Salt Bride (27 page)

Jane guided Salt to a corner of the room where the adults had begun to seat themselves on an arrangement of ladder-back chairs in front of which were half a dozen children cross-legged on plump cushions before a raised platform that had upon it a marionette theatre. Nurses, nannies and tutors stood off to one side with their smaller charges and babes in arms, while servants in livery scurried about with food and drink on silver trays for members of the audience.

“Uncle Salt! Sit here next to Tom. Sit here! It’s about to start!” Merry demanded eagerly, grasping for the Earl’s hand.

“Not the puppet show,” corrected Ron with a roll of his eyes. “We have to sit through a yawning poem first.”

“But you are just as eager as the rest of us to see Mr. Wraxton’s iron wig,” Merry countered. “Isn’t he, Aunt Jane?”

Salt cleared his throat as he took a swift look about the long room, with its fresh coat of powder blue paint, sprigleaf patterned wallpaper and soft matching curtains. He smiled down at his wife. “All your endeavor, my lady?”

“I cannot claim all the glory. Tony, Merry, Ron and Tom proffered their expert opinion on decoration. Although I suspect Ron and Tom will deny any involvement in such a womanly venture. Tony is made of sterner stuff.”

This made Salt laugh, a glance over her dark hair at her stepbrother who gave a shrug of defeat. “I do not doubt it. Not a very manly pursuit to own to pouring over swatches of fabric.”

“Speak for yourself, Salt,” Sir Antony quipped, quizzing glass plastered to an eye and a wink at Tom. “You’d be surprised how many pretty girls occupy the counters of drapery shops.”

“Uncle Salt! Sit!” demanded Merry, pointing to an empty chair central to the row as she scrambled on to one of two tasseled cushions at the claw and ball foot of his chair. “Aunt Jane? Aunt Jane! Here! Here!”

Jane let go of the Earl’s arm and would have stepped away to take her place on the cushion placed between Merry and Ron, but he grabbed her hand.

“Are you abandoning me, my lady?”

Jane looked down at his possessive hold on her wrist. “I—The children have reserved a cushion and I promised…”

He let her go and sat where requested with an outward flick of his frockcoat skirts. “Naturally they have placed you at my feet which is only right and proper.”

Jane glanced up, saw the wink and turned away to sink down on a cushion beside Merry. He leaned in to whisper at her ear before settling back to enjoy the performance.

“I would gladly trade places if it was in my power to do so.”

His words were still reverberating in her ear as Hilary Wraxton minced across to stand center stage dressed in a canary yellow frockcoat with matching breeches, diamond paste buckles in the large leather tongues of his red-heeled shoes, and carrying a lace handkerchief. He unfurled a parchment and held it out at arm’s length then cleared his throat as if about to make an announcement as town crier. But it was at his head that all eyes were glued. He was wearing a full bottom wig, all tight brown curls and festooned above each ear with yellow ribbons.

A strident elderly female voice cut into the stunned silence.

“What’s that you say, dear boy? Iron? The fellow’s wearing an
iron
wig?”

“Can’t tell ’em from the real thing.”

“What? You must be mad! It’s bloody obvious the thing ain’t real!”

“Steady! Ladies and brats present.”

“Sorry.”

“Ha! Ha! Can’t tell horsehair from the real thing so why should iron be any different. Aye? Still. Ridiculous creation.”

“Hope the poetry is better than the finery.”

“It’s an
Ode
.”

“
Ode
-or. Ha! Ha!”

“Oh do be quiet and let the fellow get on with it!”

“Yes, do!”

“What’s it called, this Ode?”

“
Ode to a Bloody Obvious Iron Wig
. Ha! Ha!”

“Not amusing at all, George.”

“What’s that you say about a carriage, dear boy?” came the same strident elderly female voice. “I thought we were talking about wigs?”

“Do listen, aunt! Hilary’s
poem
. It’s called an
ode
, and it’s about a carriage.”

