Scandalous Brides

by Annette Blair

  “He can’t afford to, more’s the pity. An organ grinder has more confidence in his monkey!”

  Sir Antony couldn’t help a laugh of disbelief and he shook his powdered head. “You go on convincing yourself of that, Di. I suppose he isn’t by her side because that’s where he wants to be?”

  “Don’t be a dullard, Tony. Wants to be? You never were quick on the uptake, were you? If Salt hadn’t got you that sinecure in the Foreign Department I despair of where you would’ve ended up.”

  With a sigh, Sir Antony let the quizzing glass drop on its riband and picked up two glasses of champagne from a passing footman’s silver tray. He gave one to his sister, and raised his to her. “Comfortably ensconced at White’s behind the pages of a newssheet minding my own business, I suspect.”

  Diana St. John’s painted mouth twisted with disdain. “You were such a disappointment to Papa.”

  “We all can’t be Queen of the Amazons, my dear,” he replied mildly. “Oh, you could. No doubt about that, Di. But there’s one thing you’ll never be and that’s Countess of Salt Hendon. The post’s been filled—for life.”

  “I so hate you, I’d like to throw this champagne in your inept face.”

  “Go ahead,” he stated and indicated the crowd breaking up into groups for the country-dances beyond the pillars in the ballroom. “At least then this lot would see your soft center and know that underneath your sparkling display of indifference you have a heart. Di, please, before you douse me in French vinegar, listen,” he added, all pretense dropped. “You must leave Salt alone, for your own sake as much as his. You need to make something of your life. You could marry any grand nobleman in this room in need of a wife and be a great political hostess; what a formidable pair you’d make! But there’s one nobleman you will never have, under any circumstances.”

  Diana St. John stared at her younger brother a full five seconds before she replied. Sir Antony thought he detected a whisper of emotion in her face, until she opened her mouth and then his shoulders slumped at the futility of trying to make her see reason.

  “I settled for second best once before. Never again.”

  “St. John loved you to distraction, Di, and you know it! Poor chap. He knew your heart belonged to Salt, that you foolishly married him hoping to make Salt jealous. Didn’t work, did it?”

  “He deserves better than that skinny county chit who’s now on his arm,” Diana St. John ruminated, ignoring her brother’s pointed comments. “He was almost trapped by her four years ago, until I intervened to save his career and his name. And I won’t sit by and allow her to ruin his political ambitions now, not after all my hard work to see him rise to greatness.”

  “Your hard work?” Sir Antony was laughingly incredulous. He threw back the last drops of champagne and deftly off-loaded his glass on a passing footman. “I suppose Salt had nothing to do with his own success?”

  “He needs a female who can help him achieve even greater political success. Someone just as adept at playing the political game. A hostess who isn’t afraid to be ruthless and cunning if required to further his career.”

  “Has it never occurred to you, Di, that what a nobleman of Salt’s position and abilities needs in a wife is someone who cares about him, not his political posts, or whether he’ll rise to be First Lord of the Treasury, or form government with a pack of petty corridor-whispering, backstabbing noble rabble. A wife who doesn’t meddle in politics, who, at the end of the day, makes him feel content and untroubled.” Sir Antony peered at his sister. “No? Not ringing any bells of St. Clemens in that pretty head of yours, sister of mine?”

  “Salt may have married a wide-eyed stick insect, but he need not be distracted by her,” Diana stated as if her brother hadn’t spoken, depositing her glass of champagne on a silver tray that was being offered to her. “If he wants distraction, I can provide him with any number of females chaffing at the bit to fill the position of mistress.”

  “Your services in that area have never been sought or required,” Sir Antony remarked dryly. “And as he hasn’t strayed from the marital bed since the day he was married, his carnal wants are being admirably fulfilled by his wife.”

  “That just proves she’s ill-bred. Noble wives are not there to play harlot for their husbands. Husbands take their carnal appetites elsewhere. That’s what whores are for.”

  Sir Antony rolled his eyes to the ornate ceiling on a sigh.

  “Father lamented Mother had all the carnal cravings of a Scottish salmon.”

