Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

S he hadn't had the nightmares in a while.

She was locked in his wine cellar again, too cold for comfort, not cold enough to kill her, knowing that if she raged and smashed the bottles, she would be as mad as he said.

She stepped through his dark house on a dark night, knowing something watched her, something with inimical intentions. White, thin hands that might reach out at any moment and touch where they had no business to be.

She walked through a misty dawn in a frozen garden, knowing she'd left something terrible locked in the house, but not knowing what . And when it might rise and follow.

She plunged a knife into his chest and withdrew the triumphant, bloody blade to see that she had stabbed Brancaster, and she watched as the warm flush left his face and the light left his brilliant eyes, leaving him a corpse before her. Terror like she'd never known.

She screamed for help, so many times, and her voice was a whisper, the scratch of one bare branch on another on a winter afternoon.

"You look quite knocked up," Lady Plume said sympathetically when Leda joined her in the breakfast room in her plainest morning dress, a cotton round gown with hand-painted red buds patterning the fabric. Her hand mirror told her the bright gown did not detract from the violet shadows beneath her eyes.

"We did not entertain all that late last evening," Lady Plume added, her gaze wandering to Brancaster, who tapped a rim around a soft-boiled egg.

Leda's stomach turned at the thought of eggs or meat, and she selected a piece of toast from the side rack. Gibbs offered her butter, the merest sliver, and by this Leda knew she was not yet back in his good graces.

"I stayed up too late reading." Leda avoided looking at Brancaster. The memory of that kiss flooded her senses, and she feared the evidence of it would appear on her face.

Evidence of how she had completely, if momentarily, lost her mind. Kissing a man! Her employer's nephew! In her own house!

Brancaster scooped out the soft innards of the egg, and Leda stared at the way his lips closed around the spoon, his cheeks flexing. Good Lord. Nothing about him was out of order, his cravat a tidy fold, a morning coat of dark blue brocade fitted over a waistcoat of dove gray silk, and yet the man could tempt an angel to sin.

And Leda was far less than an angel.

"We have made no headway in finding Brancaster a governess," her ladyship observed.

"I thought he wished a bride."

Her ladyship sniffed. "He need be more selective this time. He chose too quickly before, and mostly for pity, I think."

"My error was letting my parents choose," Leda murmured.

She wondered how her parents fared, for they, too, would have thought Leda dead all these years. Of a certain they believed she, and they, were better off that way.

"This time, he can choose from his heart," her ladyship said.

"Or from a list of requirements, which would be the sensible way to go about it."

Leda sat at the table. With a huff Gibbs moved the kettle of chocolate out of Leda's reach and toward her ladyship. Leda sighed and wondered if she could make a move for the coffee, but the pot sat before Brancaster.

"I do think at the least you could travel to Norfolk with him and help him get his affairs in order. Meet the girl, and determine what sort of governess she needs."

"Travel alone with a man for days? Staying at public inns?"

Brancaster lifted his head. The cravat didn't disguise the bold slope of his jaw, the set of his chin. And the tousle of hair falling over his jutting brow did nothing to detract from the piercing cold in the glare he tacked on her.

"That would be a terrible idea."

The toast scratched all the way down as she swallowed. Last night he'd wanted her. He'd kissed her. She'd felt his hunger in the way his mouth drew on hers, in the press of his big hands across her back, in the press of his—what was the word, manhood , between her thighs.

Traitorously, appallingly, a heat flickered there, like a tiny flame rising from coals she thought long turned to ash. She didn't lust as other women lusted, she knew that. Her passions ran bloody.

But if there were a way she could stand in that moment and kiss him infinitely, with the flicker of candlelight sculpting his face and that delicious heat weaving through both of them, with none of the pain and humiliation and wounding that came after—she would still be in the parlor, kissing him.

"See?" Leda said. "Brancaster agrees."

Lady Plume sighed and stared reproachfully at her nephew. "Did you tell her?"

"Tell her what?"

"How the former Lady Brancaster…never mind." Her ladyship rose. "We must check the book. Perhaps there are new arrivals who will suit our needs."

