Page 12 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Leda made the mistake of glancing behind. Crutch had, predictably, turned to deliver a fulminating glare.
He could seriously damage her reputation with his accusations that she had meddled and manipulated. Her name came to lips as the soul of absolute discretion. Those who soughther advice or fixes did so with the promise that their difficulty would be solved with the utmost quiet and lack of fuss.
If Leda lost the trust of the people who came to her, she would not lose income, true. But as a conventional lady’s companion, overlooked and unremarked, she would be a deal less interesting to Lady Plume, andtherelay all her security.
“Do all your unmatched take it so poorly?” Brancaster asked, holding her arm close to his body. A distracting heat arose from him, hotter than the waters of the spring pouring beneath their feet.
Leda couldn’t respond. Her lungs seized when she saw a shadow slip through the tall doors, pass through the morning light slanting on the floor. Greasy black hair. Small, close-set eyes. The black stock at his throat, as if he were a military man or religious. As if he had the authority and discipline of either.
A cold, quivering sensation wound up her body from her feet, as if she’d stepped into an enormous chilled pudding, and she was drowning.
He was here.
“Do you know, I believe I might dispense with my daily dose today.” Leda was astonished that her throat worked to form words, which moreover sounded perfectly sensible, when her senses had taken flight like a screaming hen. “There is so much more to see in town, Brancaster. Let us find your new lady somewhere else.”
She had to get him out of here. She had to find him a governess and send him off packing before the ghosts grew any closer, before there were any chance he might learn who Leda was, before Lady Plume learned.
Bath had been her refuge for six years, where she clung like a red squirrel in its tree. Now the kite was on the loose, hunting with his keen eyes, and that refuge would disappear. Where could she go next? Where would she be safe?
Nowhere will be safe for you, if you leave me.
He’d sworn that, hadn’t he? Made her a promise. And now he meant to keep it, even from beyond the grave.
CHAPTER FIVE
Leda laid her selection of evening gowns on the bed and studied them. Her cache of possessions was small, but each was dear. If he made her run, she would lose all this: the beautiful things, the small trinkets that held meaning, this pretty room with its walls of robin’s-egg blue. A life she had built for herself—on Lady Plume’s generosity, that was true, buthers, the way nothing had been hers in her early life, nor her married life, either.
She didn’t want to run. She wanted to stay.
It had been grueling, keeping her mask on today. Lady Plume wanted Brancaster with them as they paid calls on Lady Plume’s extensive acquaintance and new arrivals. Very often a host or another guest, or sometimes a servant, pulled Leda aside for a small conference. Lady Plume smiled beneficently upon these exchanges; it pleased her to see her companion in demand, to know her resources were of benefit to her friends. Lady Plume was born to be chatelaine of a medieval keep or some rich Dark Age abbey, save that she never could have borne the absence of basic hygiene.
Brancaster observed these conferrals with a blend of curiosity and suspicion. Were he at all possible to ignore, Ledawould have done so. But there was little choice to pretend he did not exist when her ladyship paraded her nephew as if he were a prime stud she had won at auction, determined to display his fine form and bloodlines to full advantage. Her ladyship regaled her friends at length with the prosperous and colorful history of the Burnham family, which Leda had never before heard her praise; she itemized the honors her ancestors had achieved at court; and she spoke of Holme Hall, perched upon its carrstone cliffs far away, as a veritable Hampton Court of Norfolk.
Brancaster listened to these recitations with his features bland of expression but a curious muscle ticking below his jaw. This only drew attention to the truly splendid lines of his face and neck, representative of his well-knit form altogether, and since not one female missed an opportunity to commend him or attempt to draw his approval toward herself, Leda soon grew irritated by the unfailing praise.
She chided herself now for her jealousy. Had she set herself to the effort, Leda could have had a governess for him lined up in the first hour of their day, and at least three eager candidates for his wife by the time their calls were concluded. Two further candidates appeared as they strolled around the Bath Vauxhall Gardens, Lady Plume in her chair, Leda on Jack’s arm as if she were any friend of the family and not a paid employee. Regrettably, Leda could not in good conscience recommend any of these eager young girls pursue Brancaster, despite their charms of person and manner, for who knew but that she would be sending some unsuspecting maid like a lamb to slaughter.
Brancaster was not in the least unpleasant to be around, and his daughter did not seem to be difficult. From the few words he had spoken of Muriel, Leda gathered she was an imaginative but deeply sensitive child at a point in her life where she crucially needed the guidance of a sensible female.
Still, Leda thought as she made her selection for the evening, she would not send any female into the clutches of a man who was dangerous, no matter how poetically his castle on the cliffside was described.
A woman would require a staunch set of morals to be cast daily in the company of such a well-proportioned, appealing man and not begin to harbor untoward fantasies. She must be too wise to fall under the spell of gray eyes and a beautiful mouth that twitched in the most beguiling way when he was amused. She must not be too entertained by the sly, wicked sense of humor in his comments after they departed a particularly silly company. And she must not, on any account, be the melting sort who would be unduly conscious of the many small, kind attentions a gentleman might pay a lady, especially when one had gone without such attentions before.
The way he might, for instance, steer her around a soft spot in the path, warning her not to soil her shoe. The way he might lean too close to comment that a friend’s feathered hat, fluttering in the breeze, appeared about to take flight. The way he might buy treats for all of them, but give the first to the companion, rather than his aunt, the knight’s lady.
And she must not mark, and thereafter recall at inopportune moments, the way his eyes widened and his face brightened with luxurious appreciation as he experienced for the first time the divine revelation of sugary dough that was the famous and unrivaled Sally Lunn bun.
No, Leda couldnotin good conscience put any woman in his company who might lose her admirable self-control at that look of sensual joy. The man was a pit of crumbling rock, and a woman could fall in, unsuspecting.
In the event this was her last night with him and she might indeed be on the run tomorrow, Leda wore her newest evening gown to dinner, a delicate red silk gauze draped over a silkchemise. Jet beads decorated the bodice, which was modest by most standards, and the small puff sleeves left her arms bare. Beaded embroidery around the hem made the skirt flare about her as she walked, and she chose her black silk fan for a dramatic accent.
“Good heavens, are we at a Venetian masque?” Lady Plume remarked when Leda came down to join them in the parlor. “I expect any moment a harlequin will cartwheel into the room and breathe fire.”
“Are you telling me I look ridiculous?”
Her ladyship had sent her own lady’s maid to curl and dress Leda’s hair, a boon which was not uncommon, and another mark of how Lady Plume confused the issue of Leda’s status, far too often treating her as a friend or relative in the Crescent for an extended stay instead of an employee who earned a generous quarterly wage.
“I say you look delectable,” Lady Plume announced, loudly enough that all her guests could hear the proclamation. There were ten of them in all: Mr. and Mrs. Warren, newly arrived in town with their two unmarried daughters; Lord and Lady Oxmantown, Lady Plume’s cronies and a fixture at her table; and Mr. Ravelli, who was attempting to set up a small conservatory where he taught art, music, and the Italian language to any who would pay tuition.
