Page 29 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Better that than the Mad Baron.
“This one is sadder,” he said. “I will return to you never.”
“Time will not return? But we always have time, until we die.”
So she was not a poetical soul either, which would explain why she had been unmoved by his discussion of Coleridge.
“This moment will never return,” Jack said. “Once it passes, it is gone.”
She met his steady gaze. In the sunlight her eyes had the shade of the violets clustering along Maud’s path.
“A mercy when the time is a harsh one,” she murmured. “Its passing.”
“And a sorrow when the moment is a joy,” Jack replied. “Which is why Horace tells us to seize it, I suppose.”
Her lips were the color of the frog orchids that would be blooming soon in the quarries around his home. He wanted to show them to her. He wanted to touch her linen cheek, the rose blush appearing there. He wanted to fit her once more against his body and not let go this time.
He wanted to hitch himself inside her, couple them completely, and stay there.
“I don’t suppose,” he said, his voice sounding strained to his ears, “you would allow me to kiss you.”
For a wild heartbeat or two, as the warm sun beat on the back of his neck, he thought she might say yes.
She broke from his gaze. “Not so near a church.” She pointed to the mill near the river, and a simple chapel standing alongside, in great disrepair. “St. Giles.”
She didn’t want him.Jack braced himself to take the rejection manfully.
“A church beside a mill beside a river? I imagine that structure floods quite regularly.”
“And is infested with vermin living off the corn, so Mrs. Blake says.”
“That is Bath stone,” Jack said in surprise, tugging off his gloves as he approached the church. Anything for a distraction. He was accustomed to being alone, but Leda’s rejection went deep. He ran his hands over the face of the building, since he was not permitted to touch her.
“Limestone. A fine chalky texture, but weathers well. Do you see the outlines of shells on the surface here? They are small enough to make an excellent freestone. You can cut it in any direction without splitting, and it makes a smooth surface for dressing.”
She watched him with her head tilted to one side. “Knows Latinandarchitecture.”
“Not architecture.” He brushed a hand across the wall, wondering how long it had stood here, resisting all the forces of nature and time. “Stone masonry. I would have been a mason if the title of Brancaster had not come to me.”
She raised her eyebrows in polite interest.
“A more difficult trade than you’d think, making bricks.” He dusted his hands and refit his gloves. “There need be precision in the recipe and in the firing, and it is difficult to find both the right mixture and the right baking process. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Another set of failures, the evidence scattered all about his home, which she would see when she arrived. Was thereanythinghe could do that might impress her?
He had carried her quite far without dropping her. That must count in his favor.
“Come,” she said. “We are close.”
He sensed apprehension in her as they moved away from the willow and alder near the riverbank and toward an English oak that stood at some distance, crowning the stand of lesser treesaround it. As they neared Jack saw the top of a brick chimney, then the cottage attached, a simple structure of wattle and daub, no more than one room stacked over the other.
“It’s what they call a squatter’s cottage,” Leda said, sounding apologetic for the humbleness of the place. “There’s a common law that says if you can build a home and have a fire in the chimney in the span of a day, the place is yours to call home.”
A nightmare for landlords trying to collect rent from tenants, Jack thought. He didn’t know what he had expected of Leda’s acquaintances: a gentleman’s manor, perhaps, or a merchant’s home in town. Certainly not a small English cottage, with no other buildings in sight save a small withy shed. The garden was lovely, fruit trees in flower, vegetables peeking from their beds, and a buzz of insects in the air along with song from the birds swooping among the trees. Voices came from inside, and in the yard a boy’s quarrelsome shout.
“Now, Nanny! If you don’t kick over the bucket, you daft beast, I’ll let you have the beet tops from my dinner. And maybe the beets, too.”
They were close enough to hear the response from inside, a woman’s voice, amused. “You’ll eat your dinner, Ives, if you want to grow sprack, else you’ll go no higher than Nanny there.”
