Salt Bride (Salt Hendon #1) by Lucinda Brant

Author:Lucinda Brant [Brant, Lucinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Georgette Heyer, eighteenth, 18th, England, 1700s, drama, family saga
Publisher: Sprigleaf
Published: 2011-02-24T23:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

SUCH WAS THE CACOPHONY coming from behind the double doors that led into the rooms designated as the nursery, that it brought Salt up short, Sir Antony and Diana St. John at his back. But it was not the noise, it was this section of the house that made him hesitate. He had not set foot on the third floor since inspecting the house just before purchase some four years ago. He could not even remember the configuration of the rooms, how many there were or how they had been furnished, if indeed they contained any furniture at all. He seemed to recall the selling agent telling him that with a coat of fresh paint, pretty wallpaper with matching curtains, and a good fire in the grates, the rooms would do very well indeed for a brood of growing noble children.

He had not given the rooms another thought, until now. He had even dismissed as farcical Diana’s refusal to mention the rooms by their designation as a theatrical means of protecting any feelings of inadequacy he had at being unable to father a child. Yet, now faced with crossing the threshold, he had a twinge that Diana’s affected display of refusal was not so melodramatic after all, for it seemed laughable to be holding a birthday memoriam for a dead father in a nursery that would remain for him as silent as the grave.

Still, he could not disappoint Ron and Merry.

He had two fingers to the door handle when Diana pushed past him in a crush of petticoats to fling wide the doors. She misinterpreted his hesitation for embarrassment at being forced to enter a wasted nursery. Her own smoldering anger that the Countess had somehow deliberately set out to taunt her by using the very rooms she so despised was enough to make her drop her guard and speak without thought to her words or her audience.

The door banging hard against the wallpapered wall did not stop the chatter and movement. Those who heard Lady St. John’s outburst above the din dropped their jaws, and a few little faces crumpled with fright at the sight of the angry lady. In one sweep, Diana took in the assembled company, adults taking tea and seedy cake, while children played skittles or statues under the guidance of their nannies and tutors at one end of the long room. All were happy and content and enjoying themselves. The warmth and color, the freshly-painted walls and upholstered furniture, the Turkey rugs covering the floorboards where small children took their first steps and chubby babies crawled, all made her seethe with resentment. Then she recognized the young woman standing beside Jane and her hazel eyes widened with new knowledge, then narrowed to slits of mischief.

She saw the Countess before Jane saw her.

“Well! How like you to unsettle his lordship’s household with a pathetic display of domestic felicity!” and with a hand to her throat and a look of shocked disbelief that would have done any

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