Scandalous Brides

by Annette Blair

  Sir Antony’s jaw swung wide and in two strides he was beside Jane on the window seat and holding her hands.

  “God, I’m an unthinking ass. Forgive me. I should be stripped of my sinecures and made to walk the diplomatic plank for—”

  “—speaking candidly? Not by me. But I suppose frank speech is not seen as part of the diplomatic armory, is it?”

  “No, for upsetting you, my dear. The last thing I wish to do on this earth is distress you.” He kissed her hands and pressed them gently and would not let them go. “I should not have been so flippant with your feelings. We have been enough in each other’s company now that I feel we have become good friends.” He smiled into her blue eyes. “And I know that you truly do love my cousin. I see that love reflected in your face every time he walks into a room. If one day I receive but a thimbleful of such emotion from my wife I will be a contented man. No. Don’t hang your head. I want to offer you my help. Perhaps if you would allow me to understand what went wrong between you and Salt all those years ago we could put our heads together and clear the mire…”

  Jane took a few moments to find her composure, Sir Antony’s kind words drying her throat, but she wasn’t given the opportunity to respond because the sitting room door opened and in walked her husband dressed magnificently in a dark blue velvet frock coat with silver lacings. His hair was powdered and tied with a black ribbon and across his chest was the blue riband of the Most Noble Order of the Garter; a number of lesser orders and decorations pinned to the breast of his silver embroidered waistcoat. He looked up from the flat rectangular box in his hand and frowned as Sir Antony and Jane sprang apart and were uncomfortable; Sir Antony on his feet and Jane to pick up her discarded needlepoint.

  “You’re not wearing powder,” he stated, an eye on his wife’s simply dressed hair, swept up off her lovely neck and affixed with many pins and a couple of strategically placed diamond encrusted clasps, a weight of dark curls falling about her shoulders.

  “No, it does not agree with me or my complexion,” she replied simply. She poked her small, silk clad foot out from under yards of soft blue watered silk. “But I am wearing shoes with a two inch heel so I can at least stand beside you and look the part. Although, I doubt I shall be noticed beside such a wall of decoration.”

  “Blinding, ain’t they?” commented Sir Antony with seeming irreverence for his best friend’s noble orders. He brushed down the sleeves of his frock coat and stretched his white stockinged legs. He too was dressed in his best silks and wore hair powder to attend the Richmond ball, the quantity of lace at his wrists and throat compensation for his lack of noble orders. “Poor Andrews must’ve bloodied his thumbs pinning all that lot on. Or does he wear gloves to catch the drips before they splatter the noble chest?”

  “That Florentine green frock coat becomes you better than you know, Tony,” Salt said with a crooked smile and handed Jane the velvet-covered box. “Those petticoats are very fetching,” he commented, an understatement given Jane could only be described as breathtakingly beautiful in a low, square cut bodice with tight sleeves and matching silk petticoats that accentuated her slim arms and back. He smiled down at her; a smile Sir Antony had come to notice the Earl kept exclusively for his wife. “Your choice will complement the locket very well.”

  “Locket?” Jane heard herself say, heart thudding against her chest as she stared at the flat box now in her hand. “What locket is that, my lord?”

  “The Sinclair locket.”

  Returning this family heirloom surely signified he had traveled a long way down the path to putting their past behind them, and was now prepared to go forward with her into the future. It brought tears of happiness and memories of the last time he had given it to her, in the summerhouse, when he had proposed to her.

  “Where… Where did it come from?” she asked, slightly dazed, and hesitated to pry open the lid.

  “From the family vault. Where else?”

  “No. Before it was put back in the vault. After—”

  “Sir Felix returned it,” he interrupted quietly.

  Jane was nonplussed. “My father? I do not understand.”

  “Sir Felix returned it at my request.”

  “At your request? You requested it be returned? Why?”

  The Earl was uncomfortable. He glanced fleetingly at Sir Antony, who was pretending an inordinate interest in the manicured nails of his right hand, before meeting Jane’s open look. “I thought it right and proper after I received word from Jacob Allenby that you had ended our engagement and were living under his protection.”

