Her Mad Baron (5 page)

“I am sorry about trying to, ah, about attempting things with your person,” he said at last. His strange intensity seemed to have passed. “You would only wish to do such things with your husband.”

She chewed a mouthful of peaches in some sort of syrup. No off flavor, though they were too sweet.

His formal, awkward apology charmed Florrie, and she decided she owed him the truth. “I never expect to marry. I have rather wondered what a man’s body would be like.” He still looked so grave she continued. “I enjoyed your kisses.” She wished she didn’t blush so easily.

“I did, too. ‘Enjoy’ strikes me as too mild a word.” His brief grin was boyish. He put the tin plates on the floor then lay back on the bed—far away from her. “I will treasure the memory of touching you. Assuming I retain the memory.”

She decided the subject was dismissed, and she was glad to let it drop. “You haven’t eaten enough,” she said.

“Once I get out of here, I will make up for it. I’ve invented menus for days.” He turned on his side and examined her. “Your face is growing and shrinking. A very odd sight. Common for me now.”

“But who would do this to you? Could it be whoever inherits from you?”

He let out a deep breath. “I’m the last in the line.”

She could still sense the difference in him. He remained tense, close to some edge. She’d distract him with conversation. “What is your first name? Oh I remember. Nathaniel. You have a lot of names.”

He blinked at her. “You. What is your last name?”

“Cadero.”

“Are you related to Martin Cadero?”

“He was my father.”

“The eccentric gentleman blacksmith. I believe my uncle admires his work very much. Admired. My uncle is dead, and I’m the baron now.” He blinked again as if trying to clear his vision. “Florrie Cadero. And the...” He drew in a deep breath and palmed his eyes. “Florrie is for what?”

“Felicity. My brother called me Florrie when I was a baby.”

“Your brother. Tell me about him.”

“His name is Duncan. He was going to be a clergyman, but he’d have been a terrible minister of souls.” She talked quickly, as if speed and filling any silences could better distract him from the intoxicants coursing through his system. “We don’t have the funds for him to actually be a gentleman, but we have saved enough to open a book and antique shop.”

“Is he here? Will he come looking for you? Perhaps that is our way out.”

“He is here, but he won’t look for me, not for ages, I suspect.”

He shivered.

“How do you feel? What’s happening to you, Nathaniel?”

“The usual sort of thing. But I will fight it. Thank you for that.” He pressed his hands together. “Why? I mean. Why is your brother not going to look for you?”

They’d made a plan: Duncan would only raise an alarm if she was gone a full day, twenty-four hours. They’d never had to test this, and perhaps he wouldn’t wait that long. But Florrie suspected it would be hours yet before he risked arrest for them both.

She considered telling a lie but was too tired to think of a good one, and she was not very accomplished at story telling. “We are not here legally. I broke into your house because I am a thief.”

“You are?” He gave a startled laugh. “You, a thief. This should teach you never to rob again. You have lost too much. Your freedom.”

“I broke in to take back the knife my father made and your uncle didn’t pay for. And now…” She shook her head. “I couldn’t care less about that blasted knife, unless I could use it to get out.”

He stared down at his hands. “It’s not in here, I’m sorry to say. This room has nothing in it that could be a weapon.”

He’d said that already...hadn’t he?

“We will get out tomorrow. I will find something.” She went to the clothespress and opened it. Perhaps the heavy lid could be broken apart somehow. She felt foolish pounding it with her fist.

After a few minutes of prowling the room, she gave up and went back to sit on the edge of the bed. He shoved overlong locks of hair from his face and pressed his mouth tight. She was just wondering if his grip on reality had slipped again when he spoke. “I have an idea.”

Nathaniel climbed off the bed and then slid under it. Florrie had grown used to his strange fits and starts and knelt on the floor to look into the darkness.

He pointed. “A slat down here is loose. The damned mattress is so heavy. If I lift the mattress, you might be able to remove the slat.”

She lay on her back and pushed herself under the low slung, old-fashioned mattress which seemed to be held up with a random series of ropes and wooden slats. In the dark, close space, she grew even more aware of him, the sheer bulk and heat of the man.

He braced his hands on the mattress and began to push. Then he stopped. “You must promise me you won’t do anything if it’s Grub. You should only hide from him. He will kill you if you don’t incapacitate him, and the man is an ox.”

“All right. I won’t. This is the slat?”

“Yes. On three.”

They worked together as easily and quickly as if they’d practiced. She pushed the heavy board sideways and down. It fell, almost hitting her face. “This is an oddly constructed bed,” she said, sliding out from under the bed, which now sagged at one end.

His eyes glittered in his pale face, and she wondered what strange visions he had. Something compelling from the intent way he watched her. “Nathaniel. Are you feeling well?”

“Yes, better than I have since I’ve arrived at this pestilential house.” He flopped down on the bed, lay back and put his hands behind his head. “Tell me. Talk. Why do you say you won’t marry?”

“Oh, dear. You said you had trouble recalling some of the things that passed between us. I wish you’d forget more.”

He looked less haggard when he smiled. “Go on, tell me.”

“I’m not very good at holding onto secrets, and I’d eventually feel the need to confess my crimes. The only man who’d accept that would be a fellow criminal, and I don’t think we’d suit.” That wasn’t a lie, exactly. Jimmy had been a thief, after all—although when it came to women he was as traditional and narrow-minded as any banker.

Nathaniel’s skin glowed and begged for her touch. She had trouble listening to his words as he said, “Your career has been brief, hasn’t it?”

She stretched out on her side near him and wondered what career he meant.

He gave a heavy sigh. Or maybe that was her heavy breath she heard as she peered into his face. “Are you still seeing strange things? Is there anything I can do to help you?” She wondered why her voice sounded as if it came from somewhere above their head.

