Noble Satyr: A Georgian Historical Romance (58 page)

Nurse hated them. But she reserved her
greatest hatred for the noble seducer. It gave her the strength and
single-minded purpose to fight to keep alive her precious, ill-used
girl. It did not stop her jumping with fright when a firm hand
pressed her shoulder.

“The physician will be here soon,” Jacob
Allenby assured her. “The recent snow fall must have delayed
him.”

“Yes, sir,” Nurse replied docilely,
continuing to rinse out the soiled sponge in the porcelain bowl on
the side table.

“Physician? Good God, what use is a
saw-bones?” scoffed the female over Jacob Allenby’s shoulder. She
came out of the shadows to warm herself by the fire in the grate,
her carefully painted face devoid of emotion. “It is evident my
medicinal is working to everyone’s satisfaction. A physician will
only interfere.”

The merchant rounded on her. “Forgive me for
not trusting the word of an angel of death!”

“Pon rep, Allenby, how dramatic you are,”
she drawled, a soft white hand to the heat. “Anyone would think by
the creature’s moans she is on death’s door. She isn’t. Syrup of
Artemisia hasn’t killed anyone of my acquaintance—
yet
.” She
glanced at the bed in thought. “Of course my apothecary on the
Strand advises that the required dose be taken immediately a female
suspects she is with child, usually the first month her courses are
overdue,” she mused matter-of-factly. “That this dolt waited four
months before confessing to the fruits of her wickedness
necessitated I increase the dosage to compensate for her sly
stupidity. After all, one must be absolutely certain the monster is
expelled.”

Jacob Allenby ground his teeth. “You’re a
cold-blooded feline, my lady.”

“No. I am a pragmatist, true to the
patrician blood that flows in my veins,” she said conversationally,
preening at her upswept hair adorned with pearls and ribbons in the
dim light cast on the oval looking glass above the mantle. “Blood
connection is prized above all else. Bastard offspring of
indeterminate lineage have no place amongst our kind.” She glanced
at the middle-aged merchant’s reflection whose frowning gaze
remained fixed on the suffering girl in the narrow bed. “Nor does
mawkish sentimentality. Why you agreed to take her off Sir Felix’s
hands, I shall never fathom.”

“Sir Felix Despard is a spineless drunkard
who should have kept a better eye on his only child or she would
not now be suffering. As for my actions, they’re not for you to
fathom.”

“Indeed? A Bristol Blue Glass manufacturer
could do worse than take as mistress a nobleman’s quick tawdry rut.
She is the offspring of a baronet, when all is said and done. Used.
Discarded. But still very beautiful.”

“You’d know all about quick tawdry ruts, my
lady.”

“You rival Mr. Garrick, to be sure. This
unholy alliance we’ve formed is so diverting. La! I do believe it’s
the best night’s entertainment I’ve had since—”

“—you went down on all fours at one of his
lordship’s orgies?”

“Shall I show you my technique?” she teased,
tickling the end of Jacob Allenby’s snub nose with the pleated tip
of her delicate gouache fan. She pouted. “Tiresome little merchant
moralists must dream of rutting titled ladies. In your dreams is
the only place you’re accorded the opportunity of
entering
society.”

“I pity your offspring, my lady,” the
merchant stated with undisguised loathing and put space between
them.

The lady’s hazel eyes went dead. She stared
coolly over nurse’s shoulder at the girl in the bed, who continued
to hug her knees tightly and whimper in pain. Just turned eighteen
and with no prospect of future happiness. Good, her ladyship
gloated, and recalled how the squire’s beautiful daughter had
captivated society on her first public engagement.

It had been at the Salt Hunt Ball, and the
girl’s extraordinary beauty coupled with a refreshing natural
modesty had caused a sensation amongst lords and ladies alike.
Unsullied and brimming with naïve optimism, charming to all and
sickeningly self-effacing, by the end of the evening she had
received three proposals of marriage and two declarations of
undying love. Embraced by Society, it was expected she would marry
title and wealth.

