Salt Redux Read online

  He slipped the letter into the pocket of his brown linen frock coat and thought of returning to the house to get on with ticking off his daily tasks. At the top of his list was awaiting the arrival of the newly-appointed nursery maid to join the growing number of servants employed in the nursery to cater to the needs and whims of a great nobleman’s expanding young brood. With the arrival of the Countess’s third child, the girl’s timely arrival would be a Godsend.

  The welcome sound of horses’ shoes clattering on the cobbles dragged the steward from his musings. He moved through the arch into the expansive stable yard as the Earl and his lively party walked their horses under the arch. Stable boys went to the horse’s heads. The riders dismounted. Liveried footmen appeared from the kitchen courtyard with jugs of ale and one of cordial, crystal tumblers, bowls heavy with spring’s first fruits, and a large basket of hot buttered bap rolls. Horses led away, leather riding gloves stripped off, riders’ thirsts quenched and hunger sated, Willis came forward as the Earl, who was offering a bowl of strawberries to his young son, looked up and said with a wry smile,

  “Mr. Willis! What taxing task are you performing on my behalf that it makes you look the gray cloud in an otherwise blue sky? Take that fat juicy one there, Ned,” he coaxed his three-and-a-half-year-old son, whose little fingers hovered in indecision over the bowl his father patiently held out to him, “before Ron decides it has his name carved into it.”

  “Does it, Uncle Salt?” Ron St. John asked seriously, in on the ruse at the Earl’s conspiratorial wink and peering over the bowl as if looking for the strawberry in question. “I should have it then, don’t you think, Ned, if it’s got my name on it?”

  “No, Ron! It’s my name on it! Ned,” Ned protested, scowling. He grabbed the succulent strawberry pointed out to him by his father, as if his twelve-year-old cousin meant to steal it from him, and with a cheeky smile stuffed it whole into his mouth.

  The Earl smiled at Ron, ruffled his son’s mop of golden ringlets, and satisfied he was eating the entire strawberry, rose up from his haunches to look down at his steward, who was smiling at his tactics to get a little boy to eat fruit. He handed off the bowl to a hovering footman.

  “So, Mr. Willis,” Salt said to his steward, “have you come to tell me her ladyship is in labor?”

  “No, my lord. That is… Approximately two hours after your departure her ladyship did go into labor. It was mercifully quick and her ladyship gave birth to a—”

  “No! No, don’t tell me! That’s her ladyship’s privilege,” the Earl interrupted, and far from feeling the concern or alarm evident on his steward’s face, he gave a shout of undisguised glee and slapped the man’s back, adding with a grin, “Ha! I knew it! I knew the exact day with Ned and with Beth, so why not with number three? But would mamma listen to papa, Ned? No! She would not.” He scooped up his little son and waited for Ron, who was politely offering thanks to the gamekeeper for showing them the stag. When the boy came over to him, he put an arm about his shoulders, saying in a low voice, “That was very well done, Ron. Thank you.” Adding audibly as he set off across the courtyard, Mr. Willis and two footmen a step behind, “What is number three do you think, Ron? Ned? A brother or a sister?”

  “Brother!” Ned was quick to offer.

  “Yes. Please let it be a boy,” Ron agreed with a solemn sigh of resignation. “There are too many females in this house as it is.” Adding quickly, fearing his godfather might think him uncaring, “I love them, Uncle Salt, but their fripperies and conversation… If I have to listen to Merry describe her wedding dress… As if she’s getting married tomorrow and not twelve years old like me, I think I’ll cast up my accounts! Ugh. It turns a man’s stomach.”

  “Then I shouldn’t wonder you are eager to be off to Eton.”

  “Very! I must survive another month of stitchery and lace fichus first!”

  This made the Earl laugh.

  “One day, Ron, you will thank your sister,” he said cryptically. “The understanding of such mysteries as embroidery and fichus will become inordinately important when you finally decide you do want to be around females and their conversations.” He glanced over a shoulder at his steward. “Is that not so, Mr. Willis?”