  Jane’s gaze never wavered from his handsome face. “I did not end our engagement, my lord, nor could Mr. Allenby tell you any such thing.”

  Salt put up his brows, half-incredulous. “Why do you say so, my lady?”

  “Because I told no one we were engaged. You asked that I keep our engagement to myself until your return. And so I told no one.”

  “Then I wonder how Mr. Allenby came by such vital news?”

  “I wonder at that too, my lord. He wrote to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then may I know by what method he communicated my supposed wishes?”

  He inclined his powdered head, unperturbed by her bluntness. “Through a family intermediary.”

  Jane swallowed. “Family intermediary?” she repeated softly, up on her heels, a shaking hand to her bare throat. But she knew whose name he would utter even before she asked. “May I know the name of this family intermediary?”

  “Diana received the locket from your father—What is it? Are you unwell?” Salt asked, taking a step forward.

  Jane blinked up at him, the enormity of what he had just told her making her skin crawl cold and hot at one and the same time. She glanced over at Sir Antony and saw that he was staring fixedly at her; her husband was doing likewise. What could she say? How was she to be believed over Diana St. John who was Sir Antony’s sister and who had known Salt all her life? Still, she could not let the matter rest when she knew the truth of the lie.

  “My father knew nothing about the locket. He was kept in ignorance of our engagement. I-I waited as long as I could and then when you did not return I sent the locket with a note as you had instructed me to do as soon as I realized I was… When I knew about the… When I—” She faltered, too overcome to continue, and pushed the box back at Salt and scurried into her dressing room with a shaking hand covering her mouth to stop a sob.

  Anne dropped the pile of linen she had scooped up into her arms and quickly helped Jane to her dressing stool. Without a word, she poured her out a glass of lemon water and held it to her mouth because the Countess’s hands were shaking. After a few sips and a couple of deep breaths Jane was more herself. Holding her hands tightly in her lap and with her back straight, she tried to compose herself and collect her thoughts.

  She now knew Salt had not received the locket, sent to him when she was two months with child. She reasoned that Diana St. John must have taken delivery of the locket upon its arrival at the Arlington Street townhouse. And she was certain that Diana St. John would have known about the secret compartment just as she had made it her business to know everything there was to know about the Earl of Salt Hendon.

  And the more she thought on it, the more convinced she was that it was Diana St. John who, knowing about the secret compartment, had read her note, and conveyed its message, not to its rightful recipient but to Sir Felix. She had always wondered how her father had discovered her pregnancy, now she was almost certain who had told him. How Lady St. John had managed to convey the news without divulging that Salt was the father of her child was something Jane was sure took all the woman’s cunning. For had Sir Felix ever suspected it was the Earl of Salt Hendon who had seduced and impregnated her he would have gone hot foot to London and demanded the nobleman marry her.

  It was years later, when she was living under the protection of Jacob Allenby and her father was dying, that Sir Felix learned the appalling n
ature of what he had done. In what Jane thought a most cruel act, Jacob Allenby told her father: that the unborn child he had ordered destroyed was not of indeterminate lineage but in fact belonged to Lord Salt. He had murdered the Earl of Salt Hendon’s heir, and Jacob Allenby hoped Sir Felix burned in hell for his crime.

  Jane did not doubt that Diana St. John would have removed and destroyed the little scrap of paper informing Salt of her pregnancy before returning the locket to its rightful owner. The evidence she needed to convince her husband he was capable of fathering a child, that she had been pregnant before, was lost forever.

  TWELVE

  ‘JANE? Jane, are you perfectly well?” the Earl asked, coming through to the dressing room. He saw the maid hovering over his wife and laid the box aside on the cluttered dressing table. “If I’d known the family bauble would affect you so, I’d not have brought it out.” He took hold of her hand and found it cold, yet when he gently touched her forehead she was burning up, despite her face being deathly pale. He went down on his haunches before her. “Perhaps it would be for the best if you stayed home, what with the unseasonably cold weather—”

  “No! I want to accompany you to the ball,” she answered and took a deep breath. She forced herself to look at him with a bright smile. “I’ll be fine. Truly. I’ll wear that lovely fur cloak you gave me just last week. That should keep me warm. It’s just…” She couldn’t finish the sentence and was glad when her maid jumped in with an excuse, which instantly alerted Jane that Anne knew about her pregnancy.

