Salt Bride (48 page)

“Magnus. Please. Don’t do this,” Jane said gently but firmly, standing at her husband’s elbow, a hand on his velvet sleeve. She glanced anxiously at Sir Antony, whose desolate face was as white as chalk, and then at Tom, who was wearing a brave face of understanding, and added firmly, looking up at the Earl’s strong profile, “Choking the life out of her will give you temporary satisfaction but I do not want any more unhappiness. Think of Ron and Merry. Think of our future. I love you. Please. She’s ill. Her mind, it isn’t well. She needs help.”

“When I think of the wanton suffering she inflicted on her small son all to gain my singular attention, it makes me ill,” Salt uttered, throat dry and raw with despair. “What you have endured… I can never—
ever
—make amends.”

“Yes. Yes you can,” Jane argued calmly. “When all is said and done, four years is not such a long time to be apart. A seaman’s wife can wait many years for word that her husband is safe. Sons go off wandering the Continent on the Grand Tour for just as many years while their families wait uneasy at home for their return. We have each other and a long future together. Ron and Merry are now out of harm’s way and they will learn to be happy, carefree children again. Please, Magnus. I do not want to dwell in the past. I want to go forward with you and the children into the future, together as a family.”

Slowly, Salt’s grip about Diana St. John’s throat slackened and with her release came unbridled relief. He tossed the small blue bottle amongst the clutter on the tea trolley and turned to gather Jane into his embrace. He buried his face in the abundance of her shiny black hair and when she put her arms up about his neck and went on tiptoe to murmur soothing words of comfort, a deep breath escaped him and he shuddered with a mixture of a dozen emotions.

And as the couple found relief and tenderness in their embraces, Sir Antony stepped forward and caught his sister as she staggered back, coughing, and spluttering, a hand to her burning throat that wore the imprints of the Earl’s fingers. But for all her distress, she would not have the touch of her brother and kept her gaze firmly fixed on the Earl and Countess. Her mouth twisted up with loathing to see him so happy and his life full of promise when all she had ever done, all she had ever strived for was to make the Sinclair name synonymous with power and this handsome nobleman the most influential politician in the kingdom. She would show him. She would make them both pay. He would live to regret this day for the rest of his life.

She snatched up the blue bottle he had tossed amongst the tea things, uncorked it and in one last defiant act threw the contents down her dry throat and swallowed. It was done. She had poisoned herself and when she was dead, he would realize just how much she had meant to him.

“No! Di! Don’t!” Sir Antony shouted and grabbed for the blue bottle. But he was too late and all he managed to do was wrest the empty vessel from her fingers and fling it away from him.

“My little apothecary on the Strand tells me that if too much is administered, death will follow quite quickly. That’s good to know. But it will be painful, agonizing in fact. You will appreciate that,” she said with a sneering smile at Jane. “And you,” she added, blinking up at the Earl, who frowned down at her, his arm about his wife’s waist and holding her close, “you shall have my death on your conscience for the rest of your long illustrious life. You’ll regret the loss of me once I’m gone. Only then will you realize my true worth.”

“Leave her to me,” Sir Antony demanded, a hand on the back of the wingchair where his sister sat in state. Tearfully, he stared at Tom and then at the Earl and Countess, who bravely met his gaze with a sad smile. “I’ll take care of her. She’s still my sister whatever mad demons possess her. It’s the least I can do for Ron and Merry, and for you, Salt. Now go. This isn’t the place for your wife, or you. Take her up to the nursery. Caroline and the children are waiting.”

“Your loyalty is to be admired, Tony, and one day it will be duly rewarded,” the Earl responded calmly, a nod to Tom to open the door that led out onto the passageway. Four burly footmen, the butler and Willis, followed by two dour faced gentlemen in plain frockcoats silently filled the room. “Your sister doesn’t deserve you, nor does she deserve to have a melodramatic exit.”

Jane looked from Sir Antony to her stepbrother and then up at her husband. They were all unbelievably calm given Diana St. John had just downed a vial of poison. “Please. Magnus, call a physician. She must be given something to bring up the poison.” She glanced at the two men in plain frockcoats who now stepped forward. “Are these men physicians? Are they here to help her?”

