The Wild Baron (Baron 1)

Toby was standing in the doorway, dancing up and down, waving, calling out, “Hurry, hurry!”

Rohan simply picked the boy up and moved him behind him. He ran into the room—only to draw up. At first he didn’t see anything. Then he saw the open window. Then he saw Marianne crouched outside on the narrow balcony, humming, waving her hands.

It was a drop of a good thirty feet to the ground.

Susannah lightly placed her fingers on his sleeve. She called out quietly, “Marianne? Lovey, what are you doing out there?”

The little girl looked back at her mother. “The man opened the window. He said I’d have fun out here.”

What man? But Rohan didn’t say it out loud. He saw the panic in Susannah’s eyes, and ignored it for the moment. “Marianne,” he said very quietly, “Your papa used to sit on that ledge when he was a little boy. It is fun. However, it’s late now. It’s dark. A sharp wind might blow up and whisk you right over the Channel to France. You don’t want to go to France without your mama, do you?”

“Maybe,” Marianne said after a moment of thought.

“Lovey,” Susannah said quietly as she began walking toward the open window. “I don’t want you to move. I don’t want you to whisk away to France without me. When you whisk anywhere it will be with me. Now, don’t you move. I’m going to bring you back inside.”

“I’ll get her,” Rohan said.

But Susannah was already at the open window. It was set high off the floor and she frowned at that. She managed to pull herself up onto the window ledge. “Don’t move, Marianne.” Susannah crawled out onto the balcony, slowly, very slowly, speaking quietly to Marianne all the while.

Toby stood beside Rohan, the two of them stiff as boards, not speaking. Mr. Fitz and the footmen stood silent as the dead just inside the nursery door.

“That’s it, lovey, that’s it. Now, turn around and come to Mama. Don’t look toward France. I don’t want you to whisk off. That’s right, crawl to Mama. Good girl, that’s it.”

“Oh, my,” Toby breathed out when Susannah had Marianne pressed against her. “Oh, my.”

“Indeed,” Rohan said. He stepped forward, took Marianne from Susannah, and tucked her under one arm. He gave Susannah his other hand and hauled her back through the window.

Rohan sat down in the elegant rocking chair in the corner of the room. “Light more candles,” he told Fitz. Then he began rocking Marianne. After a while, he said, very quietly, “What man was here, Marianne?”

6

SHE REARED BACK IN HIS ARMS. SHE RAISED ONE DAMP finger that she’d been sucking to touch the cleft in his chin.

“Come, Marianne, what man?”

Still staring at that cleft, she said, “A nice man. He said he’d let me sit on the ledge if I would stop yelling. He said he had to find something. He said it was all right for him to be here because he knew you.”

“He opened the window for you?”

Marianne nodded.

“He set you on the window ledge?”

“No. He put a chair next to the window. I got up all by myself.”

Good Lord. “Did you stop yelling?”

She grinned at him. Naturally she’d stopped. What a forbidden treat the man had offered to her.

“Marianne, can you tell me what the man looked like?”

“You,” she said, pressing her middle finger against the cleft in his chin. “He looked like you.” Tired. She collapsed against his chest. Sucking was the only sound in Susannah’s bedchamber. Rohan said quietly, “Do you think she’ll sleep through the night now?”

Susannah could only nod. She stood there, stiff with shock, nearly as frightened as she’d been for those endless hours she’d spent with her mother in labor. There’d been nothing she could do then. But now, she was the mother. Marianne was her responsibility. And she could have died.

“Susannah? Just stop it. Marianne is fine. Can’t you hear her slurping on her fingers? Get hold of yourself. That’s better. Now take her and put her down. I will have one of the maids stay with her until you come to bed. I’ll have two maids come if you would like.”

“Two maids,” Susannah said.