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Chapter Nine

Ace tossed and turned in the bed as the laudanum coursed through his veins. Wild dreams possessed him, taking him places he did not want to be, making him hear things he had long tried to forget.

He dreamed he was in a forest. His own throat was dry and parched, but he had to bring water to his mother before he could drink himself. He had cupped water from a dank, murky pool and was carrying it in his hands to his mother. The bushes he crawled through had thorns, and they hurt him. But he pressed onward, until he knelt by her bed and offered her the water.

“So little? That’s all you could bring me?” she complained. “And that’d better be liquor, not your damn water.” She cursed him, laughing and screaming.

“Pipe down, Maud!” yelled another inhabitant of the room. “Bloody bitch is on the tear again—somebody get her some gin to quiet her.”

The screaming continued. There was a woman in a clean-smelling cloak, her head covered in some white scarf or cloth, who leaned over Ace and tried to pull him from his mother’s bedside. “Come along, boy,” she said kindly.

And then she said to someone else, “A lad shouldn’t be witnessing his mother give birth—these people are a disgrace.”

“But he’s all she has,” the other voice said, and they left him there with a screaming baby in his arms.

A screaming toddler. They were trying to take him away from Ace, but he held Ted’s hand tightly. It was the workhouse. “Let them be,” said a voice. “His brother is all he has.” They did, and then there was silence.

He was back in the forest somehow, crawling through the brambles. He had to find Ted. He had to rescue Ted. He was all Ted had—he knew that. The thought drove him onward and onward. He had cuts all over him now, and his bones ached.

After hours, perhaps days of crawling, he broke into a small clearing. Moonlight shone there on a small, clear fountain of water that was surrounded by plants.

And there was a creature there kneeling by the fountain, a miraculous creature. Was it some sort of forest nymph? The vicar who came to the workhouse, the one who first singled him out and taught him his letters, had later given Ace stories to read about classical gods and goddesses. This was what a nymph looked like then.

Slender but curved...her skin creamy in the moonlight...long, wavy nut-brown hair that wafted to her waist. Hazel eyes shining in the darkness and soft, pink lips full of allure and promise. She beckoned to him, and he approached her.

He remembered from his books that the immortals sometimes impose impossible tasks on humans in return for their favors. “Are you maiden or nymph?” he asked the creature, and the words sounded to him like something he had once said at another time.

She did not answer, but the corners of her mouth turned up in a little, secret smile. She beckoned again, and he found himself kneeling in front of her.

What could a creature like her want with someone like him?

The nymph reached out and stroked his face with her hands. He suddenly found his lips on hers. They were sweeter than anything he had ever tasted. She guided his hands down to her soft shoulders, her full breasts, her tiny waist.

In the way of dreams, it seemed the gown she had been wearing, of a green so pale it was almost white, had inexplicably disappeared. All that remained were the fragrant green-and-white blossoms around her neck and in her hair. His fingers touched bare flesh, and somehow he knew no mortal man had touched this skin before.

“You are mine,” he said hotly. “No one else’s. Mine.”

She smiled that secret smile again. Then she offered him her young, pure breasts to suckle, while she guided his hands even lower.

By the time he had reached her thighs, he was in a burning fever. He wanted to mount her. But he sensed that, since she never had been touched by man before, he must go slowly. He parted her thighs with his hands, and he saw her womanhood displayed to him.

She guided his face to the hidden temple. He wanted so much to give her pleasure, to teach her what mortal men and women enjoy. As he entered her with his tongue, he felt her arch her supple, slender back in arousal.

A frenzy overtook him. “You’re mine, you’re mine,” he kept murmuring, as his tongue thrust in and out. Then suddenly, in the manner of hot, wet dreams, he felt himself explode into a million stars up in the moonlit sky.

Sated, he held her tightly. “Goddess,” he whispered, “don’t leave me. You’re all I have.”

* * *

The same afternoon, Lady Seraphina sat in the drawing room, trying to concentrate on a novel, when a footman announced her brother as a visitor. “The Baron Roster, my lady.”

Lord Alfred swept in. He was impeccably dressed as always—down to the pearl pin he wore in his silk cravat. Yet his blond hair looked tousled, as if he had been running his fingers madly through it. His usually cold, expressionless eyes had a hunted look.

Lady Seraphina rose and greeted Lord Alfred with a kiss on the cheek. “Brother! This is a surprise. Shall I order us some tea?”

“To hell with your tea. Get me something stronger than that, I need it. Port—no, whisky, make it whisky.”

Lady Seraphina would have pointed out that it was a bit early in the afternoon for strong drink. But she was a little frightened of her brother and his moods, so she acquiesced.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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