Page 10 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“The qualities I wish in a governess, you mean.”
“I thought I persuaded you a wife was the better bargain. All that labor, and for free.”
“Rather your comments persuaded me that wifehood must be the most dreaded and overworked status in the kingdom, and no sane woman would willingly lash herself to that mast without the greatest inducement.”
“You forget what an inducement bed and board can be, all on its own,” Leda answered. “And a companion who cannot be objectionable—or so I assume,” she added hastily, realizing she had said too much.
He didn’t miss a thing, drat the man. His brows lifted. “You find me unobjectionable?”
“I am assuming the perspective of the dainty young maiden who will become your wife, and presuming she would not find you so.” She turned to survey the crowd about them.
“Who said I would wish for a maiden?” he murmured.
“Every man does. Come, here are Sir Charles and Miss Hotham, whom you slighted last night, and may now repair the breach.”
Leda stepped forward, and he stepped with her, as if they were a matched pair and had been in harness together for years. He wore Eau de Cologne, and on him the notes that emerged were grapefruit and bergamot, with a hint of tobacco.
A wall of longing hit Leda in the face. The faint scent of tobacco took her back to her father’s study, one of her favorite places in the world, once her shelter and escape.
She had no refuge now. Only this tiny space in Bath where she crouched like a child closing her eyes in a game of hide and seek, praying she wouldn’t be found.
“Sir Charles, good morn. How are you finding the waters today?” A sulfurous odor drifted from his cup, dispensed to him by the matron behind the wooden bar at one side of the room.“Miss Hotham, I hope you enjoyed the assembly last night. Lord Brancaster had already engaged my hand for the minuet or I would not have bustled away from you so hastily.”
Leda made quick introductions. Sir Charles’s brow worked while Miss Hotham regarded Brancaster, a blush rising on her cheeks. She could not seem to decide how deeply to curtsey.
“Miss Hotham, I detect that your days in the schoolroom passed under the tutelage of a wise governess. Would you be willing to share the name of your friend? His lordship is in search of a proper person to instruct his charge.” She pulled her lips into a smile. “Though I have counseled him that he might instead seek a wife.”
Miss Hotham turned scarlet.
“Brancaster!” Sir Charles’s brow cleared. “The Mad Baron, eh? ’Swhat Howth called you. Rowdy good story there, I’d imagine?”
“Not at all.” Brancaster’s voice was as smooth as melted butter, but his arm beneath Leda’s hand felt like a catapult primed to spring. “Too much time walking the cliffside with one’s thoughts will lead a man’s friends to call him mad, and style themselves wits for it.”
Sir Charles looked disappointed that a salacious tale was not in the offing. Meanwhile, Brancaster regarded Miss Hotham with no more interest than he had regarded his cutlery at breakfast; there was need to interact in socially acceptable manner, and that was all. He seemed unmoved by the delicate slope of her nose or the susceptible fairness of her skin.
Leda wondered why she felt faintly smug about his lack of interest in the girl.
Miss Hotham appeared desperate to remedy this. Her fan fluttered. “I find madness very poetic. Like in Mr. Wordsworth’sLyrical Ballads.”
“Your governess had a romantical interest, then?” Leda asked, determined to set the conversation on its proper course.
More blushes painted Miss Hotham’s sweetly curved cheek. “Oh, no, my mother oversaw my education, mum.”
“Ah, a pity, as I imagine she is not eligible for either of your open positions, your lordship,” Leda teased Brancaster. “Would you care to walk with Miss Hotham about the room and hear more about her education? Sir Charles might take me to get my daily dose of the waters.”
“Now see here, Mrs. Wroth, I won’t have you pitching my daughter at the Mad Baron,” Sir Charles chortled. “I know your reputation as a matchmaker.”
“I had thought her a match unmaker, rather,” Jack murmured.
“A red coat’s good enough for my gel, should there be a government pension behind it,” Sir Charles said. “Look you, there’s Captain Handfield below the statue. Come and I’ll introduce you, El.” He nodded to Jack, then Leda, and towed his daughter away.
“Are you going to encounter that reception often?” Leda considered the knight’s departing form and Miss Hotham’s wistful glance in Jack’s direction.
“I fear so,” Brancaster answered, his jaw etched in hard lines.
“Perhaps you’d best tell me why people call you mad.”
“I’m sure I cannot say.”