That very night her ladyship had found
them
together in the summerhouse down by the lake: the
handsome nobleman in all his splendid, wide-backed nakedness and
this beautiful eager virgin with her tumble of waist-length hair
the color of midnight. They were blissfully riding to heaven
together, as if they were the only two in the Garden of Eden. It
had enraged her, but what had crushed her dreams and broken her
heart was spying the ancestral betrothal necklace of the Earls of
Salt Hendon around the girl’s white throat.

The tragic consequences of the lovers’
unbridled lust could not have made her happier. But when she least
expected it, in those rare moments when she permitted herself to
smugly believe she had regained absolute control of the future, the
image of those two heavenly lovers joined as one haunted her waking
hours and turned her dreams to nightmares.

“You, sir, have no idea to what lengths this
mother has gone to secure her son’s future,” she stated dully and
retreated into the shadows just as the girl let out one last
guttural moan that filled the quiet of the airless bedchamber. “For
God’s sake! How much more pathetic whining must I endure?” she
growled, and threw her fan at the wallpaper in a temper. She
slumped down on the horsehair sofa in a billow of blue velvet
petticoats. “Allenby, have the wench examine her. She must’ve
expelled the brat by now.”

Nurse began to sob openly.

“I wish there’d been another way, my dear,”
Jacob Allenby apologized with real remorse. “You must understand
that this is the best outcome for her, with the least pain.”

He patted Nurse’s shoulder and then he, too,
retreated into the shadows.

Understand
?
Least pain
? Nurse
wanted to scream. How did any female recover from the loss of a
child, be it from miscarriage, stillbirth, or taken away at birth?
And Sir Felix would have had every right to take it away. Sent to
an orphanage, it would never know its mother, never have a father.
Best if the child was taken now, barely formed and unknowing,
because giving birth to a bastard child was a sin, a stain for
life. Her poor suffering darling Jane didn’t deserve such
ignominy.

“Please. Please,
please
, God. Please
let my darling live,” Nurse whispered and buried her face in the
bedclothes, squeezing the sponge so tightly that her fingernails
dug into the flesh of her palm and drew blood. “Please, no more
pain. No more suffering.”

And as if in answer to her prays, an eerie
stillness descended upon the bedchamber as the girl ceased to move
and finally lay quiet amongst the down pillows in the middle of the
narrow bed, the agony of the contractions abating and giving way to
relief, emptiness and loss.

Jane blinked at the guttering candle on the
side table, tears staining her cheeks knowing that it was not just
sweat from her painful exertions that bathed her exhausted body in
cool wetness but blood, her blood, and the blood of her unborn
child; life extinguished. Quiet sobbing made her turn her head. She
touched Nurse’s lace cap, which instantly brought the woman’s tear
stained face up with a jerk. Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Silly. Don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry
for now.”

LONDON, ENGLAND 1763

“Tom, do I have a dowry?” Jane asked her
stepbrother, turning away from a window being hit hard with
rain.

Tom Allenby glanced uneasily at his mother,
who was pouring him out a second dish of Bohea tea. “Dowry? Of
course you have a dowry, Jane.”

Jane wasn’t so sure. When her father
disowned her four years ago, he cut her off without a penny.

“What is the amount?”

Tom blinked. His discomfort increased.
“Amount?”

“Ten thousand pounds,” Lady Despard stated,
a sulky glance at her stepdaughter. Annoyance showed itself in the
rough way she handled the slices of seedy cake onto small blue and
white Worcester porcelain plates. “Though why Tom feels the need to
provide you with a dowry when you’re marrying the richest man in
Wiltshire, I’ll never fathom. To a moneybags nobleman, ten thousand
is but a drop in the Bristol River.”

“
Mamma
,” Tom said in an under voice,
close-shaven cheeks burning with color. “I believe I can spare Jane
ten thousand when I am to inherit ten times that amount.” He
regarded his stepsister with a hesitant smile. “It’s a fair dowry,
isn’t it, Jane?”

But Lady Despard was right. Ten thousand
pounds wasn’t much of a dowry to bring to a marriage with a
nobleman who reportedly had an income of thirty thousand pounds a
year. Yet Jane hated to see her stepbrother miserable. Poor Tom.
The terms of Jacob Allenby’s will had disturbed his well-ordered
world.