Leda fixed him with a glare as her employer departed. Brancaster studied the bottom of his egg. Gibbs fiddled at the sideboard, ears pricked.

"Tell me what?" she asked.

He pushed away his egg cup. "Why no woman of sense will come with me to Norfolk, as my bride or anything else. Ever."

"Oh, it was a terrible tragedy. I don't know the details, only the rumors, of course, but they say there is quite a stretch of cliffs alongside Holme Hall, situated on the seaside as it is. And the poor woman—" Lady Sydney lowered her voice— " threw herself from them."

"She fell off the cliff?" Leda raised a hand to her mouth.

Lady Sydney shook her head. "She jumped ."

Leda looked about to see who in the Pump Room had heard this awful disclosure. The Earl of Howth, Lady Sydney's father, strolled with Lady Plume, regaling her with some amusing tale. Brancaster had been trapped in conversation with Mrs. Warren, who was certain that last night he had been captured by at least one of her daughters and would, in the light of morning, be able to detect which he preferred.

Leda watched his straight back in his tailed coat, the courteous tilt of his head as Miss Warren trilled up at him. He did not droop as a man bowed by senseless tragedy. Or crushing guilt. He had, to all appearances, held up manfully.

"Then why do they call him the Mad Baron?"

"Because he drove her to it, of course."

"He drove his wife to destroy herself?"

Lady Sydney blinked. "Well, why else would she? If there were any possible recourse, she would have gone to her friends for aid, or found a way to escape. Only complete despair could drive a woman to end herself."

Leda nodded. She had known it herself, even in extremity: that desperate, animal instinct to survive .

"How long ago?" Leda asked.

"Five years, I think, or is it six? I can't say, as he goes about so little in society. Even before it happened he was practically a recluse, which was part of her problem, I don't doubt. Loneliness from living tucked away at the bare fringe of the world."

Lady Plume had not, in the years Leda had known her, mentioned this nephew, or his title, or his bereavement. Almost as if he were a family secret. Why was she set on helping him now?

"And this is why no one of any station will consider his bid for a wife," Leda mused.

Lady Sydney nodded. "Not even Frances, and you know how she is."

Another of the earl's daughters, Frances, made her way toward them across the room, giving Brancaster and his companions a wide berth. Lady Frances was notorious for her want of a husband, a prize which has thus far eluded her despite her family name and her father's elevation. Frances wore a gray silk round gown, Lady Sydney a dark purple, both of them mourning a third sister who had died the previous year, leaving small children.

As Brancaster's wife had left him a daughter. Was the girl thought to tend also toward madness, and that was why no governess would stay at the house? Such things were said to be inherited.

Another reason that Leda's parents and sister had had nothing to do with her. They wished no questions, no nervous gazes, to fall their way.

Mrs. Warren, who had made the recent and still quite dizzying hop from merchant's wife to gentlewoman, saw little beyond his title and a daughter who might style herself Lady Brancaster. But the higher families had closed ranks, and Howth was the worst of them, joking about the Mad Baron, in search of another wife to drive out of her senses.

What had his first wife suffered?

What had he suffered, as a consequence?

Brancaster turned, having been freed from Mrs. Warren. He scanned the room, and his gaze halted on Leda. As if she were the one he sought.

She stared back at him, her insides churning. Terrible images danced in her head. Had he witnessed the leap? Had he known his wife was lost to despair? Had he been the one to find her, or had the report come later, leading him to her broken form at the bottom of the cliffs?

"There is a new gentleman in the book," Lady Frances announced, joining them. "They say he is possessed of a lovely estate in Gloucestershire, near Cirencester. The name stirs recollection, Izzy. A Mr. Toplady. Do we know that family?"

A wave of cold shock doused Leda, as if the waters of the lake near her childhood home had closed about her head. She couldn't breathe.

He was here .

