Page 23 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“That is well worth the comfort.”
Her cheeks flushed again, and Jack could have kicked himself for his insensitivity. “You’ll require a chaperone, of course.”
“A chaperone? No. You forget I am a widow.”
“Not even widows are approved for traveling the countryside with strange men, I am sure. It will appear…” He let the sentence dangle, silenced by the longing that struck him at the image that followed. Leda ashiscompanion, sharing meals and carriages and rooms and beds.
Her brows lifted this time. She had such an expressive face. “A dalliance?”
A mild term for what he imagined, which was colored by the hot blood rushing through his ears and, still, his nether regions. Her lips were carmine red, as if she’d been biting them. Precisely as he wished to do.
“No.” There would be no dalliance. He had to tell her, at some point, but he could not bear for her to know what a failure he had been as a husband, a lover. What a failure he was now as a father, as a landlord, as a baron. As a man.
She didn’t know yet and, when she regarded him with those enormous eyes, there was still a chance he could be something other than what he was, in her imagination at least. Someone better, stronger, a man in truth, not a broken shell.
A man walking in behind them jostled Jack, and out of instinct he grasped Leda’s arm to shield her. A mistake. Heat soared between them, like a fire pumped with a bellows. Her lips parted. She was so close. He could simply take her into his arms, take her upstairs, relieve the pressure about to make him explode?—
And show her what a failure he truly was.
“There will be no dalliance,” he said roughly, squeezing her arm.
She narrowed her eyes. Was she indignant? Hurt? Did she want him, despite everything? Hope leaped up like a wild hare, bouncing off the inside of his chest. If it could be different with her…
But it wouldn’t. And she should know, before she subjected herself to hours and days alone with him in an enclosed carriage, what he had done to Anne-Marie.
“But there will be coffee.” She separated her shoulder from his grip. “Which I will be drinking while you arrange for the chaise.”
Chippenham being a stop on the busy London-Bristol road, all the post chaises were currently in use, Jack reported a short time later as he found her in the tavern. The innkeeper expected at least one return later that day, but could not give them an exact time of arrival.
The lines around Leda’s eyes went white, and she gripped the jasperware cup holding her coffee with both hands, as if to steady herself. “I cannot stay here.”
Jack looked around the noisy tavern, thronged with all sorts of people, from nattily dressed tradesmen and aproned women in traveling cloaks to laborers in their fustian jackets. He ought to have hired the private parlor for her to sit her coffee in quiet. Another man worthy of the title of his lordship—or worthy to be the man providing for Leda Wroth—would do this much for her.But Jack was all too aware of the lightness of his pockets, which he would be obliged to empty to deliver them to Hunstanton and hope for no accidents along the way.
Still, he had not thought Leda the type to be bothered by the common press. She hadn’t struck him as the supercilious sort.
Some instinct prompted him to glance toward one corner, shadowed under a first-floor balcony with more tables and chairs that looked out over the rest of the room. A man sat in the gloom, staring intently at Leda. He was dressed like a gentleman in a dark cloth coat and grey pantaloons, but wore a hungry, calculating look. Jack guessed him to be an upper servant, perhaps employed at one of the manors hereabout, waiting for an employer to finish a task. His intense concentration on Leda made the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand on end.
He had been thick-headed, again, to assume her conscious of class. As a woman, she must be conscious always of her well-being. Anne-Marie had taught him this much.
“Of course,” Jack said. “What do you wish? We could wander the market and see the Shambles and the Yelde Hall, if you like quaint medieval relics. If you wish newer, we could look at the canal, which I hear was just completed. Or visit the shops?”
He hoped she would not ask him to purchase her anything. As it was he hoped they would find a modest place for dinner, were they forced to wait that long for a vehicle.
As they stood, the man in the corner stood also and hastened over, barring their way. He made no acknowledgement to Jack, his gaze pinned on Leda.
“Mrs. Toplady,” he said, his voice low and somehow menacing.
Leda didn’t freeze so much as recoil, as if absorbing a blow. She blinked and swallowed. “No. You have mistaken me for someone else.”
The man leaned close and peered into her face. “Them eyes. Who’s to forget them eyes?”
“I am Mrs. Wroth. Good day.” She tried stepping around him, but the man didn’t move.
Jack came between them. He was not quite the eye level of the other man—his kind father had bequeathed Jack many gifts, but not height. Still, the breadth of his shoulders counted for much.
“You heard the lady,” Jack said. “She is not who you think.”
The man straightened and regarded Jack, the look of calculation returning. “Or perhaps she’s not whoyouthink.”