  “He’ll soon tire of her,” Diana went on, ignoring her brother’s remark, “whether she plays the whore for him or not, he always tires of his whores.”

  Finally, Sir Antony’s frayed temper snapped. He gritted his teeth and turned glittering blue eyes on his sister. “For God’s sake, Diana! Stop calling her that. She’s his wife.”

  Diana teasingly tickled her brother under the chin with the pleats of her fan. “Ooh! Such emotion, Tony! Got you under her whore’s spell, too? That would explain the latest gossip circulating drawing rooms: While Lord Salt is hard at work making speeches in the House you are hard at work between Lady Salt’s thighs.”

  Sir Antony snatched his sister’s fan and flung it to the floor in abhorrence.

  “Never. Never repeat that piece of filth again,” he growled. “Lady Salt is deeply in love with her husband. I believe her to be honest and true. And even if in your blind jealousy you have convinced yourself that she could be disloyal to Salt, you should never have believed it of me, your own brother! I could never cuckold my best friend.”

  “Sir Lancelot to Salt’s King Arthur to be sure, Tony!” Diana announced dismissively with a trill of laughter that had the few remaining guests lingering by the refreshment tables turning to stare with interest at brother and sister. “But it’s not what I believe that matters. It’s what Salt believes about his little whore-bride, isn’t it?”

  “For the last time, Diana,” Sir Antony stated, beyond patience. “Leave them alone; for your own sake. Salt has tolerated your interference in the past because it has been harmless, if annoyingly persistent. This is an entirely different game you’re playing at, and one you are destined to lose. I give you fair warning: Overstep the mark with his wife and he’ll never forgive you…ever.”

  Diana shrugged a bare shoulder and changed tack. “You think I give a groat about that insipid milkmaid being Countess of Salt Hendon? My dear Tony, what I do I do, and have always done, for Ron.”

  Sir Antony was skeptical. “It’s what you do to Ron that bothers me.”

  “I beg you pardon?” Diana St. John was uncharacteristically startled.

  For the first time in their conversation, Sir Antony sensed that his sister was paying attention. “Here’s another warning you should heed, Di. If your son continues to be ill; if you continue to have Salt called out at all hours of the night, you may find your children removed from your care.”

  “Are you drunk? I am their mother. Salt would never take them from me. Never.”

  Sir Antony held her gaze. His mouth grim. “Fair warning, Di.”

  She turned her chin and out of the corner of her eye spied the Earl at the edge of the dance floor in relaxed conversation with that old roué Lord March, the perverse wit George Selwyn, and his mentor and good friend Lord Waldegrave, the Countess nowhere to be seen. He was happier and more content than she had seen him in many years. In fact since that fateful Hunt Ball at Salt Hall when he had proposed to Jane Despard. It made Diana St. John sick to her stomach.

  It was time she made her move on the Countess and stopped squandering it in vapid conversation with her brother. Still, she couldn’t resist a parting remark, to exert her superiority over him, as always, and calculated to send his mind into a spin of conjecture. She snatched her fan from an obliging footman, who had scooped it up off the polished floorboards, flicked it open and, with a bunch of her silk petticoats in one hand, said to Sir Antony, with a smug smile, before she swept off to the ballroom, �
�Salt’s whore-bride has a dirty little secret. She’s with child. But whose brat is it?”

  SIR ANTONY’S JAW swung wide at this startling pronouncement and he watched his sister traverse the ballroom, stopping to say hello to an old Dowager Duchess with gout here, kissing the powdered and patched cheek of a dear friend in a towering toupée there, playfully rapping her fan across the knuckles of an old roué who bowed over her outstretched hand; then exchanging smiles and pleasantries with a Lord of the Admiralty before disappearing from view out on to the terrace. She was the most amiable and animated beauty in the vast sea of noble silks and powder, and an altogether different being from the one Sir Antony knew as his sister, and it bothered him greatly.

