Page 80 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Jack took charge. It was such a lovely thing, someone else taking charge for once. Leda sat in the cart next to him as he drove Pontus, leading Eustace’s horse behind. He would ask around, find where it was hired, and return it, he told her. He would hire boys to dig out the tunnels and recover Eustace, if he was alive.
She nodded. He wouldn’t be.
“I will have to send his body back to Cirencester,” she said. “Or take it myself. The Toplady crypt is in a cemetery there.”
“A proper burial is more than you owe him. He killed your husband because he meant to seize the estate from the child he thought you were carrying?”
She formed words through chattering teeth. This had happened to her before, after she realized Bertram was dead and Mrs. Blake and Betsey had fled who knew where with a just-born babe. She waited in the cold wooden cell that was used to hold those coming before the magistrate, and it was as if she stood on the beach against a rising tide, cold dousing her, freezing her veins, and trembling that would not stop.
Jack snaked an arm about her, and she leaned into him. He was so firm, so present. So calm.
“He wanted the house and estate. He would have been the heir, without a child. He said he had intended to marry me as well. He simply wanted what Bertram had.”
“And he put the knife in your hand to pin the murder on you.”
“He said he had planned to take me out of the madhouse, eventually. I suppose he could have, as family. He wanted it to look as if I had been punished and was sufficiently penitent, having paid for my crimes. He wanted me to tell him where I had hidden Ives.”
“Did he know?”
“He was close.” Leda shuddered. “He came to Bath looking for me, as I thought, after he’d heard rumors I was alive. He found Lady Plume, and he found out about the packets I was sending to Kellaways, though I never discussed it with her.”
Jack snorted. “She knows everything that goes on beneath her roof, and many others besides, but I find it hard to believe she would betray you.”
“He said he asked at the coaching inn. Then he found my sister in Chippenham, so I suppose she mentioned where I was going. I think I had said I was traveling with you to Norfolk. I imagine it took him some time to find exactly where, and that is why we’ve not seen him before now.”
Unless he had found Ives first. Cold shook her.
“You are safe now.” Jack squeezed the arm about her, pulling her close. “He cannot hurt you.”
She sighed and leaned against him as the cart jolted over the ruts. There were the ruins of Ringstead Parva again, but now they were merely sad instead of frightening, the relics of a bygone age and lives that had long passed into obscurity. It felt sogoodto trust another person. A warm bead formed, deep in the center of her chest, and the glow began to chase away the cold. She was with Jack, and she wanted never to leave him.
He brought her to Holme Hall as if it were her home, and the great shrug of red stone indeed felt welcoming. A thread of sadness tugged at the sight of the cliffs and the sea beyond. She thought for a moment she saw a shadow, almost the shape of a woman, but then a great flock of terns wheeled and lifted, and the shadow fled.
“Jack.” Leda clasped his shoulders as he lifted her down from the cart. He pulled her against his body, and a thrill darted through her from the place where their bodies touched, her insides soaring just like those birds.
“I was running away from you. I was so angry that you hadn’t told me about Nanette.”
His eyelid tensed, his beautiful lips flattening into a line. He held her cradled against him as if he could not bear to set her down. “I want to explain.”
“I do as well. It felt—I told you I thought I was imagining things, and you let me believe it. You let me think I could be going mad again, and if I were—if I hurt someone…”
He pressed her close. “I am sorry. I didn’t think of how you might feel. I only knew, with your clever mind, you would figure out everything, and I would be exposed. And I feared you would despise me. The man whose own wife didn’t want him.”
She found her feet but still leaned against him. This firm, splendid body, the shape of this man whom she utterly loved. Having had him close to her, how could she ever let him go?
She touched her fingertips to his jaw, the silk of his short beard, the warm skin beneath, and the hard, determined slant of bone. There was steel in his core, but such softness in his heart.
“Let us be clear about one thing. What I feel for you isnotcontempt.”
He curved his palm around the back of her hand. Her insides quivered at the intensity of his expression. “No?”
“No,” she said firmly.
His head lowered, and she would have kissed him, quite willingly, there in the drive before Holme Hall, with the shore birds wheeling above them and the grasses waving in the ruffle of wind and the insects chirping as madly as if there were a coming storm. Then Henry barreled out the front door, taking Pontus’ head.
“Are you right, mum? Thas a great puckaterry in the kitchen or you agorn, but I says thas a great load a squit, tha is, and you warnt ment to lollop off on us.”
Leda reined in a shaky laugh. Her feet did not yet feel solid on the ground. Her balance had been thrown off in the dark of the tunnel, and she had not yet found her bearings.