  “Her corset, my lord!” Anne blurted out in explanation as she dropped into a curtsey and kept her eyes to the floorboards. “I’ve been lacing her ladyship’s corsets too tightly of late. That would account for her dizzy spells and-and paleness. It will only take a moment to set it to rights.”

  “Yes, that must be it,” Jane agreed when Salt stood up but was unconvinced. She placed a hand on the lid of the box. “I’ll leave this until you can put it on for me.”

  When she was left alone with her maid, Jane quickly pried open the lid of the box, and there, nestled on a bed of velvet was the Sinclair locket, a single large sapphire surrounded by diamonds and set into an oval of gold. The setting was suspended on a gold chain set with smaller diamonds and sapphires. It was a magnificent piece of craftsmanship and drew an awed gasp from Anne.

  With shaking fingers, Jane turned over the sapphire, trying not to disturb the sit of the chain too much in the box, and searched for the tiny point of gold that was the catch that, when pressed, opened the secret compartment behind the sapphire. But as hard as she looked, as much as her fingers ran deftly around the gold lip of the claws that held the precious stones in place, she could not find the catch. It had to be there, it couldn’t just disappear. She knew how the catch worked, remembered exactly where it was, so how was it that it wasn’t there now? It didn’t make sense until Anne said conversationally,

  “It’s so beautiful, my lady,” she cooed, “I never thought I’d see the like of such a locket again after leaving Lady St. John’s house—” She shut her mouth when Jane’s head snapped up. She bobbed a respectful curtsey. “I spoke out of turn. Please forgive me, my lady. Should you like another sip of lemon water?”

  Jane shook her head. “Go on, Anne. Tell me about this other locket.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Anne replied and obediently told Jane about Diana St. John’s dramatic reaction to misplacing her locket adding, “Her ladyship was in a state of the greatest agitation, as if her whole health and happiness was bound up in that locket. Her ladyship keeps it under her pillow and sleeps with it wrapped around her wrist every night, without fail. She never wears it out but she’s never without it. She even takes it with her when she goes to stay in the country.”

  Jane turned the locket back to its face and studied it in silence. Sir Antony had told her once that the treasure trove of jewelry dripping from ears, and around the throats and wrists of the wives of nobles were mostly exacting copies of the originals, which were locked away for safe keeping; the copies made from paste so as to foil attempted theft by pickpockets, disgruntled servants and, above all, hold ups by highwaymen. So this, too, must also be a very good paste copy substituted by Diana St. John for the real locket. But why make the switch? And why hadn’t Salt noticed? Jane wondered if he had examined the locket closely since its return. If indeed he had even bothered to put on his eyeglasses to do so.

  Absently, she fingered the false sapphire and diamond locket as she stared out of the carriage window at the passing traffic of carriages, sedan chairs and men on horseback. Rugged up in her new fur cloak, she wondering how she was going to recover the real locket from Lady St. John. She would have to visit the woman’s Audley Street House, but when, and what reason could she possibly give for visiting a woman who clearly disliked her? She would need to take Anne with her, who knew the house and the servants. Perhaps she could go on the excuse of taking Ron and Merry on some particular excursion about the city? She would ask Sir Antony to accompany them, but not tell him about recovering the locket, that would add validity to her visit…

  “SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS, my lady?” Salt asked quietly.

  He was sitting diagonally opposite Jane, Sir Antony beside him. He wasn’t surprised when she slowly turned her head to look at him blankly, her thoughts seemingly miles away.

