Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

H e didn't know what led her to change her mind. He didn't trust she was being honest with him about her motives.

But Leda was with him, and while Jack reminded himself to be on his guard, he couldn't find it in him to regret that he was now forced to spend several days on the road with her.

Alone, he'd taken the stagecoach along the main roads down to London and through to Bath. It was a slow, clumsy way to travel, and it was also the cheapest and least dangerous means available, when a man alone on horseback, traversing the entire width of southern England, was simply asking to be robbed, beaten, and left for dead. But he couldn't ask Leda Wroth, a gently bred woman, to hack alone with him on some shambling hired nag across fields and country lanes, subject to who knew what weather or other threats.

Lady Plume expressed her doubts about the stagecoach option, but she did not address her remarks to Leda's delicacy. It was clear to anyone who knew her that Mrs. Wroth was not in the least delicate, in constitution or sensibility. The woman had steel in her backbone.

"But in a coach, you'll be subject to anyone who can pay the fare inside," Lady Plume said when Jack outlined his plans over breakfast. "Not to mention those who pay the outside fare and overcrowd the roof. Pirates. Ex-prisoners. Someone inside your coach will undoubtedly smell of onions, and someone atop will almost certainly be drunk. Then there will be the cub who imagines himself quite the whip and badgers the coachman to let him take the ribbons, and will no doubt overturn the coach."

"If Mrs. Wroth minds the discomfort, I will accommodate her and hire a post-chaise," Jack said, calculating in his head the cost of hiring horses for the miles from Bath to Hunstanton, the tips for the ostlers, the tips for the postboys, the meals in public inns, and how to find coaching inns that could accommodate a lady. The cost would strain his budget until the next quarter rents came due, that was certain.

A baron, nearly broke. What a laughable situation. It was why he couldn't show his face in London for a regular Season, or take his seat in Lords. It was why he couldn't persuade a governess to put aside her reservations about the remote aspect or condition of Holme Hall, nor the difficulty presented by her charge. Not for the first time, Jack cursed the profligate life the former baron had led without a thought for the unknown nephew who would inherit a ramshackle house and the tumbledown farms that remained of the estate after the previous Brancaster had sold off everything he could to live a life of riotous comfort.

But Jack could not, in good conscience, treat Leda like a servant, even if she had hired herself as his interim governess, with the scope of her salary to be settled once they reached Norfolk and she could properly assess the situation.

He had not yet told her fully what she would find. He dreaded the confession, and what it said about him. The light it cast over them all.

But he had to tell her sometime. She had not answered an advertisement and might turn straight back to her father's vicarage once she saw the lay of the land. Leda was a friend of the family, his great-aunt's favored companion, though his aunt had said not a single word about how greatly she would miss her companion of six years, nor made any insistence that Jack swiftly return Leda to her.

Friend of the family, yes. A spinster friend of his great-aunt. That was how he would consider her. He would be polite, formal, distant. Reserved.

This resolve collapsed the moment Leda entered the dining parlor. She wore a wool gray riding habit with the skirt buttoned along the side to convert it to a walking dress. The smart military cut of the jacket emphasized her bosom, and a rakish ruffle adorned her throat, framing a face pale with weariness, spots of color adorning her high cheekbones. Her hair was dressed severely, her outfit completely lacking in adornment, yet she looked capable, efficient, and delicious.

Family friend, his arse. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to whirl her close in a dance and feel her body fit to his, warm and pliant. He wanted her in his bed.

He wanted her in his house, buxom at bed and board, bound there by promises of marriage. Heaven help him, he wanted her for his wife.

Her, and none other.

More fool he.

While Leda nibbled on toast, her ladyship spoke at length of the beautiful prospect of Holme Hall (not mentioning the near perpetual and often chilly wind from the North Sea), the grand building itself on the Jacobean pattern (perhaps she did not know how much it had fallen into disrepair since her childhood), and the pleasant neighborhood about (nothing but farms, wind mills, and marshes, dotted with the occasional chalk pit and lime kiln). Clearly, she wanted Leda to look with favor on the place, but Jack feared she was only setting them both up for disappointment. She saw them off with great cheer, as if they were embarking on their wedding trip.

"Why did you change your mind?"

