Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

L eda heard the voices, drifting down the hall from the nursery.

Muriel's suite, with the schoolroom and her bedroom, lay toward the east arm of the house, and the mistress's suite to the west, with a view of the Wash. The house had a north-facing entry, which Leda had thought odd, for here the Hall faced nothing but water on two sides and flat grass on the other, with the sharp line of carrstone cliffs on its flank rearing eventually down to a gentle sandy beach. Now, having seen how the south side caught the light and let the house brace the brunt of the wind, she understood why the stableyards and many gardens lay in that direction.

A main stair that circled up from the state rooms below let out on a landing across from the master suite, Jack's domain. Leda stepped quickly past it. Though she knew Jack was out, peering into his rooms, his sanctum, would be like touching his body.

She longed to do so, and knew she must not.

Muriel was having quite a conversation with Grace, who despite being hired as Leda's companion had taken quickly to the role of nursemaid for the child. May had surrendered her childcare duties without a protest, muttering something about preferring to beat carpets and haul fuel than wrangle with a stubborn little mawther.

Muriel was certainly stubborn. In the days since Leda's arrival, the girl had refused to bend an inch to her father's plans for her. She had a complaint about every local family Leda had called upon as she attempted to learn the neighborhood—complaints, Leda guessed, rehearsed from remarks she had overheard from some unknown source, not her father. She found fault with every local woman Leda proposed pursuing an acquaintance with.

On the whole, it seemed this pocket of Norfolk had a noticeable dearth of unmarried daughters and spinster sisters the likes of which could be found anywhere else in Britain. There was no workhouse or boarding school to plumb for orphans, no agency to request referrals. There was only the Hall among its cliffs, a few stately homes here and there buried in their parks, and scattered villages perching on the crests of small hills or wading into the marshland that stretched into the North Sea. It was land that had been cultivated for centuries, populated many times over by waves of settlers coming by sea, yet Leda had never lived in a place that felt so wild and empty and open to the sky.

"—with three big chandeliers simply dripping with candles, and musicians in a balcony perched high above, and they danced the minuet."

Leda paused at the sound of Muriel's voice, hearing a story she had told one night at dinner. She had suggested to Jack that they allow Muriel to dine with them, in part so she could see the girl's manners in order to properly warn a governess of the work ahead. In part because Jack's relationship with his daughter so clearly needed mending.

And in part because, when she was left alone with him, Leda lived in that memory of their kiss in the dining parlor of the coaching house in Swindon. She lived in that memory at many other times, also.

"The minuet's a stately dance. Lots of intricate steps. Here, I'll show you."

A bustle followed, then the sound of footsteps striking the wooden floor. Leda imagined Grace humoring the girl, letting her make up the steps of a dance neither of them knew, and had likely never observed. Muriel had presented a rigidly unimpressed fa?ade as Leda described how she'd met Muriel's father, yet the girl had clearly been listening.

Giggles followed a larger thump, as if something had been knocked to the floor.

"Well, one of us has to be the lady! Is it you or me?"

Leda smiled to herself and knocked gently on the nursery door. Perhaps she was getting through to Muriel after all. "Is there an assembly within? I would very much like to?—"

A screech cut off her words, and the door slammed against her, pushing Leda back into the hall. The noises inside the room resembled the flutter and flight of frightened hens when a fox entered the henhouse. A rustle of fabric, the beat of hurried footsteps, then a slam. Leda pushed the door open.

"What in heaven's name?"

Muriel stood in the center of the room, panting, her eyes spitting defiance above pink cheeks.

She was alone.

"What do you want?" she said in challenge.

"Where did Grace run off to?"

Leda looked around. Schoolbooks sprawled open on the table, the history book Leda had suggested for Muriel and a primer for one beginning to read. The shelf held its neat line of toys and books and a teapot with a jagged, broken spout. The immense wardrobe loomed with doors snugly shut, like a matron crossing its arms. The rocking chair in the corner, below the window, swung gently back and forth, as if rocked by a breeze, or a ghostly hand.

The door to the inner bedroom stood open, but the room was empty.

Muriel breathed in short pants, like a frightened animal. She glared at Leda, unblinking.

