Salt Bride (13 page)

The Post boy ringing his eleven o’clock bell signaled the last collection of mail for the day, and shattered the still and freezing night air. It was much too cold in this fashionable quarter surrounding Grosvenor Square for itinerate sellers, thieves, pickpockets and drunken Merry-Andrews who usually roamed the streets, even at this late hour. Even the chairmen were scarce. But then a carriage pulled up outside a particular townhouse in Audley Street and out stepped a lady in fur-lined hooded cape and wearing pattens to keep the muck off her satin slippers.

She had just come from Drury Lane theatre, where she had enjoyed the attentions of her son’s circle of male friends and the admiration of one or two gentlemen nearer her own age, who left their cards and asked permission to call on her the following day. She had no idea what the play was about or the names of its actors, but she had spent the evening surrounded by titled and wealthy males so was more than satisfied with her foray to the theatre.

Her buoyant mood dissolved, however, as soon as the nose-in-the-air porter of this fashionable establishment admitted her. She was not welcome; she saw it on the faces of the porter, the butler and the lady’s maid who were all lemon and lime faced. She was made to feel inferior and cheap and her clothes not quite the thing under their steely, disapproving gazes. But she had waited all day for this interview with the high and mighty Diana, Lady St. John, daughter of a Baron, cousin of an Earl, mother of his heir, and related to at least three ducal houses.

This doyen of fashion and darling of Polite Society had graciously granted Lady Despard five minutes of her time, but only under cover of darkness. But Lady Despard didn’t care that she was unwelcome, nor would she have cared had she been shown in via the tradesmen’s entrance. She had a message to convey and important news to share with her ladyship and she couldn’t wait to see her reaction. She hoped for venomous tears, at the very least. She got much more.

She was shown up to her ladyship’s boudoir because there was a fire in the grate. Ordinarily, provincial visitors were granted an audience in the drawing room at the front of the house, if they were granted an interview at all. Her pattens she left in the hall, along with her cloak. No refreshment was offered her and the porter was instructed to tell the driver to wait; Lady St. John’s visitor would not be staying above a few minutes.

Lady Despard was standing by the fireplace warming her gloved hands when Diana St. John came quietly into the room. She was in dishabille, a brocade dressing gown thrown negligently over her nightgown, and her light auburn hair, full of curling papers, fell to her shoulders. Yet, her face, as always, was perfectly made up, even down to the carefully applied mouche at the corner of her painted lips.

Diana St. John took one look at the woman by the fireplace in her revealing, low-cut bodice and outrageously upswept powdered hair and smiled thinly. Her exceptional memory had not failed her. She would not have been able to recall the woman’s name, but her butler had supplied that. Yet she knew who she was: the wife of a nobody squire and sister of a Bristol merchant – Allenby was his name, and she was stepmother of
that creature
. How gratifying that Lady Despard’s beauty had faded more rapidly than her own in the four years since their one and only meeting during the Salt Hunt.

“Been on the town, Madam?” Diana St. John enquired with a crooked smile as she came further into the room.

She did not sit, nor did she offer her visitor a chair, and was displeased when the woman did not show her rank the proper respect and curtsey.

“Drury Lane theatre, where I saw a most marvelous play by a well-known playwright, but I can’t remember either,” Lady Despard replied, the inference to her loose morals lost on her. She openly looked Diana St. John up and down. “I was surprised not to see you, my lady. Everyone who was anyone was there tonight. Still, ladies of our age must have at least one night off a week to recover our looks. The London Season must be so fatiguing for you, whereas in Bristol—”

“I don’t give a damn about Bristol, nor do I have time for your inconsequential small talk. What is it you want?”

“Fie, my lady! There’s no need to be vulgar, to be sure,” Lady Despard commented with a pout and, spying her reflection in the looking glass by the fireplace, couldn’t resist an admiring glance. “Particularly when I have made the effort to come here at such a late hour with news of interest to you, and suffered a considerable loss to my social calendar—”

“If you’ve yet to scratch his itch your prospective lover will look you up tomorrow if you pay him enough. So why have you come?”

Lady Despard took a moment to adjust a small bow in a powdered curl. “Are you aware that my dear brother Jacob was buried a mere three months ago?”

