Page 75 of The Mad Baron's Bride
She was Caledonia Toplady beneath a thick veil at church, hiding her shame when she heard the whispers of what her husband had been up to in the neighborhood, felt the scorn drifting from the people who would otherwise have been her friends, her support.
She was Caledonia Toplady, maniac,non compos mentis,hearing the clang on the iron lock of the door to her chamber, seeing the iron rings in the floor where she would be chained if she screamed and thrashed against this handling.
No. She was Leda Wroth. She had walked away from that place shaking hay from her hair. She had changed her name and buried her history, buried Caledonia Toplady atop Caledonia Hill in a tomb with no markings. That starved girl, cut from her herd and forced to the chopping block, she no longer existed. Nor did the woman who had walked her own house in caution, fearing her husband’s contemptuous wrath, plotting to thwart his viciousness and his greed.
Nor was she the woman watching thin plates of food shoved through a hinge in the door, shivering in her shift after the cold baths to clear her mind, stripped of her hairpins, jewelry, and garters so she could not cut or strangle herself. That woman had died.
She was Leda Wroth, and she was in full possession of her faculties.
She was a woman betrayed, but not by her own mind. By a man, which was far more mundane, one might even say inevitable.
She would go to Mrs. Styleman. The wind teased Leda’s cap and the folds of her cloak. She was not dressed for calls, but Mary Styleman would help, would be pleased at the status it granted her to be the first to know of Leda’s flight, that the mad baron was driving her from the hundred, just as everyone believed he would.
Mrs. Styleman could direct Leda to a coaching inn. She would go to London and then to Bath. She would throw herself back on the mercy of Lady Plume, and wonder how long she might keep her position when her ladyship learned Leda had not aided Brancaster as promised. She could find other work. Sheknew families in Bath, those who lived there, those who came to visit. There was always a place for a woman who was not too proud to work.
Of course, her sister knew she was alive, and by now would have notified her parents. And Eustace might still be in Bath. He might not have connected Leda Wroth, had he heard talk of her, with the woman he had known as his aunt by marriage, at whom he had leered when he came for hunting and meals and an advance on his allowance.
But if he saw her, he would know. She had not changed all that much in eight years. And neither had he.
Leda looked around, realizing she ought to have reached Hunstanton Park by now, crossed the river long ago. The ruins of a church stood in a field to her left, in better shape than St. Edmund’s chapel, able to boast all four walls, if no roof and nothing inside. It stood like an etching against the landscape, like a long-forgotten thought. If she turned her hag stone upon it—the omen lay in her pocket—the ruin might vanish into the other realm from which it had come.
Leda shook her head to clear the fancies. This was not fairy-made; this was chalk and flint, a human-made building long outlasting its use. This was Ringstead Parva, a medieval village wiped out by the Black Death. Jack had told her the story. Now the village church stood naught but an empty frame, a monument to lost safety and the illusion of refuge. It stood exposed, the entire roof lifted off, its inner life whisked away, leaving a husk.
Much like Leda would be when she left here, leaving Jack behind. How had she become so attached to the man, and so quickly? Why did she understand, just as a besotted Anne-Marie had written in her diary, that the bliss they had shared was to be found with him, and him only, and once she left him, she would be bereft for the rest of her life?
Hunstanton Park was north. Leda turned down the next lane she found, heading east, determined to turn north as soon as she might. Pontus flicked his ears and trotted nervously, picking up on her distress through the narrow leather strips. She must rein in her emotions. She must keep control of her mind.
She could not show up in Mary Styleman’s parlor ranting like a madwoman. It would reflect badly on Jack, and his reputation was strained enough, baron though he might be. He was struggling already to keep his estate afloat, and he had children—threechildren—to support. He had to keep his standing in the eyes of his neighbors, and his credit with the tradesmen about.
Pontus flicked his ears backwards, and a prickle along her spine made Leda glance behind her. A man on a horse appeared in the lane—the drift, they called it in Norfolk. He was far back, but riding at an uneasy canter. Jack had found her already?
She must reach Hunstanton Hall. She would keep her wits about her in the company of the Stylemans. She would remember he had not trusted her to learn of Nanette—for good reason, perhaps, knowing what she had done to her husband, though she had never hurt Ives.
Jack did not trust her, and she did not trust herself. The only solution was a break. Which meant he could not come after her, lure her back. She urged Pontus to a trot, and the large horse reluctantly obliged.
She passed a farm, a yard, a gravel pit. This wasn’t right. Where was the lane to head north? Then the land on either side of the lane rose suddenly into grass-covered downs, with white walls forming a large sunken amphitheater before her, and she realized where she was. Jack had brought her here once, on his tour of brick making in Norfolk. This was the Ringstead chalk pit, one of the great scooped-out pits that pocked Norfolk, and there was nowhere else to go. She would have to turn and face him. Or hide.
She glanced behind her. It wasn’t Jack. It was the apparition from the beach. Black hair a blot of grease atop his pale, doughy face. Dark coat flapping around his barrel of a chest. He was large, strong. He had found her. This time, she had no knife.
There was a kiln set into the face of the pit, with an iron grille of a door to keep out animals, brigands and vagabonds, and to prevent smugglers using it to hide untaxed goods. She did not care to lock herself in such a place.
But tunnels opened in the white walls like gaps between teeth, tunnels formed to follow seams of flint deep into the hill upon which sat Ringstead Magna. They were worms of darkness creeping into the hillside, and who knows how deep they ran. She could hide there until he went away. A ghost could not touch her, only haunt. She would whisk herself into the darkness, and he would disappear.
She could be lost in the hill forever, like the sleeping king beneath Norwich Castle.
She cast a look of despair behind her. The rider neared. His face, his grim smile, was pure malevolence. She halted Pontus and threw herself to the ground, then tossed the reins into a broom bush to hold the horse. He wouldn’t like it, but she needed a way to find shelter once the ghost left her.
If he had found her here, he could follow her anywhere, to the edges of the island, to the far reaches of the sea. She would never be free of this ghost. Leda sobbed as she stumbled toward the kiln, frantic with the need to hide.
“Caledonia!” The voice was strange, not quite Bertram’s bellow.
The door to the kiln was locked.
If he killed her, left her body here, her bones would never be found. No one would ever know what had become of Leda Wroth.
“Leda.” He crooned the word, the name she had always preferred to call herself, and claimed for herself when she decided she was no longer mad.
“Stop. Be reasonable, I beg you.”