Footsteps rang from the hall, near the servant's stair, and moment later Grace appeared in the doorway, a pile of fabric in her arms. "Mrs. Leech found your cloak, Miss Burnham, but says she don't know where your bonnet coulda got to. I be thinking—oh, good day, Mrs. Wroth. Are you ready for our airing, then?"

The hair on the back of Leda's neck rose. "How did you come from the hall? I thought I heard you in here."

Grace regarded her warily. "I were downstairs, mum, fetching the things."

Muriel's nostrils flared. "I was alone , miss."

"Mrs. Wroth," Grace corrected her sternly, coming into the room. "Will you change your apron to see your da, or go along like a flamtag in your dirt?"

Muriel raised her chin. "He's playing in the mud, innit he? It'll be my dirt, then."

Grace fussed with outfitting Muriel, reporting that Mrs. Leech anticipated a fine drizzle. Leda closed the books on the table and capped the ink, which had been left open when the dancing began. A blob from the quill had been left on the page which held the beginnings of Muriel's report on her book.

Next to the primer lay a slate in its wooden frame and a piece of chalk beside. The slate bore the beginning of letters: a shaky A, a large looping B, a C with the curve of an unpracticed hand.

"This cannot be your slate, Muriel? You already know your letters. Were you teaching Grace?" Leda wondered sometimes if Muriel would respond better if she addressed her as Miss Burham, but Jack had made her feel as if the child were Leda's own family. Someone it was upon her to look out and care for.

"I were in the kitchen all morning, mum," Grace said nervously. "I hope it's all right, but I asked Miss Burham to look after herself a moment. The peddler came round, and Mrs. Leech wanted a minute to look his things over."

Muriel crossed her arms, creasing her fresh tucker. "I told you. I'm the only one here."

Leda spotted the corn doll on the edge of the table, bound in one of the ribbons Jack had bought his daughter at market. Muriel had worn none of them save the one that Grace had fastened to her good hat. Leda wondered if this was because the girl suspected Leda had a hand in their acquisition, or if she was adamant about refusing overtures from her father.

"Are you bringing Nanette?" Leda asked.

Muriel recoiled as if Leda had slapped her. Her eyes flared, a combative light springing into them, and her entire body tensed. Then she followed the direction of Leda's gaze and sprang forward to grab her doll.

"I'll bring her."

There was some unholy connection between Muriel and that doll. Something about Nanette that made even Grace flinch and dart Leda a look of apprehension, as if steeling herself, not for a fine drizzle, but a full-on storm.

Leda fastened the tapes of her cloak, shaking her head as they descended the stairs. She was not mad. She could trust the evidence of her ears and eyes.

Or at least, she hoped so. What, then, was Muriel hiding?

Nora had offered one explanation. The Hall is full of ghosts .

Leda experienced the strangest sensation as she stepped off the small front porch of Holme Hall, tugging on the leather gloves she would use for driving. She had not had occasion in years to wear driving gloves; driving a horse was something her father had taught her when she was young, and she had barreled around in the pony cart until her parents banned her from gollumping about the neighborhood proving she was naught but a hoyden, as her grandmother would say, though she put it in less kindly terms. Leda had enjoyed her grandmother's strict house even less than she appreciated her mother's many rules.

What they thought when she went to the madhouse for killing her husband, Leda couldn't say. They'd stopped speaking to her.

And with a husband stricter than her grandmother, then being locked up and running away after, Leda hadn't been on a horse, nor had her hand on the ribbons of any sort of conveyance, since those long-lost days of hoydenhood. Her heart expanded in her chest with a sense of fullness, like the tide rolling in.

She heard the water all the time now, and the cry of the shore birds, especially the migrations that came through in swarms that could block the sun. And a small, high call out on the water that she couldn't place, but might be mermaids. She'd seen small sleek heads breaking the surface just this morning as she watched the water from her window.

Mermaids. She chuckled to herself at her fancies.

"Alright, me kiddie?" she asked her companion.

Muriel narrowed her eyes, not drawn in by Leda's light tone. Now the dialect of her youth was coming back, too. She felt younger here than she had in years. The land was made for flinging one's arms out and twirling. One could breathe here as one couldn't in Bath, where the muck of the street waste and the coal smoke from so many chimneys hung heavy in the air.

And Eustace would never find her. Not here.

Henry stood at the head of the horse, harnessed into the market cart and waiting patiently. "The bor's botty a'smornum, and he'll allus pull left if you let um." He held the ribbons as if reluctant to share. "S'name's Pontus."

