Page 69 of The Mad Baron's Bride
The ghost was dancing. She whirled and twirled a ribbon over her head like a maid at the May fair. She leapt from side to side, a clumsy hop. Dark waves of hair spilled down her back, and her tiny feet were bare.
Not a woman, nor the ghost of a woman. The ghost of a girl. A tiny girl, bone thin, with eyes that captured the darkness. She turned and saw Leda and froze mid-step, a silent pillar, moonlight from the window falling about her, shining through her white gown. The ribbon fluttered to rest, dangling from her small fingers, which looked translucent.
It had happened, just as Leda feared: her mind had truly cracked. She had gone mad again, this time seeing apparitions. At least she didn’t have a knife in her hand.
Leda backed away, shaking, her entire body cold with shock. She couldn’t stay here with Jack, not now that what she feared had come to pass. She had to run again. She didn’t know where. She had nowhere to go that was safe. Nowhere that would take her.
Jack. Leaving him would be agony.
She stumbled to another door, but not her door. It opened.
His room, too, lay silvered with strange light, as if the furniture, the hearth, the rug before it all lay on the border between this world and another. A door to his dressing room on one side; the door to her powder room on the other. The great bed loomed like a ship at anchor, curtains fluttering in a breeze from the window, which stood open a slit. Cold crept around it, clenched her body. So cold. She needed warmth, and safety, and someone to hold her even if she were mad. She needed Jack.
“Leda?” His sleepy voice slid from the silvery dark as the mattress dipped beneath her weight. Soft, like feathers. His mattress had been turned and plumped, not like that in the mistress’s room, flat and hard and empty for years.
“I’m dreaming. Hallucinating. I saw a ghost.” Her ghostsandhis. There were too many ghosts to account for. The shadows inside the bed curtains were warm and quiet and smelled faintly of a rich spice. Of him. She moved closer.
“You’re real.” He touched her arm, slid his hand from elbow to wrist, then back up to her shoulder, ruffling the sleeve of her dressing gown and the bedgown beneath.
“There’s something in the nursery.”
“Shh. You’re safe. Everyone here is safe.” He kissed her, and she sank into his bed, into his body. He was so warm. He threw heat, like the stove in his kiln, searing her skin.
“The girls,” she tried again when he moved to kiss her neck, her collarbones.
“Are safe. I promise. It’s all right.”
She shivered at the delicious slide of his mouth, more heat. It seeped into her, erasing the chill. There were no ghosts here. There was only Jack, solid, firm,safe.
Kissing her. She squirmed as he pressed her onto her back, tugged the fabric away, and kissed her breasts. Her nipples hardened, reveling in his mouth, better than memory. Heat reached into her core, curled tight, longing. He slid a hand down her ribs, down her belly, between her legs, cupping her there, where the heat coiled and seethed, as if he knew.
She clamped her thighs together, remembering the pleasure. She was not sure she could bear it again. She wanted it more than anything.
“Tell me you’ll stay with me. That you want this, too.Faire l’amour.”
To make love. She whimpered as he sucked on her breasts, tugging a nipple between his teeth. That place where his hand was ached for him. Without meaning to she rubbed against him.
“Let me please you, Leda.” He took her mouth again, his tongue plunging inside, and she melted, thought receding like anoutgoing tide. He muttered the plea against the crook of her neck and shoulder. “Let me see what it can be like.”
He wanted her. This beautiful, darling man cravedher,with her madness, with her spotted past, with all her ghosts. He desired her, and in his arms she felt beautiful, and powerful as the moon with its pull on the water.
“Show me,” she whispered, and parted her legs.
He didn’t dive straight in, as she expected, as she thought men did. Instead he kept kissing her. He kissed all over her breasts and below, pushing fabric out of the way. Then he pushed the fabric of her skirts up, baring her legs, and she squirmed.
“What are you doing?”
He kissed down one thigh, down her knee, and she trembled. That wantonness was washing over her again, its own madness. She felt damp between her legs at the very thought that he might fill her.
“I want to try something. I read about it. They say—it is very pleasing for a woman.” He pushed at her hips, and she jumped at his hands on her flesh, warm, his fingers slightly callused. “Scoot up on the bed.”
“I don’t—what are you?—”
“Ssh. It’s just a kiss. And if you don’t like it, tell me to stop.”
“But how can you kiss when you are down—there…oh.”
He pushed her thighs apart, gently, and now she knew what he meant. Leda covered her eyes with her hands as he probed with his lips and tongue the parts of her he had discovered with his fingers. She moaned at the indecency.
