Salt Bride (16 page)

A replica of the Tudor Tennis Court found at Hampton Court Palace, the court had a tiled floor, rich wood paneling and an enormous void that reached up to an intricate wood-beamed roof. Along the length of one high wall windows were set at an angle to give adequate light, air and space. Along the opposite wall was the Gallery where spectators gathered in individual boxes, fitted out with velvet cushions and soft furnishings and assigned an attending footman with an endless supply of refreshment. Here wives, daughters, children and mistresses of sporting noblemen lounged at their ease, drinking champagne and wines. From behind the relative privacy of curtains made of soft netting to ensure rogue tennis balls did them no damage, these pampered females were free to ogle and discuss the merits of the sporting male physique, shown to full advantage in thigh tight woven breeches and shirts so wet with sweat that they clung to broad chest, wide back and beefy arm.

The Earl hailed his friends. Four were out on the court with their hickory rackets about to commence a practice hit up, the rest of the group milled about the first boxed gallery opposite the Tambour, in conversation with the gathering spectators, while footmen adjusted the lacings of their soft kid shoes, took away frockcoats and offered refreshments on silver trays. But Salt did not join them. He acknowledged their hearty salutes with a wave and strode on, down the length of the boxed gallery in search of his cousin.

He was half way along the Gallery when Diana St. John appeared through the doorway that gave access to the court from the Gallery. She saw him almost at once and came bustling along the tiles, careful to stay close to the spectator boxes because the four players had begun a game of doubles, serving across the net, the ball hit up onto the angled side wall so that it skittered along the sloped roof of the gallery making a loud series of thumps before dropping down on the opposite side of the net. She stopped in front of the third box along and when Salt joined her there threw her arms about his neck and clung to him. She burst into tears.

“How is he?” he said without preamble, and pulled her closer to the spectator box, shoulder brushing against the soft net curtain, his wide back shielding her from any stray tennis balls.

Diana St. John remained mute. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.

“Diana, for God’s sake, tell me!” he demanded, ashen-faced, interpreting her forlorn expression to mean her son’s temperature had indeed taken an upward leap into feverishness. “Ron’s just got a slightly elevated temperature? He’ll be all right in a day or two?”

“Oh, Salt! It’s been such an ordeal,” Diana St. John announced loudly, as if to be heard over the shouts of the tennis players, and quickly dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief, careful not to smudge her expertly applied cosmetics. “I can’t begin to tell you what a wretched night I’ve had. No sleep and the worry. I couldn’t stop thinking what would happen if I lost my boy, too. First dear St. John’s death, and he in the prime of his life, and now, to lose my son… Oh, I couldn’t bear it, Salt. I just couldn’t. It would surely kill me.”

“But he’s all right, isn’t he?” Salt asked her stridently. “Just a slightly elevated temperature, nothing more? Nothing to really worry about? Tell me! Diana!”

She nodded and covered her face with her hands before looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “But he was so hot, and I thought… I thought it might be smallpox. That’s how it started with St. John. Do you remember? The high temperature and then the sweats… I was so scared. So scared that my boy might have caught the smallpox, too. You can’t begin to imagine how dreadful that feeling is for a mother!”

“No. But St. John was my best friend,” he answered quietly. “I never want to relive those weeks. It was a nightmare.” When she clung to him again, he put his arms about her and hugged her briefly, saying gently, “But nothing is going to happen to Ron. He and Merry were inoculated remember? So it would need more than a high temperature to take the boy from us, now wouldn’t it?”

“Us. Yes.
Us
,” she answered, seizing on the word. “He means everything to us, doesn’t he, Salt? He’s your future,
our
future. If something were to happen to him—”

“But nothing will happen,” Salt assured her and put her away from him, just as one of the players bounded over their way, arm at full stretch to hit a ball that was coming straight at them. “I think we’d best get off this court before you are hurt.”

“I say, Tony, good shot!” came a shout from the court.

There was loud applause from the spectators, one female calling out encouragement and her companions giggling in response.

“Splendid tambour, sir! Well done,” offered another voice much closer to the Earl and his cousin.

