Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

L eda paused outside the half-open door of the nursery, hearing the murmur of girlish voices within. Part of her hesitated to intrude on the happy circle, not certain she'd be welcomed. She'd come to ensure that Ellinore felt at home, that she'd been seen to and put at her ease. She also wanted to show Muriel that she cared about the girl for her own sake, and not because Leda was desperately fascinated with her father.

Yet she hardly felt she should be among innocent children after what she had just done downstairs with Jack. The indecency of her actions might be writ on her face, and they would perceive the signs her lust and not be innocent any longer.

Lust. Pleasure. Ecstasy, really. She felt flushed with it, her body languid and humming. She'd been a complete wanton, pushing herself at him, but she'd been seized with the powerful wish to erase, if she could, the self-loathing on his face. She couldn't bear that he was not supremely confident in knowing, down to his fingertips, how wonderful he was, how fine his character, how noble his heart, how sound his intellect, how splendid—so very splendid—his body.

A kiss had seemed a logical way to show him all this. One kiss of reassurance. And instead, she had been transformed with a new knowledge of her body's desires. He'd unleashed a side of her she'd never acknowledged, primal, full of passion.

And, heaven help her, now that she knew what pleasure was with him, she wanted it again. And again. And again.

"—doesn't know?" Ellinore's voice, hushed and curious. "Hant no one told her?"

"She'd leave my father flat." This from Muriel. "She wouldn't want him anymore. It's why no one here does."

Another noise followed, a creak as the wooden rocker shifted, then a sound between a sniffle and a hiss.

"Thought that's what you wanted," Ellinore said. "For her to be on her way."

Silence stretched out, and then another voice, one she didn't recognize. Not Grace. Not May. A low, guttural utterance, more like a moan.

"I do not like her," Muriel flared. "I said I want her gone, and I do."

"But she bought ribbons for Nanette, dint she?" Ellinore said. "Here, chick, come about and I'll fix tha proper."

Leda told herself to leave, go to her room, as she'd told Jack she was doing when she left him in the small parlor downstairs after dinner. No good would come of eavesdropping as the girls discussed her. They had a right to their own opinion of her, whether they knew of her shamelessness with their father or not.

She'd paused in her step, dallying in the hall outside the nursery, because the exchange of confidences between sisters made her nostalgic for a tender time in her own life when she and her sister had stayed up nights whispering to one another about anything and everything, while the moon floated past their window like a double Gloucestershire cheese that monthly was eaten and then filled up again.

She'd been so pleased, absurdly so, when it had seemed Muriel wanted to name her little corn dolly Judith, after Leda had remarked on the woman's cleverness. She ought to have known better.

Muriel made an outraged huff. Through the slit in the door Leda saw her dart forward, lift her hand, jab at something. She came back holding a ribbon. "That one's for Judith," Muriel cried. "You can't have them all, you little greedy guts."

She busied herself tying the ribbon about the little doll. "Clever Judith," she crooned. "Pretty Judith."

"Whiff, now you've made her mad," Nora said. "Is the little cat going to bite us?"

Muriel tossed her head. "Dint you see all the marks I have from her? You'll have your share soon enough, I shink."

Who was with them at this hour? Leda wondered. Grace and May, after work from dawn to dusk, ought to be well in their beds. She'd sent the tea things back with May an hour ago for precisely that reason, so someone wasn't waiting up for her while she sat in the parlor, spinning out all the time she could with Jack.

"Whiff, don't let that Grace hear you speak Norfolk." Ellinore moved behind Muriel, both girls visible now through the slit of light falling through the door. Leda was ashamed to realize she'd inched closer. "Though how we're to understand a word in her Wiltshire dialect, I'm bound I don't know. Worse than Nanny."

A response to this came from deeper within the room, a point which had fixed both girls' attention. It was a low drone of a voice, but Leda couldn't make out the words. Whatever their content, they made Muriel laugh. Ellinore shook her head with a rueful smile.

"But your da hant said a thing neither? I don't see how the all of you?—"

The door creaked beneath Leda's hand. She only wanted a peek. The girls were looking at someone—who was with them?

The girls whirled toward the door, Ellinore's face surprised and wary, Muriel's full of horror. A muffled sound came within, much like the mewl of a kitten, then a thump. Leda pushed the door further.

