Page 88 of The Mad Baron's Bride
How different this small, oak-paneled room was from the room they had made the family parlor in Holme Hall, which was a glowing seashell rose and gently cluttered with the girls’ many projects: Nanette’s slate with her letters, Muriel’s book of French exercises, Ellinore’s attempt at netting.
Leda walked past the bedchamber that had been hers when she lived here. She’d given it to Betsey. She and Jack had taken the master suite. Leda had suggested a smaller guest room would be enough for them when they were in residence, but Mrs. Blake had insisted. She wanted one of the smaller rooms for herself.
Jack appeared outside the door of their dressing room, his shoes sinking into the soft runner along the hallway. He had not yet finished with his toilette and wore only his waistcoat, with no neckcloth, and her gaze riveted on the strong line of his neck and throat. One of her favorite places to kiss.
His voice was warm, husky as he surveyed her dressing gown. “Everything just as you want it?”
The servants were downstairs busy in the kitchen and laying the table with the china Leda had brought with her ten years ago. She had married on the instant of her eighteenth birthday—so naïve, so resentful, knowing even then there was something wrong about the barter of innocence to feed greed. May had taken the girls for a turn in the overgrown gardens to settle them before guests arrived, and Betsey and Mrs. Blake were dressingIves, then redressing him again so he would meet the approval of the Hills.
Leda was quite sure little would meet with their approval, and nothing about her. Leda’s mother had sent her off to marriage with no better advice than to keep her own set of accounts so her housekeeper did not cheat her, never air her dirty linen in public, and accommodate her husband without complaint in everything he should require.
How much more she knew, this time around. And how different it was to delight to accommodate a husband, and feel he looked after her as well. She stepped toward Jack.
How different to have an anchor in her life now. A compass point, rather than living by her wits alone.
“I am walking with my ghosts,” Leda admitted. “It’s not as if I can feel them here—I know they’re gone, both of them. But something—lingers.” Memories. Regrets.
“Come into our dressing room. I put something away that I found when we first arrived. I’ve been thinking of moving them to the attics, but I wanted to see what you think.”
“Are you luring me into an interlude, milord? My parents are bound to arrive early, and I am not yet dressed.”
“Then you can’t mind if I muss you first.” He beckoned her into the room.
The dressing room was as large as a bedchamber, built to accommodate the powdering apparatus and furniture-sized skirts of a previous era, the extra space occupied now with their luggage.
“What did you do with Grace?”
“There was a last-minute spill on a prized tablecloth, or some such, and Grace knows just the thing to get it out. But I’ve no doubt she will be reminding everyone belowstairs she is a lady’s maid now, above such household tasks, and she shares these nuggets of knowledge out of the goodness of her heart.” He rana hand through the fall of her hair, unbound and left to dry after the morning’s washing. “You’ve made a great many dreams come true, my love.”
She stepped into his arms and raised her face for his kiss. “You flatter me.”
“Not at all. Ellinore came to us because of you. She trusted you from the first moment. So did Muriel, though she had her little claws out, I know, and might still bite you now and again. Nanette has never known mothering. You seem a veritable goddess to her.”
“Pooh.” She tilted her head to allow his kisses along her neck.
“A goddess to me as well,” he whispered, and she shivered at his warm breath on her skin. “Of course, I was half in love with you from my aunt’s letters, well before we met.”
“What do you mean?” She hummed with pleasure as he skimmed his lips over her shoulder, pushing aside the neckline of her loose gown. His beard was soft, his lips softer.
“Aunt Plume would not stop going on about her clever companion, her wondrous Leda. I suspected she was trying to entice me. Insisted I come in person to talk with you about finding a governess. And when I saw you in the Assembly Rooms, in that gown trimmed with scarlet, so calm and queenly, with a queue of people lining up for your attention and advice—I knew why my aunt made me visit.”
“You didn’t like me one bit.” Leda shivered as she recalled their first dance, and the spell he had wrapped around her. The way she had longed for him instantly. Had she known then what he would come to mean to her, that he would be the element of life that she’d never known she sought? Had she been looking for him all that time—lover, companion, her solid rock, her sure refuge, the piece that made her heart complete.
“I kissed you under my aunt’s roof when I had known you less than a day. Do you suppose I am in the habit of falling upon women in libraries?”
“Not anymore,” Leda said. “Only me.”
“Yes.” He kissed above her breasts, and the fire, always banked for him, began to burn. “Only you,” he said. “Now—who do you suppose procured these?”
He pulled the cloth from a set of four prints leaning atop one of the dressing tables. Leda put a hand to her mouth, suppressing a giggle. All of them depicted nude couples in the midst of sexual congress, in varied and interesting positions.
“Oh, these are Bertram’s. He was very proud of his collection. He spent a great deal of time—admiring them.”
“I believe Eustace admired them well. They were on full display in here, no doubt for his own delectation.” Jack slid his arms around her from behind, and his mouth was beneath her ear again, trailing hot kisses. “Which one of them is your favorite?”
“I’ve never tried them. I saw these prints once, when I entered Bertram’s dressing room to tell him something, and he bellowed at me to go away. A wife wasn’t to be—entertained in this fashion.” He was still at the edges of the room somehow, his glowering presence, his animal scent, meaty and rank.
“What an utter fool.” Jack pulled a low stool toward them. “Put your foot on here.”
