A Dance in Moonlight (The Fitzhugh Trilogy)

A DANCE IN MOONLIGHT

Sherry Thomas

COPYRIGHT

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

“A Dance in Moonlight,” © 2012 by Sherry Thomas.

Cover design © Courtney Milan.

Cover photography credits © Spinnaker555, Tony Brindley, Halay Alex, and Inga Ivanova | Shutterstock.com

Digital Edition 1.0

All rights reserved. Where such permission is sufficient, the author grants the right to strip any DRM which may be applied to this work.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Epilogue

About Sherry Thomas

Extras

Excerpt from
Ravishing the Heiress

Other books by Sherry Thomas

About
Midnight Scandals

Excerpt from
One Starlit Night
by Carolyn Jewel

Excerpt from
What Happened at Midnight
by Courtney Milan

Chapter One

Summer 1896, Somerset, a few miles south of the Exmoor hills

THE WOMAN WAS BACK.

Ralston Fitzwilliam had seen her once before, two days ago. He had been on the tail-end of a fourteen mile walk, up and down hills so gentle they were barely bumps in the ground, across rain-swollen streams, and alongside green, sheep-dotted pastures.

Given that dark rain clouds, so low he could almost touch them, had crowded the sky from horizon to horizon, he should have gone straight home to Stanton House, set at his disposal by the Duke of Perrin for the few weeks a year Ralston spent in England. But the walk had not been sufficiently tiring for a man who wanted his limbs aching and his mind blank, so he had traversed Beauregard’s farm and headed up the slope at the top of which sat Viscount Northword’s country seat.

Only to have the rain come down hard halfway uphill. He veered toward Doyle’s Grange, a smaller property of the Northword estate. It was vacant at present, and he could take shelter under its ivy-covered portico without being fussed over and lectured about the foolishness of being abroad in such weather, without even an umbrella. As he approached the garden gate behind the house, she had appeared on the garden path, a young widow all in black.

She was beautiful—tall, regal, her hair as dark as the beads of jet that trimmed her hat. But what had truly caught his eye was the story of her life that had been written on her otherwise exquisite face.

It had not been the easiest of lives. There was an air of fragility to her—not an inborn timidity, but the residual fear of someone who had been burnt by the vagaries of fate.

He recognized himself—as he had been for many years, and perhaps even as he was now.

She hurried into the house without noticing him. But he thought of her as he waited out the rain beneath the eaves of the garden shed, for the entirety of his walk home, and when he extinguished his light at night.

He called on Doyle’s Grange the next day, but the front gate was locked, the house shut tight.

And now here she was again, a lovely, somber silhouette in the waning light of a summer evening, stepping down from a hansom cab, a satchel in hand. His heart leaped until he realized that the hansom cab, parked on the country lane before the blooming rhododendron hedge, did not leave. It was waiting for her to come out from the house and would ferry her elsewhere.

He hesitated. But before long, he found himself slipping into the front gate and walking up the drive. A movement of an upstairs curtain caught his eye—he had been sighted. Under the portico, as he raised his hand toward the bell pull, the door flung open, and she launched herself into his arms.

He was over six feet in height and sturdy of build. But she was at least five foot nine and no skeleton. He stumbled back a step.

Before he could quite recover from his surprise, she gripped his face and kissed him.

He’d kissed women to whom he hadn’t been properly introduced, but never before he’d uttered so much as a greeting. She was ravenous, almost barbarous, as if she wanted to level him to the ground and lay waste to him.

The next moment her kiss turned tender. Now she was kissing her beloved, thought to be lost on the battlefield, but found alive and well, needing only to be cared for and cherished. Her fingers, which had been digging hard into the sides of his head, relaxed. Her body fitted itself to his. And he, who’d until now been largely stunned, wondering how to disentangle himself without giving offense, was suddenly caught in the kiss.

She smelled of roses. Not the smothering scent he’d encountered at times, as if he’d been stuffed inside a perfume bottle, but light and fresh, like a single petal held beneath the nostrils. Her cheek beneath his hand was wondrously soft. And her body was all velvet—her mourning gown was made of the stuff—plush, smooth, sensational.

“Oh, Fitz,” she murmured, her arms banding tighter about him. “My darling Fitz.”

His nickname at school had been Bosh—he liked to roll his eyes and say “bosh” when his mates sprouted nonsense. But he supposed one could call him Fitz, short for Fitzwilliam. Which raised the question, who was she? Where had he met her before that she considered their acquaintance to merit such a passionate kiss at this reunion? And if indeed they knew each other so well, how was it that he did not have the least recollection of her?

But that was for later. For now, he pulled her closer and kissed her back.

ISABELLE ENGLEWOOD ALMOST COULD NOT withstand the wild burst of joy in her heart. Her Fitz, her beautiful, beloved Fitz. He had realized his mistake and returned to her at last.

He smelled wonderful—but different, of cedar and bergamot, with the faintest underpinning of oriental spices. And he was more substantial than she remembered—good, she preferred a little more meat on his bones. And how she loved the way he kissed her, with a gentleness that nevertheless scorched.

Since her return to England, he’d been reticent to be physically close to her. But not anymore. Now he was unhesitating. Now he was hungry.

As was she. She’d been dreaming of this moment. It had been more than eighteen months since she’d lain with a man, more than a decade since she understood that she wanted to wake up next to him every morning of her life.

She broke the kiss when she could no longer breathe. Locking her fingers together behind his neck, she rested her head against his shoulder and panted, all the while pressing kisses into his cheek and jaw.

At last he was hers to have and to hold. To love and to cherish. Tears welled in her eyes, but she did not care; it had been far too long since she’d wept tears of happiness.

Happiness, what an alien sensation.

She nibbled him just above his collar, and the sound that emerged from his throat was full of suppressed desire. And his body—she could feel his
un
suppressed desire against her, making her giddy even as a tear escaped the corner of her eye.

She smiled. And giggled—she loved being dizzy with hope.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, reaching up to touch his hair. “But let me dismiss the cabbie first, before he begins to wonder what…”

She forgot what else she was about to say. The hair beneath her finger was brown, with perhaps the slightest reddish tint. Fitz’s hair was not brown; it was black, like her own. Not to mention when she last saw him, this very morning, his hair had been at least two inches shorter.

Dazed, she looked up into his eyes. “What happened to your—”

The eyes that gazed back at her were green.
Green
. A man could conceivably dye his hair—or put on a wig. But how did he change the color of his eyes?

She leaped back from him. “You are not Fitz. Who are you?”

A SIMPLE CASE OF mistaken identity.

Which would have been rather funny, a woman kissing the wrong man, if she did not look so shattered.

She stared at him as if he were a piece of art for which she’d bartered all her worldly possessions, only to realize that he was but a forgery, an inferior copy of what she truly wanted. She blinked furiously, then, forgetting—or perhaps no longer caring—that she’d asked for his identity, she turned her back to him and reached for the door of the house.

“Mrs. Englewood,” he blurted out.

He’d spoken to the estate agent who had overseen the letting of Doyle’s Grange. He knew her name. He knew that she was the mother of two young children. He knew that she had lost her husband, a cavalry officer, in India.

“My apologies, Mrs. Englewood. I did not mean to…disrupt your evening. My name is Fitzwilliam and I live nearby. I was informed that you have taken Doyle’s Grange and hoped to make your acquaintance.”

The breath she took was audible. Stiffly, she turned her head enough to look at him. “I should apologize to you, Mr. Fitzwilliam. The mistake and the responsibility were both mine.”