Salt Bride (11 page)

Poor Arthur Ellis. Such a conscientious, hard-working young man could never have dreamed that as part of his secretarial duties to a great nobleman he would be required to deal with the more sordid details of his lordship’s marriage. She wondered if he had had the courage to tell his employer that she refused to sign the edict of her imprisonment, and guessed that he had not, for surely the Earl would’ve shoved it under her nose as soon as she entered the bookroom?

Jane rose out of the wingchair as the secretary ushered in the next petitioners, the husband and wife she had spent a cold hour in conversation in the anteroom. Mr. Church raised his cane and his wife smiled kindly in acknowledgement of her presence as they approached the Earl’s desk. Jane waved back and watched Salt come away from the window and speak to the couple. She would have sat back down but a large gentleman in powdered wig and sky-blue silk frockcoat, who slipped through the double doors unseen, caught her eye.

He escaped the attention of Mr. Ellis, who had been included in the Earl’s conversation with the couple, and made no attempt to approach the desk, but quietly tiptoed up the length of the library, keeping his back close to the bookshelves, as if not wanting to disturb the Earl.

Jane immediately recognized this large intruder as the very same soft-spoken gentleman whose acquaintance she and Tom had made at the Tower Zoo, and went to meet him. She was almost upon him before he saw her by one of the ladders and he was so surprised and pleased to see her that he completely forgot he had entered the bookroom by stealth.

“By Jove! What a pleasant surprise,” Sir Antony Templestowe announced, bowing over Jane’s out-stretched hand. “Now I may repair my remiss at the Tower. I did not introduce myself, nor did I catch your name, or that of the excellent young man in your company who I presume is your brother? You were both so good as to come to this bachelor’s rescue and entertain my niece and nephew.”

“Oh, but you were doing such a splendid job keeping their interest without our intervention, sir,” Jane said encouragingly. “I gathered they were in high spirits because they had the freedom of their uncle’s company rather than under the stern tutelage of a somber-faced governess?”

“You figured all that out in what little time we spent in front of the lion enclosure? Splendid! By the way, my niece and nephew were just as taken with you as were the crowd of onlookers, and scolded me dreadfully for my lack of manners in not discovering your name and direction.” He added with a confidential smile, “I trust you’ve taken my advice about the appreciative stares of Londoners?”

Jane nodded shyly. “I am doing my best, sir. But I must admit I don’t think I will ever get used to such outrageous attention.”

“Given time, you’ll soon forget they are there,” he assured her and stuck out his hand to the Earl who had crossed the room to join them. “You really ought to put a fire in the grate out there, Salt,” he said good-naturedly. “Is it any wonder nine out of ten of your petitioners can’t cobble together two words in your presence when they must be thawing out before your eyes. Of course, the other reason they’re tongue-tied might have something to do with the fact you dazzle them with your magnificence. Have I seen that waistcoat before?”

He held the Earl’s gaze and directed a significant sidelong glance at Jane that Salt ignored. Sir Antony could have hit him for making him say it. “So won’t you introduce me to your fair petitioner, who, I might add, because she is too modest to tell you of it herself, is London’s newest beauty, and is mobbed wherever she goes.” He smiled down at Jane who was blushing to the roots of her raven hair. “If I was you, ma’am, I’d ask for his lordship’s protection under his sinecure as Keeper of Westminster Parks. I’m sure he can spare a dozen or so lieutenant-constables to protect you from an unruly mob of onlookers. What say you, Salt?”

Salt looked round from signaling for his secretary to approach with a gentleman in full-bottom wig.

“What would I say? That in less than an hour’s time, Miss Despard, as my wife, will have at her disposal all the strong-armed protection she could desire to fend off the admiring hordes. Miss Despard, let me make known to you Sir Antony Templestowe, who, I might add, will one day rise to be an Ambassador, though from his stupid grin you would be quite within your rights to think him fit for Bedlam.”

Sir Antony’s silly grin remained fixed and he had no idea where to direct his gaze, at the stern bridegroom or the blushing bride. He felt as foolish as he looked and his sigh of relief was audible when a commotion at the double doors deflected attention away from his acute case of foot in mouth.

