Page 25 of The Mad Baron's Bride
His curiosity heightened, but he curbed his tongue. He wanted to know so much about her. What kind of family had raised this canny, capable woman. If her blighter of a husband had hurt her, and that was why she wished not to marry again. What had driven her from Bath with that desperate, hunted look in her eyes.
What she would say if he leaned down and whispered in her ear what she had done to him, riding his knee those three hours to Chippenham. What outrageous fancies still flitted about his brain.
He had no business attempting to seduce her. He could not marry, either. That was a lark his Aunt Plume had taken into her brain, that Jack would be better served with a wife.
A governess only. A companion for Muriel. Jack did not deserve a companion. He’d not taken good enough care of the last one.
“Where do we begin, Mrs. Wroth?”
“Here, in the market. We cannot turn up empty-handed. Then I will introduce you to Maud Heath and her Causeway.”
The square held the wooden stalls called the Shambles that would be full of vendors on market days, and the old Yelde Hall, timbered in the medieval style. Leda led him toward the butcher’s shop, marked by the carcasses hanging in the window, and without a qualm stepped over the gutter at the lip of the door, currently running pink with effluvia.
Jack soon realized that Mrs. Wroth knew how to do her own marketing. She bargained with the butcher for two brace of larks, a hare, and something she called Bath chaps, a pink mass enclosed in a jar of brine. Jack grew impressed as she sorted over the birds, returning one that she pronounced stale after flexing its tiny feet. When the butcher rendered another, she tipped up its tail for inspection, then professed herself satisfied.
“How do you know if a bird is fresh or stale?” Jack asked.
“The vent,” she said matter-of-factly, and turned to the hare, already stripped of its fur and innards. “Now with these, you look for meat that is whitish and stiff. Blackish and flabby means the kill was some time ago. And look at the claws.” She held up a long foot. “If the claws are wide and ragged, she is an older hare. If there is a small knob on the bone here,” and she felt just above the foot, “it is a leveret, less than a year old. This is a youngish doe, not hung so long she will be gamey.”
“Only dead four days, mum,” the butcher assured her. “Can I interest you in a cut of mutton or ham? A side of beef?”
“I will look at your jellies, if you have them, and perhaps some salted fish.”
“Calves’ foot, hartshorn, ribband jelly, and any fish you want. Herring, plaice, whiting, pike?—”
Leda sorted through her purse for the proper coin, and Jack took her packages as the butcher finished wrapping. “You would make a formidable housekeeper, Mrs. Wroth. Are you certain my aunt has made full use of your skills?”
Leda bid the butcher a courteous good day. “I am happy with the employment Lady Plume has given me.”
“As a non-matchmaker.”
“As a person equipped to discreetly resolve difficulties and settle affairs of the heart.” She turned, her face hidden beneath the brim of her capote bonnet, and pointed down a broad street. “That is the other Causeway, the one lined with the burgage houses, the homes of the rich wool merchants, if you want to see them.”
“I do not wish to spark envy in my breast. Let us go join Maud.”
She glanced at him from under her bonnet, her eyes a bright blue. “I have heard only the highest praises of Holme Hall.”
“From my great-aunt, who knew it more than five decades ago, when her father and brother had lands, funds, and properstanding in the neighborhood. Her nephew went some way toward diminishing all of those.”
There was no keeping the bitterness from his tone. The previous baron, having no direct issue, had demonstrated a corresponding lack of interest in handing the estate over either thriving or intact.
And as it was attached to the title, the estate would go to the next heirs male. Jack didn’t know who that might be, the Burnham family having cut his father when he chose to go into trade. Some clerk in some dusty government office would be busy tracing lines of descent once he died, Jack supposed. He only cared that the estate be yielding income he might leave as a bequest to Muriel, so she would be provided for after he was gone. And she could provide for the others.
“I suppose I shall see it for myself soon enough.”
“And go running back to your comfortable position with her ladyship as soon as might be arranged, I don’t doubt.”
She stopped on the old stone bridge crossing the Avon, a fortification that looked as if it had been there since the times of the Saxons, if not the Romans before them.
“Lord Brancaster.”
He faced her. “Jack.”
Her lips parted slightly, that delectable red. “Milord Brancaster. I hope you know I will stay as long as you have need of me.”
Stay to help him? He’d rather thought she was running from something.
Here in the bend of the river the water flowed lazily, though a small breeze blew from the weir, carrying with it the scent of salmon. Fresh water had such a different character than the pounding waves of the sea. And this town had more of a rugged medieval landscape in the points and angles of the buildings, so different from the expansive neoclassical rectangles that hadsmoothed over Bath. This was more like Norwich, where he was born, and the familiarity loosened a weight that had long sat heavy on Jack’s chest.
