Salt Bride Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Lucinda Brant

  Title Page

  Frontispiece

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Noble Satyr Preview

  Midnight Marriage Preview

  Autumn Duchess Preview

  Deadly Engagement Preview

  Deadly Affair Preview

  About The Author

  ALSO BY LUCINDA BRANT

  Noble Satyr

  A Georgian Historical Romance

  Roxton Series Book 1

  Midnight Marriage

  A Georgian Historical Romance

  Roxton Series Book 2

  Autumn Duchess

  A Georgian Historical Romance

  Roxton Series Book 3

  Deadly Engagement

  A Georgian Historical Mystery

  Alec Halsey Crimance Book 1

  Deadly Affair

  A Georgian Historical Mystery

  Alec Halsey Crimance Book 2

  for

  Andrea & Cathy

  Copyright 2011 Lucinda Brant

  all rights reserved

  Kindle Edition by Sprigleaf

  The girl in the narrow wooden bed was in agony. Curled up in a ball, legs drawn up to her small breasts and thin arms wrapped tightly about her knees, her whole body shuddered with excruciating contractions. She had no idea if she had been in pain for five hours or twenty. Exhausted and bathed in sweat, her cotton nightshift with its little lace cuffs and pearl buttons had become twisted and tangled with the bed sheet. Both were soaked with blood.

  In the small, brief moments of reprieve between each painful cramp, she whimpered for the hurt to go away, big blue eyes staring imploringly at her nurse, as if a simple kiss from this most treasured servant would make everything better again as it always had with a childhood bruise. But no matter how tenderly the girl’s feverish forehead was bathed or soothing words of comfort offered, the contractions continued unabated; the intervals becoming shorter and shorter until the girl lost all sense of time and space.

  Tears coursed down the nurse’s sallow cheeks and she pressed the wet cloth to her own mouth; it was all she could do to stop herself sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of her beautiful, sweet-tempered child in such torment.

  “Have the girl drink this and tomorrow she won’t be troubled,” she had been ordered.

  Obediently Jane drank the bitter-tasting draught, on reassurance that the medicinal would ease the nausea and restore her appetite. She had then thrust the tumbler back at her nurse, laughingly accusing her of poisoning her.

  Poison.

  Yes, Nurse had poisoned her beautiful girl. She knew that now as she bathed Jane’s tortured forehead free of sweat. She would pray to God for forgiveness for the rest of her days for not better protecting her girl, for trusting her betters to do what was right and proper when all along they had planned for this to happen. But she had poisoned Jane unwittingly. The same could not be said of the other two occupants of the darkened and airless bedchamber; or the girl’s absent, unforgiving father, who had disowned his only child for losing her virginity to a noble seducer who lasciviously planted his seed then discarded her like a used, worthless thing.

  Murderers all.

  Nurse dared not look over her shoulder. But she knew the man and woman were there in the shadows, waiting. Jane’s cries and her ministrations to help ease the pain did not make her deaf or blind. She knew why they were there, why they suffered the stench and the ignoble sounds of suffering, why they could not avert their eyes from the offending sight of the waif-like creature with the translucent skin and distraught gaze who convulsed, sweated, and bled before them. They had to satisfy their own eyes that the murderous deed was done. How else could they inform her heartless father that his wishes had been satisfactorily fulfilled?

  Nurse hated them. But she reserved her greatest hatred for the noble seducer. It gave her the strength and single-minded purpose to fight to keep alive her precious, illused girl. It did not stop her jumping with fright when a firm hand pressed her shoulder.

  “The physician will be here soon,” Jacob Allenby assured her. “The recent snow fall must have delayed him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nurse replied docilely, continuing to rinse out the soiled sponge in the porcelain bowl on the side table.

  “Physician? Good God, what use is a saw-bones?” scoffed the female over Jacob Allenby’s shoulder. She came out of the shadows to warm herself by the fire in the grate, her carefully painted face devoid of emotion. “It is evident my medicinal is working to everyone’s satisfaction. A physician will only interfere.”

