Page 42 of The Mad Baron's Bride
The matron nodded in approval. “And this Lady Plume,” she probed.
“The relict of Sir Dunlap Plume of Bristol, who made his fortune with the East India Company and did not live to enjoy the comforts of his old age. Fortunately, her ladyship chose me to be the prop of her days, and her good friend the Duchess of Gordon is in town for a stay, to amuse her while I am gone.”
Knights, barons, duchesses, and ladies apparently satisfied the matron that her establishment was serving the finest sort,and she signaled to the maids to conclude their business. “If you need a lady’s maid or one to do for you on the road, we might find you a miss as is keen to travel. One good with young children to boot.”
Leda nodded graciously. “Our thanks, mistress.”
When the door shut behind her, Jack stood yet, clutching the chair, astonished by relief. He hated this, the fuss and attendance that his status stirred up whenever he set foot out of doors. He still felt the mantle of lordship was false, that the title of Brancaster and possession of Holme Hall was some absurd test, which he was failing, and someone would eventually step in to put the family’s legacy in better hands. Underneath the pomp of peerage he was still Jack Burnham, shoemaker’s son of Norwich, as common as milled grain.
But with Leda arranging things, providing the conversation, pleasing the curious with just the right words, everything was easier. The pressure was off him to perform as a baron ought. And now she was rearranging the table to her satisfaction, seating herself beside rather than across from him, reordering the plates so all sat within Jack’s reach, and filling a plate from the assorted dishes with the quiet grace of a woman bred her whole life to preside over a table.
“You’ll carve?” She cast him an inquiring look. Jack sat in his chair and took up the carving knife.
He flashed on the image Leda had planted in his brain earlier. Her, trailing gore, wandering the halls of her home in a stained shift, holding a knife, while her husband’s body lay soaking blood into the parlor rug, stabbed in multiple places.
He pushed the image away and cut into the shoulder of mutton. When he laid a strip of meat on the plate she passed him, her gaze met his, and he guessed she knew exactly what was in his mind, in that uncanny way she had of reading people.
“You don’t fear I would hurt Muriel? Now that you know my story.”
She spoke her name as if Muriel were real to her already, not Jack’s appendage, not a shadowy concept, but a person taking shape in her mind.
She offered him the plate she held. She had filled his plate first, not her own.
He couldn’t remember the last time any person—any woman, outside his darling, distracted mother—had made an effort to see to his comfort.
He took the plate. “I believe Muriel would be better off with you than she is with me,” he said frankly.
She filled her own plate almost as full as his. Leda Wroth was not one of those ladies who pretended not to eat in company so she might be perceived as delicate. The candle on the table flickered, casting a veil of light over her cheek.
“I was the Mad Baron even before my wife—” Jack let the sentence end there. “My uncle had petitioned Parliament for an Act of Enclosure in his benefit. I stopped the proceedings when he died and opened the common land back for grazing.”
“Thereby injuring your profits, no doubt,” Leda observed.
“And leaving my tenants something to live on, like the old ways, having pasture to graze their own animals, and a place to collect fuel for their homes.” He forked up a stalk of asparagus, swimming in cream. “Most of the tenant farms were in shabby condition, as my uncle had left off improvements. I believe I was seen helping the thatchers now and again, and repairing one or two brick hearths with my own hands.”
She watched him, wide-eyed, nibbling on a pickle. “Truly, the act of a man who has taken leave of his senses.”
“Or a baron not fit for his title.” He winced. “Then I wooed Anne-Marie, who had turned down every man who approached her. She was known to be contrary. Dreamy. They said she wouldnever make a gentleman’s wife, and I was mad to think I could make her a lady.”
“Contrary and dreamy are two of my favorite attributes in a young woman,” Leda said. “I would have been enchanted, too.”
Jack savaged his mutton, tougher than it first appeared. Anne-Marie’s face, at their small wedding in a smaller church, had not been of bridal enchantment. She’d worn the stricken look of a bird caught in a snare, debating whether to injure itself to get free.
And he’d not been enchanted either. It seemed a lie to let Leda believe so, and yet—would it make him desirable in her eyes, if she thought him a normal man, with a heart that could be charmed and softened by a woman?
She would hate him when she learned the truth. Everyone did.
“We did not entertain much during our marriage,” Jack said. “Anne-Marie disliked crowds of people. Disliked their judgments about her. After she…died, with Muriel being so small, I did not accept what invitations came. I knew the whispers going about and did not want to face them. But by the time I emerged, when I realized Muriel needed more people than just me in her life, the whispers had turned into established fact. And there were no more invitations.”
“Did you kill your wife?” Leda asked in the most reasonable of tones, as if she were asking him to pass the salt cellar.
“No!” Jack’s gaze leapt to her face.
She nodded, as if that decided the matter. “Then I shall keep my promise to accompany you and arrange proper guidance for Muriel. I do not fear gloomy households, and if I do not need fear being murdered, then you offer me a better situation than I had in my marriage.”
Jack laid down his knife, haunted. “You thought your husband might kill you?”
Had Anne-Marie feared him that way? Was that why she’d chosen the path she did?