"Is ought amiss?"

Muriel's mouth worked but produced no speech.

"You've just caught us heading to bed, missus," Ellinore said. "That's what we're about, innit, Muriel?"

Muriel rolled her eyes about the room like a frightened rabbit. Leda followed her gaze. The door to the inner room, the bedroom, stood open and dark. Leda had never been inside there but saw the outline of a cot placed near the wall, no doubt an addition for Ellinore. They would have to see about getting her a proper room; she was old enough for it. The wardrobe in the nursery was shut up, the bookshelves all orderly. Three plates and cups sat on at the little table, their tea things not yet put away.

Leda walked across the room, spotting a splash of color. The wooden floor creaked as she bent and lifted a length of ribbon.

"The mate to the one you're holding, I believe?" She turned to Muriel. "For your doll, Nanette?"

"Her name is Judith." Muriel took the ribbon with great caution, as if Leda might nip off her arm if she drew close.

Leda flushed. She would never do right, not where Muriel was concerned, and she detected Ellinore's look of gentle pity. Waves crashed on the beach outside, the tide embracing the rocky shingle. A sliver of chill wind crept around the window panes.

"Oh," Leda said. "I thought I heard you refer to a Nanette."

Muriel's mouth dropped open and her eyes flared wide, but again, words failed her.

"Oi, you know how tha do, tha wee ones," Ellinore said. She moved a finger at her temple, as if drawing an invisible string. "With the friends you don't see."

"Made-up friends." Leda nodded. "I had many when I was Muriel's age. I also tried to make a pet of a cow, a hedgehog, our local badger, and a hare that lived beneath my mother's dog rose."

Muriel wrinkled her nose. "A badger? They bite."

"And thus I do not recommend attempting to befriend them. I am sure you wouldn't be so unwise."

Her skin prickled with the oddest sense that she was being watched, but the door to the hall stood empty. Jack had not yet come to bed. She wondered if he sat in the parlor still, brooding before a dying fire. He'd spoken so sanely to her, of Norwich and the neighborhood and Lady Plume and bricks, as if at dinner his hand had not delved into her private place, as if he had not devoured her breasts like sweet cakes. Her body still savored the ease following her release, yet her chest flushed with heat, with new longing.

The girls said nothing to encourage further conversation. They simply watched, waiting for her to leave. She wasn't wanted here.

Cold slipped around the panes in her own room, carrying the nip of the sea. Moonlight floated on the waters. A small head broke the surface, a small pointed face. Another joined it. The mermaids at their play.

They belonged here, in the cold sea, with the sea thrift blooming above the cliffs and the great broad vault of the sky. Leda didn't belong here, though. She wondered if she belonged anywhere.

Muriel didn't want her, but Norfolk embraced Leda.

Mrs. Leech consulted Leda to plan menus, showing great satisfaction at Leda's acknowledgment of the cook's undisputedly superior knowledge of local cuisine, especially the seafoods. Leda nodded along to every proposal, made an occasional suggestion so Mrs. Leech would know Leda was making an effort, and was rewarded with delicious, warm meals, beautifully presented, and Mrs. Leech's confidences whenever the housemaids needed guidance or correction, stores were low, or she thought Henry had been too long at his task of checking over the late baron's supply in the wine cellar.

Leda sensed that Mrs. Leech pitied her about something—or sympathized? The staff often watched her as if they were waiting for something, the proverbial other shoe. Did they expect her to learn something about Jack, or the family, and run screaming from the hall?

Did they know her history, and were waiting for her to run mad? But their manner was all respectful warmth, and an unexpected deference, as if she were the lady of the house already in their eyes.

Jack said he had never eaten so well and confirmed that the staff were turning themselves out to impress Leda. Even the boy in the stables made an extra effort to brush out the old draught horse's mane when Leda was taking the cart.

"I can't think why any of them should regard me with favor," she told Jack one night over a dish of Stewkey blues, a special cockle fished only from the dunes near Stiffkey, and acquired by Mrs. Leech on a special trip to the town of Burnham Market. They had a unique blue cast to the shell and, dressed with vinegar and a dash of lemon, Leda found them delicious.

