Page 62 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“Yes.” The bitterness spilled from him. “So you’ve said.”
“Doesn’t it help, knowing it’s not you?”
“It would be better if itwereme. Then I would have a reason.”
Henry entered the parlor wearing the livery in which he had served the previous baron, antique breeches and a tailed coat. It had never occurred to Jack to tell Henry he might put the suit aside if he wished, for who would see him here? Jack never entertained—Anne-Marie had disliked crowds of people—and he would not have Leda for his helpmeet, a beautiful, clever wife who shone in company, who drew people to her like moths to flame.
She smiled at May, the housemaid, as she trundled in after Henry with the tureen of soup, placing it as carefully on the table as if she were serving the queen.
“Is it a great fuss for you downstairs, May, if we take in Miss Nora?”
May’s eyes widened. “Thas alright, tha is. Her’s a right mite, so thin and tiny, but she’s useter work, so she won’t get primmicky, and she’ll fit in the upstairs with Miss Muriel for now.” She shook her head. “Hant a scrap with her but her bag. It went sadly with her in the town, I shink.”
Jack winced, feeling this report on Ellinore’s state a further accusation of his neglect. He’d assumed the child was better off with her grandparents, even if they didn’t acknowledge her outright. Anne-Marie hadn’t really cared for the company of children; she liked to sew and do fine work, take long walks in her own company, and she could seclude herself in her dressing room for hours, trying on different adornments.
Anne-Marie, come to think, had possessed that same self-containment he saw in Leda, but where Anne-Marie had been cool and remote, Leda was warm and approachable. It was like her to notice that taking in an orphan would create more work for the servants, and like her to broach the subject directly.
Anne-Marie, like most of her class, had assumed servants existed to do the job for which they had been hired, seeing to her comfort. Leda saw the human creature within. Jack hadn’t missed how his aunt’s butler in Bath had chivvied his ladyship’s companion, and that the man would dare showed he considered himself one of the household, not a stick of furniture that moved about.
Nevertheless, as soon as the dishes had been laid, Jack sent the servants away. Leda stirred her soup; Jack regarded his wine.
“I knew Anne-Marie had a past when I courted her.”
Her eyes were a deep gray in the candlelight, like a tidal pool at dusk. “And you approached her despite that?”
“Because of it, I think. I knew I must have a wife, and I was attached to no one. I didn’t see a risk that I would become attached to anyone. I was ridiculed when I arrived. A baron’s coronet on the head of a shoemaker’s son? The very foundations of the earth should tremble and fall.”
Leda applied herself to her soup, sipping delicately as she listened. The woman didn’t hide her appetite. Jack wondered if meals at the asylum had been inadequate, and that was why Leda openly savored her food.
“You didn’t think you would find love?” she asked softly.
He met her gaze. “Did you ever imagine you would?”
She took up her fork and pried at the shell of a lobster. “We are discussing your courtship. I’ve been told she was very lovely.”
“She was. Many had tried for her hand. I was told to harbor no hope. But I had that coronet, you see. The best on offer around here are baronets and vicars.”
She lifted her brows. “That swayed her?”
“It swayed her parents, certainly.”
“Ah.”
The flame of the candle in its stick before him flickered as Leda passed him a dish of buttered asparagus. “But were you happy?”
“Not in the least. Nothing I did could please her. I was as kind to her as I knew how to be.” He caught the flicker of Leda’s eyelids, the narrowing of suspicion, there and gone. “But I, even with the title, was not enough. She was rarely content. I thought a child might cheer her, but when Muriel was born…”
“A difficult birth? I saw one with Ives, remember. You will not turn me off my food.”
He smiled with one half of his mouth. No, indeed, from the way she tackled the dish of cauliflower, she was not squeamish about talk of childbirth.
“It was the melancholy that gripped her.” Jack drew in a deep breath. Even now, these shadows held teeth and claws when they sprang out again at him. “It was dark. Deep. I knew no way to draw her out of it. She had no interest in the babe, she would not nurse—she could scarcely leave her bed. I feared she would starve to death under my roof.”
Leda chewed, then chased her bite with a swallow of wine. “I have heard it goes ill for some women. Motherhood is not every woman’s sole mission in life. And not always the rarefied joy that the church fathers would have us believe.”
“She did not wish me to touch her thereafter.” Jack swallowed hard. Shame tasted tart, like the horseradish Mrs. Leech had used to flavor the leg of mutton with oysters. “And I respected her wishes. I feared what another childbirth would drive her to. But then, of course…”
His lips closed over the words. This shame, he could not share. Despair choked him, the oyster turning cold and gummy in his throat.