Jack caught Leda in the small hallway while Gibbs levered her trunk down the stairs, looking aggrieved by the manual labor. Jack took her valise and studied her wan face. Violet smudges darkened her eyes to a dull gray matching her dress, and she pressed her lips into a thin line.

"A woman's prerogative," she said.

She was not being forthright with him. But when was a woman ever honest?

"You will forget all about me," Leda said to Lady Plume, who walked with them out of doors to see who was passing in the Crescent. "I'll return to find you've given Mrs. Hobart or Madame Nou?ier my post."

"No one could ever replace you, Leda, dear," Lady Plume said serenely, scanning the figures promenading in the vast green across from the Crescent while Jack and Gibbs loaded luggage on the dogcart. "Though you do know I detest being alone. And it would be a shame to let your room sit empty, when it has such a pleasant prospect."

Leda stewed as they rode to the coaching inn, confirming Jack's suspicions that she was not entirely leaving of her own free will. But what drove her, then?

At the White Hart, as they stood in the dirt-packed inn yard while their things were loaded somewhat haphazardly atop the coach headed to Chippenham, Jack recalled the package she had mailed to Kellaways. He wondered again who it was for, and what they meant to her. Women of his station were almost relentlessly forthcoming about their business, themselves a chief subject of occupation and interest. Leda remained mysterious and tight-lipped.

He was bringing a woman of whom he knew almost nothing, of neither her character nor her past, neither her breeding nor her education, into his home, to look after those dearest to him.

He must be daft.

She stepped close, taking his hand as he helped her into the coach, and the scent of almonds swept through his head, clearing every thought. He followed her inside like a stag in rut, led by sheer instinct. Daft, indeed.

The leather seat creaked as he lowered to the bench seat beside her, trying not to press his length along hers. The interior seated only six adults, and all needed to be small adults if they were to avoid banging knees with the person opposite, and each occupy their allotted amount of space. Jack had enjoyed the breath of his shoulders when Leda curled against him in Lady Plume's parlor, her fingers digging into his muscle as she clung to him for a kiss. Now he crowded her unmercifully.

A woman's strident voice sounded from outside the carriage, well before she poked her head inside. "—don't see why you couldn't hire a carriage and transport your family in some comfort. No, my husband must always be mixing business with pleasure. Bringing samples on a family visit. Showing us off like his wares."

The matron, much against current fashion, wore bulky petticoats that filled out the skirts adorning her more than ample form. A younger woman, nearly the same size, climbed in after her, and the third seat opposite was taken by a slender, meek-looking man in a rateen coat and pantaloons, who clutched a large leather case.

Jack hoped his companion, the male voice currently responding with equal distemper to the matron's complaints, might match the other in size. No such luck. A very fine and expansive figure of a man clambered inside with a significant squeak of springs as the body of the coach depressed. Along with a truly generous girth dotted with an extravagance of buttons, he hauled in with him an enormous duffle surtout and tall round hat. He made two of Jack, even accounting for the shoulders.

"Fustian, Patricia. This is the fastest way to return us home to Sheldon, and you know my darling creatures cannot be left on their own too long. They might pine for us, and what taste would that give the meat?"

He turned to Jack, who was pressed unbearably between them by the gentleman's presence on one side and Leda's soft heat on the other. Of the two, it was Leda who most addled his brain. He was disabused directly of the hope that he might not have to participate in the further torment of conversation while being pressed like a sausage into his seat.

"Heard of Wiltshire bacon, I suppose? I'm a prime producer. Best to be had in these parts. And we —" He nodded importantly at the man with the leather case— "my factor and I, we've just struck a bargain to send all our flitches to the estate at Bathwick. Now what do you say to that! You're riding with a personal supplier to Sir William Pulteney, one of the richest men in all England! Didn't know when you wed me, did you, Patricia, that one day you'd be rubbing shoulders with baronets, did you, love? I fancy one day you'll be proud to claim your shackle is Mr. Horace Clutterbuck, esquire."

Jack now placed the smell emanating from the leather case and the attire of their fellow travelers. The features of his seatmate, rounded and prominent, put him in mind of his porcine charges.

Leda, it seemed, could not let this self-importance swell without taking out a pin. She leaned forward to address the newcomer.

"You will be pleased to know, sir, that you and your family are in company worthy of your eminence." Jack shook his head, and she ignored him. "For here beside you is the Baron Brancaster of Holme Hall."

