Page 21 of The Mad Baron's Bride
But he had to tell her sometime. She had not answered an advertisement and might turn straight back to her father’svicarage once she saw the lay of the land. Leda was a friend of the family, his great-aunt’s favored companion, though his aunt had said not a single word about how greatly she would miss her companion of six years, nor made any insistence that Jack swiftly return Leda to her.
Friend of the family, yes. A spinster friend of his great-aunt. That was how he would consider her. He would be polite, formal, distant. Reserved.
This resolve collapsed the moment Leda entered the dining parlor. She wore a wool gray riding habit with the skirt buttoned along the side to convert it to a walking dress. The smart military cut of the jacket emphasized her bosom, and a rakish ruffle adorned her throat, framing a face pale with weariness, spots of color adorning her high cheekbones. Her hair was dressed severely, her outfit completely lacking in adornment, yet she looked capable, efficient, and delicious.
Family friend, his arse. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to whirl her close in a dance and feel her body fit to his, warm and pliant. He wanted her in his bed.
He wanted her in his house, buxom at bed and board, bound there by promises of marriage. Heaven help him, he wanted her for his wife.
Her, and none other.
More fool he.
While Leda nibbled on toast, her ladyship spoke at length of the beautiful prospect of Holme Hall (not mentioning the near perpetual and often chilly wind from the North Sea), the grand building itself on the Jacobean pattern (perhaps she did not know how much it had fallen into disrepair since her childhood), and the pleasant neighborhood about (nothing but farms, wind mills, and marshes, dotted with the occasional chalk pit and lime kiln). Clearly, she wanted Leda to look with favor on the place, but Jack feared she was only setting them both up fordisappointment. She saw them off with great cheer, as if they were embarking on their wedding trip.
“Why did you change your mind?”
Jack caught Leda in the small hallway while Gibbs levered her trunk down the stairs, looking aggrieved by the manual labor. Jack took her valise and studied her wan face. Violet smudges darkened her eyes to a dull gray matching her dress, and she pressed her lips into a thin line.
“A woman’s prerogative,” she said.
She was not being forthright with him. But when was a woman ever honest?
“You will forget all about me,” Leda said to Lady Plume, who walked with them out of doors to see who was passing in the Crescent. “I’ll return to find you’ve given Mrs. Hobart or Madame Nouçier my post.”
“No one could ever replace you, Leda, dear,” Lady Plume said serenely, scanning the figures promenading in the vast green across from the Crescent while Jack and Gibbs loaded luggage on the dogcart. “Though you do know I detest being alone. And it would be a shame to let your room sit empty, when it has such a pleasant prospect.”
Leda stewed as they rode to the coaching inn, confirming Jack’s suspicions that she was not entirely leaving of her own free will. But what drove her, then?
At the White Hart, as they stood in the dirt-packed inn yard while their things were loaded somewhat haphazardly atop the coach headed to Chippenham, Jack recalled the package she had mailed to Kellaways. He wondered again who it was for, and what they meant to her. Women of his station were almost relentlessly forthcoming about their business, themselves a chief subject of occupation and interest. Leda remained mysterious and tight-lipped.
He was bringing a woman of whom he knew almost nothing, of neither her character nor her past, neither her breeding nor her education, into his home, to look after those dearest to him.
He must be daft.
She stepped close, taking his hand as he helped her into the coach, and the scent of almonds swept through his head, clearing every thought. He followed her inside like a stag in rut, led by sheer instinct. Daft, indeed.
The leather seat creaked as he lowered to the bench seat beside her, trying not to press his length along hers. The interior seated only six adults, and all needed to be small adults if they were to avoid banging knees with the person opposite, and each occupy their allotted amount of space. Jack had enjoyed the breath of his shoulders when Leda curled against him in Lady Plume’s parlor, her fingers digging into his muscle as she clung to him for a kiss. Now he crowded her unmercifully.
A woman’s strident voice sounded from outside the carriage, well before she poked her head inside. “—don’t see why you couldn’t hire a carriage and transport your family in some comfort. No, my husband must always be mixing business with pleasure. Bringing samples on a family visit. Showing us off like his wares.”
The matron, much against current fashion, wore bulky petticoats that filled out the skirts adorning her more than ample form. A younger woman, nearly the same size, climbed in after her, and the third seat opposite was taken by a slender, meek-looking man in a rateen coat and pantaloons, who clutched a large leather case.
Jack hoped his companion, the male voice currently responding with equal distemper to the matron’s complaints, might match the other in size. No such luck. A very fine and expansive figure of a man clambered inside with a significant squeak of springs as the body of the coach depressed. Along witha truly generous girth dotted with an extravagance of buttons, he hauled in with him an enormous duffle surtout and tall round hat. He made two of Jack, even accounting for the shoulders.
“Fustian, Patricia. This is the fastest way to return us home to Sheldon, and you know my darling creatures cannot be left on their own too long. They might pine for us, and what taste would that give the meat?”
He turned to Jack, who was pressed unbearably between them by the gentleman’s presence on one side and Leda’s soft heat on the other. Of the two, it was Leda who most addled his brain. He was disabused directly of the hope that he might not have to participate in the further torment of conversation while being pressed like a sausage into his seat.
“Heard of Wiltshire bacon, I suppose? I’m a prime producer. Best to be had in these parts. Andwe—” He nodded importantly at the man with the leather case— “my factor and I, we’ve just struck a bargain to send all our flitches to the estate at Bathwick. Now what do you say to that! You’re riding with a personal supplier to Sir William Pulteney, one of the richest men in all England! Didn’t know when you wed me, did you, Patricia, that one day you’d be rubbing shoulders with baronets, did you, love? I fancy one day you’ll be proud to claim your shackle is Mr. Horace Clutterbuck, esquire.”
Jack now placed the smell emanating from the leather case and the attire of their fellow travelers. The features of his seatmate, rounded and prominent, put him in mind of his porcine charges.
Leda, it seemed, could not let this self-importance swell without taking out a pin. She leaned forward to address the newcomer.
“You will be pleased to know, sir, that you and your family are in company worthy of your eminence.” Jack shook hishead, and she ignored him. “For here beside you is the Baron Brancaster of Holme Hall.”
“What! A baron!” The gentleman also leaned forward to peer around Jack, which had the effect of compressing him further into his seat. He turned his small, surprised eyes on Jack. “You don’t say.”
