Page 92 of The Mad Baron's Bride
“Then you won’t put you? But you are ourbelle-mèrenow.”
“Belle,” Nanette said fondly, stroking the silk of Leda’s skirt.
Leda had hit on using the French term when the girls wondered what to call her, and Jack thought it a fine solution. Leda crouched to be level with Muriel, whose doll had also gotten a new dress for the occasion, the lace stitched by Muriel herself. Leda had made sure Jack noticed and admired.
“I have the great privilege of looking out for you, Muriel,” Leda said. “But I am not, and will never replace, the mother who gave birth to you. We will respect her name, and her life, by putting the proper names on the register. Alright, me kiddie?”
“But you will put Papa’s and your names on the paper for Jay Jay,” Muriel said, glancing anxiously at her father.
“Yes, because I have the honor of being his mother by blood, which is almost as good as being yourbelle-mère.”
“Producing the son and heir? Given the crowd of folk here, thas quite an accomplishment, that is,” Ellinore said with amusement. “Greater jollificearshuns here than the harvest fair in Snettisham.”
“No speaking Norfolk in the church, dear. Proper English.”
Muriel fastened her doll to her chest and regarded Leda solemnly. “I don’t mind, you know,” she said, her tone anxious still.
“Mind what, dear?” Leda murmured, half an eye on Aunt Plume, who was doling out views of Baby Jay as if he were peeks at the Crown jewels.
“That you are mybelle-mère. I am very glad Papa persuaded you to marry him.”
Leda looked at her and smiled, that beautiful, all-encompassing smile that made Jack feel, every time, as if the sun had slipped out from a cloud. “I am glad to hear that, sweetling.”
Muriel slipped her hand into Jack’s, and a lump closed his throat. She hadn’t done that since before her mother died.
He felt the last brick in the wall between him and his daughter give way.
“Glad you approve, Mere,” he said gruffly.
“She’s all right,” Muriel conceded. “Much better than a grumpy governess.”
Jack merely nodded. Leda was the sun and moon and all the lesser stars, the entire firmament of his life. He almost feared it, how much he loved and needed her. He had never thought he would find what Susan had with her architect, that kind of open love, riddled with laughter. Nor yet the quiet communion between his aunt Dinah and her companion, a secret they kept from the world.
Yet this. This churchyard full of colorful people, chatting and milling and waiting impatiently for the vicar to finish his preparations. This had all come to him because of the woman at his side.
Muriel drifted away to play with the others, and Jack stood for a moment alone in the crowd with Leda. He slid his fingers through hers.
She glanced at him, reading the emotion in his face, and squeezed his hand lightly.
“For me as well, you know,” she murmured.
“Impossible.” He could not have brought her nearly as much as she did him.
She shook her head lightly. “Ask your aunt. I had my room in her garret, and I had her company, and it was more than what I’d had in the madhouse, and more freedom than I’d had before. I never guessed…neverdreamed…” Her words trailed off.
“Missus,” said a new voice. “I hear you’re to be congratulated.”
Jack looked around and saw the peddler he’d seen Leda speaking to in Snettisham. For a moment his heart seized, then relaxed. It wasn’t his rival, the man Anne-Marie had loved instead of him. Silver threaded the man’s hair, and a red scarf knotted at his neck kept the dust of the road from his face.
“Her ladyship now,” Jack said, though not in reprimand.
The man nodded. “It is good, thechavo.The child. Extending the family. It is good.”
“They are well,” Leda said to the man as he leaned on the wall, watching the crowd of people. “The girls. Did—did Bohamos know of them?”
The man blinked and looked at her, taken aback. “That is his Roma name.”
“Anne-Marie called him that, in her diary,” Leda said. “What is—was—his, er, English name?”