“Good—Lord!”

“
shhhhhhh
!”

The children were being better behaved than the assembled adults who giggled behind fluttering fans and guffawed into lace handkerchiefs. Jane glanced over her shoulder at the Earl.

“You see the level to which poor Mr. Wraxton has had to condescend to garner your patronage, my lord.”

Salt playfully tugged one of her curls.

“Wearing an iron wig at a children’s tea party is certainly descending, my lady. But why does Hilary require my patronage?”

“Oh? You
have
neglected him! Poor Mr. Wraxton will be devastated if he discovers his poetry accumulating in your bookroom remains untouched and unread.”

Salt continued to play with her hair.

“I’ve been rather preoccupied of late… If
poor
Mr. Wraxton wishes to place blame, he had best place it at your elegant feet. No! You cannot argue with that. Now do stop distracting me,” he added loftily, eyes on the stage. “I must give my full attention to Hilary’s ode.” And in the manner of a sultan, waved a languid lace covered hand for Mr. Wraxton to begin his recitation:
Ode to a Well-Sprung Carriage
.

Oh, thy torment of a rut in the road
To the muck and manure, the slush and the slurry…

It was usually after dinner, when tea and coffee were taken in the Long Gallery and her children drew Salt and Sir Antony, and that creature with her big blue eyes and radiant complexion, and any of the guests who had a mind for childish pursuits, to play at charades, that Diana St. John quietly disappeared upstairs to the Countess’s private chamber.

She was never away for more than half an hour at a time. And when she returned without ever having been missed, it was in a brooding temper, because as hard as she fought to remain a force in the Earl’s life since his marriage, with her disruptive Tuesday visits with her children in tow, being within his orbit at all the same parties, party-political dinners, routs and theatre evenings, there was one area of the Earl’s life that remained off-limits and beyond her control to influence. She might continue to insinuate herself into his waking hours, but his nights belonged very much to his wife, and much to her angry disgust, only his wife.

That he had not strayed one night from the marital bed since his marriage gnawed away at her day and night. She tried to convince herself that to a man of Salt’s experience and strong appetites, physical gratification was as necessary and as mundane as satisfying hunger and thirst, no more and no less. But when the Countess’s personal maid reluctantly told her that the Earl had not only spent every night since his marriage with his wife but always stayed the entire night in her bed, Diana St. John began to realize with bitter disappointment that such long-held, cold-blooded beliefs could be applied to Salt’s lovers, but not it seemed to his wife.

Hiding her anger, frustration and intense jealousy behind a mask of indifference, she bided her time, waiting for the maid to tell her the inevitable news she dreaded hearing and yet desperately wanted to know so she could finally do something to put an end to her misery. The anticipation was almost worse than the news itself and after two months and as many weeks of being told there was no news to tell, Diana St. John was beginning to suspect the maid was holding out on her.

“Are you absolutely certain?” she demanded fiercely, backing the maid into the Countess’s closet and shutting over the door. “You’re not mistaken? She’s not keeping the news from you?”

Anne sniffed loudly, feeling wretched at abusing the young Countess’s trust for the umpteenth time, yet so afraid of this woman, who stood so menacingly close that her legs wobbled with fear, that she did her bidding without question. “Her ladyship hasn’t said a word to me.”

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t breeding, nitwit! You’re supposed to look for signs,
anything
that might give me a clue.”

“Yes, my lady,” Anne replied meekly and cast her gaze to the floorboards.

