Dair Devil (60 page)
Authors: Lucinda Brant
The silence went on for so long that curiosity made Jane turn away from the window. Had there been a chair close by she would have sat upon it from shock. Tom had deserted her, settling with his mother and the secretary, his friend from Oxford days, in the far corner of the drawing room, to take tea and talk over old times. They had left Jane to face Lord Salt alone.
His lordship stared over her head and out the window.
“Miss Despard, it is customary to permit me to bow over your hand,” he drawled, with just that touch of insolence required to bring immediate obedience.
But Jane was too much affected by his closeness and his earlier unfavorable appraisal to be bothered with the niceties of a formal introduction, and her hands remained firmly clasped in front of her. She told herself she was being obstinately bad-mannered, but, for the first time in years, she allowed emotion to rule her tongue and spoke her thoughts.
“I am fully sensible to the honor you do me, my lord,” she answered in a clear voice, gaze riveted to the engraved silver buttons of his waistcoat. “But I am not ignorant of the fact it was forced upon you in a most ungentlemanly manner. It is a circumstance I bitterly regret and wish I could alter.”
There was the smallest of pauses before Salt said in his insolent way, “You’ve had ample opportunity to release me from such a damnable circumstance. You merely had to refuse the honor. Still, there are some eighteen hours before the ceremony…”
This blunt speech did tilt Jane’s chin to his face, blue eyes wide with astonishment. He was offering her the opportunity to give him an eleventh hour reprieve; indeed his very manner suggested he expected her to do so there and then. That she wanted to release him from his forced obligation with all her heart was momentarily forgotten with the wound to her feminine pride. That he did not even have the good manners to disguise his abhorrence for a match that was of her father’s making, not hers, angered her into giving an impudent reply.
“You cannot imagine, my lord, that I leapt at your backhanded offer of marriage,” she stated with as much coldness in her voice as she could muster. “Doubtless there are dozens of females eager to take their place at your side as Countess of Salt Hendon. I wholeheartedly wish you’d offered for one of these ladies, for then this horrid situation would never have presented itself.”
“I am not in the habit of making life-altering decisions merely to oblige others,” he replied coldly, gaze remaining fixed to the wet windowpane. “Yet… Knowing you for a fickle female with no heart and even less brain, who has the barefaced cheek to accept a
backhanded
offer of marriage, I should indeed have married the next fresh-faced virgin who presented herself for mounting.”
Jane staggered back a pace, mind reeling and hand out to the heavy brocade curtains for support at such crude speech. “How… How
dare
you speak to me in such a repulsive manner!” she whispered indignantly, a fervent glance at her tea-drinking relatives at the far end of the room. “I am not one of your whores who you can—”
This brought his hard gaze down to her beautiful face. “Come now, Miss Despard,” he said with bored indifference. “Your show of offended sensibilities insults my intelligence. It is a bit late in the day to exhibit virginal outrage.” He watched her throat constrict, and when she turned her fine nose to the window, giving him a view of her lovely profile, he smiled crookedly. How well she played the part of indignant female! As if she were the injured party. “By the way, I don’t waste conversation on whores.”
“If you hope to unsettle me with your-your—by
that,
then you are vastly mistaken in my—in my—” She stopped herself and bit her full lower lip, for how could she say the word
character
when she had none?
He seemed to read her mind, for he said so softly that she could only just hear him, “You were wise not to say it. You lost what little character you possessed when you thumbed your nose at constancy and decency to take up with a conscienceless old merchant. But as you are your father’s daughter, I am inclined to believe Sir Felix never taught you the meaning of such words. Thus I will own that the fault lies with me for being taken in by your beautiful face.”
Jane bravely met his gaze, and seeing the loathing in his eyes, a painful knot formed in her chest, making it difficult for her to breathe. She did not understand what she had done to deserve such hatred. He spoke of her not being constant or decent, and yet if there was one thing she had been in those days, weeks, and months after the night in the summerhouse, it was constant. Nor did she understand why he had such an intense dislike for Jacob Allenby, the only person to offer her sanctuary. She knew there was no point defending her own character with this male colossus of unreasonableness, but there was no reason for him to besmirch her protector. She forced herself to remain outwardly calm.
