Page 26 of The Mad Baron's Bride
So did her promise. He had been carrying his burdens alone for years. The very notion of having a helpmeet, an aid—simply someone totalkto—the stab in his chest was also an opening, letting in light and air.
“What if I need you never to leave?”
Now that was absurd. Why was he being absurd?
She stepped close to him as a carriage approached the bridge. “You said there will be no dalliance.”
Damn it,damn it, he had. He should never have made such an outrageous declaration. His wits had been addled.
“And you said you will not be a wife.”
A post chaise neared them, and the lead horse leaned down to snuffle Leda’s bonnet as they passed. She laughed.
“Aye, he’s an eye for a handsome lady!” The postilion, a gent of many decades, lifted his hat. “Good day, mum. Sir.”
“That had better not be a vehicle we could have rented,” Jack said, watching the chaise roll past, its occupants tucked behind the front glass.
“You asked them to hold a coach for us, did you not?”
“I promised they would have our business,” Jack hedged.
Her shoulders slumped, though she held up her chin. “Do you wish to go inquire?”
He studied her face. “No,” he said. “I wish to see Maud Heath’s Causeway, and your friends, and I’ll go a bit mad if I can’t have a bite of that pickled herring, which I can smell through the package.”
Her brows lifted. “Is that why you are called the Mad Baron? Because you must not be denied your victuals?”
There was something behind the question, belied by her light tone. She had asked him not to inquire into her past. Did she likewise suspect he was keeping something from her?
“If you are to be allowed your secrets, Mrs. Wroth, I may equally claim the right to mine.”
They stood eyeing each other, and Jack had the oddest sense of having been in this moment before. Of watching Leda Wroth step into his life, and knowing she belonged there. As if he had been waiting for her all this time.
Now, that was the maddest notion he’d had yet. Jack held out his elbow. He must shake off these notions crowding his brain, or sense would desert him entirely.
He held his breath, wondering. She clearly did not trust him, nor anyone. Why would she promise him her time?
Then she took his arm, and he breathed in relief and wonder at the sense of something firm and important sliding into place, like one brick fitting perfectly against the next.
He wanted her in his life more than he’d wanted anything. And she was the one thing he could not have.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jack placed his free hand over Leda’s, holding her against him as they walked what was called the New Road. Around them the crowded brick and timbered houses, crowned with the church steeple, gave way to scattered wooden buildings, cottages, and barns. Then nothing but a sea of green pasture dotted with browsing sheep, fields of newly sprouted corn, and verges marked with blooms of wildflowers. The sky shone the color of pale love-in-a-mist, with white clouds roaming like sheep that had strayed into the firmament. Jack did not have a poetical soul, but he like most people could be struck by beauty, and by the sense that he had been gifted a treasure of a day, and a treasure in the woman beside him.
Leda paused before a chalky slab of stone, a metal plaque pressed into its surface.
“Maud Heath’s gift, given in 1474,” Jack read. “What, the marker?”
“The Causeway,” Leda answered, amused. She tugged him down the trail, wide enough for two people, with grass pushing up between the cobbles.
“Maud Heath lived in Langley Burrell, which we’ll pass, and made this trek every week, bringing eggs, butter, and cheese tothe market in Chippenham, likely to the very square where we alighted. She was left widowed at her husband’s death, and since they had no children, she bequeathed the town a trust paying eight pounds a year to build and maintain a path for other travelers. It goes all the way to Wick Hill, where there is another marker in her honor. This is a floodplain, you know, and it can become quite muddy or even impassable at high water. A great nuisance if not a bar to her income.”
“An intrepid woman, Maud.” Jack could see Leda doing such a thing.
“Had she children, she would have given her goods to them, and her blood would live on if her name was forgotten. But she granted her money to the community, and now generations have benefited from her vision and her name is remembered through the ages.”
Her tone left little doubt which future she preferred for herself. Jack smarted at the implication. “So the best possible status for a woman is a childless widow.”
