Page 66 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“The mate to the one you’re holding, I believe?” She turned to Muriel. “For your doll, Nanette?”
“Her name is Judith.” Muriel took the ribbon with great caution, as if Leda might nip off her arm if she drew close.
Leda flushed. She would never do right, not where Muriel was concerned, and she detected Ellinore’s look of gentle pity. Waves crashed on the beach outside, the tide embracing the rocky shingle. A sliver of chill wind crept around the window panes.
“Oh,” Leda said. “I thought I heard you refer to a Nanette.”
Muriel’s mouth dropped open and her eyes flared wide, but again, words failed her.
“Oi, you know how tha do, tha wee ones,” Ellinore said. She moved a finger at her temple, as if drawing an invisible string. “With the friends you don’t see.”
“Made-up friends.” Leda nodded. “I had many when I was Muriel’s age. I also tried to make a pet of a cow, a hedgehog, our local badger, and a hare that lived beneath my mother’s dog rose.”
Muriel wrinkled her nose. “A badger? They bite.”
“And thus I do not recommend attempting to befriend them. I am sure you wouldn’t be so unwise.”
Her skin prickled with the oddest sense that she was being watched, but the door to the hall stood empty. Jack had not yet come to bed. She wondered if he sat in the parlor still, brooding before a dying fire. He’d spoken so sanely to her, of Norwich and the neighborhood and Lady Plume and bricks, as if at dinner his hand had not delved into her private place, as if he had not devoured her breasts like sweet cakes. Her body still savored the ease following her release, yet her chest flushed with heat, with new longing.
The girls said nothing to encourage further conversation. They simply watched, waiting for her to leave. She wasn’t wanted here.
Cold slipped around the panes in her own room, carrying the nip of the sea. Moonlight floated on the waters. A small head broke the surface, a small pointed face. Another joined it. The mermaids at their play.
They belonged here, in the cold sea, with the sea thrift blooming above the cliffs and the great broad vault of the sky. Leda didn’t belong here, though. She wondered if she belonged anywhere.
Muriel didn’t want her,but Norfolk embraced Leda.
Mrs. Leech consulted Leda to plan menus, showing great satisfaction at Leda’s acknowledgment of the cook’s undisputedly superior knowledge of local cuisine, especially the seafoods. Leda nodded along to every proposal, made an occasional suggestion so Mrs. Leech would know Leda was making an effort, and was rewarded with delicious, warm meals, beautifully presented, and Mrs. Leech’s confidences whenever the housemaids needed guidance or correction, stores were low, or she thought Henry had been too long at his task of checking over the late baron’s supply in the wine cellar.
Leda sensed that Mrs. Leech pitied her about something—or sympathized? The staff often watched her as if they were waiting for something, the proverbial other shoe. Did they expect her to learn something about Jack, or the family, and run screaming from the hall?
Did they know her history, and were waiting forherto run mad? But their manner was all respectful warmth, and an unexpected deference, as if she were the lady of the house already in their eyes.
Jack said he had never eaten so well and confirmed that the staff were turning themselves out to impress Leda. Even the boy in the stables made an extra effort to brush out the old draught horse’s mane when Leda was taking the cart.
“I can’t think why any of them should regard me with favor,” she told Jack one night over a dish of Stewkey blues, a special cockle fished only from the dunes near Stiffkey, and acquired by Mrs. Leech on a special trip to the town of Burnham Market. They had a unique blue cast to the shell and, dressed with vinegar and a dash of lemon, Leda found them delicious.
Jack pried open a shell with his fork. “You don’t see it? You make me respectable. It’s clear you’re a sensible, steady sort of woman who isn’t prone to fancies or freaks of the imagination. Everyone hopes you will marry me and reform me, chasing mymadness away. Or, if reform fails, live with me as I am, turning the mad baron only slightly eccentric.”
She suffered freaks of imagination in spades, Leda wanted to reply. And she was the last person on earth to offer a cure for madness. She was more likely to infect him with hers, did the demon inside her awake.
She distracted herself with the stack of invitations that had been pouring in, which she had brought into dinner to discuss with him.
“You do seem to be invited everywhere lately, when I thought you were the pariah of the neighborhood. I suppose everyone wants to take my measure.”
“How many of them have warned you off me?” Jack asked, squeezing lemon onto his next shell. “And how many have recommended you marry me at once?”
“I hear all of that advice, from nearly everyone,” Leda reflected. “The ladies warn me about you, then point out all your marriageable qualities. It significantly hinders my quest to locate a governess, you know, when the conversation turns always to our wedding.”
“Perhaps you should take their counsel and accept my suit.” Jack speared a round of pale flesh and popped it into his mouth.
She felt the blush, the heat of it, climbing her collarbones and neck. Jack wanted her, too, and the elegant panels of the parlor, painted in a deep blue gray that matched the cockle shells, bore witness. He showed his care in the way he sought her out when he returned home from his bricks, washing off the dust and clay. He showed her affection in the clasp of his hand on her arm or waist when he helped her in and out of the market cart as they made calls. In the looks of admiration he cast her over the dinner table, over the tops of the wavering candles, and in the pleasant conversations they had in the parlor in the evenings, often with the girls keeping company.
Ellinore was improving her reading, and Muriel her sewing, and their quiet chatter was the dearest thing Leda ever heard. She often thought Ellinore might wish to linger with the adults, learning their ways, but she went up to the nursery when Muriel wished it, leaving them alone, when Jack inevitably stole a kiss or two. Each kiss turned her to pudding in his arms. He made her lose her senses entirely.
Leda sensed that, if she showed the slightest invitation, he would gather her close and pleasure her again as he had in the dining parlor that night, or more, whisk her off to bed. He wanted only a sign from her.
She sensed also that, did she but demand, he would, without hesitation, throw himself at her feet and offer her everything he had, all of him.
