Page 58 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“I won’t.” She curled her hands into fists. The bloom Leda had added to her hat shook with the force of rage. “I don’t want it. Her or anyone. You can’t just buy a new mum at market.”
“Mere, I know. I never meant?—”
“You did. Youdid.You wanted her gone from the start, because you didn’t like her. And now you have things just the way you want them, don’t you?”
“Muriel Marie. I never wished for you to be motherless.”
She traded him a challenging glare. “And I didn’t either. But here we are.”
Leda swallowed a laugh that might very well become a sob. She herself said that all the time: “And here we are.” Muriel was borrowing Leda’s sayings without being conscious of it. Her heart pulled apart for Jack, for the look on his face as his daughter defied him. Muriel would not approve no matter what he chose.
But she also couldn’t ignore the warning that the girl’s words tapped into her shoulder blades.You wanted her gone.
“My word,” Leda said, slicing through the tension, “what a great lot of bricks went into the building of this house. Only look at this gate and wall.”
Jack turned and, with an effort, brought himself to the conversation. Ever the gentleman, even when he had a dagger in his heart. Leda wanted to place her hand on his cheek, rub those tired lines from his brow. But she hadn’t the right, and Muriel was watching.
A wife would have the right, even if Muriel were watching.
She pushed the thought away and flicked Pontus through the archway. The pillars on either side followed an Italianate design at odds with the medieval symmetry of the great house and the crenellations marching along the roof. The tracery of the family coat of arms, with its swirls and vines, stood out as much for its delicacy as for its lighter color.
“Now that gatehouse looks like Bath stone to me,” Leda said lightly, “while the walls are much older.” A straight dirt lane arrowed through a lawn studded with ornamental trees, some in delirious blossom. A wall not much higher than a man filed around the garden, the crenellations mimicking those of the house. To the east stood the stable block, a long low wall of small square windows with a thatched roof.
“That archway is the work of Thomas Thorpe, master mason, in the style of Inigo Jones,” Jack said. “The wall of the house is coursed carrstone, at least a century old. Pieces of the Hall, they say, date to the time of the third Edward.”
“Late medieval, then,” Leda guessed, trying to remember her history lessons and the reign of the English kings. Her mother had engaged a governess for the girls for precisely this reason: so they could engage in conversation with a man, and have a chance to enchant him.
Jack twisted on the seat, and his shoulder brushed hers. Leda did her best not to thrill to the contact, and most certainly not to let a blush show on her face, like some debutante riding out with a favored suitor.
“The middle portion of the hall, that’s the gatehouse. At least three centuries old, judging from the style. Native carrstone, that’s why it’s red. The wings, Jacobean era. Built early in the last century, I’d say. That checkerboard pattern, gray and white, that comes from clunch, a kind of limestone, and knapped flint. Very common building materials around here.”
Leda watched him grow animated, forgetting the checks and challenges of earlier. She wished she could cup her hands around his fire and shield him from the world while he burned. He cast such a light.
She let Pontus fall to a walk, giving Jack time to look around. Neighs and whickers came from the stable block, the estate horses sensing an intruder; human voices sounded in response. “You must have grand plans for Holme Hall, with all this building knowledge.”
The light dimmed. “It would take money to enlarge. Hamon le Strange had enough to buy a baronetcy for himself and his sons. Cost around four hundred pounds, so they say.”
“And how did the Burnhams achieve their elevation?”
He peered down a lane of trees, straight as a plane, to the blank wall beyond of undressed brick.
“By acquiring wealth through shipping interests in King’s Lynn, first, then aspiring to the rank of gentleman upon it, and standing members of Parliament. Queen Anne made a favorite of Judith, my great-grandfather’s wife, but only noblewomen could be attendants in the Queen’s bedchamber. So she looked about for an available title and made Judith’s husband Brancaster. My worthy progenitor hopped from the House of Commons to the House of Lords, the family set up a housein London, and the two women were thick as thieves until the Queen’s death.”
“Clever Judith,” Leda murmured.
“If only her grandson had been so. The second Brancaster lived well on the favors his mother had earned the family, managed to prove he was not a Jacobite, and so kept his wealth and position. But my uncle, having been born to it, had no mathematical sense. He apparently believed that his income was an inexhaustible stream that would not cease no matter how much he drew from it. His sisters depended on his support, even after they married, and their families continue to assume that the income from my farms exists only to fund their pleasures and wants.
“For that I blame my grandmother, whose father had been a maltster, and whose first husband the vicar had been a Nonconformist, and whose chief accomplishment was adhering to the standards of beauty of her time. But to see her, you’d have thought she’d been born wrapped in purple, and the title invented solely so she could marry the man who held it.”
“I venture to guess that your pleasures and wants go unregarded,” Leda said.
He faced her, and the sun picked out silver highlights in his eyes. His neckcloth had become disarranged, and Leda kept a firm grip on the ribbons so her hand would not stray and be tempted to tidy him.
“Yes.” A single word, but she heard so much behind it: dormant longings reawakened, dreams once extinguished stirring to life. Just like hers.
He had wants, and he could name them. She sensed, sheknew, that some of those wants were attached to her. Just as the tendrils growing inside her reached for him.
“Look.” Muriel pressed between them, an arm held out. “Swans. On the moat.”
