure, and the reason you will tell all and sundry whom you meet, and of course always in the strictness of confidences, is that you eloped with my sister to the Continent—”
Dacre Wraxton lost his grip on his champagne glass. “Dear God, no.”
Sir Antony caught the glass, which was empty, and deftly set it on a silver tray held by an attentive and eagle-eyed footman hovering at his shoulder. He almost felt sorry for the man, and he clapped a hand to the slumped sloping shoulder.
“I should leave you to your misery, but I cannot in good conscience tell you an untruth. Diana won’t be fleeing to France with you. It is a ruse, but one you will abide by. That you eloped should suffice as the reason for your absence from London. Once on French soil, for your purposes, my sister died at sea, washed overboard by a rogue wave.”
Dacre Wraxton eyed Sir Antony shrewdly.
“I wondered when you would come to your senses and real
ize she is many slices short of a full loaf. There is the rumor Salt packed her off to the Continent, much as you’re doing the same to me, because her mind snapped when he married another. But my suspicions about her mental stability go way back. St. John also had his suspicions, and not long after he married her. He and I were friends at Eton, and in a far more intimate way, if you understand my meaning, than his friendship with Salt. I confess that to you and no other, only because Diana discovered that interesting tidbit about her husband and me and used it to sinister effect.”
“I do not doubt it.”
Dacre Wraxton heard the note of sympathy in Sir Antony’s voice.
“Dear St. John. If he had not died of the smallpox when he did, I’m very sure she would have found a way of hounding him into an early grave…”
He made Sir Antony a bow of farewell, saying with a huff of laughter, “Be assured, I will welcome the birth of your son and heir with much rejoicing. Adieu, my lord.”
Sir Antony inclined his powdered head in farewell and stood aside to let the man pass. He watched him be swallowed up by the perfumed laughing multitudes strolling the length of the ballroom in preparation for the first of the dances, then took up his quizzing glass and scanned the crowd for sight of the love of his life. Lady Caroline instantly appeared out of the silken throng, as if she had been watching him for some time.
She, like Jane, was dressed in a costume fit for the harem of an Ottoman potentate, in ornately-embroidered slippers, pantaloons of chocolate brown and mint green striped satin, and a bodice of chocolate brown velvet, cut low at the décolletage and made decent by the strategic draping of a translucent fichu of shimmering silver. Upon her head was pinned a small silk turban that matched the fabric of her pantaloons. She looked every bit a harem beauty, and he was certain that if the real Sultan of the Ottoman Empire clapped eyes on his Caroline, she would instantly be his favored jewel. But it was at her bright flaming hair that he stared. It was pulled over one shoulder and fell unrestrained to her thighs, tied loosely half way down its length with a mint green satin ribbon entwined with pearls.
Salt Redux Page 33