Diana St. John lifted her brow. “And how would one know that, Madam, when you’ve already dispensed with your mourning? Or didn’t you even bother to put on your black?”

Lady Despard was put out. She puckered her painted lips. “Black does not become me. I wore grey to mourn Sir Felix, and that was quite enough. Poor Jacob,” she added with a sigh, as if her sad regret made up for her lack of mourning. “He survived the smallpox only to die from complications of the lung. Such a loss to me and my son…”

Diana St. John shrugged a shoulder in callous indifference. “Three months or three years. Allenby’s death is supremely unimportant. You don’t require my sympathy. No doubt he left you more than you deserve.”

Her visitor looked smug. “Twenty thousand, to do with as I please.”

Diana St. John dismissed the inheritance with a contemptuous sniff. “Pin money. So? The reason you are here?”

“Twenty thousand to do with as I please once I have delivered you a message from Jacob. A lawyer awaits in my carriage to ensure I have done as stipulated in my dear brother’s will.”

“Oh,
please
. Not a message from beyond the grave! What could that moralizing puff piece possibly have to say to me?”

Lady Despard smiled thinly. “I know what you had done to Jane. Jacob told me.”

Silence fell upon the room. The only sound, the ticking of the mantle clock.

Lady Despard waited and watched.

Finally, Diana St. John yawned, as if bored and said levelly, “So your brother felt a twinge of regret and was weak enough to confess his part in that tedious melodrama to you. My conscience is clear. I merely carried out Sir Felix’s wishes to have the rotten fruit of his daughter’s disgraceful behavior got rid of as expediently as possible.”

“It was exceedingly interesting to Jacob that you knew of Jane’s pregnancy before she had confessed her condition to Sir Felix.”

“What of it? Once she opened her legs to Salt it was no stretch of the imagination to suppose a pregnancy would ensue. After all,” she said with a small private smile, “his lordship is exceptionally virile.”

“You knew Jane’s seducer was Lord Salt when her father did not. Jane told no one. You have made it your life’s work to know all about his virility. Have you not, my lady?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lord Salt’s habits, more precisely who he has bedded and when, if he got them with child and how often, and what you did for them and others who found themselves
inconvenienced
.”

Diana St. John crossed to the door and wrenched it open.

“I have not the slightest idea to what you allude. You are talking goose fat, Madam! If that is all you have to say, leave before I have you bodily removed.”

Lady Despard stayed where she was.

“Betwixt you and me, my lady, brother Jacob didn’t give two testers how many whores Lord Salt had impregnated, or what you did to help rid them of their unwanted pregnancies, his lordship none the wiser. But it bothered him greatly that you overstepped the mark with little Jane, who was a virgin.”

“The creature should have thought of the consequences of her behavior before she let Salt between her thighs.”

“What was the medicinal preparation you supplied to Sir Felix?” She peered into her reticule and took out a piece of paper; this she unfolded and smiled. “Ah! That’s it! Syrup of Artem—Artem
isia
.” She held out the paper. “There is an address here of your apothecary on the Strand.

Diana St. John gritted her teeth. “I know his address you insolent slut. Leave!
Now
.”

“But I haven’t delivered Jacob’s message yet,” Lady Despard replied with a pout, putting the folded paper back in her reticule, enjoying the woman’s growing anger. When Diana St. John opened the door wider, she added with a shrug, “I don’t see why it matters now. Not after today’s events, but Jacob wanted you to know that placed with his will is a document that names your clients, females who found themselves with child, and the services you rendered them as a terminating midwife; a hanging offence for client and supplier, so brother Jacob’s attorneys tell me.”

Diana St. John kept her features perfectly composed. It was as if Lady Despard had not spoken. She certainly wasn’t about to acknowledge the accusation or the implied threat. “I have a full round of engagements tomorrow. No doubt the heady social scene of Bristol beckons you. Good night, Madam.”

Lady Despard still remained by the fireplace. “It seems to me that you are in ignorance of what occurred today in Grosvenor Square.”

“Grosvenor Square?”

“You truly have no idea what happened to Lord Salt today, my lady?”

A little of Diana St. John’s cold façade cracked. She came back into the middle of the room. “Happened?”

“The Earl of Salt Hendon was married this afternoon.”