"God of the sea. We'll get along, won't we?" Leda scrubbed his muzzle with her knuckles. The big gelding blew and butted his forehead beneath her hand. Leda scratched between his ears, delighted. She'd forgotten she loved horses.

Henry helped her settle on the board that served as a seat and handed up the reins. "Dew yew keep a' troshin, miss."

She heard this phrase often among the servants, and Leda gathered it was a mixture of "fare thee well" and "mind how you go." Keep threshing —an injunction to carry on, no matter what. Because one day, one might step out of a grand old hall that felt like a home—the first home one had had in ages—on the way to meet a strapping man who sent up flutters beneath one's stays at the sight of him. There might be a pale sun peeking out behind clouds, and the wilding scent of salt and sea, the edge of the world falling open.

And there might be a quiet, troubled girl beside one whose heart Leda longed to know. Almost as much as she wished to know that of her father.

"So it seems I must teach you the minuet." Leda concentrated first on getting a feel for the harness and horse, and keeping her seat, but when she'd assembled some level of confidence in her own abilities, she thought to speak to the girl sitting beside her.

"I won't need it." Muriel looked away, pointedly indicating her lack of interest in conversation.

"You don't expect you will dance at assemblies, or have suitors who will want to dance with you?"

Wasn't that every girl's dream? Although Leda's girlhood dreams had not tended toward men or marriage. She'd wanted to read all the books she could lay hands on. Travel to the remotest corners of Britain, and then beyond. To go to school—how she had longed for school—and make friends who would be hers for life, like happened in the books.

"I won't." Muriel said this firmly.

"Don't wish to marry?" Leda probed. "Or don't wish to dance?"

The girl's head swiveled toward her. A field vole shot across the path, and the horse's ears flickered back. Worried he would shy, Leda took a moment to comprehend Muriel's answer.

"I won't have any of those things," she snapped. "Who will offer for a mad woman's daughter?"

Pontus snorted and tossed his head, and Leda realized she had pulled back on the ribbons. At once she loosened her hands.

"Your mother was not—" Leda chose not to finish this thought. The woman had abandoned her child. What frantic thoughts had preyed on her mind to force her to such a choice?

Although, if one listened to certain farm wives of Snettisham market, Anne-Marie Burham hadn't jumped from the cliffs. She'd been pushed.

"And my da, too," Muriel went on ruthlessly. "I'm the mad baron's daughter, aren't I?"

"Your father is not mad," Leda said in a sharp tone. This she was certain of. Jack Burham was as sane, as solid a man as it was possible to find.

She concentrated on keeping her hands light on the ribbons, but something of her distress must have communicated itself down to the leather to Pontus. He flicked his ears, then picked up the pace into a trot.

Muriel held on to the seat on both sides. "Of course you think that. You want him to marry you."

The girl stared straight ahead, her tiny jaw clamped tight. She was such a picture of her father in that moment that Leda felt stabbed in her heart.

"I'm here to find you a governess."

"You want my father." Muriel dashed a knuckle across one cheek. "He had to go far away to find a woman who wouldn't care that he's mad, to a place where you all gather and talk about getting husbands. And I suppose you'll want other children, too."

"I won't marry again," Leda blurted. "I'll have no child of my own."

Muriel blinked, her eyelashes heavy with tears. "Don't you all want that?"

Leda's heart twisted and thrashed in her chest, like a landed fish. Her lungs compressed, bereft of air.

"Many do," Leda said. "But I won't have them. Just like you."

Muriel scrubbed at her eyes. "Why not?"

How could Leda explain to a child that she didn't trust herself? That she might go blank again, who knew when, and wake with a knife in her hand and a body in her house. She'd never feared it with Lady Plume, but then Lady Plume did not unsettle Leda the way Jack Burham did. Make her long for things she couldn't have, so much that she might indeed go mad with the wanting.

Jack made her long to have a home of her own with a husband who smiled at her over dinner, who touched her hand as they walked through town. To have a child to hold to her breast. A woman like her, with madness buried within her—she couldn't risk having those things. The demon might come out and destroy them.

Because I am just like your mother , Leda almost said, but knew better to let the words emerge. She must keep Muriel safe. The moment she feared that madness was threatening, she'd flee Holme Hall the way she left Bath. She'd leave Lord Brancaster without looking back.