  “Very true, my lord. A keen interest in female accomplishments is particularly important when a young man turns his mind to courting.”

  Ron screwed up his face as if he had tasted something sour. “Courting? Ugh. Never.”

  With a grin, the Earl pulled Ron into an affectionate hug and then let him go to step off the courtyard onto the cool black and white marble flooring in the wide passageway. The smile died spying his butler in low conversation with the physician. Two footmen hovered at the butler’s shoulder at the far end of the hallway where it opened out into the expansive entrance hall. With Ned still in his arms, he strode up to the physician, Willis and Ron quick to follow, trying to match the nobleman’s long strides, and interrupted his butler.

  “Well?” he demanded of the physician.

  He noted the rotund man’s greatcoat buttoned to his chins, and hanging at his side in one gloved hand was a black leather bag. He had no idea if the man was coming or going. When the physician’s response was not immediate, his gaze snapped to his butler, who met his eye then looked away to the physician, waiting for him to speak first. The Earl’s heart began to race and the blood to drain from his face.

  “Speak!” he ordered the physician. “The Countess—”

  The physician dared to cut him off. “I’m sorry, my lord, so very, very sorry. I was too late. I could do nothing—”

  “Sweet Jes—Rufus! Take Ned!” Salt demanded, thinking the worst.

  He handed Ned into his steward’s arms with a perfunctory kiss to the little boy’s forehead and strode away, leaving the party in the marble foyer gaping after him. The physician was still working his jaw to speak, but the moment was lost. Ron St. John nodded to Willis and silently took himself off to his rooms, following the Earl up the great staircase, but slowly, and with head bent lest a servant or worse, a member of his family, caught him with tears in his eyes.

  The Earl went up the flight of marble stairs two at a time. He did not stop until he reached the second landing. Here he paused in the wide vestibule with its double-height windows that framed a picturesque view of lush rolling meadow, and beyond, the old stone bridge and the summerhouse by the lake. He drew breath, staring at the view without seeing it as he stripped out of his velvet riding frock coat and flung it away from him as if it had the plague. Two footmen opened the oak double doors that led into the private apartments he shared with the Countess, and closed them on their master’s back, not a word, but with wide eyes and a knowing lift of their eyebrows.

  Salt strode through the private dining room, not a glance at the two startled chambermaids who backed against the ebony table to get out of the Earl’s way, or at a third chambermaid who was throwing wide the burgundy and gold curtains to allow light to stream across the polished floorboards.

  He went through to the small antechamber with its two ornate doorways, one opening into his private rooms, the other onto a landing that crossed to the nursery rooms occupied by his children, and on into his wife’s recently redecorated pretty sitting room. With its chinoiserie wallpaper and matching curtains, sofa and wingchairs in soft pink and green pastels and gilt, it was such a feminine space and so very Jane that the room never failed to give him a warm glow, except today.

  Today, the room could have been draped in Holland covers and he none the wiser as he flung wide the door that opened into his wife’s dressing room. The door banged against the wallpapered wall and so loud that, despite the noise and activity within, the occupants stopped what they were doing and looked to the doorway. The room, from ornate dressing screen across to the cluttered dressing table, was full of women and industry. They curtsied as one, but as the Earl stared straight through them without acknowledgement they waited, as stone, for direction. A nod from Lady Caroline
Aldershot to the Countess’s head femme de chambre and the servants came to life and continued on with their tasks, gaze to the floor.

  Salt would have walked on, but above the drumming in his ears he heard his name, and his head snapped to the left. Sitting on the pale blue damask chaise longue were his goddaughter Merry and his sister Caroline, and between them a nursery maid was gently rocking a snugly-wrapped newborn, to which all eyes on the sofa were pinned. That the newborn was not being cradled by its mother so soon after birth increased the Earl’s fear that something was dreadfully wrong with his wife. Without a word to his sister, who rose with a shake of her silk flowered petticoats and went to meet him, he strode on to the bedchamber door.