"What! A baron!" The gentleman also leaned forward to peer around Jack, which had the effect of compressing him further into his seat. He turned his small, surprised eyes on Jack. "You don't say."

"Oh, your lordship." Patricia drew out an enormous silk fan and waved it, further decreasing the available space to breathe. "An honor, I'm sure."

"A baron," Clutterbuck marveled. "Jenny, sit up straight and make your curtsey. An unmarried baron, did you say? Unless you…" He attempted to survey Leda, crushing Jack further.

"Mrs. Wroth," Jack muttered. "I don't suppose it would be more comfortable if you—" He made a helpless gesture in the small bit of space before him. Her almond scent grew richer in the confined area, beneath it whatever herbs she stored in her wardrobe with her clothing, and under that, some deeper scent of her own, the arousing scent of woman.

"I suppose I might." She squirmed in her seat, trying to free herself. Jack solved the problem by scooping her into his lap. Immediately, the pressure eased, and he could breathe again.

Warmth. Softness. A female in his arms again. He'd forgotten, before he came to Bath, how delightful that could be. Longing stirred, seated deeper than mere physical sensation.

Her cheeks reddened, and she held herself stiffly as she faced their companions.

"Mrs. Wroth, his governess," she said crisply. "This is to say, I am not his governess, but hired by him to be governess to his daughter."

"Oh. Married, then." Mrs. Clutterbuck's face fell.

"Widowed," Jack said, his words muffled against Leda's shoulder.

Jenny regarded them both dubiously, clearly uncertain as to whether she should lay out her feminine charms for a baron who would travel in a stagecoach with his governess most improperly perched on his knee.

Jack faced a different problem, perceived in full when the horses moved, jolting the conveyance into motion. Leda shifted, her body jounced backward by the movement, her bottom resting directly atop his groin. The thick wool of her skirts shrouded the shape of her, but the mere contact was sufficient to make him stand to full attention.

It had been far, far too long since he'd taken his ease with a woman. He was woefully alert to every sensation caused by this one.

It was nearly fifteen miles to Chippenham, a journey likely to last up to three hours, and he was going to be in agony the entire time.

Patricia took out her knitting and enjoined her daughter to do the same. Clutterbuck and his factor engaged in a discussion of how they might increase production to furnish Bathwick with its bacon. They all, at different points, engaged Leda in conversation. They tried to engage Jack, but his remarks were barely coherent. Leda sat in his lap, her body slender and strong, her body all warm softness, her scent a cloud that fogged his brain.

He didn't want to speak to the Clutterbucks of Holme Hall and the grand life he did not lead, one lacking social engagements, political clout, rounds of visits with important neighbors. He didn't want to reveal to Leda, not yet, the virtual isolation in which he lived, fields on three sides of him and on the fourth a sharp, sheer cliff to a cold sea. She would learn soon enough that neighbors did not call, and the mad Baron Brancaster was not invited to harvest festivals or Yuletide feasts or planting celebrations.

There was no village for him to be the benevolent lord, only Hunstanton nearby, where shopkeepers did him an honest trade, their eyes wary as they conducted business. Around him lived his handful of tenants paying rents he couldn't in good conscience raise when he'd done nothing to improve the land or its buildings, having no means to do so. And with him lived his quiet daughter, bowed into silence by too many losses of her young life, and ghosts.

The image was not enough to quell his body's response to Leda. The consequence of a man deprived. In one respect, he was gratified at the reminder that his manhood still functioned, despite everything. He'd forgotten the sheer pleasure it could be, his shaft thick and hard, his thighs heavy, the back of his mind light with the loss of blood. Such arousal reordered his priorities, centered everything around the sensations of his body. The sway of Leda's soft bottom against his lap, the way he was certain her bottom, even through the layers of padding, slid back and forth along his thighs. Her soft, fast breaths as he held an arm about her waist to keep her from tumbling to the filthy floor.

If he didn't contain himself, the ride alone would work him to climax. And he must not, under any circumstances, imagine a way he could work her skirts around his waist, move aside the heavy layers of fabric, unbutton his fall and slide himself into the warm crevice of her body, burying himself inside her as the coach rocked them both to bliss. That thought would make him spill in his pantaloons, and the stain would show when they arrived in Chippenham. He gritted his teeth and leashed his body, unable to focus on anything but the exquisite torture of Leda rubbing against him, mile after mile, and being denied the ultimate release.