"I suppose some women are shaped for such things, a home and babies and fixing tea," Leda said finally. "And some are made for other purposes."

It wasn't madness, yet, the things that were stirring inside of her, like rumblings from the depths of the earth or waves from the deeps of the sea. This felt like freedom. A surfacing of parts of herself she'd thought lost to her, buried under the years of fear and want. It wasn't darkness rising in her but something fierce and bright, a joy she'd thought no longer possible for her.

When she topped the ridge and found Jack, exactly where he had said she might find him, that bright thing rose like a golden shower, shaking loose more pieces that had bricked over all the girlish dreams and desires and pleasures of her youth. She had the strangest sense that she had arrived precisely where she was supposed to be, and had always known she would find him waiting for her.

Leda was here. The day brightened, the sun that had been teasing all morning finally emerging from the clouds in full glory. The woman brought light with her, and the sense that a drab, winter-dead world was only dormant, about to burst into full bloom.

Jack stood quietly a moment, letting the new knowledge settle, absorbing its rays. She wore a round gown of sprigged muslin, the color of a new-blown rose, and a spencer of cherry red, lined with white fur, that hugged her bosom and lovely arms. Cherry blossoms from a tree that some ancestor had lodged in the hall gardens adorned her straw hat.

She pegged the ribbons over the seat as if she'd been driving for years, hopped down with a lively little spring, and came around the horse, sparing a pat on the muzzle for Pontus, to help Muriel descend from the cart. As they turned toward him, the woman holding his daughter's hand, Jack felt as if the huge horse had kicked him in the chest.

This woman. She was smart and well-dressed for any occasion. She carried herself with confidence and composure. She was past her first blush of innocence, that was clear by her complete lack of shyness or guile. She was a woman who knew her mind and would speak it as the occasion called for. She was fully formed, so secure in herself, so complete .

He'd never known a woman to possess such ease, such surety. Certainly not his wife. Anne-Marie had never seemed fully present, her mind always elsewhere, her heart driven by longings he couldn't fulfill, restless fears he could never assuage for her.

Leda Wroth looked fear in the eye and stared it down.

He watched them approach, enjoying the sight of Muriel holding Leda's hand, which she had not yet let go of. Leda paused and plucked a yellow flower, waving it beneath Muriel's chin.

"Do you like butter? The buttercup can tell us."

Muriel giggled. Giggled . Jack drank in the sound.

"That's cowslip," Muriel said.

Leda gazed at the bloom in mock despair. "Well, now what shall I do with it? Wait a moment." She tucked the stem into the new ribbon tied to Muriel's hat. "There, all smart and proper. What does your father think?"

"I've never seen anything more lovely." Jack spoke the honest truth, betrayed by the hitch in his voice.

As if she'd just spotted him, Muriel stiffened. She pulled her hand from Leda's and turned away. "I'll wait here."

"Don't you wish to see what your father is about?"

Muriel muttered something Jack couldn't hear. Leda's lips tightened, but she did not chasten the girl as Muriel moved toward a path of wildflowers. She only called, "Watch for stinging nettle."

"That's dead nettle." Jack forced out the words. "It oughtn't sting."

Muriel moved along the ridge, her small frame nearly swallowed by the waving meadow grasses, red curls a banner down her back. The sun retreated behind the clouds again.

Jack looked to Leda. "She laughed with you." Something had shifted between them; something had lightened Muriel's gloom and drawn her to Leda, if only for a moment. But she wasn't about to yield the same softening toward her father.

"A first." Leda moved closer to him. He smelled blossom, then her beneath, the almond scent of her skin. "I doubt she'll allow it to happen again."

Jack turned and walked back to his frames and pots. "She laughed all the time as a baby. Constantly. Everything I did made her giggle."

"Losing her mother would hurt. Would still hurt."

"It was well before that when she stopped. She learned young to tiptoe around Anne-Marie. To take on her sadness. We all did."

Leda waited a moment. He appreciated that. She didn't press him. She didn't utter platitudes. She didn't try to chivvy him out his grief or momentary despair. She simply let the confession float between them, let him understand for the first time how much of his own happiness he had held in reserve, tamped down, put aside, because Anne-Marie was always so distant and sad.

She touched his arm, and her steady warmth flushed through him as if he were a sponge drawing water. "Show me what you've done."