"I do recall a thread of gossip, at that." Lady Sydney had married well, to a rising peer of Ireland awarded two baronies and a diplomatic post, handsome, or at least prepossessing, if the painting by Reynolds were to be believed. He had died a month after their marriage, extinguishing the two peerages, leaving the estate to his cousin the admiral and his wife to enjoy a long widowhood at the sufferance of her father, amusing herself by taking an interest in the lives of those around her.

"He came by his estate when his father—or was it his uncle?—was found murdered by his wife. A horrible spectacle, they said. She was locked up in a madhouse, of course, where she could hurt no one further, and I heard she died there."

"My word," Lady Frances breathed. "What an unnatural creature she must have been."

"We must pity such creatures, Fanny, rather than despise them. Not every woman has the constitution or capability for good sense. If they were, the universal reputation of our fair sex would be much higher, I must believe."

Leda stood immobile, her feet melded to the floor like hot wax, her body engulfed in flames. Madness. Murder. An insensible, unnatural creature. Would they say these things if they knew it was Leda? Would they say these things if they knew the whole truth?

Likely they would. Women were not to fight the yoke that marriage put upon them, however heavy a burden it conferred. They were meant to bear it, because of Eve, cursed for the first disobedience. They were not to turn mad like animals and fight for their freedom with bloody claws.

This was why she could never marry again. One of many reasons. Because of this animal within her.

Brancaster joined them, and Leda's nerves fired at his nearness. He seemed so large, difficult to harm. He could not be overpowered by a mere woman.

But what might he, with his own power, do to a woman? There was strength in his shoulders, in the chest straining the buttons of his morning coat. There was power in his hands.

Hands that had led her so gracefully in their dance. Hands that had raised wildfires of lust across her skin the night before.

"Lord Brancaster." Lady Sydney cooed as if she had not nearly accused him of murder moments before, when his back was turned. "You are bringing us the fashions of London, I think."

"I wear what my tailor makes me, madame." Brancaster made the ladies a brief bow. His suit lacked much embroidery or ornamentation, the dark blue cloth of his tailcoat cut away to show a gold-striped waistcoat and pantaloons of a muted buff color tucked into tall black boots. Beside the heavy embroidered silks and bright patterns of the other gentleman in the room, he looked severe and commanding, a watchful kestrel among a flock of bright warblers.

Dangerous. A warning rippled across Leda's neck. She could not throw herself on his mercy.

"Which of the Misses Warren is making her bid to be your bride?" Leda asked.

"Fanny, my dear, I believe you might be permitted to make the acquaintance of our interesting new arrival," Lady Sydney said. "If that is the gentleman staring so fixedly in this direction."

Leda looked toward the counter where the cups of mineral water were dispensed and felt she stepped out of her world into a pantomime. The figures around her grew blurred and misshapen, mere blobs of bright color with leering faces, paper-thin mockeries that might be shredded away. From across the room, his dark eyes sank into her like claws.

He was large, a brown suit with a high collar and ruffled cravat cradling his round face with its heavy jowls, the insolent set of his rosebud mouth. He looked a man who demanded to be given his due.

She knew she must be seeing the nephew, and yet he was so much his uncle come to life that she was certain she faced a ghost. Cold trails of fear raked down her spine.

He'd found her, after all this time. He'd come for justice at last. Or revenge.

"Brancaster." Her throat was tight, her voice high with panic. "I would like to leave."

"Where to?" He offered his elbow, and she took it before her knees collapsed. He was firm and solid.

"The—King's Bath. You have not seen it yet. And the Abbey. You must visit the Abbey." She tugged futilely. He was too large to push.

He searched the room for the focus of her stare, and found him. Toplady's beady glare moved briefly to Brancaster.

No. No, no. She must not make Brancaster a target. And she must not allow him to come anywhere near her.

"The Baths," she said desperately. If he pursued her, she could push him in. It would make her a murderer twice over, but he must not, must not be allowed to speak to her.

"What has upset you?" Finally, to her great relief, Brancaster steered her toward the pillared doorway and the promise of light and air beyond.

"Upset? Not at all. I have made a decision." She hauled him out the door. "We will not find your governess here, or a wife. I am coming with you to Norfolk."