  He hadn’t taken his gaze off her since they had set off from Grosvenor Square for Richmond House by the Thames. He knew her mind to be anywhere but on the present. He wondered if he had left her alone too often during the day over the past three months. He had been a great deal caught up with parliamentary business and a host of committee meetings, but he had purposely kept his distance, so he told himself, to allow her to find her feet as the new Countess of Salt Hendon.

  The real reason, however, was far more selfish and self-destructive.

  By leaving her very much to herself during the daylight hours it was as if he was waiting for disaster to strike. What that disaster could be he had no idea. It somehow seemed he was not entitled to the happiness he felt when he was with her. He might not be at home much but he knew his wife had been crowned queen of the fairies by a group of young, artistically minded wealthy young gentlemen who had pretensions to artistic greatness, and with nothing better to do with their time but write poetry, act out plays and fawn over the Countess of Salt Hendon’s beauty. He was kept informed of their comings and goings and had even now read a number of Hilary Wraxton’s poems, all of which he knew were a source of great mirth at the Countess’s afternoon teas. Salt considered them harmless confections of fun, but he wasn’t particularly pleased that the iron-wig wearing Wraxton’s most recent string of poems all centered on his Countess, whom the aspiring poet had the absurdity to call his fair faerie queen.

  Yet, from the reports regularly given him by Arthur Ellis, Willis the under-butler, and by Sir Antony, Jane never put herself forward, never flirted with these young men and never had her head turned by their constant compliments of her beauty. In fact, she treated such worship with the grain of sand it deserved, maintaining a cool, if kind-hearted, distance from her admirers. His own observations of his wife at dinner parties and the like confirmed this, and yet he still felt ill at ease, that if he allowed his defenses to drop completely his hopes and dreams would again be shattered.

  He had no real basis for his apprehension, only the past experience of their broken engagement, which she emphatically denied she had instigated. It’s not that he disbelieved her, but it did not make sense: one and one did not make two. Yet the more time he spent in Jane’s company the less he cared about the details of the broken engagement and what had occurred in the past; who was in the wrong. He just knew that his future happiness, that if he was ever to feel contented with life, rested with his wife.

  He repeated his question just as the horses slowed and the carriage turned into the forecourt of Richmond House.

  “I was thinking about Ron,” Jane replied and turned from t
he window to look at him, “and how well he has been looking these past few weeks.”

  Salt was surprised. “Ron?”

  “Yes. He had color in his cheeks at the nursery party, and he played three games of skittles with the Spencer boys. And he ate two slices of pie.”

  “And he was rolling around on the floor laughing along with the rest of us at Wraxton’s absurd poetry,” Sir Antony stuck in. “Ode to a Well-Sprung Carriage, indeed! God help us all when we have to listen to his next piece of piffle!” When the noble couple looked at him as if seeing him for the first time he grinned sheepishly. “You did offer me a seat in your carriage. Can I help it if I have eyes and ears?”

  “He had no color whatsoever at three in the morning!” Salt said with asperity.

  Sir Antony glanced at Jane before looking at the Earl. “Called out to his bedside again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times has he been ill these past few months?”

  Salt shrugged at the question and was ashen-faced. “Too many times. Last night he had one of his worst attacks yet.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Sir Antony said grimly. “Poor little chap. Poor you, to be inconvenienced at such an hour,” he added with a huff of laughter, thinking the Earl had to be the unluckiest bridegroom in London, to be dragged from the arms of his beautiful bride at such an inauspicious hour, to attend on a sick little boy who had no consideration for his uncle’s newly married state. Yet, he was all admiration for Salt’s devotion to the boy, and for the Countess’s tolerance.

  “Er—Apologies,” he muttered in response to the Earl’s embarrassed glare of disapproval, and turned his profile to the undraped window and the view of the congested line of horses and carriages with crests upon their doors, queuing up one behind the other to deposit their noble occupants at the wide steps of Richmond House, and where Jane was staring, a blush to her cheeks. Still, he could not help voicing a thought that had been niggling at him for some time now. He was surprised when Jane stared at him with wide blue eyes of shock, as if she, too, had had the same thought, yet had dared not voice it aloud for fear of it being true.