Page 47 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“In a moment.” Leda untied the ribbon on her hat and set it on a table, her gaze still fixed on the window as Jack departed down hall toward the stairs.
The sea heaved in gray humps, rippled by the wind, and short grasses along the cliff bent and nodded. A steep path led down to the beach, a wide strip of sand dotted with clumps of rock crowned with green seaweed. Between the field of rocks and the high cliffs, banded with cream and red, lay a broad path of sand untouched by the tide. On it were two sets of footprints, small and distinct.
Muriel must have been walking with her nurse, but where had the maid gone? The girl made her way alone through the inner garden to a door beneath Leda’s window, which must lead to the kitchens or a room attached to them. There seemed a dearth of servants for a house this size, only the cook, one chambermaid, and this Henry. If Jack’s fame as the Mad Baron had spread to Lynn Regis, or beyond, she didn’t doubt his difficulty retaining servants.
Something about the vast sky and the haunting call of the sea made the strange feel possible. Made it seem that a darker, wilder world, one full of ancient things not yet tamed, lay but a step away, across a layer of sand and mist. While inside this house, moaning in answer to the wild wind, lay a still, empty shell encasing a grieving widower and a motherless child.
Little wonder she wanted to put her arms around Jack and hold him close. He didn’t seem the Mad Baron to her. He seemed lonely.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Leda’s heart gave a small kick against her ribs as Jack clicked to the horses and the market cart rolled away from Holme Hall. It took her a moment to place the sensation: excitement. The sky stretched broad and blue gray above them, dotted with birds swooping along the shoreline and feeding in the marshes, their calls echoing in a continuing musical chorus. The scent of salt braced her senses with its bouquet of sand and cordgrass and seaweed, the wind scraping her skin. She hadn’t felt this wild and alive since she sailed toward Bristol and saw if she kept going she’d reach the wide sea, leaving behind everything she’d known. Norfolk unrolled before her in the same way, like an enamel box opening to reveal treasures nestled within.
The man beside her in the driving seat had something to do with her excitement. Being near Jack brought her to attention, as if she were an instrument being tuned by a skilled hand.
“My mother took me to market in Snettisham with her all the time,” Muriel announced. The girl sat between Jack and Leda, her back straight and determined, hands clasped around the small cloth pocket she carried, which she had not attached beneath her dress. The fabric, scraps of silk brocade in an elegant weave, were held together by knotted thread and showedthe wear and dirt of steady use. Leda had never seen the girl without it.
“What is your favorite part of the market?” Leda asked lightly.
Muriel set her tiny chin. She was a small child, built like a reed, with her slender limbs and tufts of hair red as the bands of stone that lined the cliffs. There was no doubt she was Jack’s child, with that hair, and something about her chin suggested his features as well, but her fair skin and green eyes came from her mother, or so she had informed Leda. In the two days since they had been introduced, Muriel’s mother fell constantly from her lips. Leda knew it was a challenge and reminder, the girl’s one defense against this stranger whom her father had brought, without her knowledge or permission, into their home.
“A peddler would sometimes come, and my mother liked to look at his buttons and pretty ribbons and pins.”
“What do you want from market, Mere?” Jack asked, glancing down at his daughter.
His look sliced Leda’s chest. There was something protective and hopeless blended in it, inviting her confidence, and doubtful he would be gifted with knowing the secrets of her heart.
Muriel did not return his look, but rather studied her pocket with great attention. The cart dipped into a rut into the road, and the girl stiffened and pulled away as the motion tipped her toward Leda. The slight stung. Leda was accustomed to people trusting her within moments, sometimes on sight. Muriel would not be easily won.
“Would you also like a ribbon, Muriel?” Leda asked. Not that she meant to woo Jack’s daughter with treats.
The girl’s attire was frightfully plain, a simple cotton frock of dark blue with only one ruffle on the short sleeves. The white tucker at her neckline and the apron at her waist were clean white linen, but her muslin cap had no ribbon to lace it, and herstraw bonnet had nothing to adorn it but a strip of scarlet silk, matching her red woolen cloak. Her shoes were clean, but the leather showed scuffed and worn above a set of wooden pattens. Leda had been furnished her own set of pattens before they left—she guessed they might have belonged to the former lady of the manor—and they served a warning that the market might be a muddy as well as crowded affair.
Muriel drew a small doll out of her pocket, an oddly shaped figure woven of dried corn husks. “Nanette would like a ribbon,” the girl said.
Jack stiffened and stared straight ahead. Mrs. Leech, seated in the back of the cart, abruptly stopped her stream of steady commentary and instruction directed at Grace, who nodded and took everything in.
Something about the mention of Nanette, the doll, had brought them all to swift attention. Did Muriel ask for so little?
“Then we shall look for a ribbon at market,” Leda said. “Is that a corn dolly? She is pretty.”
“My mother always won the corn dolly in the fall. The workers made it for her. She was the queen of the harvest.” Despite the proud note in her words, Muriel stuffed the dolly back into her fabric pocket as if she meant to bury it.
“My mother was the most beautiful lady,” Muriel added. “Everyone loved her.”
“I am very sure they did,” Leda murmured.
Jack’s jaw had gone as hard as the cliffs that fell down to the beach outside his house, a hardness that could weather centuries of wind and wear.
“I’ll never want a different doll.” Muriel looked Leda full in the face, her expression as tight as her father’s. “Never.”
Leda trained her gaze on the rough track ahead of them. The wind cut through her cloak, made for the sheltered, stone-walled streets of Bath, not this wild, empty country where grassstretched out endlessly to one side of her and the other rolled to marshland dropping bare and open to the sea and sky.
“Not a different,” Leda agreed. “But perhaps another, in time?”
Muriel set her chin and stared straight ahead. “No.”
“She will warm to you.” Jack came to Leda’s side after he stopped the cart south of Heacham to inspect a brick kiln there. A chalk pit dug out a hill across the road. Leda watched Muriel wander to the edge of a pond, where shovelers and teals floated in pairs on the water. The girl looked so small, framed against the green-gray marsh.
