Salt Bride (6 page)

“Miss Despard is little altered since last we met.”

“Meaning?”

“She presents to the world the same well-bred young lady now as four years ago, my lord.”

The Earl was shrugged into his heavy greatcoat by the butler.

“You ignore her intervening history perhaps?”

“No, my lord. But you asked for my thoughts.”

“What else?”

“My lord?” said the secretary, stepping out of the way as the Earl adjusted his ornately sheathed sword before buttoning his greatcoat.

“Don’t be obtuse. You have eyes. You’re still smitten by her beauty. Admit to it!”

The secretary’s mouth slackened and he felt the heat in his face, not only at the bald statement put to him but also because he happened to glance at Springer just then, who was standing at the Earl’s shoulder and thus out of his master’s line of sight, to find the butler smirking from ear to ear. Still, the secretary managed to bravely meet his noble employer’s unblinking stare. “To be completely truthful, my lord, Miss Despard remains the most beautiful young woman I have ever had the privilege to gaze upon.”

“Yes, isn’t she,” Salt snarled with such bitterness that Arthur Ellis audibly gulped and with the butler took an involuntarily step away. “A word of warning: Never permit sublime beauty to lull you into a false judgment of character.”

“Yes, my lord.”

There followed an awkward silence as the two men awaited their noble employer’s pleasure, but as his lordship was momentarily preoccupied with some frowning thought, the secretary took the brave step of moving time on. He coughed into his fist.

“If your lordship has no need of me this afternoon I will offer my services to Miss Despard, as you requested. The transfer of Miss Despard’s belongings to Grosvenor Square and arrangements for tomorrow’s ceremony…”

“Yes. Yes,” Salt murmured, coming out of his abstraction. “Go and play lapdog to your heart’s content.” And snapped his head around at the butler. “Offer Mr. Ellis whatever he requires and ensure Miss Despard’s maid is given every assistance.”

“I am at Mr. Ellis’s service, my lord,” Springer replied, adding with a note of apology, but with eyes agog in anticipation of the Earl’s explosive response, “but unfortunately I am unable to assist with the latter part of your request as Miss Despard has come up to London, I beg your lordship’s pardon to mention it, but Mrs. Springer is most insistent that such a remission be rectified, without a maid.” When the Earl continued to stare at him as if he was talking an unknown foreign tongue, the butler continued, a little less confident than before. “Mrs. Springer being told by Lady Despard’s maid, a haughty creature with an inflated sense of self-worth, that Miss Despard has never possessed a lady’s maid, other than a nurse who, most regrettably, died some years ago of a complaint of the lung. It is a mystery to the members of this household how Miss Despard copes without the services of a lady’s maid.”

The Earl closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, as if the domestic arrangements of his household were all too much for him, then looked to the plastered ceiling before saying very quietly to his secretary, “I regret I must add to the burden of your secretarial duties, Arthur. Be good enough to put your head together with the Springers to employ a suitable lady’s maid for Miss Despard, this female personage to be installed at Grosvenor Square by tomorrow morning at the latest. And Springer—”

“Yes, my lord?” the butler said cheerfully, thinking his sensible third daughter, Anne, who was very unhappy in her present situation in the house of Lady St. John, would do very nicely as lady-in-waiting to the future Countess of Salt Hendon. He couldn’t wait to tell the good news to his wife.

“—be discreet or you’ll find yourself mucking out my stables.”

With that withering statement, Salt stepped out into the hustle and bustle of Arlington street, where carriages, sedan chairs and horse and rider competed for space with pedestrians in heavy coats, muff and hats, and the more adventurous and needy cart sellers, although there were few of the latter and even fewer pedestrians because of the intense cold. Instead of turning right to walk the short distance to St. James’s Street to spend a few hours of quiet solitude at White’s, a club that was fast becoming the most popular male bastion for noblemen, and not least because the Earl of Salt Hendon deigned to patronize it, the Earl reluctantly went left and hailed a hackney chair to take him to Half Moon Street. Here he was set down at a particular townhouse where resided Elizabeth, Lady Outram. A voluptuous blonde widow on the other side of thirty, she had buried two elderly husbands in quick succession and was in search of a third. In the meantime, she catered to the Earl of Salt Hendon’s strong carnal appetites and in return enjoyed his benefaction.

