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" 'And now, where are you keeping my darling princess?¡¯

"I heard her from the top of the back stairs: 'Quinn!¡¯

"I rose at once and ran up to her, jogging left then left again with the little stairway, and then throwing my arms around her as we came together on the second floor.

" 'Remember my warnings,' came Rowan's voice from below.

" 'I promise, no penetration,' said Mona. 'Now leave us alone. ¡¯

"I picked her up off her feet.

" 'Oh, my egregious boy!' she declared, her breasts hot beneath her snow white shirt, her red hair everywhere in my eyes and against my heart, her naked legs smooth and beautiful to my touch.

"I carried her down the hallway. 'Where do we go, Princess Mona of Mayfair?' I asked. 'I have wrestled with angels and dragons to be with you!¡¯

" 'To the very front of the house, Prince Tarquin of Blackwood,' she answered. 'There is my bower among the branches of the oaks. ¡¯

"We passed up a short few steps, out of a narrow hallway, to a big bedroom and through it into a large hallway and on past a regal staircase to the very front where my beloved, my red-haired beloved, signaled me to make a left turn.

"It was the very front bedroom, all right, and its two floor-length windows were open to the upper porch, and they seemed to be filled by the oak branches of the two trees which stood before the house.

"We fell onto the bed.

"I was all wound up with Mona's virginal white blouse and its voluminous sleeves and lace, and we were tumbling in her white pillows, and I pressed my hand against her hot wet panties, and with the pressure of my palm brought her to the finish with divine blushes that made me come.

"Again we did it, and this time more slowly and playfully, and then again, and I was as always spent before she was, but I was in no mood to desert her in her need.

"It must have been an hour that we lay together, and all the while the door was partially open and there came no sound of any intruding person in the house.

"We were on our honor and on a small white lace baby quilt, which I had pretty much spoilt with my overspilled love. 'Entirely washable, and destined for the purpose,' said my Lady Love as she folded it and cast it away.

"Now it was the season for kisses and for snuggling and for lying back against the pillows and looking out of the windows at the oak branches in which the lithe little brown squirrels tripped among the clinging green ferns.

" 'I never want to leave you,' I told her. 'But awful things have happened to me since we were together,' I confessed.

"I told her all about the stranger and his bizarre assault. I told her how he had read my very thoughts about the Hermitage. And how I had given the order for the renovations and he and I would be partners in it, but I was more sure than ever that I had seen him dumping bodies by the light of the moon.

"She was fascinated.

" 'Doesn't that scare you?' she asked.

" 'Of course not,' I said. 'I'm more scared of Oncle Julien. ¡¯

"She laughed.

" 'Does Oncle Julien come any time you want him?¡¯

"She looked sad.

" 'No,' she said, 'it's more like he comes when he wants to come, and now you have to tell me everything that happened to you with him. I overheard your telling Rowan and Michael, I admit. I was an eavesdropper. But you have to tell me. Describe him. Describe how he acted. I have to know. I'm so ferociously jealous when Oncle Julien appears to anybody else. ¡¯

"I recounted the whole experience for her. I described Julien's dapper clothes, his gentle manner. I described the flowered china pattern. She knew it. She said it was Royal Antoinette. She wasn't sure they even had it in his time. She said he had snatched the image out of the pantry. He was a clever ghost.

"She was deeply affected by the fact that he had said her child was alive. That meant the world to her. I had a jewel there to give her in that simple intelligence.

" 'But doesn't a ghost ever lie?' I asked. I went, in my mind, back over my experience with Rebecca. Perhaps she never lied to me. She only deceived me and there can be a difference.

"I got up out of the bed. I went to the window and looked into the oak branches. It was so beautiful here. You'd never guess that you were in the middle of the city -- that the waterfront lay a scant eight blocks from here to the left, that St. Charles Avenue with its legendary streetcars was only three blocks to the right.