  Her throw away news that the Countess of Salt Hendon was with child made him oblivious to the footman who stood waiting at his elbow. The servant had been standing there for sometime. Indeed, he had been the one to retrieve Lady St. John’s fan from the floorboards. The only sign that he had heard the whole of the heated discussion between brother and sister was the redness to his ears. In every other respect he remained blank-faced. Inside he was bursting with news and couldn’t wait for the ball to end to exchange these juicy tidbits with the staff below stairs. He now stepped forward and presented the still gaping Sir Antony with a sealed letter.

  Sir Antony had the letter in his hand a full minute before he realized it was there and when he turned to enquire of the servant who had sent it, found himself alone by the French window. He broke the seal, mind still abuzz, but when he opened out the single sheet of paper and saw the familiar handwriting his mind cleared of all else. Reading the two sentences caused his heart to flutter, and he beamed from ear to ear. Quickly, he put the letter in an inner pocket of his frock coat.

  Five minutes later he was making his apologies to his hosts, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, and before a powdered head could turn to wonder why the diplomat was making a hasty retreat from the social event of the winter thaw, Sir Antony was out the front door and in a hackney headed for Grosvenor Square.

  THIRTEEN

  JANE LEFT the glittering ballroom for the fresh air of the expansive terrace with its breathtaking views of the Thames, mind bubbling over with so many new faces and names that she was sure she would forget them all by morning. She was in search of her stepbrother, whom she spied earlier in the ballroom in company with Billy Church. He had waved to her but she had been caught up in a round of endless introductions and small talk, everyone it seemed who was anyone eager to meet the Earl of Salt Hendon’s bride. She had lost sight of Tom in the press of the crowd and it was only later, after Pascoe, Lord Church had taken her out for a country-dance, and Salt was busily engaged in conversation with Lord Waldegrave, did she feel able to slip away.

  Tom was said to be on the terrace but so it seemed was half the guest list. Couples had spilled out of the house to walk the gravel paths or just stand by the iron railings to admire the view, considered one of the finest in all London. Liveried footmen scurried about with trays of refreshment. Others stood to attention either side of the wide steps that took guests from one flat expanse of terrace to the next until they finally arrived at the jetty, where bobbed colorful barges and boats that had brought guests from lower down the Thames.

  The enormous shoals of floating ice that had blocked the river in January were now melted so that all manner of water craft plied the congested breadth of the Thames, from small two man row boats, to ships under sail and covered barges festooned with colorful bunting. At the foreshore of the river to the horizon everywhere was brick and stone, the red roofs of buildings, and the church spires piercing the milky blue sky. Rising majestically above this conglomeration that was the city of London stood St. Paul’s, the cathedral’s glorious dome dwarfing everything that surrounded it, the magnificence of which never failed to draw a breath of amazement from this superlative vantage point, from residents and visitors to the metropolis alike.

  Jane drew breath now as she took in the sprawling vista of river, city and darkening sky. She carefully descended the steps that led down to the next section of terrace closer to the water’s edge, a clutch of petticoats in her hand, and glad she had come outside before nightfall shrouded the view in a dark blanket, and the cold air finally penetrated her bones. But darkness, and to ward off the cold, had been accounted for with strategically placed tapers lining the terrace walks, ready to be lit the moment the signal was given. And out in the water bobbed a flotilla of barges, packed with fire rockets and Catherine wheels, all intended to light up the night sky, however briefly, and shower the guests in flecks of tiny lights: the much anticipated finale to the Richmond Ball.

  Music drifted out from the ballroom. Laughter and conversation in the open air competed with the noise of water traffic and sounds of a city that never slept. Jane had at first thought she would never be able to sleep at night with the constant and varied noises around her, everything from carriage wheels rumbling along the cobbles, cattle being herded to market, sellers advertising their wares in their sing song voices, to the pitter pat of pattens that kept a lady’s silk shoes from town filth. But since her marriage, she had slept very well indeed, in no small part due to her husband’s warm embrace.

  Instinctively, she lightly fingered the sapphire locket about her throat and wistfully thought about the baby she was carrying.

  “You think that trinket holds any meaning for him?” a voice purred in her ear.