They rolled at long last into the yard of the Angel, the horn trumpeting their arrival. The Clutterbucks clambered out, the men still debating hocks versus back fat and where to source their salt, the women clearly disappointed that riding with a titled peer of the realm had not enriched their lives in any discernible fashion, not even to leave them juicy gossip to share with their friends, much less an offer of marriage for Jenny.

Leda slid off his lap with a sigh of relief, and Jack clenched his teeth at the final caress, and the cold that rushed in after. He might be blue balled for life, unable to service a woman ever again, broken from being over-sensitized for so long.

Well, it was no more than he deserved, wasn't it?

"I beg your pardon." Her cheeks still bore those flags of color, and her eyes were a brilliant, tormented indigo.

"I beg yours," he said through an iron jaw. "I saw no other way to spare us both suffocation."

They were alone in the coach, which rocked again as the horses were unharnessed, their luggage unloaded from the basket in the back. She looked vaguely tousled, wisps of hair fanning about her face, her cheeks pink as if she'd been pinching them. He could yank her to him, press those sweet lips beneath his own, have her skirts up and his torment over in a moment, a few brief, hard strokes. He shuddered at the exquisite agony the picture produced.

"You might bespeak a private parlor for us to collect ourselves." His voice was a dry rasp. A terrible idea. In a private parlor he might press her against the wall or over a chair, toss all that wool out of his way, and finish what the journey had promised. He imagined Leda's cheeks flushing with arousal, then satisfaction as he brought her to a fast, hard release.

Dolt. He needed to bring himself under control. Fast and hard would not satisfy what had built in him. He needed hours. They needed a room.

"We won't have long at this stop, they said. Barely enough time for tea."

"We are not continuing by coach. I am arranging a post chaise."

He hobbled behind her as she proceeded through the double doors into the sturdy inn, lit by several bays of windows all showing an iron-gray, glowering sky. She paused inside the small wooden hall with the innkeep's counter and the doors opening to the common room beyond. Her brows drew together.

"A chaise is an expense?—"

"That is well worth the comfort."

Her cheeks flushed again, and Jack could have kicked himself for his insensitivity. "You'll require a chaperone, of course."

"A chaperone? No. You forget I am a widow."

"Not even widows are approved for traveling the countryside with strange men, I am sure. It will appear…" He let the sentence dangle, silenced by the longing that struck him at the image that followed. Leda as his companion, sharing meals and carriages and rooms and beds.

Her brows lifted this time. She had such an expressive face. "A dalliance?"

A mild term for what he imagined, which was colored by the hot blood rushing through his ears and, still, his nether regions. Her lips were carmine red, as if she'd been biting them. Precisely as he wished to do.

"No." There would be no dalliance. He had to tell her, at some point, but he could not bear for her to know what a failure he had been as a husband, a lover. What a failure he was now as a father, as a landlord, as a baron. As a man.

She didn't know yet and, when she regarded him with those enormous eyes, there was still a chance he could be something other than what he was, in her imagination at least. Someone better, stronger, a man in truth, not a broken shell.

A man walking in behind them jostled Jack, and out of instinct he grasped Leda's arm to shield her. A mistake. Heat soared between them, like a fire pumped with a bellows. Her lips parted. She was so close. He could simply take her into his arms, take her upstairs, relieve the pressure about to make him explode?—

And show her what a failure he truly was.

"There will be no dalliance," he said roughly, squeezing her arm.

She narrowed her eyes. Was she indignant? Hurt? Did she want him, despite everything? Hope leaped up like a wild hare, bouncing off the inside of his chest. If it could be different with her…

But it wouldn't. And she should know, before she subjected herself to hours and days alone with him in an enclosed carriage, what he had done to Anne-Marie.

"But there will be coffee." She separated her shoulder from his grip. "Which I will be drinking while you arrange for the chaise."

Chippenham being a stop on the busy London-Bristol road, all the post chaises were currently in use, Jack reported a short time later as he found her in the tavern. The innkeeper expected at least one return later that day, but could not give them an exact time of arrival.

The lines around Leda's eyes went white, and she gripped the jasperware cup holding her coffee with both hands, as if to steady herself. "I cannot stay here."

