MINE.
Their hips moved in unison, gliding back and forth, back and forth. Dancing on that razor sharp line of passion and pleasure. Gliding between darkness and desire. Grasping her chin, he turned her head toward him and captured her lips in a bruising kiss while simultaneously plunging all of him into all of her.
They came together, Ambrose with a primal snarl and Mara on a soft cry. Shuddering, he emptied his seed, again and again, until he was spent, body, mind, and soul. Keeping an arm wrapped around her ribcage, he withdrew and buried his face into her nape, breathing in the scent of her. The scent of the lilacs. The scent of complete and utter fulfillment.
Even in the hazy swirl of a dream, he recognized that with Mara, intimacy was different. It was not a means to an end, but abelonging. A union that he’d never experienced before with any of his previous, meaningless dalliances. And what a fool he was, to have waited this long. To have wasted untold nights.
“Mara.” He kissed the delicate bump of her vertebrae. “Mara, I...” A bead of sweat pooled at his hairline and rolled down his temple. Annoyed, he brushed it away, but a second took its place and then a third, a fourth, a fifth. All at once, the air was swelteringly hot.
“What the devil? Mara? Mara—”
But his arms were empty.
She was gone.
Vanished.
Flames, hot and hungry, ran up the drapes and then spread across the ceiling in a crackling inferno of orange and red. Cursing, Ambrose tried to jump off the bed, but his legs wouldn’t move. Neither would his arms. He was trapped, and when he tried to shout, no sound emerged. Horrified, he could only watch as the room burned.
*
The next morning,Mara woke in a chair beside Ambrose. And as soon as she absently pressed the back of her hand to his forehead and felt the heat radiating from his skull, she knew immediately that something was wrong.
“Agnes? Agnes! Come here. Come quickly!
“What is it, Your G-Grace?” Out of breath from racing up the stairs when she’d heard her mistress call out, Agnes rushed to the duke’s bedside and placed her hand right above Mara’s. What she felt made the blood drain from her cheeks, and in that instant Mara knew that something was very, very wrong indeed.
“What’s happening to him?” she whispered, as if by keeping her voice low it would somehow keep the evils that were plaguing Ambrose at bay.
“Infection,” Agnes said matter-of-factly. Rolling up her sleeves, she went to the wash basin where the doctor had ordered fresh water, clean towels, and a bar of olive oil soap to remain. “We’ll have tae push him back onto his side and clean the wound. He’s not going tae like it.” She summoned Mr. Humphrey and Lucy, a scullery maid, who hung nervously in the doorway until Agnes barked at her to come forward and hold the towels.
“What can I do?” Mara asked, wringing her hands together.
“Stay by his head. Keep him still.”
Keep him still?
He hadn’t moved in days.
Nonetheless, Mara did what was requested of her. If Agnes had told her to stand on her head and cluck like a chicken she would have done that, too. Anything to make Ambrose feel better. To wake him up. To return him to the robust health he’d once known.
I don’t even care if you’re cantankerous and terrible to deal with, she thought as she tentatively placed her hands on his shoulders.I’d rather have you like that than not have you at all.
From the foot of the bed, she heard Agnes expel a hiss of breath.
“What?” she said anxiously. “What is it?”
“Best not tae look, Your Grace.”
“He’smyhusband. If there’s anything... oh.” Dizziness hit her like a wave as her eyes went to the wound on his leg where green and yellow puss oozed. With the bandages removed, the smell was nearly overwhelming. As her stomach rolled, she yanked her gaze away. “Oh, how did we miss that? I checked it just yesterday!”
“Infection can set in overnight,” Agnes said grimly. “Best ye noticed his fever when ye did, or else it would have continued tae fester. I’ll clean it as best we can and send for the doctor again. We’ll give him some laudanum for the pain and then hope for the best.”
“Hope for the best,” Mara repeated in a strangled voice as she looked at her husband. “Hope for the best.All we’ve done is hope for the best! There has to be more that we can do. A remedy we haven’t tried. A medicine that would heal him!”
Agnes exchanged a fleeting glance with Mr. Humphrey.
“What?” Mara demanded. “What is it?”