In Salt’s pocket was a short, scrawled missive from Elizabeth Outram requesting his presence in her drawing room without delay. The matter was urgent and could not wait. The note had arrived just as he and his secretary had set out for his interview with Jane Despard and thus he had had no time to write her a reply. But he was not in the habit of going at the beck and call of his mistresses, and if he had not had a prior engagement he would have made Elizabeth Outram wait his pleasure.

Still, he could not put off the inevitable. She would be offended and sulky and stamp her foot at him for being a neglectful lover, but it wouldn’t take him many minutes to bring her to heel and they would end up in bed. Bedding Lizzie would be a welcome change from the long hours spent on parliamentary business and the bitter realization that tomorrow he was to be married to a young woman with the face of an angel and the heart of a conniving whore, who didn’t have the wit or will to employ a lady’s maid!

Why had she used the word
must
?

It was such an inoffensive little word and yet it burned itself into his brain the moment she’d uttered it. How dare she pretend it was she who was entering into this marriage under sufferance.

His lofty parents must be turning in their graves!

Salt barely had a large well-shod foot inside the drawing room of the Half Moon Street townhouse when Elizabeth, Lady Outram flew off the silk-striped chaise longue and into his embrace. She wrapped her arms about his strong neck and pressed her voluptuous curves to his tall, hard torso and looked up at him with such a doleful expression that the Earl mentally sighed and readied himself for the inevitable feline tantrum.

But Elizabeth surprised him. She let him go and stepped back and coolly offered him a glass of burgundy; her initial over-exuberance replaced with a tightly controlled façade that had him puzzled. He took the glass and watched her pour out a burgundy for herself. She hesitated, mentally preparing herself. She had been forewarned by her good friend the Earl’s cousin, Diana, Lady St. John that the Earl intended to cast her aside.

It was Diana St. John who had first brought her to the attention of the Earl and it was Diana St. John who now informed her that her year was up and it was time for Elizabeth to find herself a new benefactor. If she had no one in mind she, Diana, could point her in the right direction. As if she needed pointing in any man’s direction! She had known from the first that the Earl of Salt Hendon never kept a mistress for more than twelve months and even then they never had his complete devotion. She had made plans for her future long ago, had several casual lovers who would drop to kiss her feet if she said the word, but it had not taken many days into her affair with the Earl to realize that none of her attentive suitors would ever measure up to the lusty nobleman now standing in the middle of her cozy drawing room.

She counted the Earl her most attractive and accomplished lover and she would sorely miss their lovemaking. It rankled that she had not managed to outlast the tenure of his previous mistresses. She had boasted to Diana and others that she would easily keep Salt’s interest for two perhaps three years at least. When Diana’s letter had arrived only last week she had suffered a great blow to her self-esteem. She couldn’t believe the Earl was finished with her and she aimed to prove it to Diana St. John, whatever her friend’s warning about not making a fuss.

But there was another, more disturbing piece of news that, if true, would signal the death knell to their affair: the Earl of Salt Hendon was about to marry a young beautiful girl from the counties. Elizabeth knew she could not compete with such a winning combination as youthful beauty. It would explain his neglect of her over the past couple of months and why, even when he did bed her, he was distracted and detached.

She followed him to the fireplace, where he stood warming his hands, and placed her wine glass on the mantel, allowing her dressing gown to slide off one shoulder to expose a quantity of rounded breast, as if it was the most natural accident in the world. She made no attempt to cover herself and smiled with practiced coyness when the Earl’s eyes strayed from her painted face.

She removed the half-empty glass from his hand and set it next to her own.

“You’ve neglected me these past few months, my lord,” she purred, a glance up at him under her darkened lashes as she pretended to adjust her dressing gown, but allowing it to slip further off her shoulders to the floor so that she stood before him in only corset and white stockings. “Do you not think I am owed an explanation for your blatant inattention?”

From habit he drew her to him.