Jack pried open a shell with his fork. "You don't see it? You make me respectable. It's clear you're a sensible, steady sort of woman who isn't prone to fancies or freaks of the imagination. Everyone hopes you will marry me and reform me, chasing my madness away. Or, if reform fails, live with me as I am, turning the mad baron only slightly eccentric."

She suffered freaks of imagination in spades, Leda wanted to reply. And she was the last person on earth to offer a cure for madness. She was more likely to infect him with hers, did the demon inside her awake.

She distracted herself with the stack of invitations that had been pouring in, which she had brought into dinner to discuss with him.

"You do seem to be invited everywhere lately, when I thought you were the pariah of the neighborhood. I suppose everyone wants to take my measure."

"How many of them have warned you off me?" Jack asked, squeezing lemon onto his next shell. "And how many have recommended you marry me at once?"

"I hear all of that advice, from nearly everyone," Leda reflected. "The ladies warn me about you, then point out all your marriageable qualities. It significantly hinders my quest to locate a governess, you know, when the conversation turns always to our wedding."

"Perhaps you should take their counsel and accept my suit." Jack speared a round of pale flesh and popped it into his mouth.

She felt the blush, the heat of it, climbing her collarbones and neck. Jack wanted her, too, and the elegant panels of the parlor, painted in a deep blue gray that matched the cockle shells, bore witness. He showed his care in the way he sought her out when he returned home from his bricks, washing off the dust and clay. He showed her affection in the clasp of his hand on her arm or waist when he helped her in and out of the market cart as they made calls. In the looks of admiration he cast her over the dinner table, over the tops of the wavering candles, and in the pleasant conversations they had in the parlor in the evenings, often with the girls keeping company.

Ellinore was improving her reading, and Muriel her sewing, and their quiet chatter was the dearest thing Leda ever heard. She often thought Ellinore might wish to linger with the adults, learning their ways, but she went up to the nursery when Muriel wished it, leaving them alone, when Jack inevitably stole a kiss or two. Each kiss turned her to pudding in his arms. He made her lose her senses entirely.

Leda sensed that, if she showed the slightest invitation, he would gather her close and pleasure her again as he had in the dining parlor that night, or more, whisk her off to bed. He wanted only a sign from her.

She sensed also that, did she but demand, he would, without hesitation, throw himself at her feet and offer her everything he had, all of him.

How did he dare, knowing what she was?

"We've seen all the great families hereabout, I think," Leda said. "Mrs. Styleman's sisters are all married well and provided for. Mrs. George Hogg of Thornham Hall would never leave a female relation of hers to earn her own keep." She made a face at this; Mrs. Hogg had learned, through the gossip mill that fed neighborhoods like theirs, that Leda worked as a companion for Jack's great-aunt, and made her disapproval clear.

"Mrs. Catherine Daly of Ingoldsthorpe Hall said she would inquire after anyone suitable, but she was more interested in instructing me how I might win over Muriel as a mother. Mr. Rolfe of Heacham Hall only wanted to tell me you will make no headway as a brick maker and might as well give it up before they laugh you out of Smithdon Hundred. And Caley Hall, which I thought held by a family, is now housing for customs officers who are chasing the smugglers along the coast."

She moved on to a dish of buttered samphire, her cockles depleted. "There are more families I could try, the Henleys of Sandringham, or the Fosters of Old Hall. I thought Mr. Nicholas Styleman of Snettisham Hall would be more useful, as the Stylemans seem to be a large and well-connected family. But they merely asked me about the ghost."

She had thought Jack would laugh at this. Instead he went pale as chalk and dropped his fork. "Ghost?"

Unseen fingers walked across her shoulders. She ought to have brought her shawl with her; this house could be drafty, sitting on its hill with its face to the wind.

"Because they suppose you murdered Lady Brancaster, and so her ghost must walk the halls. Their descriptions are much like what I've heard about Queen Isabelle, whom I've heard haunts Castle Rising. A woman in a white dress wisping through rooms, echoes of maniacal laughter, that sort of thing. I daresay they didn't put much imagination into the conjecture."

Jack's color changed to something slightly green. If she didn't know him better, she would say he looked guilty about something.

"I did not kill my wife."

