Page 57 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“Mrs. Leech packed lunch for your crew. Pickled pig parts, eggs and asparagus, oysters with vinegar, and bread with preserves. She packed a Norfolk cheese in yours, and shortcake in everyone else’s.”
“Why did I not merit a shortcake?”
She passed him a packet. “Muriel wanted yours as we drove over, so I gave it her.”
“You’re a motherly sort,” Jack said, guessing that Leda had had a hand in the lunches. Mrs. Leech did not typically send Jack on his way with more than day old bread and perhaps a chutney.
She turned from him, and her entire demeanor changed, stiff bombazine where she’d been easy silk.
“I am not motherly in the least,” she said shortly. “Only I am acquainted with a man’s temper when he is hungry, and we can’t meet the Stylemans like that. I am counting on Mrs. Styleman to have relations, or friends of friends, who will leap at a chance to be governess to a mild-mannered child in a great house with a cook like Mrs. Leech.” She waved Muriel in, then laid the lunches in a neat row along the plank where they’d set their bricks to dry.
She’d make the brick, but would she stay to bake it? Turn it into something lasting that could shelter one against wind and water?
He held Pontus while she helped Muriel into the cart. Then she ascended to the seat, taking the driver’s place.
“I would have shared my shortcake with you also,” he said.
She took the ribbons and looped them around her hands, not looking at him. Pontus shifted his head and stomped one foot.
“I do like your Norfolk shortcake, with the currants added, but I like your vinegar cake better.”
“I meant to say nurturing. You are the nurturing type.” Jack swung up beside her and tackled his lunch. The cheese sank under his teeth, soft and sweet as the skin on Leda’s neck and throat. “You’d make a grand governess.”
“You are forgetting our bargain, Lord Brancaster.”
That she would leave. That she would fix his problem, set him on his path, as she had so many others, then depart, never to see the fruits of her labors.
Muriel perched in the belly of the cart, braiding a daisy chain for her doll.
“What will it take to keep you?” Jack asked bluntly.
Leda glanced over her shoulder at the girl, who was pretending not to listen to them.
“For me to have a different past,” she said, and looked away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Ishould be a family of note in the area,” Jack remarked as they neared Hunstanton Park, encased in its woodlands and centuries of acknowledged power. “The Burnhams, I mean. Styleman is a reverend and the son of a gentleman, and his mother was the daughter of a baronet, but we are barons, even if the title is young.”
“Have they been in the area long?”
Leda steered Pontus through the line of stately oaks and beeches, the ground a purple-gold carpet of comfrey and celandine. She’d lost the easy companion who had shown her the ways of brick making and gave her a glimpse into his ambitions, his heart. Beside her sat the baron in truth, upright, polished, distant. Negotiating his place in the world, picking out who was above him, and who below.
“The first L’Estrange sailed over with William the Conqueror,” Jack said. “The family gained lands here, and here they have been ever since. The sixth baronet left no issue, so the estate passed to his sister, who married a Styleman.
“But L’Estrange was an upstart to the Burnhams, established here in Saxon times,” Jack added. “There’s a tale that L’Estrange claimed lands as far out into the Wash as a knight could ride atlow tide, then shoot an arrow. One day a Burnham challenged that he could shoot an arrow further. He did, and won the land where Holme Hall now stands.”
“The families have been friends?”
“My uncle kept few friends,” Jack said, the words clipped with disapproval. “And his sisters even fewer.”
“You have written to your Aunt Dinah? What does she think of my stay in your household?”
“She is happily lodged with a friend in Middlesex, and not inclined to think ill of your presence.” He set his lips, that mouth that lent a hint of softness to his face, and which Leda spent too much time noticing. “In fact, in her last, she said she agreed with our Aunt Plume and I require a mother, not a nurse, for Muriel.”
“I have a mother.” The cry rose from behind them. “Had. I don’t need nor wish another.”
Leda took her eyes off the road long enough to assure herself that Muriel was in a fury. Jack turned to placate her. “Mere?—”
