Page 38 of The Mad Baron's Bride
They stepped into the hard-packed earth of Market Square, with the square tower of St. Andrews looming, topped with its Gothic spire. Leda never would have looked at the yellow-gray stones of its façade, wondering about their source, if Brancaster had not made her aware of building materials.
“I do not hold the common view on illegitimate children.” Brancaster held the heavy front door of the Angel open for her.
“Meaning?”
“I know bastardy is supposed to be a moral stain the child inherits from the mother’s lack of continence.” He stared straight ahead as they walked through the small foyer. “But I do not see why a child should be held accountable for the sins of its parents. Nor denied a father’s care simply because he did not, or could not, marry the girl.”
His lips pinched as he delivered this line, and a vein in his neck suggested he clenched his teeth. His views explained why he had been kind to Ives, but not his distemper now.
“Thank you,” Leda said softly.
He paused and faced her. The world around them pulled away like rolling bits on a stage. He was not much taller, but he felt sopresent. The outline of his body, the shape of his face, were burned on her inner eye.
Spending time with him today, seeing him relaxed and at his ease, had been a dangerous seduction. She had no defenses against a man who wasgood.
“My God.” The cry, high and breathless, in a woman’s voice, came from behind Brancaster. “Caledonia? We thought you were dead.”
Before her stood another ghost, filling the doorway to the private parlor.
Another figure who had been torn from the fabric of her life, stripping Leda of her identity. Another once-loved companion lost to her the moment she came to her senses with the knife in her hand.
“Emilia.” The word wisped from Leda on a breath.
Brancaster stiffened, his eyes cautious but his chivalry in place. “Good evening.”
“Emilia, this is the Baron Brancaster of Holme Hall.” Even stupefied, the courtesies did not desert Leda. They would hold her up while her ship sank beneath her. She searched her mind for her married name. “Brancaster, this is Mrs. Hector Crees of Chippenham. My sister.”
Brancaster absorbed this new information quietly. Emilia’s eyes burned into Leda.
“I thought Haines was lying when he said he saw you. That he was imagining things.”
Age and time had descended harshly on her older sister. Lines framed her brow and pursed mouth. Strands of grey wove among her dark hair, the color of the black walnuts that came from America. She had Leda’s nose, Leda’s proud chin, and all of Leda’s flinty breast.
“Ah. I thought I recognized your man. Shall we have this conversation elsewhere?” Leda motioned toward the dark, wood-framed parlor, currently empty.
Her own calm astonished her. Inside she was a shrieking, keening child. She had looked up to her sister. Admired her. Emilia knew the ways of the world that Leda did not, had early on passed through the gates of womanhood. Her one support, Emilia had been spirited away into marriage just when Leda was beginning to bud herself, and needed her.
“Six years.” Her sister’s voice shook. The parlor had no fire and the windows turned away from the late afternoon sun, leaving them in gloom. “Six years, with no word to our parents. To our mother. To me. You let us think you dead.”
“It was better you thought that.” Leda held her fisted hands to her middle, hoping to quiet the roiling sensations there.
“And you never once thought to write—not me, not our parents—to tell us we’d been lied to?”
“Would you have let me live freely? Or would you have made me go back?”
Emilia set her jaw, and Leda had her answer.
“So you are hiding. Because the law, if you were fit to stand trial, would hold you responsible for your crimes. You ran away and assumed a false name, and you are living freely at your ease, while?—
“While what?” Leda broke in. Her heart wept, but her back stiffened. “What have you suffered? In your fine house with your wealthy husband and your children and your drawing room papered in hand-painted prints. Everything you wanted. Everything our parents insisted I must want, too. They would prefer me dead.”
She pulled hard at her fingers in their traveling gloves to gain command of herself, so she did not dissolve into tears. “They would have preferred Bertram kill me before I could tell the world what he did.”
“It would have spared us the shame,” Emilia snapped. “Do you know that shadow follows me around? Even now. I can never lift my head above it. That is Mrs. Crees, they whisper. Do you know the tale?” She swung on Brancaster, her mouth taut with fury. “This is what they say: She is the one with the sister who was locked in the madhouse after she murdered her husband and newborn babe.”
CHAPTER TEN
Murder.