“Of course it’s a fair dowry, Tom. It is
more than fair, it is
very
generous,” she answered kindly
before retreating once more to the window with its view of London’s
bleak winter skies and grey buildings. She wished for the sun to
show itself, if but briefly, to melt the hard January frost. Tom
could then take her riding about the Green Park. Somehow, she had
to escape the confines of this unfamiliar townhouse crawling with
nameless soft-footed servants.

But there was no escaping tomorrow. Tomorrow
she was to be married. Tomorrow she would be made a countess.
Tomorrow she became
respectable
.

Tom followed her across the drawing room to
the window seat that overlooked busy Arlington Street and sat
beside her. “Listen, Jane,” he said gruffly as he picked at a
thread of a tapestry cushion. “You needn’t rush into this marriage
just for my benefit. Attorneys for Uncle’s estate said there is
still time…”

“It’s perfectly all right, Tom,” Jane
assured him with a soft smile, thin white hand covering his. “The
sooner I’m married the sooner you inherit what is rightfully yours
and can get on with your life. You have factories to run and
workers who are relying on you to pay them their long overdue
wages. It was wrong of Mr. Allenby to leave his manufacturing
concerns and his estate to you without any monies for their upkeep.
You shouldn’t be forced to foreclose, or to sell your birthright.
Those poor souls who make your blue glass need to be paid so they
can feed their families. Should they be made destitute all because
your uncle willed his capital to me? You are his only male relative
and you have an obligation to those who now work for you. We know
why your uncle made you assets rich but cash poor, why he left his
capital to me, because he hoped to force a union between us.”

“Why not? Why not marry me, Jane?”

“Because despite being my brother
in
law
, you’ve been my little brother since I can remember and
that will never change,” Jane explained kindly. “I love you as a
sister loves a brother, and that is why I cannot marry you.”

“But what of Uncle’s will?” Tom asked
lamely, not forcing the argument because he knew she was right.

“We have been over this with Mr. Allenby’s
attorneys,” Jane answered patiently. “The will does not
specifically mention that I must marry you, Tom, and so we are not
obligated to do so. That was an oversight on your uncle’s part. The
attorneys say that I may marry
any man
and the one hundred
thousand pounds will then be released in your favor.”

“Any man?” Tom gave a huff of embarrassed
anger. “But you are not marrying just
any man
, Jane. You are
marrying the Earl of Salt Hendon! I cannot allow you to make such a
sacrifice. It is not right. It is not right that in marrying him
you are left destitute. Surely, something can be worked out. We
just need time.”

“Time? It has now been
three
months
since Mr. Allenby died and you cannot keep putting off your
creditors. How much do you owe, Tom? How long do you think you can
go on before you must sell assets to meet your debts?” Jane forced
herself to smile brightly. “Besides, is it such a sacrifice to be
elevated from squire’s daughter to wife of the Earl of Salt Hendon?
I shall be a countess!”

“Wife of a nobleman who is marrying you
because he gave his word to your dying father and feels honor-bound
to do so,” Tom grumbled. “Not because he wants or loves you… Oh,
Jane! Forgive me,” he apologized just as quickly, realizing his
offence. “You know I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t apologize for the truth, Tom. Yes, I
am marrying a man who does not care two figs for me, but in doing
so my conscience is clear.”

“Well, if you won’t marry me, then marriage
to a titled Lothario is better than you remaining unmarried,” her
stepbrother said in an abrupt about face that widened Jane’s blue
eyes. “Only a husband’s protection will fend off lecherous dogs.
Living unmarried in a cottage on the estate was all well and good
while Uncle Jacob was alive to protect you. But even he was
powerless the one and only time you ventured beyond the park. You
became fair game for every depraved scoundrel riding the Salt
Hunt.” Tom squeezed her hand. “Uncle showed more restraint than I.
I’d have shot those lascivious swine as let them take you for a
harlot.”

That humiliating incident had occurred two
years ago but the memory remained painfully raw for Jane. What Tom
did not know was that the lascivious swine of which he spoke were
in truth the Earl of Salt Hendon and his friends. On the edge of
the copse, with her basket of field mushrooms over her arm and
dangling her bonnet by its silk ribbons, she had not immediately
recognized the Earl astride his favorite hunter with a full beard
upon his face and his light chestnut hair tumbled about his
shoulders.