Page 24 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Jack glanced back to find the man watching as he escorted Leda out of the dim tavern to the yard, which was currently quiet, only a boy sweeping away remains from the last visitors and an ostler grooming a horse. Past the arched gate that admitted the horses, on a wooden bench along the street, two gaffers sat smoking their pipes and observing the street.
“You do not wish to be in this inn, or you do not wish to be in this town?” Jack inquired.
She’d been stiff as a scalded cat since the morning, when he announced the first leg of the journey was Chippenham. When the man confronted her, she’d reared like a shrew flushed from its burrow, ready to sink in its venomous teeth.
She braced her shoulders, as if bearing up under a heavy yoke. “I—know people in this area. From my marriage, and—before.”
“Was Chippenham where you and Mr. Wroth made your nest of marital bliss?” Why he was so dratted envious of a dead man, Jack could not say. It sat ill with him. “Then surely there is some acquaintance you would wish to look in on. It would fill the time while we wait.”
She turned toward the open market square, avoiding a tradeswoman approaching with a young boy in tow. “There arepeople I would wish to see. And others I would not. My marriage did not…end happily.”
Her expression was as stoic as the Sphinx, but tension tightened the corners of her eyes.
“You and Mr. Wroth did not get on?”
Now why should that twist so in his chest? Glee that she had not been happily married, no more than Jack was. She would not still carry a torch for a man she disliked. But alarm, also, for what she might have suffered in her marriage. God alone knew what Anne-Marie had gone through, and Jack had done nothing to offer her ease.
“Let us not speak of him.” She drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, though the spring day was turning warm.
“Very well. Where can we find these friends of yours? Avoiding the people you do not wish to see in the process.”
She slanted her head. “They live outside town, in Tytherton Kellaways. I suppose I could arrange to meet you back here.”
“You’d leave me to wander town all on my own, and deny me the honor of being your escort? There’s only so long one can be entertained gazing into a canal.” He was desperately eager to spend the day with her. To meet these people who had known Leda Wroth well before he did.
She bit her lip, and Jack heroically conquered the urge to tug the tormented flesh free and soothe it under his thumb.Get a hold of yourself, man.
She pressed her hands together, fingers plucking at her beaver gloves, practical for traveling. “I would beg you not to ask questions.”
This time his brows climbed. Leda Wroth was a woman of secrets. He was hardly surprised.
“Keeping in mind,” she added, twining her fingers together, “that as someone who is hiring me to come into your home and have the keeping of your daughter while I arrange a truegoverness, you would be right to ask as many questions as you wished. Under normal circumstances I would advise it.”
“I will be content with what you tell me, but now I cannot be kept away. The curiosity would consume me.”
She smiled, though only one side of her mouth quirked up. She was still tense as a harp string. “That is a woman’s weakness.”
“Oh, mine as well. Very much.”
He offered her his elbow, and she took it. The weight of her small hand sliding over his skin lit a warmth that echoed in his groin, where his arousal lay banked, like hot embers that could flare at any time into life. Jack supposed he would always be in a state of near arousal around Leda Wroth.
But the heat spreading through his chest was of a different quality. A surge of protectiveness, and the same sense of triumph he felt when Muriel consented to share his company. Fierce pride that she chose him. Wantedhim.
“You will have to consent to walking a few miles.”
“I have spent days walking Smithdon Hundred end to end. Your tame Wiltshire countryside does not intimidate me.”
She glanced at his feet. “You may get your boots wet.”
That gave him pause. “Just where did you say you were taking me?”
“To a cottage of my sister witches, where we mean to cook you and eat you, of course.”
“I’d rather an orgy,” Jack replied. “Would you consider an orgy instead?”
She laughed, and a ray of spring sunshine burst in his chest. Bringing Leda Wroth merriment felt like his greatest accomplishment in quite some time.
“No orgy,” she said, completely unconcerned that he had made such a wildly inappropriate suggestion. “With any luck, there will be a child present.”