“Neglect, Lizzie?” he murmured, unlacing her tight silk corset with practiced ease. “I should hate to think you’ve been neglected in my absence.”

She ignored the veiled reference to her casual lovers and made a half-hearted attempt to squirm out of his embrace. But more than anything she wanted him to make love to her. It would be a welcome change from the over-eager love-making of Pascoe, Lord Church, and the inexpert fondling of Pascoe’s penniless cousin Billy Church, whose worth resided in the fact he was the boon companion of the Earl’s officious secretary. Billy was only too willing to share confidences about his friend’s employer when roused to the point of no return by Elizabeth’s expert tutelage.

When Salt pulled her corset free and dropped it to the floor leaving her in all her glory she gasped in a little breathless whisper, “Why, my lord, have a care! Do you forget we are in a drawing room? Someone might enter at any moment!”

“That someone being me. If you’ll stop your twittering, Lizzie, I’d be very pleased to enter you,” he quipped.

She tittered and melted against him at the thought of him deep inside her as he bent to kiss her throat but wanting him to kiss her mouth knowing he never would. Of all the places he had kissed and pleasured her he had never kissed her mouth. Not that it disturbed her greatly. In all other respects his skill as a lover and the sheer size of him more than satisfied her. Yet, if he would just kiss her mouth she knew he was hers and hers alone. She went for the buttons of his breeches but he caught up her hands and put them behind her back as he stooped to kiss her breasts. She was taken aback by his ardency at this the beginning of their lovemaking. There was a hunger about him, as if he’d gone without a woman for sometime, his want as great as that of a thirsty man in need of water. It thrilled her to think she had aroused this urgent craving in him and she couldn’t wait to impart this newfound power to her friend Diana St. John.

But her triumph was short lived. Just as quickly as the spark was ignited it was extinguished. The Earl pulled himself free of her embrace and set her aside. And when he blinked down at her as if she was a stranger, flushed and short of breath, Elizabeth was shrewd enough to realize that it was not she who had brought out the carnal urgency in him but the creature in his mind’s eye who occupied his thoughts when aroused. How right she was.

The moment he’d closed his eyes on Elizabeth Outram into his mind’s eye appeared a pale, ethereal beauty with big, questioning blue eyes that looked up at him with disconcerting frankness, and whose rosebud mouth invited plunder. That he wanted desperately to make love to this ethereal being was not in question, that she was none other than his future wife whose mere apparition possessed the ability to affect his manhood made him seriously question his virility.

Disgusted with himself, he quickly turned away and adjusted his clothing.

Unsatisfied and her self-esteem in shreds, Elizabeth angrily scooped up her discarded dressing gown and made a drama of covering her nakedness, despite the Earl having his back to her.

“After a twelvemonth of my hospitality I believe I have earned the right to know something of your plans, my lord.”

“Have you?” he answered indifferently. “My plans I leave to my long-suffering secretary.”

“And your letters to discarded mistresses?” she asked bitterly. “Do they require a woman’s touch and so are left to be penned by Lady St. John?”

“Lady St. John? What are you blabbering on about, Lizzie?” Salt asked gruffly and turned to face her. “What letters?”

Elizabeth rummaged in a drawer of the mahogany bureau by the window, found the letter she was looking for and presented it to the Earl with a flourish and a questioning lift of her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “My twelvemonth notice. Like your previous interests, Sarah Walpole and Maria Leveson-Gower, just to name the two ladies known to me personally; Lady St. John has provided us all with our notice to vacate.”

Scowling, Salt opened out the single sheet of parchment with two fingers, stared at the familiar sloping handwriting, turned it over to inspect the broken seal then folded it. “May I have this?”

Elizabeth shrugged a shoulder. “By all means. Is it news to you?”

When he did not respond but finished off his glass of burgundy Elizabeth had her answer.

“Is selecting the Earl of Salt Hendon’s Countess also part of Lady St. John’s cousinly duties?”

He lowered the wine glass. “Such tedious details are of concern to no one but myself, my dear.”

The edge to his voice made her wary but she could not help herself. “So Diana doesn’t know. Good. If she did she would not have been able to resist gloating the news to me. It’s a secret, is it?”