Free Salt Bride by Lucinda Brant

the upcoming nuptials put a decided spring in his step as he went about his usual business the next day, despite an anteroom full of petitioners and the day’s appointments already substantially delayed with the arrival of Lady St. John with her two children in tow.
    The secretary did not approve of Lady St. John and her mischievous offspring but it was not his place or right to say so. Nor did it surprise him that she always chose to visit on the only day in the week when the Earl received petitioners, and thus his busiest at-home day.
    Tuesdays were open house day at Lord Salt’s Grosvenor Square mansion, providing an opportunity to anyone who wished to put his case to the Earl of Salt Hendon, be it on a matter regarding a sinecure, patronage for a literary work or some such artistic endeavor, a hawker representing the wares of his manufacturer, or persons with some minor connection to the Sinclair family or the Earl’s estates seeking assistance in some way. Petitioners rarely managed to make it to interview on the first Tuesday of their petitioning and waited all day in the freezing and cavernous anteroom with its marble floor and no fire in the grate. There were never enough chairs to go round and people stood for hours only to be told to return the following Tuesday to wait all over again. The more persistent returned three or four Tuesdays in a row all for the privilege of stating their case in the fifteen minutes allotted to them for an audience with the Earl.
    None of this meant anything to Lady St. John and she sailed into the Earl’s bookroom in a billow of exquisitely embroidered Italian olive velvet petticoats, her retinue behind her and without a single glance at the nameless silent and shivering crowd queued up either side of the double doors guarded over by two footmen regaled in the Sinclair blue and gold livery.
    Arthur tried to continue on with his work as if she was not there but of course this was an impossible task when she immediately draped herself on a corner of the Earl’s massive mahogany desk with no regard for the piles of important papers her petticoats swept to the floor in the process. As for her two children, the boy and girl clambered up onto Uncle Salt’s lap and demanded his attention. And of course Lady St. John’s visits invariably required the involvement of most of the household staff to provide for her and her children’s care and nourishment. The kitchen was sent into a whirlwind of activity to make and bake the little almond biscuits she liked so much and the particular Bohea tea at the strength her palate would approve; the butler was called upon to provide his undivided attention to her ladyship’s whims and at least four liveried footmen were dispatched to keep an eye on the children to ensure there was minimal disruption to carpets, leather bound volumes lining the walls, mahogany furniture and soft furnishings. All this despite Lady St. John arriving with her own lady-in-waiting, the children’s tutor, a governess and a Negro pageboy whose arduous task it was to go before her ladyship carrying a silk cushion which had upon it her ladyship’s fan.
    Jane was set down at the door to the Earl’s Palladian mansion in Grosvenor Square in the midst of this mid-morning disruption. The under-butler sized her up. From her simply dressed hair without powder, to her unseasonable silk gown of old gold with light lace petticoats that lacked the requisite fashionable hoop, over which was a wool cloak with frayed collar, and the fact she had arrived without her maid in tow, put this haughty little man in two minds whether to close the door in her face.
    Never mind the indisputable fact that she was the most breathtakingly beautiful female he had ever set eyes on. He had a job to do. It was all very well to admit groveling petitioners on Tuesdays, but a beautiful female without her maid was another matter entirely. One, Rufus Willis, under-butler in this noble household, wasn’t too