“Yes. They are here to help, but not in the way you think,” Salt answered and kissed Jane’s forehead. “My darling, do you honestly believe I’d have left poison in that bottle? It was flushed out long ago. Nothing more harmful than a lemon cordial went down her throat.”

“What?” Diana St. John demanded, half out of the wingchair. Sir Antony held her in check, a firm hand to her shoulder. “How dare you! How dare you deprive me!” she snarled, defeated. “Why is that sniveling servant here? Who are these men? Unhand me at once, Antony! Do they have any idea who I am?”

“They know precisely who you are and what you have done and they will be amply compensated for taking on the care of you,” the Earl advised, a nod to the two plainly dressed gentlemen who stepped forward either side of Diana St. John’s chair and bowed to him. “I suggest you do as you are told. If you do not… These gentlemen are well versed in the care of lunatics. Tony, you may wish to accompany her to the courtyard to say your farewells. The coach is leaving at once.”

When the sitting room was again tranquil and deserted of attending physicians and the Lady St. John, who did not go quietly but screaming and kicking and heaping curses upon all and sundry as the butler closed over the door, Tom asked what Jane wanted to know. “Where are you sending the Lady St. John, my lord?”

“Where she can do no harm. And yes, she will be well cared for and all her needs accommodated,” he assured Jane with a smile and a chuff under the chin. “But she will be pressed for company. I won’t tell you the precise location in the Welsh mountains, but the views from the castle keep, so I am told, are spectacular.” He saw Jane’s glance of concern at Willis, who was issuing last minute instructions to the four burly footmen who would accompany the coach as outriders. “Rufus is coming to live with us in Wiltshire. He is the new steward of Salt Hall. He will marry Anne and settle in the gatehouse lodge where they will no doubt produce half a dozen brats, some of whom will make up the Salt Hall cricket team.” He grinned. “The rest of the team I have promised to supply.”

Jane gasped and took her gaze from the under-butler, blushing furiously. “Magnus! You made no such promise to Willis!”

“Didn’t I? I gave the man my word. Now come along, wife,” he added, effortlessly scooping Jane up into his arms and striding out of the pretty sitting room without looking back. “You too, Tom. I’m really rather ravenous.”

“I’m not surprised,” Tom added in the servant passage. “It’s not every day the Earl of Salt Hendon is beaten at his own game.”

Jane struggled to sit up in her husband’s arms, blue eyes wide with disbelief. “Tom beat you at tennis! Magnus?”

The Earl refused to look at either of them. He stretched his neck in its intricately tied cravat. “I’m not entirely infallible.”

“Thus spoke the noble nostrils,” Tom muttered disrespectfully.

“I beg your pardon, Tom Allenby?”

Jane sighed and pretended to be exasperated. “It’s that dreaded pedestal, again. It comes with the nostrils, I’m afraid.”

Salt stopped at the base of the stairs that led up to the nursery and let Jane stand on her own feet.

“The pedestal has been consigned to the fire,” he murmured, brushing the tip of his nose against hers, then looking over her head at Tom, who was grinning like a sentimental idiot. He raised his eyebrows in mock hauteur. “But, if you don’t mind, I shall keep my noble nostrils. They are useful for quelling recalcitrant servants and very small children and self-satisfied brothers-in-law.”

Jane giggled and then was suddenly shy. She glanced at Tom, who understood at once that he should make himself scarce and with a smile excused himself. Salt watched him go up to the nursery two steps at a time. Not a minute later a door banged against a wall above their heads and Tom’s voice could be heard booming out a boisterous welcome to which there was a crescendo of footfall followed by squeals of delight before the door closed on the playful cacophony.

“I like your brother. He’s a good man.”

“Yes. Will you confide in him about Caroline? They are first cousins after all.”

“I suspect he may already know…”

“That bothers you?”

Salt shook his head and smiled down at her. “What bothered me was Caroline marrying Tony and seeing them with a brood of brats with no prospect of my good self becoming a father.” He grinned. “Mind you, not from want of trying.”