Leda picked apart her roast partridge. "So you assured me, and so I did not abandon you in Swindon. But it is odd." She put down her knife. "I do hear voices abovestairs. And sometimes footsteps, when I would swear the maids and children were downstairs."

Jack reached for his glass of wine and took a long swallow. Red stained his lips.

"There is something I did not tell you about Anne-Marie."

Leda curled her hands into her lap. He did not push his wife off the cliff. He did not drive her to madness. He had not been cruel. She was certain of these things, she told herself. Certain.

He pushed his plate away, crumpling the linen cloth covering the table. "I have told you, after Muriel was born, she would not let me touch her."

Leda nodded. She herself, after she had conceived her plan to pass off Betsey's child as her own, had insisted Bertram not touch her. She'd welcomed the reprieve from the pawing and prodding that left her sore and raw the day after, and sometimes bleeding.

She'd never known those parts of her were capable of the pleasure she'd found with Jack. It explained a great deal about human behavior she had observed over the years.

She forced herself to sit quietly as he straightened his shoulders and drew a breath.

"She did, however, let other men touch her."

A gasp escaped Leda against her will. "She was unfaithful?" The woman must truly have taken leave of her senses, to prefer any other man to Jack.

He jerked his head. "I didn't know who. I suspected everyone. Hogg. Rolfe. Styleman, for all he's a reverend."

"Ellinore's father?" Leda guessed.

This had clearly never entered his mind. Jack stared at her. Shadows danced along the ribs of the plaster ceiling that curved overhead, rippling down the corners of the room like a whisper.

"The gypsy? He left her. Pregnant and alone. Why would she go back to him?"

Leda shivered at the anguish in his voice. "If she loved him," she tried, but she didn't understand. What woman, given Jack Burnham in her home, in her bed, would want anything, anyone else? Leda would sell her soul to belong here with him. To have him like this for dinners and evenings, for travels whenever the whim called. For the right to lie in his arms at night, wrapped in the embrace of husband and wife.

She put her hands over her face. She was going mad, to want such things, when she knew she could not have—did not deserve them. Not after what she had done. Not knowing what she was capable of.

"I am hearing voices, Jack," she whispered.

He jerked again, as if taking an invisible blow. "Ellinore will be finding her feet. And that girl, that maid we brought from Wiltshire."

He didn't understand. He couldn't. He was as sane as a brick, as steady as Pontus the work horse. However Anne-Marie had hurt him, she'd scarred his heart, but not his mind. He'd not suffered what Leda had suffered.

He wasn't a murderer.

But Leda was.

The house was dark, but far away, she heard the high, shrill cry of a babe. A cold rug pressed against her feet. Cold swirled around her bare legs beneath her shift.

"You're a sight to frighten the devil."

Toplady stood at the end of a long, narrow hallway, a hulking outline in the dark. Not Bertram, her husband. Bertram lay stabbed on the floor of his library, his eyes dull and open with shock. Eustace stood in the hall, his dark hair greasy with sweat, his teeth a gleam in the shadows.

She was dreaming. A nightmare. She must wake.

She looked down at herself and saw what she knew she would see. The ones fading to rust were from the maid, where they had cut her to free the babe struggling to emerge. The midwife knew what to do, but yet, so much blood.

There were fresher ones, though, bright red, sticking to her bodice. Her hands were sticky, too. She examined them, the red smudges on the blade and handle of the knife. Why was the carving knife in her hand?

Wake up, Leda!

"I didn't kill him." She stood as she was before the magistrate's table, bloody shift, bare feet, the knife. The room crowded with spectators gawking, whispering her guilt.

"Not in her right mind." The judge was so large, so fierce as he glared at her. Troublesome woman. "Lock her in the asylum and see if they might cure her madness."

Eustace at her side as she was loaded, hands in manacles, into the prisoner's cart, the way revolutionaries had been carried to the guillotine in France. Such a good nephew. Such a caring man, placing her valise with her one gown and shoes and hairbrush and the Bible that had belonged to her grandmother. Who had packed the bag? Betsey was gone. Mrs. Blake was gone.

The babe was gone.

"Where is it?" Eustace leaned close, hissing in her ear like the geese in the yard. "The child."