  The merchant rounded on her. “Forgive me for not trusting the word of an angel of death!”

  “Pon rep, Allenby, how dramatic you are,” she drawled, a soft white hand to the heat. “Anyone would think by the creature’s moans she is on death’s door. She isn’t. Syrup of Artemisia hasn’t killed anyone of my acquaintance—yet.” She glanced at the bed in thought. “Of course my apothecary on the Strand advises that the required dose be taken immediately a female suspects she is with child, usually the first month her courses are overdue,” she mused matter-of-factly. “That this dolt waited four months before confessing to the fruits of her wickedness necessitated I increase the dosage to compensate for her sly stupidity. After all, one must be absolutely certain the monster is expelled.”

  Jacob Allenby ground his teeth. “You’re a cold-blooded feline, my lady.”

  “No. I am a pragmatist, true to the patrician blood that flows in my veins,” she said conversationally, preening at her upswept hair adorned with pearls and ribbons in the dim light cast on the oval looking glass above the mantle. “Blood connection is prized above all else. Bastard offspring of indeterminate lineage have no place amongst our kind.” She glanced at the middle-aged merchant’s reflection whose frowning gaze remained fixed on the suffering girl in the narrow bed. “Nor does mawkish sentimentality. Why you agreed to take her off Sir Felix’s hands, I shall never fathom.”

  “Sir Felix Despard is a spineless drunkard who should have kept a better eye on his only child or she would not now be suffering. As for my actions, they’re not for you to fathom.”

  “Indeed? A Bristol Blue Glass manufacturer could do worse than take as mistress a nobleman’s quick tawdry rut. She is the offspring of a baronet, when all is said and done. Used. Discarded. But still very beautiful.”

  “You’d know all about quick tawdry ruts, my lady.”

  “You rival Mr. Garrick, to be sure. This unholy alliance we’ve formed is so diverting. La! I do believe it’s the best night’s entertainment I’ve had since—”

  “—you went down on all fours at one of his lordship’s orgies?”

  “Shall I show you my technique?” she teased, tickling the end of Jacob Allenby’s snub nose with the pleated tip of her delicate gouache fan. She pouted. “Tiresome little merchant moralists must dream of rutting titled ladies. In your dreams is the only place you’re accorded the opportunity of entering society.”

  “I pity your offspring, my lady,” the merchant stated with undisguised loathing and put space between them.

  The lady’s hazel eyes went dead. She stared coolly over nurse’s shoulder at the girl in the bed, who continued to hug her knees tightly and whimper in pain. Just turned eighteen and with no prospect of future hap
piness. Good, her ladyship gloated, and recalled how the squire’s beautiful daughter had captivated society on her first public engagement.

  It had been at the Salt Hunt Ball, and the girl’s extraordinary beauty coupled with a refreshing natural modesty had caused a sensation amongst lords and ladies alike. Unsullied and brimming with naïve optimism, charming to all and sickeningly self-effacing, by the end of the evening she had received three proposals of marriage and two declarations of undying love. Embraced by Society, it was expected she would marry title and wealth.

  That very night her ladyship had found them together in the summerhouse down by the lake: the handsome nobleman in all his splendid, wide-backed nakedness and this beautiful eager virgin with her tumble of waist-length hair the color of midnight. They were blissfully riding to heaven together, as if they were the only two in the Garden of Eden. It had enraged her, but what had crushed her dreams and broken her heart was spying the ancestral betrothal necklace of the Earls of Salt Hendon around the girl’s white throat.

  The tragic consequences of the lovers’ unbridled lust could not have made her happier. But when she least expected it, in those rare moments when she permitted herself to smugly believe she had regained absolute control of the future, the image of those two heavenly lovers joined as one haunted her waking hours and turned her dreams to nightmares.