He rolled onto his side, propped an elbow and leaned his head on his hand. “You might hold me,” he suggested.

“I’d be afraid.”

“Don’t be. You’re my anchor in reality, and you needn’t fear me anymore. I want you very much, but I can stop myself.”

I am more afraid of my own desire.
But the words caught in her throat. She had some measure of a woman’s decent pride—at tattered shred that would be ripped away if he took her in his arms. She wriggled to within two feet of him and held out her hand. “I’ll hold your hand. Is that enough?”

“More than enough.”

For a time they lay in tense silence. He covered them both with the thin sheet.

She forgot pride and all the rest as she absently reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. Jimmy’d used scented Macassar oil, and he’d protested when she’d touched his sleek hair.

Nathaniel’s hair was so wild her touch made no change in the multi-toned waves of brown and gold. She stared as it flowed like wheat caught in the breeze.

The shadows on his face grew deeper. Under his eyes, on his cheekbones. The muscles of his shoulders and arms shifted. Magnificent lovely muscles but the sharpened angles were odd. She examined every inch of his flesh she could see. She wished the sheet and the ragged trousers would go away. His warm grasp seemed to calm her, as well.

And as she watched the dimming shadows of his chest rise and fall with his breath, she suddenly understood she needed an anchor in reality, too. “No, no, the peaches. They must have. Oh.”

“Something in them after all?”

She nodded then wondered if she had actually moved her head or if it was the room that moved.

His voice came from near her. “I’m sorry, Florrie. I should have stopped you. I expect they shift the poison once I learn to trust a food.”

The lines of his face that were not in the dark now glowed as if he were lit from within. The flames turned orange. “Help,” she croaked. “You. And now. The room is on fire.”

“Florrie, it’s not real. Look at me.” His voice next to her ear, thank God, was firm and deep. “Look at me. My face and body might transform, but I will not vanish. I’m real, I shan’t leave, and I’ll help you. Do you understand?”

Paralyzing fear wouldn’t allow her to speak. She could only stare into those eyes. Fires of blue and green but no more orange, only cooling blue and green. She had never seen such a color before, and if the terror hadn’t seized her, she could have enjoyed the astounding beauty. “You have to hold me,” she demanded. “Don’t let go.”

He must have rolled toward her because the center vanished. “The eyes,” she croaked. “Let me see them, please? Let me feel your breathing.”

“It’s dark, Florrie. Time will shift oddly for you, and it’s evening. They don’t allow me to have a light. You’ll have to know I’m here by touch.”

“Don’t let me go.”

“Of course not,” he said, and wrapped his arms tight around her, pressing so close no air came between them.

Nathaniel was the nearly sane one now, a glorious change. He held the weeping woman close and ignored the strange visions and occasional bizarre thoughts that had become almost normal. Harder to ignore his body’s response to her. She dozed at last. He still held her, breathing in her scent, lightly stroking her impossibly soft skin, but only on the side of her face and throat, though his hands longed to explore her body again.

She woke with a wail that he hoped wouldn’t bring anyone, but no, she had buried her face against his chest. The scream was muffled.

“It’s true,” she sobbed. “I’m in an insane asylum. My brother has put me here.”

“No, no,” he crooned and told her the truth, or as much as his own befuddled brain could recall. “You are Florrie, and you came to steal your father’s dagger. You stumbled into the room where they are keeping me. I am the prisoner.”

“You are. You are the madman who attacked me.”

He sighed. “Yes, I did, but now I will keep you safe.”

“Wait. You didn’t attack me. Now I’m awake, almost, I mean. It wasn’t an attack.” She sounded like the Florrie he’d come to know over the last few hours. “I saw you and thought you looked wonderful. All gold and...” She swallowed. “Nathaniel?”

“Yes?”

“Good. Just making certain that’s your name. Don’t let go of me, please. It’s not done yet. Will it ever be done?”

“Yes, sweet Florrie, it will be done, and you’ll get out of here to climb more walls and break into more houses.”

She gave a weak laugh. “Never again. This was my last one. We were only taking back Papa’s blades. We tried once or twice to ask for money, but were threatened by the owners. Duncan said. But I admit, I don’t know. I’ve learned my brother is not always…”

She gave a wide yawn and a shiver. “We only did three. This was the fourth. Don’t want anyone to notice the connection to us, after all. I didn’t. Oh, I hope Duncan didn’t lie.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to learn my uncle didn’t pay. I believe he was miserly. And he’d been sick a long time.”

But she was asleep again. This was the longest he’d been awake in this room. Usually he slept as much as he could. He allowed himself to slip into sleep, too.

He woke to her groans again. “Papa,” she murmured. “No, no. You’re Nathaniel, my madman who’s made me mad.”

“Just the food,” he reminded her. “We are sane at our core, remember?”

“Yes, this will cease. Yes. I must wait. Thank you.” She rubbed her face against his chest, her warm breath caressed him in a sigh. “The worst seems to be over. My heart isn’t jumping out of my chest. Talk to me.”

He did, he told her all he could about the strange drugs they’d been fed and how long the effects would last, but it was difficult to talk when her small hands reached under the sheet to stroke slowly down his spine and sides, and over his rear.

He exhaled sharply and gave up hiding his arousal. “I am holding you, but I should tell you that it’s damned difficult when you move like that. Or touch me. Or when I feel your breasts through your shirt against my skin.”

Her warm hands moved up to his shoulders and stayed there flat against his flesh. “You feel so strong and real. But I’m sorry. I don’t want you to lose control.”

“No, not again. I promise I won’t. But I might end up howling and drooling and chewing on the furniture.”

She gave a weak giggle. “That sounds like the very definition of losing control.”

“No. I meant taking you. Chewing the furniture is nothing to that.”