Jane laughed. “Magnus! You voice most shocking thoughts.”

“I’ve had a surfeit of Magnuses today. Dear me, my lady. Stop or I shall come to expect to hear my Christian name on your beautiful lips out from under the bedsheets.”

“Well, you can banish thoughts of the wrong order of things,” she said quietly, smoothing down an imaginary crease in the lapel of his velvet frockcoat. “You’ve no need to fear Antony becoming a father before you.”

Salt tried to keep his features perfectly composed, despite the boyish excitement welling up within him. In exposing Diana St. John’s unforgiveable wickedness, Rufus Willis had been forced to confide what his betrothed Anne had revealed to him: that the Countess was three months with child. It was such badly wanted news; confirmation of what Jane had always believed, that they were capable of having a family. He dared not accept the happy reality until he heard it from his wife. Thus he found it hard to contain his enthusiasm and joy, despite his best efforts to look suitably grave.

“Why need I not fear Tony beating me to fatherhood, Lady Salt?” he asked gently and made her look up at him.

“Tell me first that you truly do want to rusticate. What of your ambitions and dreams to make this little kingdom an empire to be reckoned with; your promise to the nation that the mistakes of the war will not be repeated? You cannot make me believe you will be wholly satisfied farming sheep in Wiltshire.”

He pinched her chin. “So you have been following my Parliamentary proclamations from the newssheets.”

“I may not know the first thing about politics, nor what constitutes good government, but I do know you,” Jane stated with quiet dignity. “I cannot imagine you could walk away from your duty to your country nor from those people who rely on your patronage for their livelihoods, anymore than Tom could abandon his factory workers for a life of leisure as a country squire.”

“My dear Lady Salt, your husband is looking forward to farming sheep, albeit from the comfort of the grand pile of Jacobean stone and within the bosom of his family, for the foreseeable future. But who knows what the next couple of years will bring? Ministries come and go. But while I rusticate in style, no one will go hungry; no one will lose his post. I will still maintain an interest and influence in what goes on in the capital, but from a distance. I will just have to develop very long arms of influence, that’s all.

“Well, at least you won’t have any trouble focusing at a distance,” Jane quipped.

He gave a shout of laughter. “If it will make you happy, I shall abandon my ridiculous vanity and wear those wretched eyeglasses at the breakfast table. But be warned: A bespectacled Lord Salt perusing the newssheets is a sight almost as quelling as a flare of the noble nostrils.”

Jane smiled cheekily. “What an irresistible combination. My knees are trembling with anticipation already!”

“Baggage!” He brushed a stray wisp of hair from her flushed cheek and smiled down at her lovingly. “You have yet to quell my fears…”

She placed the palm of his large hand on the delicately embroidered hem of her satin bodice where it covered her belly and smiled up at him. “My dear Lord Salt, you are to become a father. Our baby is due with the fall of the first autumn leaves.” When he visibly gulped all her shyness evaporated and she laughed and touched his cheek. “I did warn you I had a surprise for you and that you should have it sitting down. But, somehow, telling you about our baby on the nursery stairs is more fitting, isn’t it?”

He stared down into her radiantly beautiful face. “Yes, much more fitting… Have I told you how much I love you, Lady Salt?”

Jane dimpled. “You did admit to it on the tennis court. And you told me you loved me when we were naked in the carriage coming home from the Richmond Ball. But I would dearly love to hear you say it, here, in the mundane surroundings of a narrow stairwell.”

“I love you, Jane,” he stated. “I have loved you since you were seventeen years old. There was a time, those few glorious hours we spent alone in the summerhouse, when I, too, believed anything was possible, even miracles. The past four years without you have felt like fifty. Events, people, both conspired to keep us apart, but never again…
Never
, Jane.” He grinned. “Later, when we are out of these wretched clothes, I will show you just how much I love you.”

Jane peered through her dark lashes as she went up on tiptoe to put her arms about his strong neck to the riband that secured his hair. “Oh, if you are going to show me how much, then I will need a great deal of convincing.”

He bent to kiss her mouth. “Oh, yes,” he murmured huskily, “a very great deal of convincing.”

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