She'd killed it. They told her so. They couldn't find the body, but they said she had borne her babe and slain it, and then she had killed her husband, before or after. Childbed madness. It happened to some women, pitiable creatures. She couldn't be let around good people, of course. Not sane, god-fearing folk.

"The babe is dead." She was lying. Wake up , she urged herself as Eustace leaned in, his onion breath stirring her hair, lank and unwashed down her back.

"It had better be," he said. "And when I am ready, I will come for you. I will take you for my own and redeem you, you miserable creature. Once they've broken some of that pride." He grinned again, showing the rot in his teeth, the plump satisfaction of a man who lived only for the surfeit of his bodily desires. "And then you will have a real master."

He rubbed the bulge in his breeches, his black eyes sharp and satisfied as they gazed on her. There was the knife again in her chained hands. She raised it, pointed it toward his throat. She struck.

Someone screamed, and wept. Wake up !

It was the mermaids calling. Their sharp, weeping cries drew her to the rim of sleep, surfacing.

She lay in the mistress's suite in Holme Hall, looking out at the Wash. There were no chains, no blood, no knife. No Eustace. She wanted to cry with relief.

Moonlight outlined the waves, gently heaving. A sharp edge dug into her side, and Leda shifted on the mattress, then sat up. The mermaids had murdered her sleep, like Macbeth. Sleep, the balm of hurt minds. Or the source of nightmares. Leda rose, reaching for her dressing robe and slippers. Her cap had fallen off her head, as usual, and she let it lie on the pillow, like a weary thought.

Anne-Marie had slept in this room, tossed on this bed, kicked these covers with her restless longings. She had perhaps paced these floors and looked out on other moonlit nights, thinking of her lover.

Perhaps Jack had come to her in this bed, seeking her warmth. And his wife had turned him away.

How could she have left her children? Leda wished she could understand the woman's mind. She must have been truly desperate.

The memory clawed its way out, a monster from the dark, and Leda wasn't seeing the scene out her window, the sandy beach studded with worn, smooth stones and seaweed. Her fingers froze around the hilt of a kitchen knife, the great blade used for carving joints, for rending bone and sinew from flesh. Her bare feet pressed the cold floor of the house, Toplady's house, which had never felt like hers, not even the rooms allotted to her. Her hands were damp and crusted. And her heart beat so quickly, quivering in her chest, as if she'd drunk poison. Far away, in a distant part of the house, a baby shrieked, jolted into cold air from the womb that had safely held him all this time.

No. No. She would not go back to that nightmare. She would not let that woman into this house, Jack's house. Not with the girls here. Leda blinked, trying to clear her thoughts.

Her arm ached. She must have stabbed him. She must have stabbed him many times, from the gashes in his waistcoat, from the blood splashed on the carpet around him, part of a table, the cushion of an overturned chair. How easily the great knife must have sunk through the fabric to the soft, pale flesh beneath. How cool his skin had always felt, even when he shuddered above her in her bed. Cold sweat fell from his brow as he worked her, striving to sow his seed. She had always washed herself after, and no matter how cold the water in her basin, it had felt warmer on her skin than her husband's flesh. He was a creature entirely lacking in human warmth.

But that didn't mean she should have killed him. She was mad, as they said. So mad she could not submit to her imprisonment, which she deserved, but had spilled herself out of the window like Rapunzel following her hair, had fled like a wraith across the fields and meadows to the ship that could carry her away.

To here. To a place surrounded, embraced by the sea, knit up with legends, laden with ghosts.

A song came from afar, a singing, but not the mermaids. The blurred, wordless moaning she'd heard from the girls' room when she watched them, and swore she had heard since. It was tuneless, haunting.

There was no light beneath Jack's door, but farther down, at the end of the hall, silver light spilled from the nursery door, partly open. The singing came from there. A shadow moved across the slit of light, a weaving pattern. As she neared Leda heard the creak of the floor, the quiet pad of feet. She pushed the door open as silently as she could.

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 ghosts and his. 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 an outgoing 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 craved her, 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.

"Stop?"

She kept her eyes firmly covered. "You—may proceed."

If he wanted this, she would try it, for his sake, but she felt so exposed, so naked. So seen .

He proceeded. She quivered, and he raised his head. "How does that feel?"