Diana St. John laughed as if told a good joke. “Impossible!”

Lady Despard blinked at her, unable to fathom what the woman found to be amused by in such news.

“You witless creature! As if his lordship would marry with his family none the wiser. As if I would not know such a momentous occasion was to take place. There is a proper order to such things in our circle. It may be common in the gutters of Bristol—

“What is there that you don’t understand, my lady? Lord Salt was married this afternoon. I was there to witness his—”

“You? Nonsense! Why would you of all people on God’s good earth be witness to his marriage? Now I know you are talking flummery. I was at Grosvenor Square only this morning. Tuesday he is at home to petitioners. There’s always a mob of beggars at his door. And in the afternoon he’s at Parliament. He is a stickler for doing his duty, tiresomely so. He wouldn’t have time to get married on a Tuesday. Perhaps on a Thursday or a Saturday. But never on a Tuesday. He doesn’t even have the time for me, but I make certain I stay an hour; just so he remembers what’s important in life, that he has a duty to Ron and to me. Just so he knows I’m there for him…always.”

“You haven’t asked about the bride…”

“He wouldn’t marry without consulting me,” Diana St. John continued stubbornly convincing herself, ignoring the leading remark. “He doesn’t visit his mistress without me knowing about it. I can tell you when he visits and how many times he mounts his whore in a night. I make it my business to know. And if he so much as looks sideways at an eligible young female I’m there to make certain the girl takes her interest elsewhere. Luckily, his rakish reputation usually precedes him, which scares the prudish ones away. And one can’t be too careful when selecting the right woman to be his mistress,” she boasted. “She must interest him enough to distract him, but not too much that he can’t be persuaded to move on to the next diversion. She has to be unable to bear children, or at the very least not want any brats and know to come to me to rid herself of unwanted offspring, should that tiresome circumstance eventuate. You see how considerate I am of his welfare?” She pressed her shaking hands together and tried to smile. “What with looking out for his political career, which is going ahead in leaps and bounds, sitting for dreary hour upon dreary hour in the Ladies Gallery of the Lords, playing hostess to party political dinners and the like when he requires that of me, not to mention taking Ron to see him as much as possible, and the onerous task of keeping track of his love life, I rarely have a moment to myself. So it is impossible for him to find the time least of all want to marry behind my back…”

Lady Despard thought Diana St. John raving like a mad woman, and that perhaps her mind had indeed snapped. She had no idea what to say in reply to a sermon on her good works on the Earl’s behalf that clearly, even to her lax moral code, over-stepped the boundaries of decency at the nobleman’s right to privacy. But in the ensuing long silence she felt she had to say something.

“You are all consideration for his welfare to be sure, my lady, but perhaps you could have saved yourself a great deal of time and bother had you just married him yourself.”

“Married him?” Diana St. John repeated, as if the question was offensive in the extreme. “Of course I want to marry him, you bloody stupid cow! I’ve wanted to marry him since I was twelve years old. But a lady does not ask a gentleman to marry her. A lady waits to be asked…”

Lady Despard was taken aback but unsympathetic. “Then you’ve missed your chance and must take comfort in the fact that you weren’t the only female destined for disappointment.”

“I’ve known him all my life and not once has he ever seriously considered the married state,” Diana St. John continued, dumbfounded. “Though four years ago he came within a flea’s foot but, fortunately, I managed to put a stop to that whim before he did something utterly rash and socially unacceptable. Whoever heard of a Sinclair marrying the daughter of a nobody squire? Of course I attribute that episode to an infatuation for a pretty face. Is that creature still as beautiful as I remember her? She had the most perfect skin, and such gloriously dark thick hair. Too thin and small breasted, of course, but some men are attracted to the type. One could forgive Salt his momentary lustful lapse but as for marriage—”

“He married Jane Despard this afternoon, my lady. And yes, she is just as beautiful as your remembrance of her.”

Diana St. John stood as stone and stared disbelieving at Lady Despard for a long time. But as that woman merely stared back at her expressionless fear seized her. “Salt…
Married
? Married?
Married
Jane Despard?” She shuffled to the fireplace, unsteady on her slippered feet and put out a hand to the headrest of the wingchair, the other to her constricted throat. “Oh, God. Oh, God.
Oh, God
.”