Arthur Ellis disappeared out into the anteroom and returned almost at once with Tom Allenby and his attorney in tow, both grim-faced. Two footmen were quick to close over the doors to the bookroom, as if denying entry to whoever was making demands out in the anteroom to be admitted without invitation to the Earl of Salt Hendon’s inner sanctum.

“Apologies for the delay, my lord,” Tom said without preamble and made his attorney known to the Earl, adding brightly when he recognized Sir Antony, “Sir! What a pleasant reunion. Jane and I were lamenting only the other day not being forward enough to ask your name and direction. Weren’t we, Jane?”

“You may all sit down to tea and cakes later,” Salt bluntly interrupted. “Let’s just get on with it, shall we? I’m glad you’ve brought your attorney, Mr. Allenby. Perhaps you would be good enough to furnish me with a copy of Jacob Allenby’s will.”

“That’s hardly necessary, is it, my lord?” asked Jane, exchanging an anxious look with Tom.

Salt put up his brows. “But as you
must
marry me, Miss Despard, I think it very necessary, don’t you?”

“I would be happy for your lordship to have a copy of my uncle’s will,” Tom agreed, a reassuring smile at Jane. “But that won’t be possible until after my sister becomes Lady Salt, as my attorney did not bring a copy with him.”

The Earl smiled thinly. “Oh, have no fear, Mr. Allenby, I mean to marry your sister, regardless of what is contained in Jacob Allenby’s will. I merely wish to satisfy my curiosity. Now, shall we get this tiresome business over with? I have a full afternoon of appointments and am expected in the House after dinner.”

The secretary and Tom Allenby exchanged a frowning look that did not go unnoticed by Jane. “What is it, Tom? Everything is in order, isn’t it?” she asked fretfully, and looked to the attorney for an answer, but it was Tom who spoke, and to the Earl.

“My lord, I have asked her to wait in the ante-room until I’ve had a chance to explain matters to you, but my mother—”

“No, Mr. Allenby. Lady Despard is not welcome,” Salt stated with extreme politeness, saying to his secretary in an under voice, “Get her out. Be damned if I’ll have that woman in here.”

“Yes, my lord,” agreed Arthur Ellis but remained where he was. “I will have Lady Despard escorted from the house at once.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, my lord,” the attorney apologized, clearing his throat, and bravely continued despite the Earl’s hard stare upon him. “Under the terms of Jacob Allenby’s will, Lady Despard is required to stand as witness to the marriage of Jane Katherine Despard or—”

“I won’t be dictated to by that merchant’s wishes, dead or alive! That’s an end to the matter. Parson, we’re wasting time,” Salt stated belligerently and strode back to his desk to find the special license, the little man in the full-bottom wig quick to flick open his leather-bound bible at the place that held his notes and then look round expectantly at the assembled company.

“Jane, she must be in attendance,” Tom whispered to Jane, a worried look directed at the scowling Earl who was fossiking amongst the papers on his desk. “It’s the penultimate condition of Uncle Jacob’s will.”

“Pardon my inquisitiveness, Mr. Allenby,” enquired Sir Antony diffidently, “but if Lady Despard is not in attendance at your sister’s marriage…?”

“Tom’s inheritance will be delayed yet again. I cannot allow that to happen,” Jane said simply and pressed her stepbrother’s hand. “Don’t worry, Tom. I’ll speak to him.”

“Perhaps you should allow me, Miss Despard?” suggested Sir Antony with a smug smile of reassurance. “I have been known upon occasion to bring his lordship round to my way of thinking.”

“Thank you, my lord. But I will make him see reason,” Jane said firmly. “After all, he is just being stubborn for its own sake, and there is much more at stake here than any injury done to Lord Salt’s pride.”

Sir Antony bowed to her wishes and watched Jane approach the massive desk and its colossal owner, quizzing glass up to a magnified eye. “What an extraordinary young woman,” he said with approval. “Tiny but astonishingly tenacious.”

“I do not understand why you will not grant Lady Despard admittance when only yesterday you came face to face with her in your Arlington Street townhouse,” Jane reasoned calmly. “It’s for Tom’s benefit that I ask you to acquiesce to the request. And it is the last occasion you need ever see her. Though why such a silly vain creature should bother you is beyond my comprehension. Unless—”

“Miss Despard, you don’t know the first thing about—”

“—you don’t wish to own a connection with her because you took her to your bed and now wish to forget the liaison ever happened?”

