Page 67 of The Mad Baron's Bride
How did he dare, knowing what she was?
“We’ve seen all the great families hereabout, I think,” Leda said. “Mrs. Styleman’s sisters are all married well and provided for. Mrs. George Hogg of Thornham Hall would never leave a female relation of hers to earn her own keep.” She made a face at this; Mrs. Hogg had learned, through the gossip mill that fed neighborhoods like theirs, that Leda worked as a companion for Jack’s great-aunt, and made her disapproval clear.
“Mrs. Catherine Daly of Ingoldsthorpe Hall said she would inquire after anyone suitable, but she was more interested in instructing me how I might win over Muriel as a mother. Mr. Rolfe of Heacham Hall only wanted to tell me you will make no headway as a brick maker and might as well give it up before they laugh you out of Smithdon Hundred. And Caley Hall, which I thought held by a family, is now housing for customs officers who are chasing the smugglers along the coast.”
She moved on to a dish of buttered samphire, her cockles depleted. “There are more families I could try, the Henleys of Sandringham, or the Fosters of Old Hall. I thought Mr. NicholasStyleman of Snettisham Hall would be more useful, as the Stylemans seem to be a large and well-connected family. But they merely asked me about the ghost.”
She had thought Jack would laugh at this. Instead he went pale as chalk and dropped his fork. “Ghost?”
Unseen fingers walked across her shoulders. She ought to have brought her shawl with her; this house could be drafty, sitting on its hill with its face to the wind.
“Because they suppose you murdered Lady Brancaster, and so her ghost must walk the halls. Their descriptions are much like what I’ve heard about Queen Isabelle, whom I’ve heard haunts Castle Rising. A woman in a white dress wisping through rooms, echoes of maniacal laughter, that sort of thing. I daresay they didn’t put much imagination into the conjecture.”
Jack’s color changed to something slightly green. If she didn’t know him better, she would say he looked guilty about something.
“I did not kill my wife.”
Leda picked apart her roast partridge. “So you assured me, and so I did not abandon you in Swindon. But it is odd.” She put down her knife. “I do hear voices abovestairs. And sometimes footsteps, when I would swear the maids and children were downstairs.”
Jack reached for his glass of wine and took a long swallow. Red stained his lips.
“There is something I did not tell you about Anne-Marie.”
Leda curled her hands into her lap. He did not push his wife off the cliff. He did not drive her to madness. He had not been cruel. She was certain of these things, she told herself. Certain.
He pushed his plate away, crumpling the linen cloth covering the table. “I have told you, after Muriel was born, she would not let me touch her.”
Leda nodded. She herself, after she had conceived her plan to pass off Betsey’s child as her own, had insisted Bertram not touch her. She’d welcomed the reprieve from the pawing and prodding that left her sore and raw the day after, and sometimes bleeding.
She’d never known those parts of her were capable of the pleasure she’d found with Jack. It explained a great deal about human behavior she had observed over the years.
She forced herself to sit quietly as he straightened his shoulders and drew a breath.
“She did, however, let other men touch her.”
A gasp escaped Leda against her will. “She was unfaithful?” The woman must truly have taken leave of her senses, to prefer any other man to Jack.
He jerked his head. “I didn’t know who. I suspected everyone. Hogg. Rolfe. Styleman, for all he’s a reverend.”
“Ellinore’s father?” Leda guessed.
This had clearly never entered his mind. Jack stared at her. Shadows danced along the ribs of the plaster ceiling that curved overhead, rippling down the corners of the room like a whisper.
“The gypsy? He left her. Pregnant and alone. Why would she go back to him?”
Leda shivered at the anguish in his voice. “If she loved him,” she tried, but she didn’t understand. What woman, given Jack Burnham in her home, in her bed, would want anything, anyone else? Leda would sell her soul to belong here with him. To have him like this for dinners and evenings, for travels whenever the whim called. For the right to lie in his arms at night, wrapped in the embrace of husband and wife.
She put her hands over her face. Shewasgoing mad, to want such things, when she knew she could not have—did notdeservethem. Not after what she had done. Not knowing what she was capable of.
“I am hearing voices, Jack,” she whispered.
He jerked again, as if taking an invisible blow. “Ellinore will be finding her feet. And that girl, that maid we brought from Wiltshire.”
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He was as sane as a brick, as steady as Pontus the work horse. However Anne-Marie had hurt him, she’d scarred his heart, but not his mind. He’d not suffered what Leda had suffered.
He wasn’t a murderer.
But Leda was.
