Page 31 of The Mad Baron's Bride
She tore herself from her frozen state and turned to him. “Mrs. Blake was our cook-housekeeper, and Betsey our maid during my marriage.”
Let that be sufficient for the moment. She had told him too much of the state of her marriage, and he had seemed sensitive to her plight. Disturbed by it, even.
“And Master Toplady is your son, Mrs. Wroth?”
The tight set to his lips and his narrowed eyes spoke of his displeasure. He’d guessed at her lie. Would he make a scene about it? Storm away? Reject her offer of assistance and leave her here?
Or would he pin her down and extract the entire painful, sordid, bloody truth?
Somehow, on the basis of no logical evidence, she was certain he could no more easily walk away from her than she, right now, could walk away from him. Some thin but strong filament bound them together. She couldn’t explain what had led to such an act of trust on her part as to bring him here, and she couldn’t explain why she felt bound to him. But she did.
“Ives is my adopted son,” she said in a low voice. “I will explain everything later.”
His mouth relaxed a degree. “Will you.”
She held his gaze. “Yes.” As much as she dared.
“I want tea,” Ives proclaimed, “but I s’pose I’ve to finish with Nanny first.”
Brancaster turned to the boy. “I will help you.”
Ives stared. “A fancy lord? You’ll muddy your boots.”
“Mrs. Wroth has already ensured their ruin by traipsing us along Maud Heath’s causeway. What’s more mud?”
Ives eyed his lordship’s footgear, a thoughtful twist to his mouth. “Them’s fine boots. A shame, that is.”
Brancaster stepped aside to attend to the goat, and Leda followed the other woman into the cottage, pulled by their whispered questions.
“Lady Plume is well. I mean to return to her when this errand is done. Brancaster is her nephew, or grand-nephew, rather. I am going with him to Norfolk to help him arrange a governess for his daughter.” Betsey opened her mouth, and Leda squeezed her hand. “We can trust him. I am sure of it.”
Betsey closed her mouth. Leda looked around the cottage, humbly furnished, but snug and clean.
“You are comfortable? I worry about you all, tucked away here. So different from what you knew.”
“Aye, but it’s safe and out of the way, and that’s what we wanted.” Mrs. Blake patted Leda’s hand as she took the butcher’s package. The motherly gesture left her with a surprising ache. Leda had not had someone to mother her since she traded the nursery for a governess.
The single room of the cottage held a kitchen on one end, a door leading to a scullery and larder beyond. A sturdy table stood in the middle of the room, with a sideboard against one wall to hold dishes and a spindle and loom opposite. In the second half of the room reposed a pair of upholstered chairs, a smaller chair with a woven seat for Ives, and a bright rag rug thrown over the flagged stones covering the floor.
It was so different from Lady Plume’s home in the Crescent, yet something about the place felt more welcoming. More like a home.
“You have what you need?” Leda asked. There were few luxuries or ornaments. A cross hung on one wall, an embroidered sampler on another. Wooden stairs led to the room above, no doubt a shared sleeping chamber.
“We’ve that and more,” Mrs. Blake exclaimed as she unwrapped the package. “Larks, a rare treat! I’ll roast them and they’ll make a tasty morsel. And a hare civet for dinner, I’m thinking. Betsey, tell that nineter of yours to pick us gooseberries when he’s put Nanny away, and I’ll make the young scamp and his strapping lordship a stir-in pudding, too. A feast, to celebrate the missus paying us a visit.
“Now, then.” She fixed Leda with a stern gaze. “Sit you down and tell us what is afoot. We received your message yesterday to be on our guard.”
“I saw Toplady in Bath.” Leda sank into a ladderback chair, plucking her gloves from shaking fingers.
Betsey, on her way to the door to call to the boy, whirled with her eyes wide.
“No, not my husband,” Leda promised. She squeezed the words past the tight band of her throat. “I am not yet to the point of seeing ghosts, though at first I thought I might have. They are very like, but there is something more sinister about Eustace. If Bertram had had that quality, or I had seen it, I never would have consented to marry him. I would have run away much earlier.”
She stared at her hands, splayed on the nicked oaken surface of the table. “None of it might have happened if I had.”
“Aye, but it did, and naught’s to be done now.” Mrs. Blake shook her head.
“And I have my Ives,” Betsey said. “Will you have eggs for your pudding, Patience?”