  Before he could open the door, a chubby two-year-old girl with tightly-sprung black curls and cherry-ripe cheeks ran across his path with a squeal of delight. She wrapped her arms tightly about his booted leg and did not let go. She demanded Papa take her for a ride like he always did. The Earl gently pried his little daughter from his jockey boot, scooped her up, gave her warm cheek a kiss, and handed her off to a hovering nursery maid, saying with none of his usual playfulness or smiles, and more sharply than intended,

  “Mamma first. Then Beth.”

  “Salt, would you like to hold your—”

  “Jane first,” he stated to his sister Caroline without turning about and slipped into the bedchamber just as the Lady Elizabeth Jane Honoria Sinclair—Beth to all who knew her—burst into tears and called for her Mamma.

  The Earl was at the four-poster bed before he realized he had not taken a breath since entering the room. He let out a sigh of relief as he wiped a cold hand over his face, then through his windswept chestnut hair, as the bed’s occupant struggled to sit up against the mound of soft down pillows, her lady’s maid quick to come to her aid.

  “Salt? Magnus? What—what is it?” Jane, Countess of Salt Hendon, asked in alarm. “What’s wrong? Not Ned? He didn’t suffer a fall on your ride? Beth? She cried out just now. What’s happened?”

  She took the hand her husband held out to her as he went down on his knees beside the mattress, but when he did not respond immediately, just kissed her wrist and then lowered his head to touch their clasped hands to his warm forehead, as if in prayer, she became truly frightened.

  “Not the—not the baby?” she asked in a fearful whisper.

  He shook his head but did not look up. “No. No,” he muttered. “All is as it should be…”

  It was her turn to sigh and she lay back against the pillows, a glance at the other occupants of the room. Without a word, her lady’s maid ushered the two chambermaids with their pile of laundry from the bedchamber. Mrs. Willis placed a cup of tea on a tray within Jane’s reach, and followed. The couple was alone. With the click of the bedchamber door, Salt looked up.

  Through a film of tears he smiled at his wife. Her blue eyes were tired and her face lacked color. Yet, for all that, and all that she had just endured, she was utterly lovely and serene. Whatever troubled him, whenever he felt the weight of his responsibilities pressing on his shoulders, being with Jane never failed to lift him up and make him supremely contented with life; that all was right with the world. She seemed to read his thoughts, because as he propped himself on the mattress and faced her, she said brightly,

  “I am not surprised you thought something was the matter. It all happened so quickly. This baby was determined to enter the world with least pain to its dear mamma, for which I will be forever grateful.”

  He handed her the cup of tea. “Did I not tell you today was the day?”

  She dimpled and drank of the sweet tea and felt better for it.

  “You did. But even you could not predict the baby would arrive before nuncheon! Mrs. Willis managed to be here in time to be of assistance, but Dr. Hume was no help at all. He is possibly still astride his horse.”

  “He’s downstairs in the hall, still in his greatcoat.”

  “Well, he might as well leave it on!” Jane said with asperity. “I suppose it will make for a nice change that he does not have to deal with a woman in labor, screeching and cursing her husband for putting her through such a painful ordeal—”

  “Did you curse me, Jane?”

  “Oh, most assuredly. Mrs. Willis tells me that it is unnatural not to do so.”

  At that the Earl laughed. She held out her empty porcelain teacup on its saucer and he put it aside without taking his eyes from hers.

  “As well as giving birth to a very healthy child, I have also managed to have the bedchamber set to rights, my face scrubbed and my hair brushed and braided, and all before the physician’s arrival. Admittedly it is a good five hours since he was sent for, but he may be left wondering if I were indeed pregnant at all.” She put out her hand to her husband, saying with a searching look, “When I am next pregnant, you had best send for Dr. Hume the moment you have one of your dreams. Last night you not only woke me, but obviously the baby had had enough of the disruption and wanted a cradle to sleep in.”

  When he huffed an apology and did not meet her gaze, it confirmed her suspicion that his dream had been in fact a nightmare, a regular occurrence over the past few weeks. She had no idea what was troubling him, and that troubled her.