But Diana St. John ignored the tennis game going on so close to her, and the fact there was a real possibility she could be struck with the ball, or a player run into her. Nor did she consider it was unfair of her to be in the way of the players. Her gaze did not shift from the Earl’s handsome profile, distracted by the game in progress, and her painted lips puckered in disapproval that she should not have his undivided attention.

“I don’t know why you couldn’t come last night,” she said pettishly, mood suddenly changing, and speaking as loudly as before, needing to be heard over the shouts of the players offering each other encouragement. She remained firmly in front of the third spectator box and was pleased when Salt’s attention returned to her. “Ron would’ve settled much quicker had you been there. And poor little Merry was crying and asking for you too; you know how attached she is to her brother. They only have each other… And us. They look on you as their papa. Well, why wouldn’t they, when their own dear papa is in Heaven? How do I tell two little children that are dependent on you it was too much to ask for their Uncle Salt to come when they are ill?”

“Diana, I…”

She dropped her powdered head then lifted it, tears on the end of her darkened lashes. “Of course I have no right to question you, to even wonder what could be more important that you could not even send a response to my note, nor should I assume that you care above the ordinary what happens to my children—”

“Now, Diana, you are being unreasonable,” Salt interrupted, annoyed, hands lightly on her bare shoulders. “You know very well I look upon Ron and Merry as my own. No one means more to me than St. John’s children, and nothing would’ve kept me from Ron’s sickbed had he been truly taken ill—”

“Nothing and no one?” Diana St. John asked hopefully, smiling up at him. “How Ron and Merry would dearly love to hear their Uncle Salt tell them so! They’re here today, y’know. I couldn’t keep Ron away from your Royal Tennis tournament. Dr. Barlow said it would be all right for him to attend, but we must keep him well rugged up. Are you certain: Nothing and no one?”

“Nothing and no one,” he repeated, the tension easing in his neck and limbs knowing Ron was not in any danger, and pleased Diana had brought the children along for the day. “Now, will you allow me to remove you from this Court before one or both of us are maimed or mutilated by your brother’s heroic displays with a tennis racket?”

A loud shout of Hurray! went up near Salt’s ear and he turned to see Sir Antony and Tom Allenby beaming from ear to ear and clapping each other on the back. After shaking hands with their dejected opponents, the winning twosome came across the court toward Salt and Diana St. John. But Tom bounded ahead of Sir Antony, and such was his excitement that he completely ignored the Earl and his cousin to throw back the netting of the third box and lean over the barrier, saying, excited as any ten year old schoolboy,

“Jane! Jane? Did you see my final shot? Didn’t Sir Antony play brilliantly? He’s a crack at placing the ball. None better. Just knows how to tip it over the net, or to up the ball over the service penthouse so it drops in such a way that the fellows on the other side can’t get a racket to it! If it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have won!”

“Now, Tom Allenby, that’s a stretch of the truth, if ever I heard one,” Sir Antony responded with a good-natured laugh, a nod at his sister and cousin, and a hand on the barrier because he was still out of breath and feeling as if all his muscles had been pummeled at once. “You played some fine tactical shots yourself that I couldn’t have managed, and you served the winning point. I say we make a fine team, wouldn’t you, my lady?”

“Oh, none better,” Jane responded with a smile at the two victors, coming to stand at the barrier, not a glance at the couple less than a foot away. Yet the flush to her cheeks and the fact she did not acknowledge her husband or his cousin was indication enough to Salt that she had overheard every word. This was confirmed when she said with a cheeky smile at her stepbrother, “Although, I’m afraid my view was partially obstructed for those shots that were on the chase one yard line. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it, Sir Antony, the line closest the wall?”

“How good of you to remember my monologue on the King of games that is Royal Tennis, my lady. Most female eyes glaze over when I offer too much detail,” Sir Antony said with a smile of approval, and not able to help himself because he was annoyed with his sister’s theatrics in monopolizing the Earl’s time, added most undiplomatically, “Though I’m not surprised you were denied part of the action, what with m’sister and Salt’s large carcass blocking the view.”