She had no words. "It is…pleasant." There was discomfort, but a welcome discomfort, if there were such a thing. A restless wanting. She squirmed again, her hands squeezing the bedclothes as she sought something, she didn't know what. He licked inside her secret place with his tongue and it became quite pleasant, and she lay still, thrilled at the new sensations. After a while it became necessary, urgently so, that he not stop, that he keep doing that, right there , and he obliged, reading her soft moans, the lift and seek of her hips. Then all at once her thighs tensed and the soft bud exploded beneath his tongue, and the shock of it rippled outward all through her body, like a star exploding in the sky.

"So it is pleasing."

Leda opened her eyes, gasping, and saw his smug grin, his eyes alight with silver, as if he'd caught the moonlight.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Good."

She tugged on his arm. "I want to please you. Do you want…more l'amour ?" She didn't know another word for it beside the delicate French. Making love .

"Beautiful Leda. I want all of you. Every part." He kissed her neck again, and the scrape of stubble on her tender skin delighted her. "But—if there could be a child?"

"There won't." She stared at the canopy of the bed, a scarlet shadow. She'd been married for two years, and her husband had tried regularly to breed her, with no success. She was one of those women with a barren womb, and she accepted it. She would never go through what Betsey had.

As if he sensed her brief withdrawal, he stroked a hand along her sides, her belly. "Are you certain you're ready? I don't want to hurt you."

"Jack, you are the one person—the only person in my life—who has never hurt me." There was no fear she would be like Anne-Marie, going mad from children she did not want to keep. There was no fear Jack would hurt her. He was Jack . She tugged him toward her.

He reared over her again and slid a pillow beneath her head, beneath her bottom, and she had a moment to wonder if she would regret this, if he would hurt as Bertram had. She wanted to give this to him, to please him, and a restless ache grew, even on the heels of the starry shower that still pulsed through her body. There was something more , and she wanted it with him. When he probed her entrance with his manhood, she took a breath and slipped her arms around him.

"You want this?" he whispered.

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. "I want you. "

He pushed gently, then slipped inside in one long, slow glide, like rolling an evening glove up her arm, the delicious slide of silk, and a warm fullness that reached to her core. Her eyes popped open.

"Leda ." His groan of pleasure thrilled her.

This was so different from anything she'd known. He found his rhythm and she surged in his arms, the pleasure deeper, keener, more urgent than she could bear. He thrust and she bucked against him, biting his chin, frantic with the intensity. And then she burst again like a seed bud in summer, breaking into pieces, flying apart, soaring. He groaned her name as he arched his back and joined her at the summit, their bodies pulsing, melded so deeply together she could not tell where she ended and he began.

At long last, he rolled to his side and cradled her. Moonlight shone through the bed curtains as he drew the covers over them.

"That," he said with great satisfaction.

She nodded, feeling she could barely move. Her body was a cloud, airy, boneless.

"You found it with me," he said. " La petite mort ."

"Mmm." She wondered why the French had the words for this act and its parts, while English only offered the crudest euphemisms. Because the French understood it was an art, it was poetry, when it felt like this.

He lifted his head, searching her face. "I pleased you."

She trailed her fingertips along his jaw. How Anne-Marie had failed to find delight with him, when he was this , she would never understand.

Perhaps because he hadn't been meant for Anne-Marie. Perhaps he was meant for Leda.

She stilled the path of her fingers and stared into his eyes. "Everything about you delights me, Jack."

He grinned. "So. Not a useless nodcock after all."

He rolled onto his back, rubbing a hand over her shoulder, and she let him revel in his triumph while she discreetly dabbed between her legs with her shift. She would wash the stain out herself, later, so the maids didn't know what she'd done.

What had she done? Jack drew her into the crook of his arm, holding her there, and she understood he wanted her to stay with him as he drifted off to sleep. How strange, to share a bed with someone again. She hadn't been this close to another person since her sister left home to be married.

A bundle of feelings she couldn't name curled and tightened inside, like a wrack of seaweed tumbled up on shore. Jack breathed in peaceful slumber, and she breathed with him, battling the despair that crept around the edges of her bone-deep bliss, sending out shoots of doubt.

How could she leave him, after this?

Yet how could she stay, if she were destined to hurt him?