Page 43 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Fury reared in him, shockingly sudden. His wife had never known him at all. Had never given him a chance to woo and win her, a chance to offer her the life she wanted, a chance to please her. She had decided against him from the beginning.
While he’d done everything in his power to please her, and Leda’s husband had put her in fear of her life.
“I was seventeen when I was betrothed,” Leda said, spooning gravy over her meat.
“That seems the usual threshold.” For gentlemen’s daughters, at least, which she seemed to have been.
“Most girls.” Leda nodded. “Alas for me, I was the dreamy and contrary type, too. When my sister married, the anchor was taken from my world. My mother only cared that I show well in company and hired a governess to teach me. She was a lovely woman, Miss Elam, frightened of her own shadow, and thought she would lose her post if she opposed my will, so I spent very little time cultivating the graces and more of my time tramping the pastures and reading poetry in the orchard.”
“What poems?” Jack asked, fascinated. She did not appear to him to be lacking in any of the graces, but then, he was the last person equipped to judge such things.
“Milton. Donne. Herbert, Marvell, Herrick. I imagined myself another Susanna Blamire, composing verses in a meadow by a stream, pinning my poems to trees.”
“Then, let me guess. You married a man who had no soul for poetry.”
“My parents chose me a husband who had no soul for poetry, but a fine house near Cirencester which he had bought from a widow whose husband had died in the Americas. Bertram was several years older than I.” Unabashed, she took a second helping of pudding, offering Jack a scoop as well. He accepted.
“I, for my part, imagined I would run away to Gloucester and find work in a shop. But my parents held the key to the lock on my bedroom door, and my sister implored me to believe they knew what was right. I let her persuade me I would be settled and content in time, as she was.”
“Were there any times? Of contentment,” Jack asked softly.
She dipped her head, staring at her plate. “When he was gone.” She drank the rest of her wine in a long swallow. “Mrs. Blake had worked for the previous family and stayed on, and she was a comfort. He hired Betsey when we married. I had friends nearby, though none I could ask for help, and the friends I could confide in lived back near home. Miss Elam—I wonder what happened to her? I had no reply from my letters.”
Jack tried to imagine it: a young woman, trapped in unkind circumstances, isolated from her loved ones. Anne-Marie had gone mad with it, and she’d had a child to live for, and a husband who was not unkind.
Leda Wroth was as different from Anne-Marie as sand from flint.
He drained his own wine. “Do you believe you killed him? Your husband.”
She looked up, her eyes full of shadows. “I had the knife. I suppose you think I should turn myself in, and let justice be done? But if he can hurt no one else, then I say justicewasdone.” She pushed away from the table. “Please excuse me. If we are to travel tomorrow, and you trust yourself in close confines with me, it will be a long day.”
Jack shot to his feet. He couldn’t let her leave like this, the same haunted look with which she had parted from her sister. Not if he had the power to comfort her. “Leda.”
She whirled from the door, eyes wide with surprise.
“I know I have no right.” His voice rasped. He had no right to use her given name, no right to approach her as he was doing. But the hurt in her face drew him like a siren’s call.
“I believe you have paid your price.” If she had taken a man’s life, that was a sin for which her Creator would call her to account. “And I see now why you are an unmatch-maker.” She had been locked away in a madhouse, her freedom further denied her, and now that she was at liberty, she had dedicated herself to keeping others from couplings that would injure their happiness. Surely that penance counted for something.
He caved to the impulse that had rode him hard all day and curled a hand around her forearm.
She was slight but substantial. Present. Real.
Now that he’d touched her, he couldn’t stop. He cupped her elbow, slid his other hand from her wrist to the shoulder of her other arm, tugging her gently toward him. She smelled of wine that had stained her lips ruby. He bent his head, bringing his face close to hers.
“But you cannot let the judgments of others rob you of happiness now. Believe me when I say it does no good to wish you could change the past. That will truly drive you to madness.”
She searched his eyes with that direct, unhesitating gaze of hers. “You are no more mad than I am.”
“I think I will part from my senses completely if I cannot kiss you again.”
He waited for her to express dismay, or revulsion. She had spurned him earlier. But she tilted her head and lifted her chin, and when her mouth slid along his, he could have roared with triumph. Instead he squeezed his hands, gathering her to him, and claimed her mouth fully.
She tasted of berries and sugar, and her lips were smooth and cool while inside her mouth was smooth and warm. He closed his teeth around her lower lip, tugging gently, and she met hiskiss with increasing ardor. Heat licked up his thighs and bulleted his groin. She was warmth and silky softness, and her breasts against his chest made his breath stop. A murmur rose from the back of her throat, and the sound pierced and heightened his ache.
The door was near and when he pressed her against the wooden surface he could lean all of himself against her. He propped his elbows against the wood and plunged his hands into her hair, angling her chin so he could stroke his tongue into her mouth. She murmured again, the sound a small moan, and dug her fingertips into the back of his shoulders. He was as hard as the door and he swore she pressed back against him, her hips lifting ever so slightly, enough to cradle his groin with hers. Heat fogged his brain, strangling all thought of caution. She met his tongue with hers, a tentative lick, and fire roared into his belly.
Relief was a few centimeters away, the thickness of fabric, her skirts, his breeches. And she was responding to him, welcoming him. She was trying to tug him closer still, though there was no space between their bodies, hers curved tightly and sweetly against his, her thighs fitting around his manhood. Ah, God, it had been so long, and no woman he’d touched had been this soft, had tasted this sweet. He sank against her, rolling his hips, wanting to fasten her to him entirely.
