Page 19 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Leda looked about to see who in the Pump Room had heard this awful disclosure. The Earl of Howth, Lady Sydney’s father, strolled with Lady Plume, regaling her with some amusing tale. Brancaster had been trapped in conversation with Mrs. Warren, who was certain that last night he had been captured by at least one of her daughters and would, in the light of morning, be able to detect which he preferred.
Leda watched his straight back in his tailed coat, the courteous tilt of his head as Miss Warren trilled up at him. He did not droop as a man bowed by senseless tragedy. Or crushing guilt. He had, to all appearances, held up manfully.
“Then why do they call him the Mad Baron?”
“Because he drove her to it, of course.”
“He drove his wife to destroy herself?”
Lady Sydney blinked. “Well, why else would she? If there were any possible recourse, she would have gone to her friends for aid, or found a way to escape. Only complete despair could drive a woman to end herself.”
Leda nodded. She had known it herself, even in extremity: that desperate, animal instinct to survive.
“How long ago?” Leda asked.
“Five years, I think, or is it six? I can’t say, as he goes about so little in society. Even before it happened he was practically a recluse, which was part of her problem, I don’t doubt. Loneliness from living tucked away at the bare fringe of the world.”
Lady Plume had not, in the years Leda had known her, mentioned this nephew, or his title, or his bereavement. Almost as if he were a family secret. Why was she set on helping him now?
“And this is why no one of any station will consider his bid for a wife,” Leda mused.
Lady Sydney nodded. “Not even Frances, and you know how she is.”
Another of the earl’s daughters, Frances, made her way toward them across the room, giving Brancaster and his companions a wide berth. Lady Frances was notorious for her want of a husband, a prize which has thus far eluded her despite her family name and her father’s elevation. Frances wore a gray silk round gown, Lady Sydney a dark purple, both of them mourning a third sister who had died the previous year, leaving small children.
As Brancaster’s wife had left him a daughter. Was the girl thought to tend also toward madness, and that was why no governess would stay at the house? Such things were said to be inherited.
Another reason that Leda’s parents and sister had had nothing to do with her. They wished no questions, no nervous gazes, to fall their way.
Mrs. Warren, who had made the recent and still quite dizzying hop from merchant’s wife to gentlewoman, saw little beyond his title and a daughter who might style herself Lady Brancaster. But the higher families had closed ranks, and Howth was the worst of them, joking about the Mad Baron, in search of another wife to drive out of her senses.
What had his first wife suffered?
What hadhesuffered, as a consequence?
Brancaster turned, having been freed from Mrs. Warren. He scanned the room, and his gaze halted on Leda. As if she were the one he sought.
She stared back at him, her insides churning. Terrible images danced in her head. Had he witnessed the leap? Had he known his wife was lost to despair? Had he been the one to find her, or had the report come later, leading him to her broken form at the bottom of the cliffs?
“There is a new gentleman in the book,” Lady Frances announced, joining them. “They say he is possessed of a lovely estate in Gloucestershire, near Cirencester. The name stirs recollection, Izzy. A Mr. Toplady. Do we know that family?”
A wave of cold shock doused Leda, as if the waters of the lake near her childhood home had closed about her head. She couldn’t breathe.
He was here.
“I do recall a thread of gossip, at that.” Lady Sydney had married well, to a rising peer of Ireland awarded two baronies and a diplomatic post, handsome, or at least prepossessing, if the painting by Reynolds were to be believed. He had died a month after their marriage, extinguishing the two peerages, leaving the estate to his cousin the admiral and his wife toenjoy a long widowhood at the sufferance of her father, amusing herself by taking an interest in the lives of those around her.
“He came by his estate when his father—or was it his uncle?—was found murdered by his wife. A horrible spectacle, they said. She was locked up in a madhouse, of course, where she could hurt no one further, and I heard she died there.”
“My word,” Lady Frances breathed. “What an unnatural creature she must have been.”
“We must pity such creatures, Fanny, rather than despise them. Not every woman has the constitution or capability for good sense. If they were, the universal reputation of our fair sex would be much higher, I must believe.”
Leda stood immobile, her feet melded to the floor like hot wax, her body engulfed in flames. Madness. Murder. An insensible, unnatural creature. Would they say these things if they knew it was Leda? Would they say these things if they knew the whole truth?
Likely they would. Women were not to fight the yoke that marriage put upon them, however heavy a burden it conferred. They were meant to bear it, because of Eve, cursed for the first disobedience. They were not to turn mad like animals and fight for their freedom with bloody claws.
This was why she could never marry again. One of many reasons. Because of this animal within her.
