Page 74 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Her eyes darted to the wardrobe, as if gauging how quickly she could reach it. Leda thought of the other times she had come by surprise into the nursery and saw that wardrobe buttoned shut. Certainly it was large enough to hold a child.
“They have been hiding you from me,” Leda said softly. “Why?”
The girl’s eyes were the light green of seablite, the same shade as Ellinore’s, as Muriel’s. Anne-Marie’s eyes. She watched Leda’s face, her mouth.
“Who are you?”
The girl wetted her lips and swallowed. She took care in pronouncing the word, pointing to herself for emphasis. “Nan.”
“Hello, Nan.” She wasn’t certain what to say. “I am Mrs. Wroth.”
The girl’s gaze flitted from Leda’s mouth to her eyes. “Raw.”
A girl with Ellinore’s eyes, Ellinore’s dark hair. Muriel had Jack’s auburn hair and his chin. This girl was Ellinore in miniature, minus a few years.
“Cor blarst me,” came May’s voice from the door. “You’ve gone and found the little ’un.”
“Yes,” Leda said softly. “What I don’t understand is why I’ve not met her long before.”
She turned to find May behind her, clutching a dinner tray. Boots clattered up the stairs, the girls surfacing first, Grace behind them. All three stopped in a troop behind May, facing Leda.
Muriel’s face went completely white when she looked into the room.
“So,” Leda said. “I’ve not been seeing ghosts, nor hearing them either, though you all let me believe it. I take it Nanette is not some local child come to play? She lives here?”
The dishes rattled on the tray as May placed it on the table. Four plates, for Grace would take her midday meal with the children. Three settings for the children’s supper, when Grace would take her dinner downstairs with the other servants.
“Her has lived here since a babe, Mrs. Wroth,” May said. “His lordship took her in as a mite, as she had no one else.”
This wasn’t the place to demand the girl’s parentage. The clues lay spelled out before her, like letters in the sand. Leda shot a wounded look at Grace, the girl who had entered this house the same time she did. “You knew?”
Grace nodded warily. She moved a protective hand over her belly, an instinctive gesture. “Aye, mum.”
“You’ve all been keeping this from me,” Leda whispered. “Why?”
“That’s as for his lordship to say, mum,” May answered, as nervous as the others. “’Twas him axed us not to blar t’yew.”
They all feared what Leda would do. Why? Did they know of her episode? Had Jack thought something about Nanette would overset Leda’s delicate mind, send her spiraling again into madness and murder?
Her hands shook. Shefeltoverset. She felt suffocated.
Jack had known there was a child in the house. He’d said nothing. He’d let Leda think she was seeing things, that her mind was rattling loose in this wild, remote place, that she was becoming unhinged from reality. He’d made love to her—love—but he hadn’t trusted her enough to explain.
She had to run. She was trapped here, as she had been in Toplady’s house with his cruelty and his lust, as she had been trapped in the madhouse by the accusations against her. She must escape.
She fled first to her room. Cap, gloves. She must not look like a madwoman, flinging her shoes out the window in a call for help. She would have Jack send her valise to Bath. He would dothat much, be that decent. It was the least he owed her for his lies.
The book, Anne-Marie’s diary, lay on the dressing table. With shaking hands, Leda placed the doll she had made for Muriel beside it. She would take only what was hers. Memories. Ash in her mouth.
Henry walked Pontus along the drive, the cart hitched and ready. “Mum. Arnt you ameant for to go with his lordship a’smornum?”
“Not today, Henry. Thank you.” She hauled herself into the cart without assistance, kicking her heavy skirt from beneath her boot. A month ago she hadn’t known which end was what on a horse harness, and now she was a dab hand at the ribbons. Norfolk had given her one thing.
It had given her Jack. And then it had taken him away. Her chest felt like she was strapped in an iron cage. Held to a bed by the leather bands they used at the madhouse for the fighters. Leda had suffered that once, and never again. She would not be at any man’s mercy, not ever again.
“Mind how yew go, mum,” Henry said, a furrow in his brow as he regarded her, as if he could sense her mood.
The dream-like state was descending again, that fog. It muffled sound and made her vision narrow, moving everything far away. She was Caledonia Hill again, her parents explaining to her that Bertram Toplady was a gentleman and a prime catch, the best a hopeless girl like herself could hope for, and the reward she owed her parents for their years of thankless care.