“Your vast experience of the type may give you some latitude to speak to me as you would any whore of your acquaintance,” she said in a steady voice. “But it does not give you leave to besmirch Mr. Allenby’s unblemished character. I have never heard an unkind word spoken about him. And despite the difficult circumstances in which I lived under his roof, I never had cause to—”
Salt goggled at her, appalled. “I won’t stand here and listen to you praise—”
“—
slap
his face!”
There was a moment’s heavy silence, then the Earl let out such a bark of genuine laughter that he startled those taking tea to momentary silence.
“My dear Miss Despard, pride still smarting?”
“I have no idea to what you are referring, my lord.”
“Don’t you?” he asked curiously, the anger gone from his deep voice. “I’d wager my best Hunter you were sorely disappointed when your merchant protector intervened that day on the Hunt. Truth be told, you had no need to lash out as you did. I wasn’t about to offer you a second helping of my vast experience.”
“What a
dull, hollow existence
you must lead to hold to the memory of such a trifling incident. I assure you I had not recalled it until now.”
His smile was sardonic. “It was to your dull, hollow existence I was referring, madam. Your hand hasn’t been the only one to have slapped this noble cheek.”
“What a comfort to know there are females who have spurned Wiltshire’s libertine lord!”
“No. I never said that. Every other slap invited pursuit; yours, I’d no desire to satisfy. Easy game doesn’t interest me. No, don’t turn your face away,” he commanded in a low voice, pinching her small chin between thumb and forefinger and forcing her to look up at him. “Do we go before parson tomorrow or not?”
To her shame and embarrassment, Jane felt hot tears sting her eyelids and she swallowed hard, unable to give him an immediate response. He had exposed the raw nerve of her life under Jacob Allenby’s protection by stating the painfully obvious. The old Bristol merchant had kept her fed and clothed, and in return, whenever he visited the little thatched cottage that nestled in a grove between the Sinclair lands and the Allenby estate, she was at his beck and call. If it hadn’t been for Tom’s supervised quarterly visits, her life would’ve been unbearable. And now this arrogant nobleman dared to sneer at her and expect release from an obligation he had given in good faith.
It humiliated her to think that on his deathbed, her estranged father had forced Lord Salt to honor a promise made to her years earlier. Her father had fulfilled his life’s ambition in bringing about her marriage to this arrogant nobleman by means of blackmail, with no thought to her feelings in the matter or the mortification she would endure as wife of a reluctant husband. It humiliated her further that Jacob Allenby had written up a despicable will, leaving her no choice but to accept the Earl’s offer of marriage or watch her stepbrother face financial ruin. And as much as she wanted to release Lord Salt from his forced obligation, as much as she wanted to tell him why she must accept his backhanded offer of marriage, she could not; it was with an aching heart and a halting voice that she gave the Earl the answer she knew he did not in the least want to hear.
“There are factors—circumstances—Yes, my lord, we will go before parson tomorrow.”
“You surprise me,” he said with an ugly pull to his mouth. “But what female could resist the lure of a coronet? Be good enough to hold out your left hand.”
Listlessly, Jane did as she was told, and was rewarded by having an old gold filigreed band set with sapphires and diamonds slipped over her ring finger. She did not look at it, nor was she aware the band was too large for her slender finger until the Earl mentioned he would have the ring resized once they were married. She thought her mortification complete until she was ordered to sit on a ribbon back chair placed in the center of the Turkey rug by the fire. It was only then that she realized she was alone in the drawing room with the Earl and his unobtrusive secretary.
Tom and his mother had abandoned her.
A
BOUT
L
UCINDA
B
RANT
W
HEN
NOT
BUMPING
about Georgian London in my sedan chair or exchanging gossip with perfumed and patched courtiers in the gilded drawing rooms of Versailles, I write bestselling Georgian historical romances and mysteries (crime with lashings of romance). All are set in mid-1700s Georgian England, with occasional crossings to the France of Louis XV. I pull up the reins at the French Revolution where I lost a previous life at the guillotine for my unpardonably hedonistic lifestyle as a layabout aristo!
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