Page 46 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Leda struggled to follow the accents. Norfolk speakers moved their vowels back in their throats, unlike the round open sounds of Somerset. “I am very well, thank you.”
Jack looked around. “Where is everyone else?”
“Henry went to Thornham to do for his mum, and the misses is out on a wander, sir,” Mrs. Leech reported. “They arst if they might, and I dussent keep ’em in to craze us. Where do we put the lady, sir?”
It was a delicate probe as to her status in the household, and Jack didn’t realize it. Leda tried to catch his eye, but, bear-like, he blundered straight into the trap.
“I’ll have Henry take Mrs. Wroth’s things to the mistress’s suite, and you may make up a room above for her maid. This is—” He looked, wide-eyed, to Leda.
“Grace Haycot. She came with us from Swindon,” Leda said. Grace, craning her chin this way and that to peer into the state rooms, brought herself to attention and made her greetings.
Mrs. Leech looked her over with a sharp eye. “Well, come alonga me and spare the gawping for later, mawther,” she said, shooing the two girls down the service hall. “Mind you, there’s to be no mardle, no slummockun, and you don’t steal a skerrit. May’ll larn you how we do, and himself int too finicky, bless ’im, so…” Her instructions, which Leda could comprehend in their gist if not their specifics, faded as the door swung shut.
Jack offered a lopsided smile. “Mrs. Leech runs as tight a ship as Nelson. Tighter, I think, as she gives no quarter, and delegates nothing.”
Leda followed him into an inner hall, a spare, lofty chamber. “You needn’t give me a fine suite. I would be happy with something next to the nursery, near Muriel.”
He blinked, startled. “You are a guest in my home.”
“And your servants will conclude I am your mistress.” Cool air touched her neck above the collar of her cloak. The fireplace in the corner stood empty and, from its state of cleanliness, had not seen a fire in some time. The room was scarcely used.
Jack flushed as red as the bricks she’d seen outside in his collection of experiments. “We?—”
“Should have anticipated this. Traveling alone, and I am staying here without a chaperone?” To spare his embarrassment, and her own, she looked around at the displayof family treasures. There were fewer of them than she might have expected, and not particularly tasteful.
She ought to have foreseen how their arrangement would appear to others, like the innkeeper’s wife in Swindon, like his staff. Customarily she was awake on all suits. Seeing Eustace had rattled her wits badly, turned her into a wild creature fleeing for its life.
Being thought Jack’s mistress gave her the sudden, unwise urge to become so. He looked so flustered, dragging his fingers along his jaw, coming out again in stubble. It was his gesture when he was nervous, and she knew that about him now.
She knew he snored lightly when he was overtired, that he disliked the taste of eel, that he had once been accidentally shut overnight in the west chapel of Ely Cathedral when he and a school chum snuck in to see the Saxon bones, hundreds of years old. He and his friend had spent the night awake in terror, convinced the bodies of the ancient dead would rise, or their ghosts would haunt them for disturbing their rest.
He set his jaw. “I could contact my Aunt Dinah, I suppose. She lives in Middlesex now.”
Of the little Leda had gleaned of Jack’s family, he was, aside from his siblings, on corresponding terms with only two members of the greater Burnham family: Lady Plume, who took an interest in everyone and everything, or at least knowing about them, and his aunt Dinah, who as a woman had been left out of the line of inheritance and excluded from most of the family struggles as well.
“Would she come to stay?”
“I could ask. If you are concerned about your reputation.”
“I am not concerned on my account.” She stepped into the next room, a large formal parlor. She wished she had the right to take his hand, soothe the worry from his face. “I am moreconcerned how it might reflect upon you and Muriel if my time here causes gossip. Perhaps I ought to stay elsewhere.”
He showed her the rest of the rooms on the ground floor, the dining parlor and beyond it the kitchens, a smaller parlor that served as a family sitting room and library. Above, on the first floor, he pointed to the nursery and Muriel’s bedchamber, then his own down the hall. Doors opened to a powder room, now unused as Jack wore no wig, and a bathing chamber alongside. The mistress’s suite lay at the end of the hall, with windows on all three walls that stared out to sea.
She’d never seen so much water in her life. It looked like it could swallow the world.
Jack spoke from behind her, his voice soft with unguarded longing. “I want you to stay here.”
She turned to regard him, standing in the doorway, ever the gentleman. Or at least, the gentleman now. He hadn’t been chivalrous when he kissed her in Swindon. He’d been overwhelming, demanding, an inferno of roaring heat. She could close the door behind him and step into his arms, offering herself again. Her breasts tingled at the thought, aching, and a heat roused low in her belly, a restless hunger.
She couldn’t give into passion. She couldn’t trust herself when she did.
Jack’s face changed, tightened. His eyes darkened as he stared at her. Leda’s skin prickled. He knew what she was thinking, sensed her desire. He was ready to unleash his. She need only show the smallest invitation and that inferno would roar again to life, all that strength and heat and maleness of him against her, surrounding her. Consuming her.
His face changed. “There’s Muriel.”
Leda followed his gaze out the window and saw a girl trudging across the lawn. She let herself through a gate in the first wall, stepping into the orchard. Her straw hat bobbedbetween the trees, and a dark blue skirt flapped about her legs. She looked small and determined.
“I’ll meet her downstairs,” Jack said. “Will you join us?”