Jack looked around the noisy tavern, thronged with all sorts of people, from nattily dressed tradesmen and aproned women in traveling cloaks to laborers in their fustian jackets. He ought to have hired the private parlor for her to sit her coffee in quiet. Another man worthy of the title of his lordship—or worthy to be the man providing for Leda Wroth—would do this much for her. But Jack was all too aware of the lightness of his pockets, which he would be obliged to empty to deliver them to Hunstanton and hope for no accidents along the way.

Still, he had not thought Leda the type to be bothered by the common press. She hadn't struck him as the supercilious sort.

Some instinct prompted him to glance toward one corner, shadowed under a first-floor balcony with more tables and chairs that looked out over the rest of the room. A man sat in the gloom, staring intently at Leda. He was dressed like a gentleman in a dark cloth coat and grey pantaloons, but wore a hungry, calculating look. Jack guessed him to be an upper servant, perhaps employed at one of the manors hereabout, waiting for an employer to finish a task. His intense concentration on Leda made the hair on the back of Jack's neck stand on end.

He had been thick-headed, again, to assume her conscious of class. As a woman, she must be conscious always of her well-being. Anne-Marie had taught him this much.

"Of course," Jack said. "What do you wish? We could wander the market and see the Shambles and the Yelde Hall, if you like quaint medieval relics. If you wish newer, we could look at the canal, which I hear was just completed. Or visit the shops?"

He hoped she would not ask him to purchase her anything. As it was he hoped they would find a modest place for dinner, were they forced to wait that long for a vehicle.

As they stood, the man in the corner stood also and hastened over, barring their way. He made no acknowledgement to Jack, his gaze pinned on Leda.

"Mrs. Toplady," he said, his voice low and somehow menacing.

Leda didn't freeze so much as recoil, as if absorbing a blow. She blinked and swallowed. "No. You have mistaken me for someone else."

The man leaned close and peered into her face. "Them eyes. Who's to forget them eyes?"

"I am Mrs. Wroth. Good day." She tried stepping around him, but the man didn't move.

Jack came between them. He was not quite the eye level of the other man—his kind father had bequeathed Jack many gifts, but not height. Still, the breadth of his shoulders counted for much.

"You heard the lady," Jack said. "She is not who you think."

The man straightened and regarded Jack, the look of calculation returning. "Or perhaps she's not who you think."

Jack glanced back to find the man watching as he escorted Leda out of the dim tavern to the yard, which was currently quiet, only a boy sweeping away remains from the last visitors and an ostler grooming a horse. Past the arched gate that admitted the horses, on a wooden bench along the street, two gaffers sat smoking their pipes and observing the street.

"You do not wish to be in this inn, or you do not wish to be in this town?" Jack inquired.

She'd been stiff as a scalded cat since the morning, when he announced the first leg of the journey was Chippenham. When the man confronted her, she'd reared like a shrew flushed from its burrow, ready to sink in its venomous teeth.

She braced her shoulders, as if bearing up under a heavy yoke. "I—know people in this area. From my marriage, and—before."

"Was Chippenham where you and Mr. Wroth made your nest of marital bliss?" Why he was so dratted envious of a dead man, Jack could not say. It sat ill with him. "Then surely there is some acquaintance you would wish to look in on. It would fill the time while we wait."

She turned toward the open market square, avoiding a tradeswoman approaching with a young boy in tow. "There are people I would wish to see. And others I would not. My marriage did not…end happily."

Her expression was as stoic as the Sphinx, but tension tightened the corners of her eyes.

"You and Mr. Wroth did not get on?"

Now why should that twist so in his chest? Glee that she had not been happily married, no more than Jack was. She would not still carry a torch for a man she disliked. But alarm, also, for what she might have suffered in her marriage. God alone knew what Anne-Marie had gone through, and Jack had done nothing to offer her ease.

"Let us not speak of him." She drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, though the spring day was turning warm.

"Very well. Where can we find these friends of yours? Avoiding the people you do not wish to see in the process."

She slanted her head. "They live outside town, in Tytherton Kellaways. I suppose I could arrange to meet you back here."

"You'd leave me to wander town all on my own, and deny me the honor of being your escort? There's only so long one can be entertained gazing into a canal." He was desperately eager to spend the day with her. To meet these people who had known Leda Wroth well before he did.