Diana St. John frowned and tapped the closed sticks of her fan in the palm of her hand as she took a thoughtful turn about Jane’s dimly lit closet. She came back to the maid, who was too scared to look her in the eye. “But from what you’ve been telling me he’s been mounting her every night,” she added silkily. “Sometimes twice in a night. So it stands to reason that such a healthy, vigorous male as his lordship would’ve planted enough seed to start a garden of brats by now… God, one wonders where he gets the stamina, what with parliamentary sittings and debates and those long late hours spent alone in his bookroom pouring over sinecure paperwork…”

“Not alone, my lady,” Anne interrupted, latching on to mention of the bookroom and prepared to confide an interesting turn of events if it meant diverting this woman from what was more momentous news. When Diana glared at her and waved her fan to and fro, for her to continue, she said with a swallow, “Her ladyship has taken to spending an hour before bed in the bookroom—”

“
What
?”

“—the bookroom with his lordship.”

“No!”

Anne winced at the ferocity of the denial and backed away as Diana St. John began to pace again.

“That’s my room,
our
room!” she growled, and such was her caged fury that she snapped the delicate latticed carved sticks of her fan with thumb and forefinger. “That’s where we spend
our
time. What’s she doing in there?”

“Mr. Willis tells me his lordship is teaching her ladyship to play at chess.”

Diana St. John blinked. “Chess? Why would he spend his time playing at chess with that simpleton?”

Anne bit back a retort about kindness not being an indication of idiocy.

“What else can you tell me?”

“Her ladyship sometimes takes her embroidery with her to the bookroom to—”

“Not that, you ridiculous creature! What else can you tell me about her besides the fact she opens her legs and is playing chess?”

Anne winced at such crudity and racked her mind for some other piece of news.

“They-they talk in bed...”

“Talk?
Talk?
In
bed
?”

“Yes, my lady. When his lordship first comes to the bedchamber they talk; sometimes they talk for well over an hour.”

Diana St. John was bewildered and she voiced her bemusement aloud. “But what could they possibly have to talk
about
? Why would he want to talk to
her
?”

“I am sorry, my lady, but I cannot hear what they talk about, I just hear them talking.”

Diana St. John’s brow was still furrowed, as if this piece of information was so incredible as to be disbelieved. So much so that Anne rattled on for fear the woman would turn on her with violence.

“One night last week his lordship didn’t come to her ladyship’s bed, my lady,” she said in a rush, hating herself for being such a telltale.

This pronouncement ended Diana St. John’s preoccupation and she stopped her pacing and looked the maid up and down with interest. “Did he not? Now that
is
a
very
interesting piece of news indeed,” she purred with satisfaction. “Do you remember the precise night?”

“It was two nights, my lady. Wednesday night and Thursday night.”

Diana St. John’s brow cleared and her eyes shone. She looked past the maid’s shoulder at some distant point. “Wednesday
and
Thursday night! Well! Well! Better still! Two nights left
all alone
. Two nights he was with someone else…”

“Oh, I don’t think so, my la—”

“What would you know to the contrary?”

Anne had felt the sting before she realized she’d been struck. She crumpled against a dresser drawer, a hand to her smarting cheek. “Andrews—Andrews is his lordship’s valet and he said on one of those nights his lordship came home in the early hours of the morning and not wanting to disturb her ladyship, stayed in his own bed and—”

“And? And? That’s only one of the two nights accounted for! And? Speak up! Speak up! I haven’t got all night.”

“The-the second night, my father Mr. Springer, he’s the butler at the Arlington townhouse, said his lordship dined with Sir Antony Templestowe and then stayed the night in his old suite of rooms on account of the very late hour.”

Diana St. John clucked and cooed and smiled. “Well, little Anne. You have managed to engage two households in spying upon their lord and master; every servant with their beady little eyes to the keyholes! Well done!” Almost instantly her face darkened. “The servants know this, but I presume her ladyship has been too timid to enquire of her husband’s servants as to their master’s whereabouts on those nights?” When the maid nodded she sighed her satisfaction. “Good. Her reticence will serve me well.” She stuck the end of her broken fan under Anne’s chin. “You still have not told me what I want to know.”

“My lady?”

“Tell me what I want to know or I will return downstairs this instant and inform his lordship in front of his guests that I found the Countess’s personal maid on her knees for the under-butler!”