“Perhaps I shall do what you suggested in the first place, Sir Antony, and watch the next game from the Dedans penthouse gallery?” Jane responded pleasantly, resisting a glance at her husband. “There is a clear view straight up the court from there.”

“That’s a splendid idea, Jane,” Tom agreed. “You’ll see it all from there. The next game should prove a real corker too,” he added, speaking without thinking through his thoughts, the only bad habit Jane was certain her stepbrother had inherited from his mother, “because Lord Church is up against his lordship, and Art assured me it’s the game to watch because they are evenly matched. Despite what Art overheard Lord Church boasting to the other fellows: That today he has the Earl at a distinct advantage because it wasn’t his wedding night last night!”

Sir Antony laughed with embarrassment at Pascoe Church’s smug belief that the bridal night had sapped his rival’s strength. But Diana St. John, who felt she had done all she could for the moment to make the Countess of Salt Hendon uncomfortably aware of her and her children’s cemented place in the Earl’s affections, kept her mouth firmly shut on the topic of her cousin’s marriage. In fact she kept her expression so tightly under control that no one would have guessed that inside her head she was screaming her anger.

No sooner had she arrived at the Grosvenor Square mansion than Sir Antony had pounced on his sister, informing her bluntly that Salt had been married the day before and that she wasn’t to make a fuss. She had replied with a smile of superiority that this was old news and to leave her to her misery. She had then flounced off to the Royal Tennis Court only for her brother to follow up his warning by forcing upon her an introduction to the new Countess of Salt Hendon in front of a dozen athletic noblemen, who, to a man, were paying homage to the Countess’s beauty as if Aphrodite incarnate had deigned to descend amongst them.

That the creature was just as beautiful and self-effacing as Diana St. John remembered was no real surprise, the Despard woman had forewarned her of that, but seeing this for herself threatened the return of her sick headache of the night before. But years of experience hiding her true feelings from the world enabled her to suffer the indignity of making her curtsey to her cousin’s new wife. Despite spending the previous night weeping buckets of bitter tears over the Earl’s marriage, today she was cunning enough to wear a mask of supreme indifference.

Her campaign to have the new Countess of Salt Hendon disgraced and disowned before the Earl had impregnated his bride had begun in earnest and she would be relentless in its execution.

So, as she had done when first introduced, Diana St. John silently curtseyed to rank and retreated to the spectator boxes. Once ensconced with her friends, she continued weaving her web of rumor and counter-rumor. The female crème de la crème of polite society were only too eager to soak up malicious whispers about an unknown girl from the country who’d had the effrontery to usurp them and marry one of their own. The Earl of Salt Hendon was not only the most eligible bachelor in the kingdom, but was a prime piece of unfettered male vigor the likes of which had not been seen since a French chit had captured the heart of that hardened libertine the Duke of Roxton in ’43.

Sir Antony smiled sweetly as his meddlesome sister flounced off, and said to the Earl, “Well, you’d best prove your secretary wrong, Salt, because I have a ten pound wager saying you’ll trounce Pascoe within half an hour.”

“Half an hour? Why should I take that long?” Salt murmured in response, distracted by the sight of his bride dressed in one of the many new gowns he’d had ordered made for her and that now crammed her closet to bursting.

He was thinking how ravishingly pretty she presented in a very feminine sacque back gown of pale green and pink silk, the tight sleeves of the embroidered bodice showcasing her long, slim arms. And he approved of her elegant hairstyle. Gone were the coils of unfashionable braids. Her waist-length hair was piled softly atop her head and secured with pearl-headed pins and threaded with matching ribbons, the remainder allowed to cascade about her shoulders in long soft ringlets. But he was mystified as to why she had ruined the effect of a low, square-cut neckline that would have flattered her small round breasts by the wearing of a gossamer fichu that bunched awkwardly over her left breast. Surely she only had to ask and her maid would have arranged such a useless article of feminine clothing to better advantage? And then he noticed the square of white linen tucked into the neckline of her bodice; it appeared to be some sort of makeshift bandage…

Slow to respond to Sir Antony’s assertion, he finally added with a frown, “So Pascoe Church is confident of trouncing me?”