She took an interest in everything: in the kiln he had, after the pattern of the one at Heacham, cut into the side of the ridge, with a space alongside for the ovens that would heat the bricks. "I'll make these first bricks extra hard as they'll provide the walls and insulation. I've spoken to a man in Snettisham about getting a cast iron door for the furnace. For the time being I'll cover the roof with wooden planks, as that gives me options for ventilation. Later I might build a brick roof, like the lime kiln at Thornham. The gravel in the barrow there is for lining the floor."

"And you simply put the bricks in here to bake them? How long does it take?"

"A day at least to get the kiln hot enough, sometimes two. A day or two of keeping things hot. You arrange the bricks in columns to create chimneys that will move the air and distribute the heat. Then another day or so to cool, and your bricks should be ready."

"And then what?"

"I sell them," Jack said. "And feed my household on the income until this agricultural depression is over, if it ever is."

She peered into the square hole in the ground, where the boys he'd hired to help him were gleefully hardening the dirt floor of his kiln by tramping about, cuffing each other or mock wrestling as they passed.

"How will you fire the bricks to line your kiln? I imagine they need to be especially hard."

He grinned, something joyous loosening and rolling in his chest. She was interested. In him. In his plans, his creation. "I'll fire those bricks in Heacham, or see if the old kiln by Thornham is still working. But I want my own kiln so I can experiment."

"Experiment how?"

He led her to his workstation, where he had labored all morning. Muriel dallied along the ridge, glancing now and again at the men building the shed, seasoned laborers with their jackets shed and sleeves rolled up as they hammered and sawed. They'd softened their language when Leda arrived, but hadn't moved to dress, and Jack wasn't going to demand it. Leda nodded pleasantly at the men and didn't seem anywhere near fainting at the sight of male forearms bared to the air.

She hadn't fainted when Jack kissed her, pressing her body against the door of the dining parlor in Swindon. She'd pressed back, fitting her hips to his, melting that delectable bosom against him, drowning him with her delicious mouth. A tight heat shot to his groin, pure want, as she bent to peer at the piles he'd made. The breeze molded her skirt to her legs and a sweet rump he wanted to curve his palm around.

Time to get a rein on his animal instincts. His daughter was present, for God's sake.

"What's all this?"

"I need to find the right mixture for my bricks. I'm testing whether this is brick earth."

She leaned over and sniffed the mass of reddish earth. He loved her curiosity. He wanted to pull her into his arms and wrap his body around hers. Absorb her into him and hold her there. Keep her always.

"You'd think there would be experts about who would want to share their knowledge, but they've been hard to come by. The only one I've found who will talk to me is the bricklayer who helped Rolfe rebuild Heacham Hall a few years ago, but he can only advise me on technique, not the recipe. The masons here are more interested in cutting and using the local carrstone than in making bricks of their own. I've been in touch with some from my old apprenticeship program in Norwich, though, and they've helped somewhat."

Leda put her hands on her hips, like a housekeeper surveying the items she would assemble into a feast.

"That's brick earth?"

"I hope." He scooped a handful of the clay soil. "Brick earth needs no mixing, can simply be tipped into molds and fired. I've heard they have it around here, but so far, all the areas I've tested have yielded what you saw the day we arrived. Failed experiments."

He rolled the earth around in his hands, learning the texture. "You start with clay of the right consistency. Soft enough to be molded. A bit of give when you poke and prod it. You can feel when it's right."

Without hesitation Leda stripped off her leather gloves and sank her clean, dainty fingers into the red earth. "Indeed you can," she murmured.

Jack swallowed. "The right mixture will have a trace of sand in it to give the right shape and texture. There needs to be a bit of lime as well to help the sand melt and fuse when fired. The earth around here is mostly clay, you can see, but with the chalk layer, it often contains its own lime and silica. I may need do nothing more than fill my molds and have all the bricks I could want." As if anything in his life turned out as he wished.

Leda's eyes gleamed, the color capturing the endless blue gray of the sky and reflecting it back as violet. "I want to make a brick."

"You'll get soil on your hands."

"I want to make something." She unfastened the button that wrapped one end of her spencer over her bodice. The cherry red brocade with its fur trim fell away. "I want to shape something with my own hands that will be useful. I want to build something that lasts ."