She bit her lip, and Jack heroically conquered the urge to tug the tormented flesh free and soothe it under his thumb. Get a hold of yourself, man .

She pressed her hands together, fingers plucking at her beaver gloves, practical for traveling. "I would beg you not to ask questions."

This time his brows climbed. Leda Wroth was a woman of secrets. He was hardly surprised.

"Keeping in mind," she added, twining her fingers together, "that as someone who is hiring me to come into your home and have the keeping of your daughter while I arrange a true governess, you would be right to ask as many questions as you wished. Under normal circumstances I would advise it."

"I will be content with what you tell me, but now I cannot be kept away. The curiosity would consume me."

She smiled, though only one side of her mouth quirked up. She was still tense as a harp string. "That is a woman's weakness."

"Oh, mine as well. Very much."

He offered her his elbow, and she took it. The weight of her small hand sliding over his skin lit a warmth that echoed in his groin, where his arousal lay banked, like hot embers that could flare at any time into life. Jack supposed he would always be in a state of near arousal around Leda Wroth.

But the heat spreading through his chest was of a different quality. A surge of protectiveness, and the same sense of triumph he felt when Muriel consented to share his company. Fierce pride that she chose him. Wanted him .

"You will have to consent to walking a few miles."

"I have spent days walking Smithdon Hundred end to end. Your tame Wiltshire countryside does not intimidate me."

She glanced at his feet. "You may get your boots wet."

That gave him pause. "Just where did you say you were taking me?"

"To a cottage of my sister witches, where we mean to cook you and eat you, of course."

"I'd rather an orgy," Jack replied. "Would you consider an orgy instead?"

She laughed, and a ray of spring sunshine burst in his chest. Bringing Leda Wroth merriment felt like his greatest accomplishment in quite some time.

"No orgy," she said, completely unconcerned that he had made such a wildly inappropriate suggestion. "With any luck, there will be a child present."

His curiosity heightened, but he curbed his tongue. He wanted to know so much about her. What kind of family had raised this canny, capable woman. If her blighter of a husband had hurt her, and that was why she wished not to marry again. What had driven her from Bath with that desperate, hunted look in her eyes.

What she would say if he leaned down and whispered in her ear what she had done to him, riding his knee those three hours to Chippenham. What outrageous fancies still flitted about his brain.

He had no business attempting to seduce her. He could not marry, either. That was a lark his Aunt Plume had taken into her brain, that Jack would be better served with a wife.

A governess only. A companion for Muriel. Jack did not deserve a companion. He'd not taken good enough care of the last one.

"Where do we begin, Mrs. Wroth?"

"Here, in the market. We cannot turn up empty-handed. Then I will introduce you to Maud Heath and her Causeway."

The square held the wooden stalls called the Shambles that would be full of vendors on market days, and the old Yelde Hall, timbered in the medieval style. Leda led him toward the butcher's shop, marked by the carcasses hanging in the window, and without a qualm stepped over the gutter at the lip of the door, currently running pink with effluvia.

Jack soon realized that Mrs. Wroth knew how to do her own marketing. She bargained with the butcher for two brace of larks, a hare, and something she called Bath chaps, a pink mass enclosed in a jar of brine. Jack grew impressed as she sorted over the birds, returning one that she pronounced stale after flexing its tiny feet. When the butcher rendered another, she tipped up its tail for inspection, then professed herself satisfied.

"How do you know if a bird is fresh or stale?" Jack asked.

"The vent," she said matter-of-factly, and turned to the hare, already stripped of its fur and innards. "Now with these, you look for meat that is whitish and stiff. Blackish and flabby means the kill was some time ago. And look at the claws." She held up a long foot. "If the claws are wide and ragged, she is an older hare. If there is a small knob on the bone here," and she felt just above the foot, "it is a leveret, less than a year old. This is a youngish doe, not hung so long she will be gamey."

"Only dead four days, mum," the butcher assured her. "Can I interest you in a cut of mutton or ham? A side of beef?"

"I will look at your jellies, if you have them, and perhaps some salted fish."

"Calves' foot, hartshorn, ribband jelly, and any fish you want. Herring, plaice, whiting, pike?—"

Leda sorted through her purse for the proper coin, and Jack took her packages as the butcher finished wrapping. "You would make a formidable housekeeper, Mrs. Wroth. Are you certain my aunt has made full use of your skills?"