  “I wish you would confide what it is that is worrying you so. Please do not tell me it is a nothing or a trifle, or something that should not concern me. I have shared your bed every night for four years, and so I know when you are troubled beyond what is reasonably expected of a man in your position.” She smiled into his brown eyes and said buoyantly, “If you cannot tell me, then whom can you tell—certainly not Willis. You and your steward share the same dour disposition, and I won’t be called to account by Mrs. Willis for adding to her husband’s worries.”

  When he smiled weakly and looked at their fingers entwined on the coverlet, she briefly closed her eyes, suddenly very tired and anxious to cradle her newborn again, and for her little son and baby daughter and their extended family to share with them in the birth of another Sinclair. Yet, as there was no wailing coming through the walls from her sitting room, she patiently waited, hoping she had coaxed her husband to confession.

  “Dearest Jane, you have just given birth to our third child and I’ve not had the good manners to ask after the baby, and still your thoughts are all for me…” He suddenly pressed his lips to the back of her hand. “I don’t deserve you…”

  “Rot! Of course you do!”

  “Jane… Without you… If I ever lost you, be it in childbirth, or in any other way… Without you, none of it matters… None of it.”

  She choked up and tenderly ran her fingers through his tussle of thick chestnut hair and said to his bowed head,

  “My dear, dear man… I love you so very much…”

  “And I you—beyond words…”

  He could not bring himself to tell her the whole truth. Yes, he had worried about the impending birth of their third child. What husband was not terrified of childbirth and all its attendant calamities? He had kept those worries to himself. To his shame and guilt, the dreams that had disturbed his sleep over the past month were not filled with worry about his wife or children at all, but concerned another, a creature he so reviled that he reviled himself for allowing her to invade his thoughts at any time. It was the letter, or the lack of one, that had started the nightmares. He did not need his steward to tell him that the monthly letter from the guardian of the unnamed person of interest was overdue. He waited on those letters, as if with each letter he could breathe easy for another four weeks knowing the creature who had tried to kill his wife and was a murderer of the unborn remained locked up, away from Jane and his children and Ron and Merry; they were safe from harm, safe from evil for another month.

  Over the past four years, he had often thought of ending the misery of the crippling apprehension that consumed him. With Diana St. John locked up for the rest of her natural life, stripped of her identity and referred to forever more as the unnamed person of
interest, he presumed he would be free of her. He was not. He knew that release would only come with her death. Too many times to count he thought of having her poisoned, or orchestrate for her to have an accident—fall off a turret or break her neck on the stairs. It would be easy to arrange. Yet, that would make him a murderer, too, and no better than she. He could not have her murder on his conscience, for his children to one day discover that the father they loved and respected had been party to such a heinous crime, and against a creature who was clearly insane.

  He sat up and mentally shook himself free of such melancholy thoughts. Jane’s blue eyes were so full of concern that he knew himself for a selfish wretch. This should be a happy time, a time for celebration, for carefree laughter, and for family. He owed it to his two children, to the new little life just come into the world, to his extended family and retainers, to those who looked to him for guidance and to set the example, and most of all, he owed it to his wife, to Jane. Jane had not only given him three healthy children he adored, but given him a life worth leading.

  He locked the dark thoughts away for another day as he kissed the back of her hand, and was about to offer her a garbled explanation for his frequent bouts of broken sleep over the past few weeks, when she gave him a plausible excuse, one he could readily agree to without the need to lie.

  “Your problem is that your mind needs occupation. I don’t mean counting sheep and fixing tenant fences. You need politics, papers and a hundred parliamentary annoyances to keep your thoughts away from petty domestic details. Willis has proved himself a marvelously competent estate steward, so competent that he leaves you little to do but say yes or no to his suggestions and advice.” Jane squeezed his fingers. “Willis can manage the estate without you needing to be here while Parliament is in session. He has proved himself more than capable, what with your frequent visits up to London in recent months on parliamentary business. Ned is in his fourth year. A month of lying-in, and the baby and I can travel. Please. Magnus. If you feel the time is right for you to return to the political arena, you must do so. Four years in the country seeing to your estates is time enough for a man with your abilities, and so the newssheets keep reminding me!”