Page 49 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“If he went mad after finding his wife dead,” Leda said, “that would seem to suggest he did not kill her.”
Her group of informers met this with silence, each grappling in their own way with Leda’s logic.
Finally, the third spoke in a hushed tone. “Do y’spose someone else mighta kilt her and blamed it on himself?”
“She jumped, dint she,” the first farm wife said firmly, rearranging the cabbage heads on her folding table. She had staked a prime place beneath the tree, sheltered by its branches but well within sights of the crossing roads, and Leda guessed she had trucked into town well before dawn, pulling her handcart with her table and wares, a Norfolk version of Maud Heath.
“I wonder why,” Leda murmured. “Milord Brancaster seems the sort of husband that a woman could go on with.”
The others leaned in.
“He’s a masterpiece, tha he is,” the second wife confirmed. “When he moved here, every mawther in the hundred set her cap for him. An he won’t see none but Anne-Marie Waddelow, the only one who dint make sheep’s eyes.” She sighed. “Thas the way of it, hintut? We wants the ones as don’t want us.”
Leda’s heart turned over, and she darted a guilty look about the market. It was a quiet day, vendors sparsely scattered around the open areas and along a line of beech trees that shielded some great house from prying eyes. She spotted the top of Jack’s black felt hat, the hat of a common laborer, as he spoke with great animation to another man Leda guessed to be a cooper, by the casks and barrels scattered about him.
Grace idled by a woman setting out an array of colorful items, perhaps feathers and ribbons, while keeping an eye on Muriel, who was stalking a chicken. Mrs. Leech was engaged in a hearty discussion with another farm wife, shaking a bundle of watercress in her fist. Leda guessed she was negotiating the best price she could, all too aware that her budget would not stretch as far in these days.
The members of the household being out of earshot, Leda was free to gossip. She felt no compunction about mining these good wives for information.
“She was very lovely, I’ll wager,” Leda prodded, keeping her voice confidentially low, and that was all it took.
“As the day is long,” said the first wife, whose name was Ellen. She described a dark-haired beauty with mother-of-pearl skin and eyes the color of seablite that grew along the coast. A woman who floated like a fairy and seemed untethered to earth. Every man wanted her, yet none won her from her parents until Brancaster came along with his hall and his title and his square jaw and broad shoulders, a lion among donkeys.
There’d been some whispers, some secrets that were shushed up when the young lord came calling. Leda gathered there might have been some protests on the part of young Anne-Marie, overruled by her older and wiser parents. Well she knew how such a conversation would go. So young Anne-Marie, who might have wanted more from her life than to be given in marriage to a hall and husband in Hunstanton, Norfolk, was bound will she nil she, and bore him a child in short order.
“And thas when she…” The second farm wife, Jane, twirled a finger outside her ear in a gesture Leda knew all too well. She winced.
“What were her symptoms?” She wondered at her own fascination with this woman—the woman Jack had loved, wooed and won, who became his wife, the mother of his child, the mistress of his home. She wanted to know everything about her.
How he had touched her. How he had longed for her. If Anne-Marie felt the same way when Jack kissed her—as if the top of her head were floating away, her body caught on a magnificent tide.
“Wandered the cliffs, blarin’ streams of sea water from her eyes,” reported the third farm wife, Mary. “They’d allus been quiet folk, but no one saw inside that house save the servants. Such a kelter she’ud get herself into. Tried agin and over to haveher folks take her back, or anyone. But they allus said no and sent her back to him, dint they.”
“She tried to leave him?”
“She was badly afore the babe,” Jane offered. “And then the next un…” She clamped her lips together.
Leda pounced. “There was another child?”
“Naught that we’re in the know of,” Mary rushed in. “But she was a primmicky sort from the first. Allus puttin’ on her parts.”
“Botty,” Ellen added. “Liked the attention, dint she. ‘Specially from the bors.”
“Yet she never had folks callin, did she, not even the grand families heres about,” Jane argued. “When she useter to be at all the great dews afore she was married.”
Mary tapped the side of her nose. “Himself dint care to share her, I shink.”
“Ah, you do run on.” Jane shook her head. “She wasn’t a furriner, mind, but it was us she dint want no truck with.”
“She was from here?” Leda asked in surprise.
“Aye, from Hope House, she was. That great block acrorst the way.”
Ellen nodded in a direction leading down the street, toward a house with the local red brick and a black tiled roof. Leda counted five bays around the central porch, framed with its classical pillars. The Waddelows were of no mean stature, it would seem. And what gentleman’s family wouldn’t want their daughter to reach high above their station, however she felt about the marriage.
Jack had moved on from the cooper and was deep in conversation with another man, shorter and bulkier than he was. He spoke with animation, his hands sweeping through the air as he made shapes to accompany his words. Curls the color of the dark brick of the buildings about them poked from beneath his hat, and she wanted to curve her hand over the nape of his neck.Lean close and inhale the scent of him, wood and smoke, salt and cedar.
The strangest heat bloomed in her belly. She wanted to twine her tongue with his in another soul-consuming kiss, feel his hard body pressing her against a door, as if he could mold her softness to his hard frame and each could balance the other.
