Page 59 of The Mad Baron's Bride
Two enormous white birds floated down the canal as if they were clouds come to life, their feathery hulks leaving barely a ripple in their wake. A mated pair.
“I intend to name my doll Judith,” Muriel announced.
“No longer Nanette?”
At that name, both her companions stilled, as if they’d fallen under the gaze of a witch. Pontus clopped across the bridge spanning the moat, each step of his shoes a blow on the flint cobbles. A square shadow pulled over them, trailing cold over Leda’s shoulders, as they went through the gatehouse. Then they were in the courtyard beyond, where a pale sun lifted above the rim of stone chimneys and trees, and a servant came forward to take the horse.
Jack swung Muriel out of the cart, and as soon as her feet hit the ground, the girl shied as if she could not stand his touch. Jack’s face was like a whip had fallen across his skin, and Leda spoke before she could debate the wisdom of pushing in. She was a child, true, and a hurt child. But she could not go lashing about at the world and expect it to remain a safe place for her. She must learn that lesson swift and early.
“Miss Burham, we are here to discuss if Mrs. Styleman knows of any prospects for a governess for you, therefore I expect you shall be on your best behavior,” Leda said in her crispest tone. “I expect civility in your answers when you are addressed. If you have a quarrel with your father, you will save it for discussion at home, in private. Here, you will be a good guest, and a good guest makes themselves pleasant and cordial to their hosts, on whose hospitality they are intruding.”
Muriel’s eyes widened, her surprise evident at being chastened. “But he?—”
“Is your father, and deserves to be addressed respectfully. As ladies, we must learn how to express our strong feelingsin ways conducive to achieving our aims, while also showing consideration for those around us.”
Muriel snapped her mouth shut and hugged her doll to her chest. Leda saw the girl’s struggle, torn between mutiny, purely on principle, and awe at being handed a secret to the mystifying world of womanhood.
But she would not give Leda the pleasure of having the last world. Her little chin tightened in that manner so like her father’s.
“He put you in her room,” she said. “But he hasn’t told youanything,has he?”
Jackhadn’ttoldher much of anything, about himself, about his family, about his wife. The reminder stabbed at Leda’s confidence as she settled in for a coze with her hostess.
“That little Muriel is a cunning baggage,” Mrs. Styleman announced the moment that Jack, on the pretext of taking Muriel to see the swans, left them alone in the small parlor.
Hunstanton Hall, from what Leda had seen, was a great sweep of polished woodwork and painted plaster, built on medieval lines lacking the classical symmetry Leda was accustomed to seeing in Bath. Its mistress was just as imposing. She was a matron of at least five decades, wearing a heavily embroidered brocade open robe that was years out of fashion, and piles of scarves, shawls, and a lace cap to ward off the cold of the room, where there was no fire. The tea was fast cooling, the footman having trundled from the faraway kitchens to deliver it, and Leda drank from the remaining warmth.
“I believe Muriel to be no slyer than any other girl of nine,” Leda said, remembering the small bits of cunning she herself had been capable of that age when it came to nicking Mrs.Chubb’s brandy snaps from the kitchen or inventing reasons she hadn’t come in from out of doors when her mother called.
“Dear Brancaster. He doesn’t know the first thing how to take her in hand, of course. And her mother! What could one expect of a child, with such an example before her?”
Despite herself, Leda sat forward. She was no stranger to gossip. People seemed inclined to confide in her; she was not sure why. Perhaps her sincere desire to help, to fix problems, provide clarity on vexing matters that entangled the heart and clouded the thinking.
But this interest was not motivated by a charitable instinct toward Jack. She wanted desperately to know what had drawn him to Anne-Marie. And what had ruined him completely when he lost her.
“But then, I oughtn’t carry tales, ought I?” Mrs. Styleman raised her teacup to her lips. The Delft blue reflected on her chin, giving her a faintly wolfish look.
Leda sat back, trying not to let her vexation show.
Mary Styleman was the kind of woman Leda might herself have become if marriage had made her more solid, and not mad. Lacking children to amuse her, Mrs. Styleman had surrounded herself with fine things. The parlor was done up in floridly rococo design, heavy with cream and gold, vines and twirls and sunbursts filling every pane of the walls and ceiling, so that the eye had nowhere to rest. A pair of enormous urns reared from the mantelpiece. Above it reposed a dark oil painting of a man and woman standing in a park, he watching her with a satisfied expression, she, in a smart scarlet riding habit and jaunty hat, patting the neck of an expensive bay mare.
“Henry commissioned that for our marriage,” Mary remarked, studying the painting as well. “A man can come across sojaunty, can he not? When he is young and fresh and strong of limb, and he sets asides portions from two of hisfavorite estates just for you, and looks at you as if you are the most clever, the most lovely thing in all the world.”
Leda sipped her tea and found herself unable to swallow. Jack had regarded her with exactly that expression as they stood by the pits and his kiln and clay, and he showed her how to make bricks.
“I imagine that is how Lord Brancaster won Miss Waddelow,” Leda said, setting all shame out the window.
“The stranger thing is that he chose her,” said Mrs. Styleman, “given her past and all.”
Leda swayed forward, unable to stop herself. She knew that to invite confidences, she must set down some crumbs of her own. “I met the most curious girl in Snettisham, living with the Waddelows in Hope House. Nora, I believe she is called.”
“Ellinore.” Her hostess nodded. “That’ll be Anne-Marie’s child, the one as she had with the gypsy.”
Leda swallowed her tea, struggling valiantly not to choke on it. “Anne-Marie was married before Ja—before Brancaster?”
“Oh, there was no blessing upon that union, mind you me. Missus Waddelow, great as she’d wish to rise, put it about that they adopted an orphan, saved the mite from being sent to the house of industry over in Gressenhall. But we all know who comes along Peddars Way, don’t we? And how many moons turn about between the getting of a babe and the birthing of it.”
“But Ja—Brancaster did not take the girl into their home?”
