Page 90 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Leda Wroth—now Lady Brancaster—finally knew where she belonged.
All of her ghosts were gone.
EPILOGUE
HUNSTANTON, NORFOLK, 1801
“Unbreakable.” Jack smiled with satisfaction as he rapped his knuckles against the brick he held up for display. “Stands up to rain, frost, thunder, heat. We tested them all last summer and winter, and not a warp, not a fracture, not a bit of swelling. Sound as can be.”
“Strong as a brick,” Lady Plume said dryly. “How fascinating.” She looked around the churchyard. “Where is that baby?”
Jack managed a smile, acknowledging that he had not impressed his great aunt. “Leda took him for a feed before the ceremony. It won’t take long. He’s a fast eater.”
His aunt sniffed and rearranged the cape covering her shoulders. She sat, uncaring of the disrespect, on the headstone erected to an excise man slain in a skirmish with a smuggler more than a decade ago. The September air still held the summer’s warmth, and clouds trailed like powder through the sky.
Jack scanned the churchyard for the sight of Leda. Just the thought of his wife brought him joy. So did the thought that his aunt had traveled all the way from Bath, though she hated travel, to be at St. Mary’s for the babe’s baptism. She had only remarkeda dozen times on the oddness of the circumstance, that Jack should wait a whole two months for his child to be baptized, with Leda already churched, and furthermore to make a family party of it. His aunt had also remarked more than a dozen times that it was not the done thing for a baron’s wife to nurse her own infant like a nanny goat.
“Here she is now.” Leda came from the church porch, where she’d stepped for a bit of privacy, and his heart swelled at the sight of her. She wore a red satin robe over her shift, the bodice cut low to accommodate the demands of the baby, and a small lace veil drifted from the back of her head, crowned with flowers. She looked the very image of Madonna and child, cradling a puff of white lace and muslin in her arms. One of these days his heart would burst from the knowledge that this woman was his wife and he could have her always.
If he did not drive her away. He scanned her face, the old fear breathing on the back of his neck. She came to Lady Plume and held out her bundle so that her ladyship, who did not dandle babies, could complete her inspection. The baby lay with lips slightly puckered after his meal, one small fist pressed to his cheek. The dark hair tufting his head at birth had not fallen out but rather filled in, Leda’s hair, but his blue eyes were lightening, and Jack suspected they would be gray.
Leda’s eyes reflected the blue of the sky about her head, and while her smile was sleepy, due to interruptions at night, her aspect was calm contentment. She had not fallen into melancholy before the babe’s birth or after. From what he understood, she had been as efficient and pragmatic about that experience as she was everything else. She had decided it was more practical to feed Jay herself, rather than arranging a wet nurse, and she carried him about wrapped to her like a peasant woman in the fields, when he was not in the hands of a doting servant or his admiring sisters.
Leda had joyed in every moment of her pregnancy, or most of them, quite astonished it had happened to her at all. He didn’t see any signs of desperation or despair. On the whole she seemed quite pleased with the addition to their family, and satisfied that Jack now had an heir, which validated his position considerably. He was, less and less in the neighborhood, the upstart shoemaker’s son who seized a set of peer’s robes for himself. He was the lord of the carrstone hall perched upon the sea, with the clever wife and the handful of daughters. He was the progenitor of an heir to his empire.
“Did you see they used your bricks to repair the wall?” Leda gestured to the low barrier separating the church yard from the lane beyond and the pond, where the swans floated like notes of music on the water. Leda, thinking ahead as always, had brought day-old bread so the girls could feed the birds, and their daughters clustered near the wall in their white gowns and fresh tuckers like a bunch of meadow saxifrage in bloom.
His daughters. And now he had a son. And a wife who ran his house and their social circle, who took an interest in his brickworks, who presided over his table and was a source of endless pleasure in his bed. Sometimes Jack feared to look too hard at them, as if the transformation were a fairy spell and might dissolve if he breathed a harsh word.
“You named him John, of course.” Lady Plume laid her hands atop one another on her walking stick, which she still pretended was an ornamental accessory rather than a necessity.
“Yes. We call him Little J for now, or just Jay,” Leda answered, smiling at her son.
“And you’ll have more, I imagine.”
“We shall see what heaven sends us. I did not expect this one, frankly.”
“Queen Charlotte gave birth to fifteen, and I don’t see why you should aspire to anything less.” Lady Plume, who wouldhave nothing to do with the plain new fashions, fanned out her ornamented skirts. “Jack, is that your mother at last? She does like to make a spectacle of herself.”
With surprise, Jack watched the carriage approaching. A line of coaches, actually. They had sent invitations, but he’d not heard a response.
“Jack! Yoo hoo! We made it, finally, though I didn’t think we’d survive those ghastly ruts from Fakenham. Do you not believe in turnpikes in this outpost of the world?”
His sister waved at him from the window of the lead coach, which slowed to a stop on the gravel drive. Henry stepped forward to take the ribbons, but then looked in alarm at the several coaches behind, a parade of grandness the likes of which Hunstanton had not seen since the baron’s marriage.
“Theyallcame,” Jack said in wonder as coaches began to dispense their contents. He glanced at his wife. “Did you know about this?”
Leda stared also, hitching the baby close to her chest. “Susan said she wanted to surprise you. Who are these others?”
His chest tightened as Jack realized that, while only his mother and sister had attended their quiet wedding last summer, the entire Burnham family had come in state for the christening of the heir. His sister, visibly pregnant, was helped down by her husband, who handled her as if she were a delicate fall bloom. Behind Susan came their mother, then his father’s sister, now widowed, with her two sons, whom she always said should have gotten the barony. From the coach behind a troop of children poured out, his three nephews making a beeline for the water, their baby sister toddling behind with her nurse.
“Another one?” Lady Plume lifted her brows, regarding Susan’s swelling middle.
“Yes, well, when Leda wrote that Jack was producing number four, I thought I must stay ahead of him.” Susan came to Ledafirst and hugged her, then tugged back a fold of lace to stare at the baby. “Oh, dear, that’s going to be the Burnham jaw. I fear it’s the family curse.”
“I adore that jaw.” Leda glanced at Jack, her eyes merry.
“It’s very telling, isn’t it? You always know when you’ve provoked him. Hello, Jack.” Susan moved to kiss him on both cheeks. “Well done. You’ve doneverywell for yourself.”