Salt’s mouth dropped open and he could barely speak above a whisper.

“Is that what—is that what that over-ripe tart told you?”

“Everyone knows casual liaisons are quite commonplace amongst your kind, so it’s not as if you should be embarrassed in any way by her,” Jane added conversationally, ignoring the Earl’s angry blush. Jacob Allenby had made no secret of the Earl’s sinful connection with his family and as her stepmother was known to have had affairs with several of Wiltshire’s wealthy gentlemen, Jane had put two and two together. “She’s not likely to say anything about sharing your bed because she would not want to embarrass Tom. If you would tell me what you are searching for perhaps I could be of assistance?” she added in an abrupt change of subject. She watched him squint over the piles of documents he was moving and replacing in, what seemed to Jane, no particular order; knowing he was blind to the print, and that this would only increase his agitation and likely negative response to the attorney’s stipulation. When he glanced at her suspiciously, she added with a small, understanding smile, “Would it be such a burden for your noble nose to bear the weight of a pair of wire rimmed eyeglasses occasionally, my lord?”

“Special license,” he muttered self-consciously, ignoring her question and stepping aside to allow her greater access to the desk. “Thank you,” he murmured when she handed him a sheaf of parchment that had upon it the seal of the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Miss Despard, there are certain particulars concerning that woman that I will not discuss with you, or any other. It is a family matter and one I refuse to allow Jacob Allenby to wreak his revenge from beyond the grave.”

“Revenge?” Jane repeated, annoyed. “Is that all you can think about? I don’t pretend to know the first thing about the feud between the Earls of Salt Hendon and the Allenbys, although you have confirmed by your prejudice that my stepmother is somehow involved in that dispute. What I do know is that if you don’t permit her to stand as witness to my marriage, then my stepbrother, who is the innocent party in all of this, will have his future severely compromised, all because of some injury done your pride, and that I cannot allow.”

“And what do you intend to do about it, Miss Despard?” the Earl drawled. When Jane opened her mouth then shut it again on a lame argument he added, “I’m surprised Allenby didn’t take it upon himself to give you a one-sided explanation of the feud, as you like to call it, between the Allenbys and my family. Suffice for me to say that you have hit the proverbial nail on its head. Your stepmother played her part well in that little melodrama.” He held the special license under Jane’s chin. “As for my pride… Where that family is concerned I have none.”

“If Jacob Allenby’s will is not carried out to the letter, it is not only Tom’s future that will be compromised, but the people who rely on him for their very existences,” Jane argued. “Good, hard-working people who are employed in his factories. Surely you can relate to such circumstances? There must be dozens of people who rely on you for their livelihoods, and if the numbers in your anteroom are anything to go by, there are dozens more waiting the opportunity to state their case in the hopes of gaining your patronage. I cannot believe that you, a gentleman, would willingly cause the ruin of a young man and those who depend upon him, and who has never done you a harm, all because of a feud you have with his mother’s family, but in which he played no part.”

The Earl stared down at her flushed face and at the intensity in her blue eyes and had to concede that her impassioned argument was sound and surprisingly selfless. That he should feel a twinge of envy that she exhibited such passion on behalf of her stepbrother astonished and annoyed him and made him say flippantly,

“Very well put, Miss Despard. When it suits your purpose you expect me to adhere to gentlemanly principles, and yet you have accused me of conduct unbecoming in a gentleman.” He tickled her chin with the parchment. “Which is it to be?”

“I was not discussing your conduct towards me, my lord,” she replied with quiet dignity, twisting the betrothal ring between her fingers at her back.

He lifted a mobile eyebrow. “Miss Despard, you speak with such injured confidence that I beg you to provide proof of the accusation of which I stand accused.”

Jane’s blue eyes held his gaze. “Certainly. At the appropriate time and place. But this is not it. You have a room full of onlookers awaiting us. The sooner the ceremony is performed the sooner you can put this painful episode behind you and banish me to the backwater of your choosing. But you cannot do that, Tom cannot begin his life as an independent man of means, without Lady Despard’s presence at my marriage, regrettable as the circumstance is for us both.”

The Earl was laughingly skeptical. “So you are marrying me for Tom’s sake?”