Leda bid the butcher a courteous good day. "I am happy with the employment Lady Plume has given me."

"As a non-matchmaker."

"As a person equipped to discreetly resolve difficulties and settle affairs of the heart." She turned, her face hidden beneath the brim of her capote bonnet, and pointed down a broad street. "That is the other Causeway, the one lined with the burgage houses, the homes of the rich wool merchants, if you want to see them."

"I do not wish to spark envy in my breast. Let us go join Maud."

She glanced at him from under her bonnet, her eyes a bright blue. "I have heard only the highest praises of Holme Hall."

"From my great-aunt, who knew it more than five decades ago, when her father and brother had lands, funds, and proper standing in the neighborhood. Her nephew went some way toward diminishing all of those."

There was no keeping the bitterness from his tone. The previous baron, having no direct issue, had demonstrated a corresponding lack of interest in handing the estate over either thriving or intact.

And as it was attached to the title, the estate would go to the next heirs male. Jack didn't know who that might be, the Burnham family having cut his father when he chose to go into trade. Some clerk in some dusty government office would be busy tracing lines of descent once he died, Jack supposed. He only cared that the estate be yielding income he might leave as a bequest to Muriel, so she would be provided for after he was gone. And she could provide for the others.

"I suppose I shall see it for myself soon enough."

"And go running back to your comfortable position with her ladyship as soon as might be arranged, I don't doubt."

She stopped on the old stone bridge crossing the Avon, a fortification that looked as if it had been there since the times of the Saxons, if not the Romans before them.

"Lord Brancaster."

He faced her. "Jack."

Her lips parted slightly, that delectable red. "Milord Brancaster. I hope you know I will stay as long as you have need of me."

Stay to help him? He'd rather thought she was running from something.

Here in the bend of the river the water flowed lazily, though a small breeze blew from the weir, carrying with it the scent of salmon. Fresh water had such a different character than the pounding waves of the sea. And this town had more of a rugged medieval landscape in the points and angles of the buildings, so different from the expansive neoclassical rectangles that had smoothed over Bath. This was more like Norwich, where he was born, and the familiarity loosened a weight that had long sat heavy on Jack's chest.

So did her promise. He had been carrying his burdens alone for years. The very notion of having a helpmeet, an aid—simply someone to talk to—the stab in his chest was also an opening, letting in light and air.

"What if I need you never to leave?"

Now that was absurd. Why was he being absurd?

She stepped close to him as a carriage approached the bridge. "You said there will be no dalliance."

Damn it, damn it , he had. He should never have made such an outrageous declaration. His wits had been addled.

"And you said you will not be a wife."

A post chaise neared them, and the lead horse leaned down to snuffle Leda's bonnet as they passed. She laughed.

"Aye, he's an eye for a handsome lady!" The postilion, a gent of many decades, lifted his hat. "Good day, mum. Sir."

"That had better not be a vehicle we could have rented," Jack said, watching the chaise roll past, its occupants tucked behind the front glass.

"You asked them to hold a coach for us, did you not?"

"I promised they would have our business," Jack hedged.

Her shoulders slumped, though she held up her chin. "Do you wish to go inquire?"

He studied her face. "No," he said. "I wish to see Maud Heath's Causeway, and your friends, and I'll go a bit mad if I can't have a bite of that pickled herring, which I can smell through the package."

Her brows lifted. "Is that why you are called the Mad Baron? Because you must not be denied your victuals?"

There was something behind the question, belied by her light tone. She had asked him not to inquire into her past. Did she likewise suspect he was keeping something from her?

"If you are to be allowed your secrets, Mrs. Wroth, I may equally claim the right to mine."

They stood eyeing each other, and Jack had the oddest sense of having been in this moment before. Of watching Leda Wroth step into his life, and knowing she belonged there. As if he had been waiting for her all this time.

Now, that was the maddest notion he'd had yet. Jack held out his elbow. He must shake off these notions crowding his brain, or sense would desert him entirely.

He held his breath, wondering. She clearly did not trust him, nor anyone. Why would she promise him her time?

Then she took his arm, and he breathed in relief and wonder at the sense of something firm and important sliding into place, like one brick fitting perfectly against the next.

He wanted her in his life more than he'd wanted anything. And she was the one thing he could not have.