Page 51 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“Novonga.No money.” He held up a hand as she reached for the pocket inside her skirt. “Thatchavineeds to smile. She is so sad.”
Leda blinked, recognizing the Romani words. There’d been a caravan that came near Cheltenham every so often during her childhood, and every time she’d defy her parents’ warnings and run off to spy on their camp.
There were so many currents in this place that she couldn’t begin to untangle, a history piling up over her head. She felt as if she were a bather inching into the Wash, sure at any moment the sea floor would fall away.
“You know the family?”
He nodded. “Walked the Peddar’s Way many times, have I. A straight old noble Roman road.” The peddler sobered as he watched the two girls, with their same slender arms, same pert nose, though Muriel had Jack’s forehead and the stubborn slope of his jaw. “Thedaj, the mother.” He shook his head.
“Some say her husband drove her to it.” Leda tugged three hairpins out of her coiffure and handed them to the peddler. His eyes lit, and he slipped the pins into a pocket, patting the fabric as if it held treasure. Her acquaintance with Jack was costing her many a hairpin, Leda observed.
“You can mend a pot,” her new friend said in accented English. “But will it hold the same, after?”
Jack arrived at her side, and the peddler melted away. So did Nora. He appeared not to notice, focused instead on his daughter.
“You have made purchases I must pay for, I see.”
“I hope you will allow me,” Leda said. “It was my idea.”
“I insist upon the honor. That color will flatter you, Mere.”
“Did you choose one for Nanette?” Leda asked.
Jack stilled, and so did Muriel. His daughter’s gaze searched his face, hers fretful, wary. He looked above the top of her head and withdrew a few coins from inside his coat.
Nora reappeared at Leda’s side, holding back from Muriel now that her father had arrived. Her gown was fine for a servant’s, but she kept her head bent and her hands, lacking gloves, were chapped. Leda thought of the extra cotton gloves in her bag, back at the hall. She ought to have brought them.
“At least he cares for his daughter,” Leda observed, keeping her voice low.
“Who’s to say he didn’t care for her, too.”
Leda knew of whom the girl spoke. The woman was still on everyone’s mind. If nothing else, Muriel would not let them forget her.
“Maybe he never done her in a’tall,” Nora whispered. “Maybe he’s locked her away in the attics.” Her eyes shone despite the cloudy day, her gaze sharp as the edge on a knife. “Haven’t you heard the voices? The Hall is full of ghosts.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Leda heard the voices, drifting down the hall from the nursery.
Muriel’s suite, with the schoolroom and her bedroom, lay toward the east arm of the house, and the mistress’s suite to the west, with a view of the Wash. The house had a north-facing entry, which Leda had thought odd, for here the Hall faced nothing but water on two sides and flat grass on the other, with the sharp line of carrstone cliffs on its flank rearing eventually down to a gentle sandy beach. Now, having seen how the south side caught the light and let the house brace the brunt of the wind, she understood why the stableyards and many gardens lay in that direction.
A main stair that circled up from the state rooms below let out on a landing across from the master suite, Jack’s domain. Leda stepped quickly past it. Though she knew Jack was out, peering into his rooms, his sanctum, would be like touching his body.
She longed to do so, and knew she must not.
Muriel was having quite a conversation with Grace, who despite being hired as Leda’s companion had taken quickly to the role of nursemaid for the child. May had surrendered herchildcare duties without a protest, muttering something about preferring to beat carpets and haul fuel than wrangle with a stubborn little mawther.
Muriel was certainly stubborn. In the days since Leda’s arrival, the girl had refused to bend an inch to her father’s plans for her. She had a complaint about every local family Leda had called upon as she attempted to learn the neighborhood—complaints, Leda guessed, rehearsed from remarks she had overheard from some unknown source, not her father. She found fault with every local woman Leda proposed pursuing an acquaintance with.
On the whole, it seemed this pocket of Norfolk had a noticeable dearth of unmarried daughters and spinster sisters the likes of which could be found anywhere else in Britain. There was no workhouse or boarding school to plumb for orphans, no agency to request referrals. There was only the Hall among its cliffs, a few stately homes here and there buried in their parks, and scattered villages perching on the crests of small hills or wading into the marshland that stretched into the North Sea. It was land that had been cultivated for centuries, populated many times over by waves of settlers coming by sea, yet Leda had never lived in a place that felt so wild and empty and open to the sky.
“—with three big chandeliers simplydrippingwith candles, and musicians in a balcony perched high above, and they danced the minuet.”
Leda paused at the sound of Muriel’s voice, hearing a story she had told one night at dinner. She had suggested to Jack that they allow Muriel to dine with them, in part so she could see the girl’s manners in order to properly warn a governess of the work ahead. In part because Jack’s relationship with his daughter so clearly needed mending.
And in part because, when she was left alone with him, Leda lived in that memory of their kiss in the dining parlor of thecoaching house in Swindon. She lived in that memory at many other times, also.
“The minuet’s a stately dance. Lots of intricate steps. Here, I’ll show you.”