  “You, sir, have no idea to what lengths this mother has gone to secure her son’s future,” she stated dully and retreated into the shadows just as the girl let out one last guttural moan that filled the quiet of the airless bedchamber. “For God’s sake! How much more pathetic whining must I endure?” she growled, and threw her fan at the wallpaper in a temper. She slumped down on the horsehair sofa in a billow of blue velvet petticoats. “Allenby, have the wench examine her. She must’ve expelled the brat by now.”

  Nurse began to sob openly.

  “I wish there’d been another way, my dear,” Jacob Allenby apologized with real remorse. “You must understand that this is the best outcome for her, with the least pain.”

  He patted Nurse’s shoulder and then he, too, retreated into the shadows.

  Understand? Least pain? Nurse wanted to scream. How did any female recover from the loss of a child, be it from miscarriage, stillbirth, or taken away at birth? And Sir Felix would have had every right to take it away. Sent to an orphanage, it would never know its mother, never have a father. Best if the child was taken now, barely formed and unknowing, because giving birth to a bastard child was a sin, a stain for life. Her poor suffering darling Jane didn’t deserve such ignominy.

  “Please. Please, please, God. Please let my darling live,” Nurse whispered and buried her face in the bedclothes, squeezing the sponge so tightly that her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palm and drew blood. “Please, no more pain. No more suffering.”

  And as if in answer to her prays, an eerie stillness descended upon the bedchamber as the girl ceased to move and finally lay quiet amongst the down pillows in the middle of the narrow bed, the agony of the contractions abating and giving way to relief, emptiness and loss.

  Jane blinked at the guttering candle on the side table, tears staining her cheeks knowing that it was not just sweat from her painful exertions that bathed her exhausted body in cool wetness but blood, her blood, and the blood of her unborn child; life extinguished. Quiet sobbing made her turn her head. She touched Nurse’s lace cap, which instantly brought the woman’s tear stained face up with a jerk. Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “Silly. Don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry for now.”

  “Tom, do I have a dowry?” Jane asked her stepbrother, turning away from a window being hit hard with rain.

  Tom Allenby glanced uneasily at his mother, who was pouring him out a second dish of Bohea tea. “Dowry? Of course you have a dowry, Jane.”

  Jane wasn’t so sure. When her father disowned her four years ago, he cut her off without a penny.

  “What is the amount?”

  Tom blinked. His discomfort increased. “Amount?”

  “Ten thousand pounds,” Lady Despard stated, a sulky glance at her stepdaughter. Annoyance showed itself in the rough way she handled the slices of seedy cake onto small blue and white Worcester porcelain plates. “Though why Tom feels the need to provide you with a dowry when you’re marrying the richest man in Wiltshire, I’ll never fathom. To a moneybags nobleman, ten thousand is but a drop in the Bristol River.”

  “Mamma,” Tom said in an under voice, close-shaven cheeks burning with color. “I believe I can spare Jane ten thousand when I am to inherit ten times that amount.” He regarded his stepsister with a hesitant smile. “It’s a fair dowry, isn’t it, Jane?”

  But Lady Despard was right. Ten thousand pounds wasn’t much of a dowry to bring to a marriage with a nobleman who reportedly had an income of thirty thousand pounds a year. Yet Jane hated to see her stepbrother miserable. Poor Tom. The terms of Jacob Allenby’s will had disturbed his well-ordered world.

  “Of course it’s a fair dowry, Tom. It is more than fair, it is very generous,” she answered kindly before retreating once more to the window with its view of London’s bleak winter skies and grey buildings. She wished for the sun to show itself, if but briefly, to melt the hard January frost. Tom could then take her riding about the Green Park. Somehow, she had to escape the confines of this unfamiliar townhouse crawling with nameless soft-footed servants.

  But there was no escaping tomorrow. Tomorrow she was to be married. Tomorrow she would be made a countess. Tomorrow she became respectable.