Again he took that sharp blow to his chest. "That is exactly what I want."

She pushed back the ruffles at the edge of her short sleeves. "Show me."

"It sticks enough that you can simply make a ball with your hands." He shaped and pulled a large handful of clay from his pile, about knee height.

"Not that pile," he called as she went to a far mound. "That has to be sifted yet to shake out the pebbles."

She bent and took from his pile, inhaling the scent of rich earth. "I love this smell."

He loved that she was doing this, diving without a qualm into his world, his interests. He moved to the table he'd built of a few planks. "Then you press the earth into molds."

He showed her, tamping the reddish clay into the wooden frame. He'd built these, too.

"It's like bread dough," she said, her voice lilting with delight. "You want it to have enough pull that you can coax and stretch it. If it's stiff, you've teased it too much."

He grinned at her, catching her enthusiasm, alight with it. This woman fired him like nothing else. "I suppose the same is true here. Too much lime, and the brick melts in the kiln. If the lime is not powdered enough, it will swell when moist and break the brick apart. It's the rich red color that tells you the mix is right. Too much iron, and the bricks will be black or dark blue. They turn up yellowish, and you know they will shatter at the first blow."

He showed her how to tamp the earth into the corners of the mold, then scrape the top flat. "If there is anything alkaline in your soil, like soda or potash, the bricks will twist and warp when you bake them. Any vegetation that works its way in will catch fire in the kiln. Pebbles will make your brick weak and porous. It will soak up moisture and crumble, or swell and break after the first frost."

"There's so much to account for." Leda followed his example and scraped extra clay from her brick, leaving the top smooth and flat. "How does one ever find the right recipe?"

"Trial and error," Jack said. "A great deal of it. Do you wish a pattern in your brick?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Might I?"

"There are many ways to dress a brick. You've seen them in town. Most of the time the mason breaks bricks in half to make that smooth facing. When the bricks alternate color, as you'll see on some of the grander houses, that's Flemish bond. You can carve lines into the facing side, or create all sorts of wonderful designs. The chimneys at Hampton Court Palace are an example. Once the substance of your brick is right."

"I've never seen Hampton Court Palace," Leda said. "I want a plain red brick. Simple and serviceable."

He smiled, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Nothing about Leda Wroth was simple or serviceable. She watched as he tapped the red clay out of the molds onto a plank that topped a wheeled hand cart parked alongside his table. Perfectly symmetrical they were, side by side. Evenly matched.

"I'll fill this plank with bricks, then wheel them into the drying shed, which the men are building." He nodded in their direction. "In some climes they let their bricks dry in the open air, but I wouldn't dare that here. When the clay dries, we'll stack them in the kiln."

"And have sound, strong bricks for building," she murmured.

"God willing."

He handed her a rag, and she wiped her hands clean, digging under the nails to remove clay.

"You adore this," she observed. "This is a passion for you."

He opened his mouth to object—the word passion didn't fit him. He was not, never had been, passionate about anything.

He closed his lips on the denial, considering. He needed this to work, and he was more desperate than he allowed her to see. Masonry was his one skill, the trade he'd trained for. A tether to the life he'd had, and the future he'd been building before the black-edged letter reached his mother and a title he'd never thought of came along with it.

There was a world a baron was supposed to dwell in, he knew, a gentleman's world of horses and hunts and card parties and debates in the House of Lords. But Jack only wanted this: the Norfolk countryside, a task that occupied his mind, something he could build with his bare hands. A safe home for his daughter, food on his table, an estate that yielded enough to keep everyone upon it alive.

A woman like this beside him, working with him. Standing here so lovely with the breeze blowing her gown against her curves, teasing dark locks from beneath her hat, her hand to her brow as she watched Muriel. She didn't shiver in the cold or shrink from the sun. She played in the dirt with him, then rebuttoned her spencer, inspected her fingernails, and pulled on her gloves, reassembling her ladylike attire as if she'd never shed it. Not a veneer at all, but a sign of the grace that ran deep within her, and the easy way she adapted to any place, any circumstances.

"Will you clean yourself up, then?" she teased. "We oughtn't show up filthy if we're to call upon the Stylemans. They are quite the family in this area, I understand."

Jack wiped his fingers and cleaned his nails while Leda went to the cart and pulled out several packets wrapped in oiled paper.

"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.