Free The Mad Lord's Daughter by Jane Goodger Page A

thick and wet now fell and danced in the wind before settling onto the ground. She flung herself out the front door, not caring that she looked like a hoyden, not caring that she was supposed to be a twenty-three-year-old young lady who should be acting far more sedately. She’d been sedate for so many years, and now she wanted to experience life.
    It was snowing and it was . . . oh, goodness, it was hitting her face, cold little bites on her cheeks and eyelids and neck. She pulled her muffler about her a bit tighter. It was cold, she thought, then laughed out loud.
    “You are always laughing at something, aren’t you? What is it now?” John asked, his dark hair frosted white with the snow.
    “I’ve never been in the snow,” she said, then turned her face up to it again.
    “Look,” he said, scooping up a bit of snow into his gloved hand and patting it until it formed a sphere. Then he tossed it at her, hitting her with a muffled thud on her shoulder and leaving behind a round snow print. Melissa opened her mouth in delighted shock, glancing from the snow on her shoulder back to John’s grinning face.
    “Let me try,” she said, grabbing up some snow. The grass was still peeking through the white stuff, but it was disappearing quickly from view. Melissa did a very poor job with her ball, but she threw it at him anyway. He ducked with a laugh. “No fair, you must stand there and take it like a man,” she announced, then bent down and retrieved more snow. With a bit of a devilish look, she gathered up as much as she could before packing it down and throwing it, hitting him squarely in the face. He stood there like a statue, his face covered with the remnants of her snowball.
    “Oh, I didn’t mean to . . .” She started laughing. “Honestly, John, I was aiming for your shoulder. I never meant to hit you in the . . .” He calmly wiped the snow from his face, where it left behind cold rivulets of water. His face had gone quite red, and Melissa hoped it was from the cold snow and not from anger.
    “I’m afraid that requires retaliation,” he said calmly, then bent down again. Melissa didn’t wait to find out what he was planning. She took off across the lawn, her feet slipping and sliding in the snow. Melissa, having spent much of her life indoors, was perhaps not the most agile runner, and she found very quickly that running in the snow added a degree of peril. Hearing footsteps behind her and gaining quickly, she tried to make a quick turn but instead found herself flailing about right before she tumbled, face-first, onto the frozen ground.
    “Melissa!” John cried, coming up next to her. She couldn’t answer. Could. Not. She was laughing too hard. Oh, had she ever in her life laughed like this? Laughed at her own silliness, at the pure joy of being completely absurd. He was kneeling next to her, his face still wet from her snowball, laughing with her. His eyelashes, thick and straight, were clumped charmingly together by the melted snow, his gray eyes dancing with humor. She suddenly felt strange, impossibly hot even though she was sitting on the snow-covered ground. It was as if everything in her body thickened: her blood, her breath. It was the strangest sensation she’d ever felt in her life, and she instinctively knew it was because of John.
    “I thought you surely hurt yourself,” he said, still laughing.
    “Only my pride,” she said, thankful that the strange feeling was abating. “And, oh, my dress.” It was a snowy, wet, muddy mess. “It’s filthy,” she said, rather delighted with that as well. She wished she could roll around in mud and laugh and laugh all day. Except it was extremely cold sitting there on the ground. She began struggling to get up, but he offered her his hand. She grabbed it without hesitation, and he hoisted her up rather too fast, making her crash against him and threatening to toss them both back onto the snowy earth. Her face was just inches from his. She could see