  Tom followed her across the drawing room to the window seat that overlooked busy Arlington Street and sat beside her. “Listen, Jane,” he said gruffly as he picked at a thread of a tapestry cushion. “You needn’t rush into this marriage just for my benefit. Attorneys for Uncle’s estate said there is still time…”

  “It’s perfectly all right, Tom,” Jane assured him with a soft smile, thin white hand covering his. “The sooner I’m married the sooner you inherit what is rightfully yours and can get on with your life. You have factories to run and workers who are relying on you to pay them their long overdue wages. It was wrong of Mr. Allenby to leave his manufacturing concerns and his estate to you without any monies for their upkeep. You shouldn’t be forced to foreclose, or to sell your birthright. Those poor souls who make your blue glass need to be paid so they can feed their families. Should they be made destitute all because your uncle willed his capital to me? You are his only male relative and you have an obligation to those who now work for you. We know why your uncle made you assets rich but cash poor, why he left his capital to me, because he hoped to force a union between us.”

  “Why not? Why not marry me, Jane?”

  “Because despite being my brother in law, you’ve been my little brother since I can remember and that will never change,” Jane explained kindly. “I love you as a sister loves a brother, and that is why I cannot marry you.”

  “But what of Uncle’s will?” Tom asked lamely, not forcing the argument because he knew she was right.

  “We have been over this with Mr. Allenby’s attorneys,” Jane answered patiently. “The will does not specifically mention that I must marry you, Tom, and so we are not obligated to do so. That was an oversight on your uncle’s part. The attorneys say that I may marry any man and the one hundred thousand pounds will then be released in your favor.”

  “Any man?” Tom gave a huff of embarrassed anger. “But you are not marrying just any man, Jane. You are marrying the Earl of Salt Hendon! I cannot allow you to make such a sacrifice. It is not right. It is not right that in marrying him you are left destitute. Surely, something can be worked out. We just need time.”

  “Time? It has now been three months since Mr. Allenby died and you cannot keep putting off your creditors. How much do you owe, Tom? How long do you think you can go on before you must sell assets to meet your debts?” Jane forced herself to smile brightly. “Besides, is it such a sacri
fice to be elevated from squire’s daughter to wife of the Earl of Salt Hendon? I shall be a countess!”

  “Wife of a nobleman who is marrying you because he gave his word to your dying father and feels honor-bound to do so,” Tom grumbled. “Not because he wants or loves you… Oh, Jane! Forgive me,” he apologized just as quickly, realizing his offence. “You know I didn’t mean…”

  “Don’t apologize for the truth, Tom. Yes, I am marrying a man who does not care two figs for me, but in doing so my conscience is clear.”

  “Well, if you won’t marry me, then marriage to a titled Lothario is better than you remaining unmarried,” her stepbrother said in an abrupt about face that widened Jane’s blue eyes. “Only a husband’s protection will fend off lecherous dogs. Living unmarried in a cottage on the estate was all well and good while Uncle Jacob was alive to protect you. But even he was powerless the one and only time you ventured beyond the park. You became fair game for every depraved scoundrel riding the Salt Hunt.” Tom squeezed her hand. “Uncle showed more restraint than I. I’d have shot those lascivious swine as let them take you for a harlot.”

  That humiliating incident had occurred two years ago but the memory remained painfully raw for Jane. What Tom did not know was that the lascivious swine of which he spoke were in truth the Earl of Salt Hendon and his friends. On the edge of the copse, with her basket of field mushrooms over her arm and dangling her bonnet by its silk ribbons, she had not immediately recognized the Earl astride his favorite hunter with a full beard upon his face and his light chestnut hair tumbled about his shoulders.

  He had brought his mount right up to her and stared down into her upturned face with something akin to mute stupefaction. Then, much to the delight of his boon companions, he exacted a landlord’s privilege for her trespass by dismounting, pulling her into a tight embrace and roughly kissing her full on the mouth. She had tried in vain to push him off but his arm about her waist was vice-like and he continued to crush her mouth under his, violating her with his tongue; he tasting of spirits and pepper. When he finally came up for air, his brown eyes searched her shocked face as if expecting some sort of revelation. It was only when she slapped his face hard that the spell was broken and he was brought to a sense of his surroundings. He released her with one vicious whispered word in her ear and a low mocking bow.