  Jane spun about, saw a flash of red and gold silk and was suddenly nauseous. Dizzy and disorientated, she stuck out a hand to hard grip the iron railing that was the only barrier between her and the plunge to the embankment below. It was the overpowering scent of the woman’s perfume not the words hissed in her ear that had her flustered.

  Diana St. John had cornered her where two iron railings met at right angles. She stood behind Jane, her wide petticoats penning her in and blocking her escape. To the casual observer it appeared as if the two women were admiring the view from opposite compass points while in conversation.

  “That trinket has no more meaning for Salt than that garish wedding band he was forced to slip on your finger,” Diana St. John continued flatly, hazel-eyed gaze riveted to Jane’s face. “His mother wore the Sinclair locket on State occasions and to significant balls such as this because it was expected of her; another social trapping of her position in society. But she considered it an ugly heirloom. It suits you perfectly.”

  “Is there anything I may do for you, my lady?” Jane asked quietly, blue eyes holding the woman’s gaze, while she stirred fresh air onto her face with her fan in an attempt to ward off the waves of nausea that came and went with Diana St. John’s strong scent carried on the river breeze. Perhaps if she let the woman say her piece she would then leave her alone?

  Diana St. John’s painted mouth thinned and she cast a significant look over Jane’s shoulder at the flowing river. “Aside from drowning yourself? No.”

  Jane swallowed. “If I have offended you in any way…”

  “Offended me? Your existence offends me!”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Diana St. John repeated, disconcerted. How dare this wisp of a woman, who had the bad manners to put up her chin, ask such a blunt question? Who did she think she was? “Surely you know the answer. Or are you as wafer-brained as you are scrawny? He deserves better than you. He deserves someone befitting his noble blood and rank, someone of whom he can be proud, who holds to the same convictions and ambitions. He deserves—”

  “—you?” Jane interrupted simply. “I am sorry he did not marry you years ago, my lady. Then perhaps you would not hate him.”

  “Hate him?” Diana St. John jabbed Jane’s beribboned stomacher with the closed sticks of her fan. “What do you mean, hate him? I love him. I’ve always loved him!”

  “For a woman who professes love, you spend a great deal of your time needlessly interfering in his life—”

  “How dare—”

  “—and
finding ways to punish him for not loving you in return.”

  Diana St. John was rendered speechless. She itched to slap the Countess of Salt Hendon’s beautiful face. A terrace crowded with the crème de la crème of Polite Society forestalled her.

  “Clever,” she finally managed to say in a low voice and held firm her fan to Jane’s belly. “Got a dirty little secret to tell me, my lady?” she taunted, again jabbing the fan into her. When Jane opened wide her eyes and instinctively tried to move away but was trapped by the iron railing in the small of her back, Diana St. John’s smug smile reappeared. “I’ll lay good odds he’s blissfully ignorant of the brat you’re carrying, just as he was four years ago.”

  “Yes, I am pregnant with Lord Salt’s child, my lady,” Jane replied with a calmness that belied her anxiety. “You can be the first to congratulate us.”

  “Congratulate you? Dear God, I’ll see you and the bastard burn in hell first!”

  “How is that you know I conceived Salt’s child four years ago?” Jane asked in her blunt way, though it took all her self-control to remain calm, stunned as she was by the ferocity of the woman’s vitriol. “I told no one Magnus was the father of my child.”

  “That was a dim-wit’s mistake, but one I applaud wholeheartedly. Had you sense you would’ve confessed all to Sir Felix, and your father would have run hot foot to London, and Salt been forced to marry you. By protecting Magnus you caused the death of his child. Good Lord! You didn’t even possess the guile to keep your legs closed to him until he had you up before parson. More fool you.”

  “Perhaps I was a fool. Perhaps I am in some way to blame for my baby’s death but… I was naïve and so desperately in love, and believed myself loved in return…” When Diana St. John gave a snort of disbelief, Jane added quietly, hoping to see a spark of humanity in the beautiful painted face, “What about the birth of your twins, when you first held Ron and Merry in your arms? Did you not love your babies so much it hurt?”